Most read stories

'Bout Apples

20092009 views11 comment22 favs

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

The Sky is Simply White

20092009 views1414 comments88 favs

The rain is no terrible epitaph

Repatriation

20092009 views1717 comments1111 favs

When he woke he carried the body of a cat instead of a man. Next to him his cat dreamed it had a human body.

Winter Hawk Jack

20092009 views22 comments11 fav

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

The Brazen Bull

20092009 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.

An Old Sweet Song

20092009 views33 comments22 favs

Rob thought he might even make it. He'd stopped off south of Seattle, in Kent, and filled up the tank and went back in the can and topped off again. He got back on the road, to all appearances blase, blase. The montages were muted, at least for…

Milton wrote his best lines blind

20082008 views22 comments00 favs

the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

Noah's Ark, NYC

20082008 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

Class

20082008 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…

Capture This Thing

20082008 views99 comments44 favs

Take it from inside you and draw it out. Do it before it decides you are not what you seem to be and, as a result, holds you up by the thumbs.

Battle at the Bodega

20082008 views33 comments11 fav

Mr. Lowell knelt down and put his face in his hands, his knees quickly covered in blood. Sobs.

Blind

20082008 views55 comments44 favs

In this coaly no-time/ strewn with fallen stars,/ you are a roaming panther/ and I am a tangle of snakes.

Suppose, I ask my friend

20072007 views11 comment11 fav

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

Opening Line

20072007 views44 comments33 favs

I cannot read one more award winning novel by a female Asian author about the atrocities committed against their childhood, she thought. Then she sat down with her trusty yellow pad and Papermate fineline to write the next lyrical story of a female Asian writer and the…

Breakfast

20072007 views1010 comments88 favs

Wake up, stretch. Check the curtained windows for sunlight or that dreaded grey frame that forces the covers to come back up and the alarm clock to be set to ‘Snooze’.

Major Chaos

20072007 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

The Messenger

20072007 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…

Hometown News: The Ballad of Ray and Rose

20072007 views00 comments00 favs

There’s an old journalism adage, usually uttered by editors who haven’t had their butts out of a comfy leather newsroom chair in years, which goes: “You know… the news just doesn’t walk in the door.” ... But sometimes, it does.

Freeway Deaths Attributed to Talk Radio

20072007 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,

patti, did art get us?

20072007 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

First Chapter of Rain (novel)

20062006 views22 comments00 favs

Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love. At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.

21stC irl (easy action) party

20062006 views2121 comments1313 favs

Nobody took pics.

Daniel in a Den of Liberalism

20062006 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

Zen and the Art of Enjoying the Last Laugh

20062006 views66 comments55 favs

What doesn't kill you gives you great material.

The Lateness of the Night Lies Dreaming

20062006 views66 comments33 favs

Your finger quivers as it writes Upon me words in water, Words I cannot read nor drink But feel them as you drink Them with your tongue

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

20062006 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

Missed

20052005 views1313 comments1515 favs

How I felt in Ireland.

Pitcher

20052005 views1010 comments44 favs

3D is killing my porn career.

Ten years later

20052005 views55 comments44 favs

Are you asleep? He says. Wake up.

Dog Days

20052005 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.