Most read stories

from MLKNG SCKLS

18071807 views22 comments22 favs

94% Battery Power Remaining Last night I dreamt about a mutt whose tail never learned how to wag, and under a sun that gagged us with heat, the mutt sat stoned with its mouth belching cones of pot smoke. Sometimes the smoke shone orange – sometim

Abandoned

18071807 views22 comments11 fav

How could you run from me now? The loneliest child in the house

wheat field with cypresses. van Gogh

18071807 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

So What

18071807 views1717 comments1414 favs

This morning I heard her downstairs trying to get away silently. I knew she would write a short goodbye note. I knew it would tell me her reason for leaving —she had to be free of my indifference. I dressed, finished my coffee, backed out of the driveway and went to…

The Nightly Dance

18071807 views55 comments33 favs

The electricity animates my body into myclonic dance. I do not rest. I dance with the demons; I dance with Nijinsky rage. I dance with the fury of Saint Vitus and his wooden cross. My shoes are fashioned with my own fear, tanned and stretched over my feet

The City's Not For You

18061806 views55 comments44 favs

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

Fulfillment

18061806 views1414 comments88 favs

And she's dying like someone who's tried living and failed.

In the North Woods (or, The War of Art)

18061806 views22 comments11 fav

For the residents of Oak Morrow, entropy is an art form. They break their own windows and crash their cars into their living rooms. Grannies and pets can usually scoot out of the way before they’re crushed under the juggernaut of creativity.

Keep it, Curt

18061806 views3838 comments1818 favs

Just move out.

Improvisational

18061806 views66 comments66 favs

This is not her death. This is absent-minded omniscience. This is impossible. And then again, the inside-out, implosion. And the hall was clogged with bodies; none of them hers, but who could be sure?

Not Sure If You're Actually Having Sex? I Can Help.

18061806 views1010 comments88 favs

When I stumbled upon evidence that the man I'd loved and trusted for 20 years had a secret girlfriend for the past 10 of those years, he tried to deny it.“We never had sex!” he told me. And I believed him. For about two minutes.“You never…

Signs and Wonders

18061806 views1212 comments1111 favs

Bag worms hang in their cloudy white hammocks. This is the month of webs when long-bodied yellow and black spiders sign their autographs.

My Dad Builds the House

18061806 views88 comments88 favs

Before the saw came my fist through the wall. Now I kneel on the crumbled drywall in my son's closet holding a flashlight, peering into the hole at the plumbing parts I'm supposed to replace. On the other side of the wall the bathtub faucet drips. It is my second…

77 Words About Saturday

18061806 views55 comments33 favs

Another Saturday in April. Another set of scars.

Admit Nothing

18061806 views77 comments55 favs

Traveling in half-lit fluorescence, she smiles up at me, pale and strained

Sweet Pigeon

18061806 views1818 comments99 favs

A small poem

The Arrival

18061806 views22 comments11 fav

Everybody knew it would happen. It didn’t happen exactly when or how they thought it would, but nonetheless it happened. “I told you it would happen,” a bearded man told his wife.

Kingdom of the blind

18061806 views66 comments66 favs

Learned & wealthy but slowly going mad from seeing, he did the only thing he could/he turned to love

This is Poop Patrol!

18051805 views88 comments33 favs

Sherry and I stand on the sidewalk on a sunny morning, watching her dog take a dump. She's new to the neighborhood and we've just introduced ourselves. The dog, a handsome poodle, does the deed efficiently. “See you later, Gloria!“ Sherry says…

When I Was Young In the Suburbs

18051805 views22 comments22 favs

When I was young in the suburbs, there was an empty lot across from our house. Bulldozers cleared the trees, shredded the bushes, and piled mounds of dirt three times as tall as I. But they never built a house.The dirt mounds, chain-link fences, and neon signs were…

The End of My Second Life

18051805 views3030 comments2020 favs

We are moments away from the end, and it feels like it.

Assemblance

18051805 views1414 comments99 favs

I assemble myself daily// from the ready-mades/ of a fast talking world,

Slaloming the Siphoners

18051805 views33 comments11 fav

Hipster-neutral dressed simulacra-person offers a glance and a wave, sudden as a ping-pong serve, designed to crowd your space and "pal" you but I dodge it — I'm practiced at this.

Her Own Age

18051805 views1111 comments33 favs

He had a country house, she said, but it was near the city. She said the house was about as old as he was and she loved it— from the wood-framed windows to the heavy wood doors... to the garden on the side of the house

The Alarm

18051805 views00 comments00 favs

Harris Tobiasharristob@gmail.comThe Alarm A terrible clanging in the middle of the night roused me from my bed. I put on some clothes and hurried into the street there to mingle with my bleary eyed neighbors. At first we thought it was a fire but there was…

Cymbals Guy

18041804 views99 comments33 favs

cymbals guy — another way of saying hey turdshitface haul your skinnyass to the front of the bus.

Naming Crayons, or the Edges of Denim

18041804 views1313 comments99 favs

neon carrots and atomic tangerines

The Nanny

18041804 views22 comments11 fav

     In the dark, alone after she was gone, he would whisper her name into his pillow and fight the tears more out of shear exhaustion than anything else. He had mourned for her even before she had passed, as he watched helpless while the disease marched slowly and…

With a Danish

18041804 views44 comments22 favs

It wasn't hidden, exactly, but kept in a place where she wouldn't be expected to look: a photograph of Roger, naked and supine, looking at the camera without surprise.

Then, But Not Now

18031803 views1414 comments1313 favs

The one-legged crow was back in the yard again today, as it was yesterday and may have been before, but yesterday was the first time I noticed it among the murder while using the binoculars that I often use to bring things closer, things like these iridescent and beautiful…