Most discussed stories

The Fallow Heart

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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.

Wild Strawberries of Mars

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might leave NYC or Earth

Fragment

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see the man

Another Version of My Life, in Which I am Played by Meryl Streep

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Rerunning, now it's published.

Notes of a Questionable Writer

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Once upon a time I was definitely a writer. I told tales everywhere and even wrote them down. Every one was a fabrication woven around a morsel of truth. Many accused me of putting them in my tales and ruining their reputations.…

To My First Crush

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But I came back around, after Robert Kennedy got shot, with one hand up your skirt and the other on the gear shift...

The Chair of Rejection

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Before I published anything in a literary magazine, I was rejected by literary magazines, dozens of them, and these rejections gave birth to one of my more strange and long-lived art projects.

Coffee Shop

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He wore his hip in his hips, his lipsShe wanted to know if he would lick the edgesWhen he pulled the coffee cup from his mouthA bit of foam clung to his moustacheShe watched it there, wondering if he wouldTwirl it off with his fingersOr lick it, his tongue darting out like…

An MFA Creative Writing Essay Question

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7. Using Cohen's Method of Structure craft a piece of fiction featuring unexpected conflict. (12 points)

Letter to a Distant Friend

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My life is life in shape alone./ The substance leaks away like blood/ removed by the embalmer’s art.

Fat Tuesday

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She likes his smile and Cajun accent, his earring and dangerous ink.

Departure. Arrival. Return.

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Put down your bazooka, Marianne.

Rattlesnake Pancakes

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I don't usually take bets, / but I took this one.

Resurrecting Jonah

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"Baby, he turned gray and dead before he hit the floor".

Picking

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You hear the thrum of blowflies first...

Pacific Light

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That was one option. Another was to assemble all the resident grunts...on one side of the island, jump up and down in unison, flip it over, and see if life on the bottom was any better.

Animals in Reverse

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She was still alive when I started to write the story of her life, called Lucy's Story, about her recovery from catnip, but it was not the real story. In the fake story, she took the subway to A.A.

Don Quixote Flash Cards (Being a small chapbook of poems)

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tiny bits each one found meant something had blown apart. that someone was no longer with us. but somewhere that things were crawling towards unity again. another gun had been fired. would peace always start over? it's funny how it will. a hand…

a crushed pepsi can floats down

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These days, even God has a day job.

Ode to the Female Gonad

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On finding out that gonads are part of the female anatomy as well.

trying to be honest but twitter is over capacity

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To be honest, I've always wanted to be black

THE SAME STORY

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Our house was big, red brick, with off-white walls that watched over us while we slept, while we prayed for our souls to be kept, while we shared bath water and bunk beds and the secret of the back closet we will die with and never reveal.

While the Light Lasts

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Smoke from bodies aflame tongues the strung moon;

Something Better Than This

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It's one of those raw, wrung out Yonge Street Saturday mornings. The smog-gray sky is just congealing into blue over the buildings and concrete.

A New Kind of Madness

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in my youth I was enamored of the moon—that is to say, lunacyI applauded the bizarre in natureI appropriated the gratuitous from dreamsI drank brashness and frenzy from bookswhat mad things I did!(throwing a bucket of water on the naked couple in the bed)what…

Tattoos

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Boxing Gloves for when...

Advice from Topeka

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... I know all about ax murderers because Elmo, my uncle by marriage to my sister who never had any sense was one. He done killed six women in a farm outside of Topeka in the space of they say three minutes, including my sister and her bingo friends . . .

BY THE BEACH

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(wc) 55 words, exact.

And Furthermore

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clickety-clack, not.

The Boy Who Knew Death

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As the sun rose each morning, so did the lonely old man with it; a sad limping figure strolling across the front lawn with a cigar tucked in his mouth, lighting fresh candles here and there, perhaps on an imagined grave of some loved one long lost to the infirmity of time…