Most read stories

Class

19721972 views55 comments11 fav

Class (appears in my book Breaking it Down; no journal publication) When your neighbor James Frehley cusses you out for hanging a block and tackle from the silver maple in your front lawn, begin to pull the engine from your Galaxie anyway, smile and nod…

Muslin

19721972 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.

Three New Poems

19721972 views99 comments88 favs

Letter(s)The sky set itself on fire, butit really didn't make a whole lot of difference. Birdsknew not to worry any more thanusual. Trees thought and made the mostof their landscapes as a way ofbeing modern and yet timeless. It's onlypeople who suffer from too much…

A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING

19721972 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.

another night, another dream

19711971 views11 comment22 favs

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

Jesus Had a Tat

19711971 views88 comments44 favs

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

Mr. Twitchy

19711971 views22 comments11 fav

I used to think the world was fucked and it was up to me and me alone to see it unfucked. That's really what I used to think, but I've been trying to work on that. It's not a particularly flattering characteristic I have. I'm trying to be more positive.

A Body Divided, 5

19711971 views00 comments00 favs

Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to

Before California Fell into the Sea

19711971 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

Caprice Classic

19711971 views22 comments00 favs

A cloud of light, white smoke floated out of the driver’s side window. Nate and Zach sat on the front bench seat, talked, and puffed away. “Breath in and say Mom is coming,” said Zach.

The Messenger

19711971 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…

Blueberries

19711971 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…

The Damp Place

19701970 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

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

19701970 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.

'Bout Apples

19701970 views11 comment22 favs

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

Our Story in Ten Photographs

19701970 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…

Thick Rib of the Lamentation Animal

19701970 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.

A Country of Husbands

19691969 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.

Noah's Ark, NYC

19691969 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 Brazen Bull

19691969 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

19691969 views1717 comments1212 favs

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

Milton wrote his best lines blind

19681968 views22 comments00 favs

the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

A New Notion about an Old Story

19681968 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…

Ten years later

19681968 views55 comments44 favs

Are you asleep? He says. Wake up.

Fragment

19681968 views2424 comments1313 favs

see the man

The Sky is Simply White

19681968 views1414 comments88 favs

The rain is no terrible epitaph

The Illuminated Dream

19681968 views11 comment11 fav

It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.

The Fish, the Fisherman, and the Sea

19681968 views44 comments11 fav

My father is remarkably clever. That is, for a rundown, henpecked fisherman. He has caught me again. He has me slung over his back in a rickety lobster trap and I can hear him huffing and the water in him sloshing and though I can't see his face, I imagine it is ruddied…

patti, did art get us?

19681968 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

Missed

19671967 views1313 comments1515 favs

How I felt in Ireland.