Most read stories

Decomposition

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She can never say why, but guilt rides her bones like the spirit. She rubs worry raw.

Hexagon

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an ominous figure of fear and grace a ball moves back and forth

Segment from a Documentary Film

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the array of regularly spaced wavering human forms floating upright seems to extend endlessly in all directions.

Movie Star in a Mental Ward

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He was a beautiful older man, late sixties, who reminded me of a movie star with a thick mane of silver hair parted neatly from left to right and eyes the color of that stretch of Pacific Ocean between San Pedro and Catalina Island, the calming blue of a carefree weekend…

Plant Me

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If you find the place they forgot to bomb send me a hot pink postcard. The planet is only so big. We're already dipping our heels into the waters without wanting to become true believers, miserable followers. The bedtime stories will have to…

The City's Not For You

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You left your quiet life for a home in the city.

On Being Bald....

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Hair today...gone tomorrow The sun beats down on my balding crown.

Anise Fish and Colin behind the glass

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“What is the sickness that you have?” Colin behind the glass wondered. “Too much world,” said Anise Fish. “We have that in common.”

The Bird

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We lived on the edge of a tiny Iowa town, and picked corn fields were steps away.

Noodles

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It's Granny hauling her crooked soul into heaven. Guess who I stole that image from?

Constable Pulce and the Sunny Dystopia

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Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.

Residual Flashbacks

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Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.

Here I Am

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Here I am in the city where we walked side by side, you had driven a great distance and lost your way somewhere where exits left the highway from both directions and unpredictably.

Vivian

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When her husband left she was not yet thirty

When I Am Dead, Let Someone Tell Him Of My Suffering

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Susie watched the record, her mouth agape just slightly, the spinning vinyl unveiling the powerful sound of a voice she'd wanted to hear her whole life.

Good & Plenty

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From across the crowded bar, past the be-suited lobbyists and in between the plates of fried calamari and glasses of cabernet being hustled to and fro by the Salvadoran waiters, Travis could see that John had changed. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. A little grey…

Piggy Bank

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He shivered in his robe and pajama pants as the showdown with the piggy bank continued on this dark winter’s night. He couldn’t resist the cute dots for eyes, the stubby legs and perked up ears.

Tomatoes and Onions on the Bed

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That led to the first aid box on the bed at 3 in the morning, but what about those veggies?

Annals of the Naked Rowdies #78

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A true Rowdies fan begins every conversation about the band with a legend. She would be impressed if he knew the story.

the snake charmer

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God forbid you should break one of the camps precious “rules,” which were more or less like the Ten F'ing Commandments around there.

Good Help Is Hard to Find

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Some of them are notorious tweakers. Nobody epitomizes the cowboy-outlaw biker more than the ironworkers, who are wired on Black Beauties they sell on breaks.

Cinderella Reconsiders

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take back all the falderal and friggin' fiddle dee dee take back the mad murmuring of ten minutes ago

Trophy

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I remember ...all the teenagers offered no-longer favored CDs, last year's cell phones, third-place trophies, team jerseys, played-out videogame cartridges, and candy-colored miniature stuffed animals...

Lockdown

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I'm explicating Emily Dickinson when the alarm starts: three long, two short. Lockdown mode. Only there was nothing in the staff bulletin about a drill. So I tell the students to get down on the floor, away from the window. I open the classroom door and lock it from…

Writer's Cough

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Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

The Criminal Intern

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"Look, Ted, I'm on a timer. It's really hell here, you can't imagine. And I have a chance to get paroled early, if you do me a solid."

Young Turks

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There was a whole group of us Young Turk poets who hung out at the Savoy Tivoli in North Beach. Most of them drove cabs, (whereas I was now working in a damned gas station for Angel, my publisher’s man, who got me a job there.) They would double-park thei

The Guerilla Drive-In

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“Don’t you wish it always ended that way? The right people fall in love? Romance leads to marriage? God, that was a great movie.”

Emotional Gentrification - excerpt Single Stroke Seven

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Sunday, Nolan and I drop by the ice rink on 10th and Alma to watch the amateur hockey leagues battle it out in an unspoken yet assumed class war: the buff, unemployed rink bums who can grind ice, cross-check, and stick handle like the pros, versus the dou

The Edge of Night

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The night wrapped its arms around us as we drove west, taking the highway past Medford towards Philly. The kids were asleep in the backseat and we were both counting the mile markers, staring out the windows with quiet eyes. I listened to the drone of the…