Most read stories

The Waves

19751975 views77 comments66 favs

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

The Truthmobile

19751975 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.

Blueberries

19751975 views66 comments11 fav

Cold water shocked Ernest's face. The evening with Gracie had his nerves hot and popping. She was his fifth date and the closest to his memory of Sadie in college so far. He looked up at himself in the bathroom mirror with his mouth agape. Redness flooded…

Miss Edna's Lace

19741974 views22 comments00 favs

When Elvis died, I felt so empty that I headed straight for Jimmy Choo's, but quietly, with the half-veil of my pillbox hat draped low over my face. I didn't want to draw attention to my vintage Dior mourning outfit, since I normally wear pants, even here. The voices…

another night, another dream

19741974 views11 comment22 favs

She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.

The Damp Place

19741974 views88 comments55 favs

As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe

Migration

19741974 views2020 comments1313 favs

She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?

'Bout Apples

19741974 views11 comment22 favs

Sawyer walked toward the lone house with the sentinel trees. Behind him there were no tracks in the snow.

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 2

19741974 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.

Muslin

19741974 views1515 comments99 favs

Outside I see the daytime moon, and it is faint as a fingerprint. My cousins have up-turned the biggest rocks and removed all the Sow bugs. The land is damp and red, and the trees feel wet to the center.

The Messenger

19741974 views77 comments11 fav

Sophie didn't stop for lunch when she worked. She showed up first in the morning and worked through until the last package was delivered. She pedaled from building to building and walked quickly, at just shy…

Jesus Had a Tat

19731973 views88 comments44 favs

Jesus Freaks will go tat head... crowns of thorns for their noggins and so on. Christ had one too...

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

19731973 views22 comments00 favs

when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

And We Sell Apples 1977

19731973 views11 comment11 fav

I hear the car door slam. Steve, about to duck daddy-duty: Just gonna take a run to the Quickway. "Rudy," I say, "go get in the car. Tell Papo I said Wait."

Before California Fell into the Sea

19731973 views22 comments11 fav

The trail wound through oak trees and climbed up a hill. The sun was high and hot whenever we came out from the cover of the trees. We stopped under a tree. “OK old man,” Leda said. She came to me and kissed me. Then she was unbuttoning my pants and kne

Noah's Ark, NYC

19731973 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

The Leg

19731973 views3131 comments1111 favs

They all looked for Vic's leg after the accident.

A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING

19731973 views11 comment11 fav

My best friend and roommate Eliza woke up one morning with the sudden conviction that she had to become very fat, as soon as possible.

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

19721972 views1111 comments77 favs

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

The Sky is Simply White

19721972 views1414 comments88 favs

The rain is no terrible epitaph

Thick Rib of the Lamentation Animal

19721972 views55 comments66 favs

This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.

Missed

19711971 views1313 comments1515 favs

How I felt in Ireland.

Milton wrote his best lines blind

19711971 views22 comments00 favs

the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

How the Plum Fell, and Not Necessarily Why the Apple Flew

19711971 views1111 comments88 favs

A friend of mine is killing me With all of her lies. If I die tonight, you can bet it's Because of her. A friend of mine Is killing me with those lit eyes like Twin pyramids holding up her rambling Blue skyline. Look I don't have to …

A New Notion about an Old Story

19711971 views1010 comments88 favs

A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…

Our Story in Ten Photographs

19711971 views2727 comments1818 favs

1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…

The Brazen Bull

19711971 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.

Human Frailty

19711971 views1717 comments1212 favs

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

A Country of Husbands

19701970 views1010 comments77 favs

The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

Saturday Night at the Yeti Fight

19701970 views33 comments00 favs

“What part of ‘only bettors can watch the Yeti fight’ do you not understand?!”, he yelled. “Either place a bet or get the hell out of here!” I begrudgingly gave him all of the money I had on me, about two hundred, and placed it on Demonio B