Most read stories

She tolled me

20212021 views55 comments22 favs

You’re mad as a hatter she said. Eons, eras of epochal proportions go by before you call me. I said recalibrate your linear thinking, incubator baby. I whispered permutations of wonder, told her secrets only the sufis know. We ate French goat cheese lac

A New Kind of Madness

20202020 views2323 comments1818 favs

in my youth I was enamored of the moon—that is to say, lunacyI applauded the bizarre in natureI appropriated the gratuitous from dreamsI drank brashness and frenzy from bookswhat mad things I did!(throwing a bucket of water on the naked couple in the bed)what…

Quarters, Pasos, Arabians

20202020 views22 comments22 favs

Sometime that night I heard one; you get so you know when they’re coming in low down the valley or set up high over the coastals and I was sure about it.

Carnal Knowledge

20202020 views1010 comments1010 favs

He says he’ll have a Bud, too. The woman taps her pencil on her pad, looks at the kid and says, “When?”

Scattering like light

20202020 views77 comments22 favs

He had long since quit listening to the incessant clanging of the bell. He stood, ringing the bell, squinting into the setting sun, nauseous from the car exhaust, his body aching for alcohol.

'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.

Snake and Duck

20202020 views11 comment00 favs

Gloomy night slippery as snake and duck.

Marion, Texas

20202020 views22 comments22 favs

Marion had decided to stop whenever she came upon Amarillo. It was close to two a.m. when she pulled into the motel parking lot. Momma, read the nametag on the woman at reception. Her face was illuminated by a TV. Her hair curlers were illuminated by the lone desk lamp…

Existential

20202020 views3333 comments1515 favs

To envy faith, to envy love --// is there a fate more hateful? Choices/ scatter like stars. Too many.

Threads

20202020 views77 comments44 favs

She said he was missing the whole point: it was a decoration, not an actual pillow. You were supposed to place it somewhere artful.

Mud

20202020 views33 comments33 favs

People ask me sometimes what it’s like to meet your wife when you’re six years old, and I have to admit now that I don’t really understand the question. Marla and I, we were just friends for most of that time. She made me laugh. I let her crib off my math

86 the Conversation: A Side of Flat Screen TV with Your Burger?

20202020 views11 comment11 fav

This couldn’t be a bar; I was with my mother. It took a few seconds for the collision of senses to clear, and I realized the restaurant had not only one, but two flat screen televisions hung in their dining room, and a fake fire blazing in the fireplace.

ROAD LESSONS

20202020 views77 comments00 favs

"Do you have to call your brother a loser? He is not a loser and that was just uncalled for"

The Book of Punishments

20192019 views33 comments11 fav

"Not a fan?" Beth asks, feeling a sliver of happiness move through her. He furrows his brow. "Then what brings you here?" "I'm here to pick up girls," Steve says simply. "Want to hit the buffet table? Want to run away to Mexico?"

Slime

20192019 views22 comments22 favs

Once or twice he sees her around town when he’s out driving but other than that, I mean, it’s not like he was stalking her, he didn’t know where she went to school or what she did for a part-time job, he didn’t care, he wasn’t interested.

The Man Whose Wife Lived in His Neck

20192019 views2323 comments1515 favs

This is the story of the man whose wife lived in his neck. Every morning, he would turn to her and say, "Hello, Sweetheart. How was your night?" and she would answer, Brilliant! What else?

Mabel Constructed the Quintessential Boundary.

20192019 views2222 comments1010 favs

Mabel constructed the quintessential boundary. She carefully boiled down her pots and pans, her jewelry, her copper kettle, and the foils from forty six bottles of white pear cider into a silky metallic stew. Mable smeared the mixture onto a burlap…

Arcana Magi Behind the Scenes: Writing through Music

20182018 views00 comments00 favs

A behind the scenes look at how music influenced the writing of Arcana Magi Universe.

Backwards

20182018 views55 comments11 fav

One of her favorites was of an old axe asleep on a desert floor. She told people the axe had the western lips of September. That it held the song of the ocean and the dreams of a scarecrow. Some thought she was mad to talk in such a way. Others believed h

Your Old Untrue Love

20182018 views00 comments00 favs

This is how we catch up. I write something down, and you read me quietly. In a year's time you will remind me, though I would have forgotten. I check to see if maybe you have put up a new song, every once in a while, but you don't sing as well as you used to.What has…

Red Hot Hyperbole

20182018 views77 comments77 favs

She came from the land of rumpled sheets. She was the very definition of sex. She was the breeze through the wind chimes of his heart. One might say that she actually invented the orgasm. All mirages are this way. Perfect until they disappear. They

Cliche

20182018 views22 comments11 fav

Six thousand dollars was a small price for a man's life. Mario was in the back seat of the Honda with Johnny next to him handcuffed, all tense. Francisco had it on a rap station, the sort of music that gave Mario a headache.

To the Manchester Children's Monster

20182018 views99 comments88 favs

“As you do it unto the least of these so you do it unto me.” —Jesus These children that you murder are not your enemy. They are not your pain or your personal sorrow. They are, if anything, flowers blowing and …

Boredom & Ennui

20172017 views00 comments00 favs

I had a weird feeling I had just validated his behavior — provided another tile in the mosaic of his ego and self-esteem — by doing nothing more than entering this hall of mirrors, and reflecting.

Beds

20172017 views55 comments55 favs

Called in sick at work for a week straight when I first met Tony.

Why They Cried: Roy

20172017 views22 comments11 fav

“Where did it go? You don’t know do you?” he teased the dogs as he adjusted the bottle rocket he had twisted into the ground at his feet, trying to find the optimal path.

Portrait of the poet as midwife

20172017 views44 comments44 favs

Some poems slip out easily Thick and solid Well-oiled and fully formed

Her Dream Princes

20172017 views1010 comments44 favs

They live a simple life..two solitudes by lamplight.

Crows and the Gunshot

20172017 views1111 comments99 favs

We'll Thelma-and-Louise it, I urged, Bonnie-and-Clyde it, she bettered, Sundance-and-Butch it, I proffered but she was already leaning in for a kiss.

Where Have You Gone, Honey Bear?

20162016 views66 comments66 favs

When I wake up and look to my left, will you be there with me, snoring like an asthmatic bear?