Most read stories

True Romance '66

18341834 views00 comments00 favs

First thing each morning, Miss Murgy, a tall witch of a woman, cornered both of us like she did every day. "Girls…" with that she clinked a tea spoon on a shot glass, "do I have your attention?" "Yes, m'am," Vicky said. 6 a.m., six…

A Message from Your Local Superintendent Concerning Sex in Our Public Schools

18341834 views00 comments00 favs

Such behavior will result in no disciplinary action only: 1) if all blinds are drawn; 2) all doors are locked; and 3) loud groaning is masked by appropriate use of the volume control on the classroom’s closed-circuit TV set.

Breathing

18341834 views22 comments11 fav

After only a few months’ practice I am able to dive deep within myself. Inhale. A millisecond stop and I am under the surface. I know there is something here within myself – some treasure that I have come to find.

Scene from the Clinic

18341834 views11 comment11 fav

No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.

The Serious Writer Tracks His Stats

18341834 views77 comments44 favs

The officers carried him away in cuffs as he yelled "I NEED STATS! PLEASE! JUST GIVE ME THE STATS!"

Cymbals

18341834 views00 comments00 favs

On stage, students from the junior college join children from the community to speak and sing in American-French accents. They are timid, heart-broken, in love, rebellious, faithful, resigned to their fates—and all in the matter of a few short hours.

Maritzer's Axiom

18341834 views88 comments66 favs

We were just as bourgeois as Bloomingdale’s, one generation past canned ravioli dinners with cheap white bread.

Criminals

18341834 views44 comments11 fav

What about the goons? Those criminals thwarted and left for dead in every action movie for the past thirty years. I'm sure at least a dozen survived the slaughters. I'm sure at least one or two came out if it reformed. This one who quit working for Columbian drug smugglers…

A Black Cat

18341834 views66 comments44 favs

And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …

entwined

18341834 views11 comment00 favs

you and i exist outside of the chaos and noise entwined in eternal embrace

Sky Without a Song

18341834 views66 comments66 favs

He hung up and I sang some whiney lyric about wanting him back. You know the songs that say the same shit: I’m an idiot. Love me anyway. I’m Velcro with nothing to stick to and you’re a nappy surface that gives me a reason to exist.

Prologue: April 16, 1970

18331833 views11 comment11 fav

The muster zone was south of U.S. 119, off the Halleck Road. The search began on a large parcel, some 75 acres of farmland, property of one Mr. Shakelford. Shakelford had allowed the earth to go wild; brush, thistle and small…

The Celebrity

18331833 views22 comments00 favs

I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.

Graduation (For My Mother)

18331833 views33 comments33 favs

I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter 3 - by Brian Lepire

18331833 views11 comment11 fav

I’d made it to the motel parking lot when I heard the footsteps. A sombrero may make me look good, but it does shit for my hearing, so the bastards were able to scoop me up real quick. The first one gave me a hard slap on the top of the head with an opene

The Room Below

18331833 views11 comment11 fav

The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

Having Read the Poems of Matt Dennison

18331833 views77 comments33 favs

Having read the poetry of Dennison I hereby give up writing.

Annals of the Naked Rowdies #22

18331833 views33 comments00 favs

As they left, Roddy kicked over a statue of a blindfold and half-naked goddess of justice. "I piss on you Justice!" he yelled. The bailiff pushed him out the door as he continued his rant, inaudible.

The Conversation Killer

18331833 views66 comments33 favs

I stand corrected once more.

The Birds

18331833 views1212 comments1313 favs

My wife goes away for a few days to the little town where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.

Some People

18331833 views1212 comments77 favs

But those burning red numbers persist in my mind and I can't rest 'till they're gone They always come back Like the cat in that childhood song.

A Body Divided, 1

18321832 views00 comments00 favs

A Body Divided: Memoir 1 When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it broug

Twin Lakes of Whiskey

18321832 views77 comments44 favs

not that we ever had before

Building

18321832 views66 comments22 favs

he told me to be careful,my feet may bleedI watched him walk up and down the path,occasionally bendingwhy?carpenter nails, pieces of broken shinglesall along the pathnow I know why

Zeta Reticuli

18321832 views1212 comments99 favs

We've talked often about that night, where six hours of our life disappeared, about our shared experience, and the big question of why.

MY WAR

18321832 views1111 comments33 favs

In May of 1982, my daughter and I planned a trip…

3 Poems

18321832 views1717 comments1414 favs

We have always been a trashy species./ We study ourselves by examining/ garbage-- a pile of mussel shells here,

Local Man Makes Good

18321832 views66 comments44 favs

A junkyard Bison seems an odd choice over the usual dog, but it did the job--trampling trespassers, vagrants and unautorized salvagers with a violent and admirable efficiency

The Red Suitcase: (Conclusion)

18321832 views77 comments55 favs

—You must be joking, he laughed.

wheat field with cypresses. van Gogh

18321832 views33 comments22 favs

There’s no sky like that, with twisting clouds shot up into by cypress trees that are so like dark green flames, leaping out of the earth as if a dark green oily pool were on fire underground, and this was all that could escape, was its essence. And a