Most read stories

Splinter Off

20222022 views1010 comments44 favs

When we lived in the attic we were make-believe.

More Abandoned Sentences

20222022 views2323 comments77 favs

By morning it was over. I crawled farther out onto the ledge. The three year old was screaming like Donald Duck. Trains ran into the night. Several pigs entered the open window.

The Brazen Bull

20222022 views99 comments44 favs

History is replete with brutally imaginative techniques of torture and execution, but I am the only death machine that doubles as a musical instrument.

Daniel in a Den of Liberalism

20212021 views00 comments00 favs

He had forgotten what the culture was like in certain parts of the city. At the lower end of Second Avenue, there lived an amalgam rare anywhere in the world, save other pockets of Manhattan. Punks, hippies, gays, the homeless, and artists of all strip

The Sky is Simply White

20212021 views1414 comments88 favs

The rain is no terrible epitaph

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

20212021 views77 comments44 favs

There was a time when she could quell the loathing that Fred inspired in her. She could force it down. Back then, for instance, when they’d been in counseling, the ball of hatred had only been a little, overripe orange - squishy and occasionally mushed

patti, did art get us?

20212021 views1111 comments88 favs

often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/ we never had any children, he said ruefully/ that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/ robert, dying: creating silence

Significant Things

20202020 views00 comments00 favs

“This is a Kneeling Bus.” They’re all kneeling buses, why do they even have to say that? Almost every person gets off in the front now when it says it even says right on the bus to please move to the back and exit from the rear side doors. I hate having t

Brot und Käse

20202020 views55 comments33 favs

I hoped I did not look as panicked as I tried not to feel.

The Pixie

20202020 views1111 comments77 favs

On the bank of the stream, we take off our clothes and dash into the water.

'Introduction' to LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT

20202020 views00 comments00 favs

Was Sligo an unfeeling privacy-violator or an uncannily-feeling empath, privy to the deepest longings of those whose lives he came in contact with? [...] Sligo's grave is as silent as these pages ultimately would be if they were left unread.

Oddities

20202020 views1818 comments1717 favs

One day my wife got so mad at me she raked her fingernails down my face.

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 2

20202020 views00 comments00 favs

Sometimes I have really violent dreams where I smash Libby’s face in with a liquor bottle, a brick, a mounted boar’s head... really whatever my brain makes available to me. I always wake up satisfied.

Ezra Stoller

20202020 views1818 comments1616 favs

captured by his lens and plates/ before humidity and hydrocarbons/ smudge the crisp clean lines

Major Chaos

20202020 views1717 comments66 favs

Major Chaos came here one of those hot days. I was washing the floor, wearing old clothes, when he knocked on my door. Since I don’t have many visits, I let him in. At first, he seemed like a soldier, but upon reflection I realized he was a big green fr

Freeway Deaths Attributed to Talk Radio

20202020 views66 comments00 favs

"I was just coming home from work listening to Consumer Dave," said Murrietta resident Mick Baylor, through his attorney, "when my eyelids started getting droopy. And he was just talking about how Circuit City was going out of business and I was. . .well,

A Taste For Music

20192019 views22 comments00 favs

“Nothing we have here can stop them,” the Lumi said, “We were hoping there might be something in your world we might try.” “Even if we had something, how would I get it to you? ”We are working on that, in the meantime, will you help us?” I

Potsdamer Strasse

20192019 views33 comments33 favs

She stared unbreakingly, confident, knowing; and talked so close to my face I felt cornered. But her voice was something, low and smooth.

Heart vs. Head

20192019 views00 comments00 favs

Where was it? Tino wondered, craning his neck, plastic bag in hand. He would have sworn there was a Barnes & Noble along this stretch. Had it closed since his mother had last been in the hospital two years ago?

Ten years later

20192019 views55 comments44 favs

Are you asleep? He says. Wake up.

Dog Days

20192019 views3636 comments1616 favs

A forgotten sprinkler is going in a neglected flower garden, water overflowing the bent wood borders and flooding the ground on either side.

Suppose, I ask my friend

20192019 views11 comment11 fav

nothing has ever happened in this or that or any other or maybe too damn many parallel universes. . . .

Noah's Ark, NYC

20192019 views44 comments22 favs

Two by two they come walking down 7th Ave girl with girl boy and girl boy and boy two pigeons strolling side by side two robins two crows walking stiffly like two pieces of anthracite coal two spiders two dogs sniffing each oth

Winter Hawk Jack

20192019 views22 comments11 fav

Jack, man in black, sporting manicured talons, his smile an iced knife.

Zen and the Art of Enjoying the Last Laugh

20192019 views66 comments55 favs

What doesn't kill you gives you great material.

Hobo's Pastor

20192019 views1616 comments88 favs

The three of us traveled seven hours that day and Al traveled as far in the service of finding the right tool for his writing.

The Truthmobile

20192019 views33 comments22 favs

She's had a magnetic sign made for the side of her Honda, TRUTHMOBILE, simple and elegant. Maybe too simple; she's worried it suggests a religious affiliation.

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

20182018 views1111 comments77 favs

I'm trying to read a Poetry in Motion poem on there wall of a crowded electric train

Henry and the Hungry Hamper

20182018 views33 comments00 favs

  Henry's had a messy day. He splashed, he jumped, he rolled and played. He wrote in books, dressed up the dog, And on the wall he drew a frog. He's wearing dinner, seconds too, And for dessert some fruity goo. It's come to live on…

The Waves

20182018 views77 comments66 favs

...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.