Most read stories

Little Green Rednecks

20082008 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

20082008 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

"Brava! Brava!"

20082008 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. …

En Pointe

20082008 views22 comments00 favs

Her gaunt arms softly rose, sweeping in front of her with movements that were hesitant at first but, as the music that only she could hear took her in its grip, became graceful and assured.

Mercury Unbound - 4

20082008 views2020 comments88 favs

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

i went to raves & wrote songs

20072007 views66 comments33 favs

A short poem.

Semi Tiresias

20072007 views1212 comments1111 favs

I knew my mother would die by the weekend

Lines with Billie Holiday

20072007 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.

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

20062006 views33 comments11 fav

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

Old Photo, 1948 or so

20062006 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

Just Another Rainy Day

20062006 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.

Inventing Games

20062006 views00 comments00 favs

As children we invent games and we're really creative. We concoct ridiculous rules and enjoy making adaptations to them. And everything makes sense. Then you grow up, lose creativity. You don't invent games anymore. Recess is replaced with a second…

Bunny Ears

20062006 views00 comments11 fav

Word traveled fast at school on Monday. Emma Jakowski had actually captured him. He was being held in her dad's tool shed. Anyone who wanted to see him had to be in the Jakowski's backyard by 3:15 that afternoon, chocolate bunny ears in hand. It was no…

Waylaid (1999)

20062006 views2020 comments99 favs

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

Early (Valentine's Day Challenge)

20062006 views1111 comments55 favs

Beside her door there was a black squirrel in the dogwood she saw scratched his armpit.

The Jewish Goodbye

20062006 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.

Kissing Cobras

20062006 views00 comments00 favs

She administers the alkaloids slowly, soaking the muscles in blight, the body tissue beneath into corrosion.

My Tongue

20062006 views1111 comments55 favs

A nun once told me to watch my tongue. This is not an easy thing to do.

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

20062006 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.

Beards

20062006 views33 comments22 favs

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

Sea Floor Fever, or The Note that Came With the Stone to the Head

20052005 views1212 comments1010 favs

I'm dying but that's not to say what you think it says. I've crossed the river of myself many, many times before and wandered to the shore, broken and drenched and full of the fever of dyingdreams. Each time was a kind of ritual mask, drying off the beat ofmy newly…

The Beach

20052005 views66 comments33 favs

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

Three Lost Cantos From Dante's Inferno

20052005 views66 comments22 favs

We came to the furthest reach of hell- A place that email users know well. The woman or man whose unmitigated gall Causes him or her to hit "Reply all".

Letters from the Aslyum (2)

20052005 views44 comments11 fav

Leo, leo, leo, leo, the word itself imprinted on my brain, carved with a pearl handled blade into my cerebral cortex, into the medulla, burrowed deep into my dreams, I miss your kissing.

When He Left it all to Me

20052005 views3636 comments2020 favs

Where did you go?

Trapeze Artist

20042004 views1515 comments1313 favs

Solitude is such an excellent alternative to suicide.

A Little Piece of Humanity

20042004 views33 comments22 favs

It wasn't meant to happen like this— the shutter, the feeling of breathlessness when he touched her shoulder, even after he had pointed out all of the things she had done incorrectly throughout the day. They had been married for five years in February, and as…

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

20042004 views2929 comments1515 favs

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

Fuck Ups

20042004 views1818 comments1919 favs

we try, we keep trying

Bubble Gum and Paperback Books

20042004 views1010 comments1010 favs

A block after his first crime, he found a bookstore to commit another.