Most read stories

Moon Over the Downs - excerpt

17121712 views44 comments11 fav

Each drip off the corrugated plastic sheeting made a tinny sound that he could hear from deep within the damp sleeping bag and layers of blankets where he was trying to sleep.

Anniversary Waltz

17121712 views1515 comments1212 favs

He hiked the hills of her condition She biked the path of his delight

We call them the Removal Men

17121712 views33 comments33 favs

They came early and parked up, under cover of the night and the giant oak. I only know this because people told me afterwards. Watching us, they were. It was six o'clock before they smashed their way in, scaring the three of us out of our wits. Baby Billy screamed the place…

Concubine on the Ginza Line

17121712 views11 comment11 fav

so I tighten hands with my castaway and say/you failed to impress in your folded peacock dress

The Shadow

17121712 views00 comments00 favs

"Did I have a dream, or did the dream have me?" - Rush, "Nocturne"

Waiting for the Voice on the Line

17121712 views1818 comments1111 favs

hoping for a happy outcome/ like a kindly voice on the line

the swan drives a car

17121712 views88 comments66 favs

the swan drives a car ( window down; wing half hanging out ) …

The French Revolution

17121712 views22 comments11 fav

Judith was a bed wetter. Judith was a first-year college student and she was embarrassed that she wet the bed.

Time Capsule

17121712 views66 comments66 favs

He pours another shot and says: Then I buried it in the yard. The time capsule I mean. You have to plug it in to see. I wonder if they’ll know.

Stillness

17121712 views33 comments33 favs

You were sitting on dark leather meringue, wearing slit ivy, epilated thighs sliding through, roots showing beneath your anaemic skin, fighting with the pale bluegreen of your veins. Quills extended from your left hand, bent about 10.2 degrees or so.

Texas Weather

17111711 views1919 comments99 favs

I know this: the sky is vast here// and the sun unforgiving/ to any architecture not the best

Poems I Wish I Had Written

17111711 views99 comments55 favs

Parsimony, Sage Advice, Alimony, and Time. That would be one. The Waste Land. The Hollow Men. The Red Wheelbarrow. There are others, But I have definite shoe anxiety dreams and can’t get over them. Do not Go Gently Into That Good Night. Alone

Zeus Takes a Day Job

17111711 views1010 comments88 favs

That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall

You Can Go Now

17111711 views44 comments55 favs

The summer when I was six and my sister Audrey was eight, she'd walk around our house pretending to be in a trance, fingers strategically hovering over my mother's vases and lamps, leaving smudges behind on my father's heavy oak desk and rocking chair. She'd lumber past my…

The Yellow Room

17111711 views66 comments44 favs

...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

Confederates

17111711 views22 comments11 fav

I knew I spoke out of turn when I asked my father's old friend Charlie Jobe what he thought would come of moving to the veterans' camp, or "Village of the Deranged", as the newspaper has since taken to calling it. That was their description after all the

Light Eyes

17111711 views88 comments22 favs

Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

17111711 views00 comments00 favs

...Loves and fights and retires; / And dies.

Fertile Ground

17111711 views22 comments11 fav

Miriam forced herself to focus on the kitchen door and on putting one foot in front of the other. “Is everything alright?” she heard Ada ask the family. “Of course, everything is fine,” the woman said. “What could be wrong other than the impossible serv

Read Me

17111711 views1010 comments22 favs

I won’t be eating much anyway if someone doesn’t start reading me. I’ve got to get a hook so people will be drawn to my work. I’ve got a few concepts I’d like to share with you. See what you think.

the cold the day left

17101710 views55 comments66 favs

in our teens as tough as the cold/we wore denim and flannel with our boots/kicking at whichever wind blew . . .

Rowdy

17101710 views55 comments00 favs

Flash’s hackles stood brushlike but he kept his head bowed just enough beneath the bigger dog’s stare to delay the inevitable fight. Flash, Mal thought approvingly, would pick the time and place.

Words of Departure

17101710 views33 comments22 favs

Not a fuss, not a stink, The eulogy, deep, will make one think, Grandmother, sat in back, will wink

River Run

17101710 views99 comments77 favs

yearning amid the waning

blanck (1?)

17101710 views22 comments33 favs

① / empty space / not black / not white / not noise / blanck

Pretending Veracity, History Winks

17101710 views1010 comments99 favs

Mosaics are a trick of the eye, seeming

A Christmas Story

17101710 views22 comments11 fav

Two days before Christmas 1946, my mother put me on an Illinois Central railroad train at the whistle stop of Neoga, Illinois.

Full

17101710 views33 comments22 favs

The trash is full. Again. I open the bathroom trash—because the diaper genie is stuffed—but there’s no room. I try the kitchen next. The lid swings open, catapulting carrot shavings onto the floor. I lay the diaper on the counter for later.

In The Kitchen

17101710 views77 comments33 favs

drips of blood vegetal

A Desperate Tweak

17101710 views00 comments00 favs

I have two of those hand exercisers jamming the tray and keeping it locked in place