Most read stories

The Meaning of Life

17991799 views1111 comments66 favs

One must not confuse the meaning / of life with the joy of living

SHADOW

17991799 views22 comments00 favs

I am a shadow. Cooler than liquid. I don't need a container to take shape.

A Butterfly For A Married Woman

17981798 views33 comments22 favs

A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.

GOT

17981798 views1616 comments1111 favs

I don't know how long I was down on the curb. When I came around it took several minutes to realize that it wasn't the moon overhead at all but a street light and the sticky feeling stuff I was lying in was, yeah, my blood. And the hand on my shoulder wasn't hers. I…

When the Moon Blooms

17981798 views88 comments66 favs

Your faded presence in sepia dream returns, firelight whispers and vanilla scented ash. We were a beautiful knot: sinew and hemp, burlap and magnolia petal, concrete and vapor. Gray kisses hovered overhead, misty…

Metastasis

17981798 views1515 comments1313 favs

I am eternal/ as long as the power holds

Basal Distance

17981798 views1010 comments66 favs

are you like the rest of us and you disagree with war yes i said i disagree with war and he said only one man agrees with war but he won t go to the war

13 fragments of a somniloquy, overheard by a burglar lost in the basement complex on midsummer night

17981798 views33 comments11 fav

1. there's nothing more to say about it and I don't want to be drawn2. beautiful she couldn't hear me anyway I was desperate and there were moths3. they'd replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked4. none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a…

Wild Dreams of Reality, 12

17981798 views00 comments00 favs

I went out behind Parker's house and saw Darrell's tent set up in the grass. The flaps of the pup tent were open. I could see him through the mosquito netting. He had a Coleman lamp burning and lay on his back in his underwear on top of his sleeping bag.

ATF

17981798 views44 comments22 favs

A father's soft neglect has repercussions.

The Work of Beauty

17981798 views88 comments77 favs

the steady, persistent work of beauty

Cheese (train writings)

17981798 views88 comments44 favs

"This tastes like goat cheese," I said.

WRECKED

17971797 views77 comments77 favs

There

thumbing through the Jesus book

17971797 views66 comments22 favs

We’re on our way out, my brother and me, to the grave­yard.

Thanks for Looking After Sinamyn

17971797 views1313 comments44 favs

Here are a few tips/instructions to help you out (though I'm sure you'll do just fine by yourself!):Getting to the Apt.:If you're coming from Riverside, you'll want to turn onto Magnolia. So, if you're coming from north to south on Riverside, that means you'll want to turn…

Our Terror Closet

17971797 views22 comments22 favs

"Honey," I called out to my wife. "Why do we have Spam in the closet?" "You mean unsolicited bulk messages sent electronically?" "No--the canned, precooked meat product made by the Hormel Corporation."

Dad, August 10, 2010

17971797 views1010 comments88 favs

Satchmo sings a love song over the sound system. People read books, tap keyboards, drink coffee, eat cake. In Barnes & Noble—more a coffee shop these days than a bookstore—I am thinking about my dad and his stomach cancer.The terror he…

Charlotte and the Avalanche of Hope

17971797 views33 comments22 favs

”My goodness how that child nurses hope,” Edward’s Grandad would often say, “were it not for her where indeed would this family be?”

Elusive Ideas in a Pineapple Under the Sea

17971797 views33 comments11 fav

I cannot find my way back to the bubbling navel of the universe because of Spongebob Squarepants.

Thin Flame

17971797 views77 comments44 favs

It was impossible that you wouldn't love me

Disappearing Ink

17961796 views88 comments44 favs

Our ink was disappearing. All of it.

Hart Crane Pantoum No. 1

17961796 views1818 comments1313 favs

One must be drenched in words.

A Jungle Tale

17961796 views00 comments00 favs

He awoke with a start. This was not the first time he did so. He couldn't afford these occasional bouts of sleep. And certainly not in the land of the Tsantsa hunters.

Faithless

17961796 views11 comment00 favs

She was now sitting in her bathtub. The warmth of the water made her pale, rich vanilla skin flushed with the fullness of circulation as her pores continued to allow the passage of her toxins from her system.

SECRETS

17961796 views1313 comments88 favs

they don't tell

The Clarity of Loss

17961796 views66 comments44 favs

This year I did not markthe day of your death.I let it slip by in an afternoonfilled with music you'll never hear,words you'll never read,a chorus of voices raised in protestat the unwavering passage of time.I don't need a numberto know that you are gone.Since you went…

Why No One Writes Epics Anymore

17961796 views66 comments66 favs

No one writes epics anymore. Why? Perhaps it's because we no longer share mythologies. Once there was a shepherd, and now there is a Google bus loaded with pricks. Yes, you say, but they are good at math. Each and every one of them. And this is true. I envy them…

Because words are insufficient

17961796 views99 comments77 favs

The day you came to the wedding the sky was so, so brightly July./ I saw my face where I left it the last time . . . .

Flannery O'Connor's Tea Party

17961796 views00 comments00 favs

“He's the one who took five tries to find your vein during your last blood draw, right?” This question spilled from the row of twenty EKG machines that now made up the hospital building's larynx

The Good Farmer

17961796 views77 comments66 favs

He leans in close then, close enough that when he speaks, his words tiptoe out and tuck me in.