Most read stories

The Soft, Cool Blanket of Night

19471947 views00 comments00 favs

wrap me in the soft, cool blanket of night. waning,the moon peers down at melike the heavy-lidded eye of some cyclops. and if I be lost like poor Odysseus,cloak me in the soft, warm wool of night. and if my eyes fail me like old Tiresias,stitch the cloth with…

Obituary

19471947 views77 comments55 favs

He drifted for years: No forwarding. No phone.

Crows and the Gunshot

19471947 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.

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

19461946 views33 comments11 fav

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

Kitchen Knife (n.)

19461946 views66 comments22 favs

Kitchen Knife (n.)1. A standard kitchen tool consisting of a sharp blade attached to a handle intended for cutting, peeling, chopping, slicing, and dicing.2. Used primarily for food preparation (see also BUTCHERING; BACKSTABBING; JACK THE RIPPER; DEATH BY A THOUSAND…

From the Found Notebooks of Homer's Writing Group

19461946 views66 comments33 favs

Oh, also, had no idea what the whole visit to the Kingdom of the Dead was getting at. Interesting, but seems unrelated to the larger story. I'd cut it. Remember — this is a story about one man's attempt to get home. Stay focused on that.

The Killer

19461946 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.

Why They Cried: Roy

19461946 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.

||||||||||| (Munun)

19461946 views1111 comments77 favs

Winter melts to ashes and now we walk where hillocks dip like pillows, where a warm pocket of air keeps the scent of spring beauties for itself. Sensitive vetch so easily shocked folds under a feather yet the earth trembles where trout lilies shove. Buds stall on lilacs…

Their Nipples

19461946 views00 comments11 fav

The soft twin winds of peace and harmony flow through your nipples It is not milk that gives such flow but the whiff of life’s spirit, the wind of poetry the renewal and the silence of the love you give me I suck like a new

Walking To Gibraltar, Epigram & Chapter 1: So It Was Cancer

19461946 views44 comments22 favs

So it was cancer. And so he was screwed, royally screwed. He was screwed all the more because he knew how screwed he was. He had to carry the shame of knowing, as much as he wanted to deny it, that this had been his first thought when he found out about h

Plantar Fasciitis

19461946 views22 comments22 favs

"Don't fuss, hon. I just lick it off like tequila."

Frostproof Suite: Saint John’s Eve

19461946 views1111 comments88 favs

Everyone at the Bermudez Brothers Combined Shows and Circus held one low opinion or another about Jimmy Dubcek.

My Tongue

19461946 views1111 comments55 favs

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

Far Star Girl

19461946 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

Dear Envelope Said the Stamp

19461946 views1212 comments77 favs

I have no more use for the beautiful words you used to like so much for me tosend you alone. See my feathers donot so much hide me now as giveme away; I tend to feel farfrom home. Forgive me this. Theend jumped by me quicker than anorange flower cricket on its…

Reaction

19451945 views77 comments22 favs

Fingers of angry red welts crossed his face and neck.

Gargoyle

19451945 views1313 comments1111 favs

they were open weekends if we needed to bring him in for euthanasia.

Bunny Ears

19451945 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…

Cold Feet

19451945 views99 comments55 favs

“…And his smell. That Brett smell. It might become my smell…”

In Machu Picchu

19451945 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. …

Paperwork

19451945 views11 comment00 favs

There were literally thousands of criteria that got people of every stripe and strata on the list, which had been maintained since before the very first human fingers scrawled crude images on blank surfaces. 

Not Again!

19451945 views11 comment00 favs

"People just weren't getting it," he continued, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and hiccuping mildly. "It looks like it's time to UP the ANTE!"

The Dooleys

19441944 views22 comments22 favs

Mama told me never to play with the Dooley boys. They play too rough, they’re not to be trusted, and no one has seen Mrs. Dooley since she tried to clean out their tree house. Mama would always say, “You play with the Dooley Boys, you play with Satan.”

halloween haiku

19441944 views88 comments77 favs

a dry bony voice/from a desiccated soul/coughs up its own throat.

Lemony snickers on Route 66

19441944 views2020 comments1010 favs

Went back to his cab and returned with a whip...

You, Cliché

19441944 views1616 comments1515 favs

You might as well be the man on the moon. Once touching your face was quotidian. When I tallied each day's pleasures, you, in this room or that, counted too much for me, I think. I stopped record keeping. I'm …

The Gospel According to Teeny

19441944 views1414 comments1212 favs

Then I heard it -- a sound like an oboe being strangled. Teeny was farting onto the cement stoop through her jeans, a tripple flutter blast.

My Almost-Clash with The Rolling Stones (Memoir)

19441944 views44 comments22 favs

I'd been living in Boston, but, on a whim, flew to London, England. Soon I was working as support staff for the actor Alan Bates and his wife, Victoria, on a movie called "The Shout", shooting in Devon.

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

19441944 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.