Most read stories

Cathy

18771877 views77 comments44 favs

"Merry Christmas, Willie."

Good Home Wanted

18771877 views66 comments33 favs

In his fridge he had one piece of meat. He hadn’t been expecting me. I cooked it for him and watched him eat.

Trophy

18771877 views22 comments11 fav

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...

Love Meal #3009

18771877 views1212 comments99 favs

His knife enters the Maui onion. He minces garlic and applies heat to pan and melts sweet cream butter and browns the garlic first and then he adds the onion and more heat, but it's time that will surely caramelize them. Salt and pepper and splashes of wine for the pan and…

Writer's Cough

18771877 views66 comments66 favs

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. . .

Seven Things I Learned About David Letterman from Jason Zinoman's "Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night."

18771877 views55 comments44 favs

Never touch David Letterman's neck!

Tak Tuckerby

18771877 views00 comments00 favs

Tak Tuckerby was a racecar driver. He could drive a racecar fast and handle a racecar perfectly. Unfortunately, Tak could only drive in one direction.

Piggy Bank

18771877 views11 comment11 fav

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.

Death, looking over the poet's shoulder, whispers...

18771877 views1414 comments99 favs

Pre-mortem

The Bird

18771877 views1515 comments1313 favs

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

Hexagon

18771877 views00 comments00 favs

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

Segment from a Documentary Film

18771877 views99 comments77 favs

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

How To Write Funny

18761876 views22 comments22 favs

I've never really been impressed with authors that write long teary-eyed novels about people dying of terrible diseases or uplifting stories about the armless boy who made the wrestling team.

Cinderella Reconsiders

18761876 views44 comments33 favs

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

Vivian

18761876 views1111 comments1010 favs

When her husband left she was not yet thirty

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

18761876 views77 comments33 favs

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.

Getting Sideways On Douglas

18761876 views00 comments00 favs

Under the dirty orange glow of sodium streetlights, the glistening pavement looks slick, but it’s only just wet. The mid-November temperature is cool—quite mild, actually, for this late time of year—still hovering in the upper 30s—so far posing only the

Tomatoes and Onions on the Bed

18761876 views1313 comments55 favs

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

The Edge of Night

18761876 views33 comments33 favs

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…

Constable Pulce and the Sunny Dystopia

18761876 views55 comments55 favs

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.

How to Have a Fulfilling Sexual Relationship with Your Own Parents (Part One)

18751875 views33 comments33 favs

Hi, I'm Alexander Payne. I hate sex.

Eve

18751875 views77 comments77 favs

When God blessed creation, a ewe gave birth to Adam. When he cursed Satan, Eve hatched from a crocodile's egg.——In naming the animals, Adam marked them for death. His own name was a slow fire. Eve's was an inferno.——In the shelter of the Tree of…

Young Turks

18751875 views00 comments00 favs

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

Wednesday late, Friday early

18751875 views1515 comments1414 favs

I wrote this during a poetry workshop at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Carolyn Forché. January, 2015. So much more has happened since that stunning week.

Good Help Is Hard to Find

18751875 views1111 comments1010 favs

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.

Amy-Loyd Plax

18751875 views1212 comments1111 favs

When I no longer know you, what signal will you give to remind me that you and I once loved?

Two Cinquains

18741874 views88 comments44 favs

SPOT ON OUR LUNG We sense A stillborn dawn. A furtive, lurking gray, A sleight of dusk, eclipse, that follows Us. TITANIC'S LANTERNS Upon My rain-glazed panes Wet lights from neighbors glow Like lantern beams from shipwrecks…

Residual Flashbacks

18741874 views77 comments66 favs

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

18741874 views88 comments66 favs

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.

Around Close

18741874 views11 comment11 fav

You know moments like these. You know how your mother ruins them.