Most discussed stories

My Literary Pockets

12641264 views77 comments44 favs

I don’t know what to do with all this money flowing from my books. It’s burning a hole in my literary pocket.

Ares Considers a Career Change

806806 views77 comments66 favs

Barbarians and savages wore feathers/ or frightful face paint or skin tones// one could recognize and aim for/ with weapons one could feel

The Safety of Breakers

10651065 views77 comments77 favs

I could put on some music, but it just pushes me further away from you, so it seems. It takes me out far beyond the safety breakers and then reintroduces me to my own splashing two-fisted fear of swimming. You can swim through …

Date Night

10781078 views77 comments77 favs

Content may contain ordinary, everyday, and all around average happenings.

Straight Out of the Can

17611761 views77 comments88 favs

My other brother, Mike, has been camping out with the Carter boys down the street. For breakfast, he had beans, straight out of a can, and they were the best thing he ever ate. “These are the best,” he told them. “The best beans?” Joe, t

Fin

14721472 views77 comments11 fav

She doesn’t answer. Ten minutes slide by unmolested in the anesthesia of cheap wine and resignation, the bouncers blurring and unblurring, the room dimming, quieting, the kaleidoscope of sundown giving way to the gentle sadness of candlelight.

The Rhythm of the Cows

13051305 views77 comments44 favs

A cow wanders onto a roof and falls through the skylight. It's a calamity, but such an innocent mistake. Mightn't you amble onto a rooftop once upon a full winter snow in Vermont?Another cow climbs a gravel mound in…

Mausoleum

12271227 views77 comments66 favs

you might as well be blind

Make Music, Not Love

11691169 views77 comments77 favs

We are/no more than heartbeats on repeat.

Retribution

829829 views77 comments55 favs

There could be a Reagan circle/ with a Maggie Thatcher suite.

On the Roof

11951195 views77 comments66 favs

Marie was on the roof. The deck, with its cool concrete pavers and faded cedar Adirondack chairs, was one of the reasons she and Harold had bought their condo in this building. The only ugly part of the roof was the chain-link fence along its edge; soon after they moved…

We'll Always Have Bakersfield

12101210 views77 comments66 favs

"I tell you about ten other men who want to love me and two I could kiss in the smoking room of a jazz club, you wonder if I’d love anyone."

A Circus Never to Return

15341534 views77 comments77 favs

But on arrival Darlene was in no prompt mood to undress. "There's some ugly sumpthin' out there along the fence, looks like it's gnawin' on sumpthin' dead."

Tuonela

947947 views77 comments55 favs

Just a lot of honking and hissing.

A Safe Distance

11621162 views77 comments44 favs

Poems, and Zebras

Calypso

19691969 views77 comments44 favs

For here in the vortex are no other laws, Than separate towards you I and skirting stone- To wards where wavelets purr against their pause A moment more, to yawn to omicron… Inside the seashell orchard's whirl-quick floor- Come all at once to me or…

where horses stood ground

13201320 views77 comments66 favs

Where horses once were tethered grows their grass . . .

Chinese Apples

22732273 views77 comments99 favs

Mother still calls pomegranates “Chinese apples,” much to my embarrassment.

Nearsighted Singers, Your Time Has Come

12231223 views77 comments44 favs

An old man in overalls with rags on his head known locally as Bo Peep made his way up from the black side of town to the white. After listening for a few moments, he shook his head in disgust. “Boy, you can’t play them blues.”

Bad Ideas I've Had

969969 views77 comments44 favs

Not all ideas are bad, just mine.

I Can't Complain

11711171 views77 comments77 favs

To tell the truth, I can’t complain. Look, lots of people have it tough. I don’t have it tough...

lament of Liu Ch'e . . . while elsewhere--

14391439 views77 comments66 favs

in her silk sleeves is silence sheathed.

The Boss of Bosses

13831383 views77 comments33 favs

The one thing my father told me that I want to believe is true . . .

Guess I'm Finally Over You - song

916916 views77 comments44 favs

All this broken glass in the road Tells the longest story l have ever told Of how you lost your life and I my love And how you still go wandering above I don't know how I can return To the planet where we used to thrive Along this broken

The Seagulls at the Parking Lot

758758 views77 comments66 favs

Turningturning the pale grey spot.She sits in her carin the parking lotwith the radio onleaning back picking a thin piece of skin from her finger.Turningturningthe seagulls move aroundand aroundabove the asphaltas though it was the wave,with…

The Naked Mountain

19511951 views77 comments22 favs

Once upon a time, a young writer decided to leave his home in Iowa City, and seek wisdom in the East.

I want to hear the man talk

10551055 views77 comments44 favs

I remember going out to a restaurant with some guy and a friend of mine who brought her little boy along. And suddenly her boy said, “I want to hear the man talk.” Well, that stopped us. Smart kid, I thought. He was fed up hearing her women friends talk

Citizens: a fragment

740740 views77 comments66 favs

B: Write a short story about men for the gym teacher. Write a candle for the century. A: How do I end it? B: Write a synopsis.

Dangling About

14201420 views77 comments33 favs

Looking at his pale and pimpled flesh, he was repulsed by his flaccid and lifeless member. The accompanying bits, dangled about far from his frame as the summer heat drew them away from his sweaty and unwashed body.

How Sturdy Is Your Sick Bag?

12121212 views77 comments22 favs

A wave lifted me from my seat, scattering more drops of vomit around, and I thought nastily about bringing the motion sickness bracelets back inside, dripping bags in tow, to ask for a refund.