Most read stories

South 55

18851885 views22 comments22 favs

This is a wife pregnant with spiders

Lines with Billie Holiday

18851885 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.

Three Network News Ledes on the Death of Jimmy Buffet

18851885 views44 comments11 fav

“He spent four lonely days in a brown L.A. haze, and now Jimmy Buffet is dead.” —Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News “Jimmy Buffet—beloved parrot-head singer-songwriter—has given up his search for that lost shaker of salt. He…

Mule

18841884 views2222 comments1717 favs

Sometimes cats had to die or dogs

Borges in the SUB

18841884 views2121 comments88 favs

"There's Borges."

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 5

18841884 views11 comment00 favs

and we got the apartment, which was on a street that backed up on an alley situated, as it turned out, right across the alley from the very first Hari Krishna house, where they would wake up at four every morning and begin their maddening chanting: Hari K

love poem for the homeless man who was killed on wednesday night

18841884 views1515 comments1414 favs

it was your hands—caked with years-old clay & quaking from too much solitude

Rear View

18841884 views1010 comments1111 favs

The man of a thousand faces was defunct.

Flicking On Some Trees, Just To See Your Silly Grin in the Half-Light of the Moon

18841884 views1111 comments77 favs

The world knows how to make you smile. I'm certain, but it's your own unique grin that they want for themselves. It's always been their perfect prize to horde. The trouble of course comes from wanting something that only exists in…

We Don't Need a Guitar Man

18841884 views55 comments22 favs

The courtroom smelled a lot like mold and it was hot as you could imagine. I sweated through my shirt and wondered if he wasn’t dying under his robe. He looked down at me from his bench and I just knew he was going to call me a commie and sentence me to l

The Birth of Girma Dali

18831883 views11 comment11 fav

Amid the swerve and pulse of hungry bodies Girma Dali picks his spot, a tissue-wide patch of net where's he going to strike. A green-jerseyed defender closes in on him his brute momentum unleashed like a kamikaze pilot swooping into enemy orbit, his lunging body makes…

Bon Bons

18831883 views88 comments33 favs

love notes yellowed through the years

A Chaos Theory

18831883 views00 comments00 favs

—with spinster goddesses in the middle of things / circling looms.

Clicking

18831883 views00 comments00 favs

Reining her small hands around the molded handle grips, her bottom bouncing athwart and wildly off the seat, Symphony wrenches her center of gravity inward, commandeering as much control from the road it would allow. With her breaks behaving as stubborn

"Hadrian's Farewell" as Tanka and Haiku

18831883 views66 comments66 favs

Little rambling soul,/kind guest, friend: leave me laughing,/pallid stiff, and bare.

The Haunting

18831883 views1313 comments1010 favs

the ugliness will not be denied

Sunday Cookout

18831883 views1010 comments77 favs

She thrust her proboscis through seven layers of dermis and began to suck, filling her belly with his Welbutrin and Xanax infused blood.

Is That You, Bugs?

18831883 views1212 comments1010 favs

Poor kid. She didn't mean to leave my business card on her kitchen counter next to the telephone. It was a mistake.

All Dogs Are Needy

18831883 views66 comments55 favs

I know she's a dog person, as she owns one. “No, my asshole ex-boyfriend wanted one and then he left me with it.” she admits, then adds, “I don't even like dogs. All dogs are needy.”

All of Me

18831883 views99 comments99 favs

They sat before the fire and played cribbage. He was a good player, but not as good as she was.

Giacometti

18831883 views2020 comments55 favs

He tells me that only a few things had happened in his life but some of them he had felt deeply.

The Madness of the Gods

18831883 views00 comments00 favs

“Have you heard about Lucius?” The lawyer turned to the carpenter. “They say he's gone mad. Just gone; the madness of the gods.” Sitting in the barbershop were the former two, one in his forties and the other of his fifties; a gray-haired…

Obituary

18831883 views99 comments22 favs

I won't fail at this like trying to fix a leaking sink without mud grease or washers tinier than Cheerios.

Working Girl

18821882 views1616 comments1313 favs

Suddenly a hand shot up on the other side of a hedge. “I’ll have one of those!” cried someone who remained invisible.

Ladies' Day At Sam's Place

18821882 views99 comments55 favs

I'm warming my stool at the far end of the bar as usual, nursing my fourth draft on a balmy Wednesday afternoon when I lock eyes with this lady who's bashing her head through the front door. You've heard the expression, “50-yard fox,” right? —Looks…

Hurricane Shutters

18821882 views44 comments66 favs

The thing that really gets you about the house is the hurricane shutters. They're up already, even though it's the end of May, because Buck's uncle is back in Rhode Island for the summer and he's prepped the house on Key Largo like Armageddon is coming.

cloth

18821882 views88 comments22 favs

i want out

I've Got a Secret

18821882 views1818 comments1212 favs

There's a man sitting in my room holding a jar of my ashes. That's what he claims.

Audition

18821882 views88 comments22 favs

My piano tutor, a walnut-faced shrew, rapped my knuckles with her small plastic baton to smack them back into the proper tempo, an adagio I’d mastered weeks before. One hour until the audition and damn if this woman didn’t break the skin of two of my fing

Myra's Lesson

18821882 views33 comments11 fav

There’s no training course available for kids in love. You can watch your parents, you can watch other kids, but for the most part it’s all trial and error, and I'm still pretty shaky at almost all of it.