Most read stories

"Brava! Brava!"

19941994 views88 comments66 favs

I woke to a crash and the sound of coins rolling along the linoleum. “Mom?” She did not look up. Her shaking hand was gathering up the single crown coins, the fifty heller pieces. Triumphantly she rescued a ten crown note from the piggy bank shards. …

Hummingbird hearts in a breadbox

19941994 views99 comments66 favs

We married in the ruins of a pachinko hall, the tiny bones in the pocket of your tracksuit luring a pack of wild dogs out from the underpass.

Harpoon

19941994 views99 comments66 favs

he’s recognizable in the earliest images of misery: a hand shoving a young gladiator before the lion; the fire devouring a witch in Salem. And here he is. Again.

Mercury Unbound - 4

19941994 views2020 comments88 favs

The music, Antonín Dvořák's 'New World Symphony,' the second movement, 'Largo,' immediately alters my mood.

Lines with Billie Holiday

19941994 views1212 comments1111 favs

It is almost as if there isn’t a wedge of wood between us – I can feel him inches away from me. I can’t control the sigh or the tears that escape my body.

To Make Way for the Future

19931993 views55 comments11 fav

It was the shock of black hair twisted into a long thick braid that got our attention and made us want to find meaning here. Albert thought he recognized the hair in the grave.

Old Photo, 1948 or so

19931993 views99 comments66 favs

I’m maybe only four. Not smoking cigarettes found in street gutters yet. That will come the next year, when I’m five. Maybe when I’m six, and Andy’s five, my pal from across the street. That’s my tricycle parked behind this pack of kids that look to be ne

i went to raves & wrote songs

19931993 views66 comments33 favs

A short poem.

Where I Live Now

19931993 views1818 comments1313 favs

The young man is back again, solo,

In Machu Picchu

19931993 views55 comments11 fav

"I wonder what happened to Murder Man and Lust Girl?" wondered The Black Toadstool. The Anti-Justice League were in Machu Picchu, on a short vacation after taking over most of South America and the South Pole. The South Pole had been so easy. …

Make-Believe

19931993 views1212 comments99 favs

My sister plays Jesus.

Better

19921992 views00 comments00 favs

... all my friends are girls; I like opera; I can answer all the questions about male and female ejaculation – without stammering – in sex ed. classes. And Braydon? In boardshorts, tall and tanned and naked from the waist up ...

THE MOON, THE SUN, AND RYAN W. BRADLEY (not quite a fortune-telling)

19921992 views33 comments11 fav

“That’s just Ryan W. Bradley—son of a bitch knows better by now.”

The Killer

19921992 views88 comments44 favs

It don't knock you down to the goddamned ground and push your face into the mat and dare you to get back up. Just so it can knock you down again. They don't have real dreams. Dreams that make them wake up in the middle of the night. Hurting. Wanting.

The Beach

19921992 views66 comments33 favs

I often thought about touching those slippery flames between my thumb and index finger.

Waylaid (1999)

19921992 views2020 comments99 favs

In that mix of sports and religion, TV was what there was of virtue. I thought bars were nicer.

X Marks the Spot

19921992 views1414 comments1010 favs

I was an only child....

This, About The Man I Met Out Here In Nearly Nowhere

19921992 views33 comments22 favs

Out here in nearly nowhere I met this man. About him I know something something, and no one can tell me otherwise.

When He Left it all to Me

19921992 views3636 comments2020 favs

Where did you go?

Beards

19921992 views33 comments22 favs

One day my mother's lover shaved his beard and legs. Said he couldn’t fit into his tight jeans anymore.

We Invented Stillness Just to Keep Ourselves from Following the Fall of Everything

19911991 views2929 comments1515 favs

Even solid seeming concrete creeps/ in time to form the faint smile of deflection./ A marble rolls along the catenary grin.

Birth and Death of a Concrete Icon

19911991 views77 comments11 fav

Homer relaxes in his tan, faded recliner, remote in hand, and watches death unfold on his television.

the hungarian artist

19911991 views66 comments44 favs

What led to the current situation was that about a year ago the conceptual artist had been shocked to read in a small item in a newspaper that a conceptual artist in China had also grown an ear on his forearm and this discovery had led the conceptual artist to make a …

Far Star Girl

19911991 views88 comments33 favs

She thought maybe an angel had called out her name. She wasn't sure. She was waiting for her older sister to return with Jujy Fruits and bonbons. The theater, neither light nor dark, was to Cassie's ten-year-old mind, an appropriate-enough setting for a v

Just Another Rainy Day

19901990 views1717 comments66 favs

Tasha loved to tease the rain. She sat still with her legs folded on the bench, never once looking the clouds in the eye.

Picturing Utrillo

19901990 views1515 comments1212 favs

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

The Jewish Goodbye

19901990 views00 comments00 favs

"And secondly, it’s never bing bing bing with you. It’s like, bing bang bongity bumbity bum yadda yadda bla bla bla.” Sam stopped short and glanced down at his shoes. He knew he’d gone too far.

newsmakers

19901990 views1212 comments44 favs

was yesterday’s dawn breaking in the high sky/ meant for us?

Little Green Rednecks

19901990 views00 comments00 favs

“I was listenin' ta one o' them Terran religious broadcasts 'bout Mother Earth when they up an' says that global warmin' was all the fault o' mankind, an' they had ta make the non-believers see that all the drivin' they did, an' all the stuff they bought

Six Short Poems

19901990 views88 comments33 favs

Can't please everyone / Or sail in all directions / Sail on / Stay the course / Still the ill-pleased storms come / To suck the wind from my sails