Most read stories

Phantom head syndrome

20082008 views33 comments22 favs

The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…

Prompts

20082008 views1616 comments1313 favs

Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.

Aerobics 6 p.m.

20082008 views33 comments11 fav

Dizzy but still alive Inside this conversation I ask if you have a sister And if she'll know me If I'm with you.

Better Days

20082008 views66 comments55 favs

I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.

A Walk

20082008 views77 comments33 favs

I suppose the lazy trees would have a thing or two to say about love

The Catcher in the Rye -What Happens Next-

20082008 views11 comment11 fav

I bet if I went back, Old Stradlater would still be combing his gorgeous locks in front of the same goddam mirror.

Resolutions

20082008 views33 comments33 favs

Portions of my heart and bones

Awaken Sleepy Star

20082008 views88 comments77 favs

Don't sleep. Tiny orange Balloons like seahorses are bobbing This way and that trying To get your hair to lift Off its marvelously mud- Swamped and pillowy support beams, blue sea strand by green. Don't you want to see…

Night Swim

20082008 views99 comments33 favs

She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely held the rope and later he could not have said if it happened above or below the water’s surface.

Like An Endless Rain

20082008 views22 comments11 fav

Fate could have sent me any number of Sergeant-Detectives, but fate sent me one of Boston’s finest, Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson. Aside from being a little undernourished Sheila Magnuson is possibly the world’s most beautiful Sergeant-Detective.

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

20082008 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

Why the Woodpecker Laughs

20072007 views88 comments77 favs

Once upon a time, before there was Prairie, there was Swamp. Therein lived Salamander and Snake. High above them, in the tops of Cypresses lived Woodpecker.

Some Kind of Change

20072007 views2626 comments66 favs

She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.

Impromptu Retranscriptions from the 'Song of Songs' (erotic poetry - explicit language)

20072007 views44 comments33 favs

I. When my lips mouth yours where they are…

How I Made My Fortune

20072007 views00 comments00 favs

At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f

Leox

20072007 views66 comments22 favs

Whoever came up with the term kismet is an absolute moron. There isn't a single reason, or word, that can describe what exactly my brain has concocted in the face of him. No, kismet isn't what makes it happen. It's my own stupidity..

February Fifth

20072007 views44 comments22 favs

We've worked silence over / Like pros, our best work together.

Scents

20072007 views11 comment11 fav

"Ah, finally the rain stopped pouring!" She opens the window to let the sticky air out of the house. The colours outside have changed. The air is clear and the sky turns into light pink while the sun is drowning at the horizon. She takes a deep breath. The…

Ibambe

20072007 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.

Me And My Liberal Friends

20062006 views77 comments77 favs

“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f

An Open Letter to my Fictionaut Family

20062006 views1313 comments99 favs

Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…

WE NEVER

20062006 views00 comments00 favs

No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…

Berthier Door

20062006 views44 comments33 favs

On Day 1122 at 4:14 AM the door which has remained since installation firmly glued to the masonry behind opens and a man emerges blinking shielding his eyes against fine stinging snow.

The not so great Popsicle caper

20062006 views2222 comments88 favs

"Ha ha!" I said triumphantly, "I've got some left and you don't!"

Middle Age

20062006 views1818 comments1414 favs

There are no city-chewed streets,/ only white and lilac blooming dogwood trees.

Last Poem

20052005 views2020 comments1818 favs

or the voice that wants/ to be inscribed/ forgets the sounds

Before the Fall (Pt. 2)

20052005 views33 comments11 fav

Newsome glared at the sleeping woman, slumped over the edge of the hard, metal table, her head settled comfortably into the crook of her arm. Over an hour she's been in that position, he thought. Despite the harshness of the room, the fluorescent lights,…

Whale Lessons

20052005 views1717 comments1010 favs

Even if your heart is as large as a small car, your tongue as heavy as two grown men—even then—you will have to carry it with you wherever you go.

Saturday Night at the Yeti Fight

20052005 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

Summer Reading

20052005 views55 comments33 favs

The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.