Most discussed stories

Pi in the Sky

23232323 views1616 comments88 favs

The possibility for numerous outcomes – the possibility of anything, really – lives on the writer’s page.

When a Bastard Stares at the Sun

15071507 views1616 comments77 favs

The sun is going to slice your goddamn face open.

consolations

14581458 views1616 comments1010 favs

we swim in failure

Cast Off Thy Suffering

15841584 views1616 comments44 favs

Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

A Shadow on the Summer Sun

13291329 views1616 comments1010 favs

Shadows are so admirable in film noir less so on x-rays and mammograms

Of Tongue and Cheek

12651265 views1616 comments1313 favs

Our beautiful currencies and stamps/ disappear into the digital vortex/ of accelerated appetites.

Blinding Light

17961796 views1616 comments1414 favs

Snow sheeted on the river...

Stranger and the green gloves

23202320 views1616 comments1515 favs

.

Yet More from The Chronicles of His Demise

10791079 views1616 comments88 favs

The Muse//has used/ me up

The Law of Natural Selection

15071507 views1616 comments1111 favs

Once a student brought him a jar of black widow spiders. Tony put it on his desk. Somehow the jar got tipped over, and the spiders got out.

Testament (complete)

14771477 views1616 comments1313 favs

Their nouns are few and stark./ Ours are numerous and dappled/ or subtly shaded and shadowed/ by circumstance and possibility.

Quitting

16121612 views1616 comments1515 favs

The dancer was a little chubby, but I didn't mind. It gave her more to shake.

Landing

14191419 views1616 comments1616 favs

She’s witnessed her mother’s terror on the day of the hurricane, and she demanded for the first time in her life that her mother do something her mother did not want to do.

Hemingway for Gloria

18261826 views1616 comments88 favs

He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

Stroke One, Stroke Two, Stroke Three

966966 views1616 comments1111 favs

On Monday, May 7, 2018, at the age of 67, I had a stroke.

End of Shift

13371337 views1616 comments1212 favs

He was losing his fight with malaria, but you would never know it from his dreams

The Bond Trader Goes Hunting

19221922 views1616 comments1313 favs

The Bond Trader begins his morning with coffee and a hit of LSD.

Strange Bird

16551655 views1616 comments1313 favs

shortest yet

Let the Others Drool

14371437 views1616 comments1414 favs

They are all sleeping, but I know better. I will keep watch and if he comes tonight I will be alert and ready. When he arrives he'll see the slack mouths, the graceless sprawls, hear the grunts, snorts and snores of the other women and then he'll sense me. My eyes will…

Metaviews at Metazen

18641864 views1616 comments1313 favs

This is self-reflection or self-reflexive writing. Candor but not verse. That is what I write: not-verse. On occasion I write a poem though rarely an occasional poem. Instead of calling it non-fiction we could call it non-verse.

The Shield

30053005 views1616 comments1515 favs

A man and his wife are walking through a museum when the man sees a shield on the wall. Look at that! he says. Isn’t that remarkable? The two of them walk a little closer. What’s so remarkable about it? says his wife. Well, the workmanship! s

Ibambe

16591659 views1616 comments1313 favs

If this was the day when the bribes of whiskey and US dollars would fail to work. If on this day a black bag, smelling of shit and fear, would be pulled over his head – the bloodied roots of a knocked out tooth tickling his neck.

Finger Weaving A Voyageur Sash

18711871 views1616 comments1212 favs

Night's air awhirl, the sky shoots fireflies. Sometimes, she bleeds black arrows in her dreams.

Night & Day

13951395 views1616 comments1414 favs

It was oddly quiet, and the air had a strangely urgent quality. The sun came out, and water on the leaves and branches turned oaks and aspens into Christmas trees.

I Take Out The Garbage

976976 views1515 comments99 favs

I Take Out The Garbage

Over Fifty

18841884 views1515 comments1414 favs

Yet it was another thing to grow to become indispensable to someone without whose infirmities the helper could not exist. People in general had started to call that helpless requiring “codependency,” but to Althea that word did no good,

Trapeze Artist

12791279 views1515 comments1313 favs

Solitude is such an excellent alternative to suicide.

The Weight of Water

41804180 views1515 comments1414 favs

Water and its damages followed Bianca. Every time she looked up. Everywhere she looked up. Up up up up. Water stains, in darkening whorls, curling across the drywall or fiberglass panels, filling them with rot and mold.

Featherbedding

20652065 views1515 comments1111 favs

She sets the muffins aside, opens herself, nymph-like, mouth spread and gritty. She pulls the dirty edge of his gray t-shirt up so to show herself to him, spreads herself across the mattress like thin flesh oil over too much canvas....

The Poem Sits at Home and Envies as It Celebrates Music

12441244 views1515 comments1010 favs

Translation’s not required—music/ sings itself complete and comprehensible