Most read stories

Anxieties of Absence

16581658 views11 comment00 favs

On beach trips with our families, there were bumper cars, jet skis; flash enjoyments, beach-themed distractions.

Out of Character

16581658 views88 comments77 favs

Co-workers have started calling him Jesus, Manson, Foghat, Doobie Brother, hippie, hipster, Grizzly Adams, Dude Lebowski... there’s really no end to it.

Out of Stardust

16581658 views66 comments55 favs

Nor woke, as always, to a dark room smelling of the lavender she kept in little bottles to perfume the otherwise stank air. Outside, she could still see the edge of the moon hanging there like a lopsided smile. The early summer wind blew in and stirred the faded floral…

Written Six Weeks Before

16581658 views1818 comments1616 favs

March 16, 2006 My mail, e-mail, and phone calls go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Apologies for the cliché, but I can't resist its perfect applicability: In my mailbox today yet another catalogue of boob jobs in bikinis and an invitation to explore…

Story Board

16581658 views1313 comments1010 favs

There was something about his eyes that seemed more sly than happy. He looked like a teamster winking at a mayor who’d just paid him off to keep trucks rolling through Scranton.

Mice and Men

16581658 views99 comments99 favs

Some life in Rosco's walls. He listened with his dead wife Sonya's stethoscope: rustles and scratching, a collective heartbeat.“Vermin”, said Vlad, Rosco's neighbor. “Will take over if no kill.” He smiled with one tooth, urped some vodka. “I…

Return Trip

16581658 views99 comments99 favs

Lou Ann and Bobby drove in from Slidell and had a small, New Orleans wedding with just a one night honeymoon at the Monteleone because the next morning Bobby had to go. It was barely daylight as Lou Ann kissed him goodbye several times and blew him kisses as his cab pulled…

Mercury Unbound - 6

16581658 views88 comments22 favs

Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor. I don't like it but I can't stop listening. It doesn't fit my mood, or the high plains landscape, or the early evening, pink and blue, pastel colored sky.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 18

16581658 views00 comments00 favs

We all ran out of the house into the communal garden without fences. There stood Von Rotten with a smoking rifle in his hands, and our mascot Digger lying on his side, limp. We all looked at each other in disbelief.

Night & Day

16581658 views1616 comments1414 favs

It was oddly quiet, and the air had a strangely urgent quality. The sun came out, and water on the leaves and branches turned oaks and aspens into Christmas trees.

Everyone the Same, But Not At Once

16571657 views66 comments00 favs

The surface temperature of the sun is 9,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

A House Burning

16571657 views00 comments00 favs

There won't be dancing, anymore. That isn't true, that can't be true; but there is no floor to dance on, you know?

Drunk and Disorderly

16571657 views1010 comments99 favs

Growing up in Mississippi meant growing up in a “dry” State which it was until 1966. Dry State meant selling alcoholic beverages, except for beer, is illegal. Period. By period I mean there was no distinction between selling whiskey and stuff to adults and…

Keep Your Man Crazy in Love the Redbook Way

16571657 views00 comments00 favs

You are like gasoline on the fire of my desire–you send me higher and higher into paroxysms of earth-shaking erotic explosions. Remember–the “light” catfood is the kind in the turquoise bag.

Dark Site

16571657 views22 comments00 favs

Though some days... I feel as though I'm nothing more than the ultimate hedged-bet should the offender be living out his last days on earth, holding my arm as we both feel our way through the long dark corridors of tragedy.

Complicated Game

16561656 views11 comment00 favs

Peggy woke up in the bedroom smelling burned pumpkin and she instantly knew her husband Tim had remained unconscious and insensible on the couch again and let the candle burn down. She and Lennon had watched him the previous night take control of the…

Librarians Love Me!

16561656 views22 comments11 fav

Librarians love me, you want to know why? I don’t dog-ear pages, I don’t even try.

Where's My Phreakin' Nobel Prize in Physics?

16561656 views77 comments33 favs

Where I went to college, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a physics lab without hitting a Nobel laureate. I know–we tried. They finally made us stop–it wasn’t fair to the cat.

Haiku for the Worried

16561656 views66 comments33 favs

Real life escapes you.

Begettings

16561656 views1818 comments1212 favs

However did we make it this far/ without murdering one another as the other sleeps

Notes from Matrimony, # 9

16561656 views44 comments44 favs

I arrived Sunday evening to a darkened house. Everything unplugged. Even the fuses from the breaker. Meticulous, this undoing. Silence has a sound. Cold has a voice, a pearly cigarette whisper. It says, “Metaphor?”

Bad Listener

16561656 views44 comments11 fav

Sunday afternoon was the best. The kids drew straws for a chance to sit on the stool in the Kitchen with the broken armrest. I think mom thought it was an antique but it was just a piece of shit her dad picked up second hand.

elegy to the death of an empire

16561656 views66 comments66 favs

lol romney

Tia Alvarez

16561656 views22 comments11 fav

Penny followed the woman into the warm, dark interior of her home, which smelled strongly of cumin and other familiar spices she couldn’t name. Penny noted that the tia’s hair had turned almost completely white and had grown very long since Penny had last

The Lot

16561656 views22 comments00 favs

The inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhood steered clear of the Lot, mindful of its existence, its countless drags of scrap, drenched with the fused association of many scenes and emotions from memory and experience. Left to its own devices, the place is now…

Summoned by the Board

16561656 views66 comments66 favs

They were all sitting naked in a sauna and drinking Diet Coke, with droopy ball sacks and sweat rolling over massive man titties and paunches. Yahweh sat on an upper bench, wearing dark goggles to protect his eyes from the brightness of his own still radi

Run For Your Life

16561656 views00 comments00 favs

It was where the “Suits” worked. I didn’t want to go there, I didn’t want to be there, but in those days one did what one was supposed to do.

Life is Life (or Ode to a great big idiot like Zizek)

16561656 views00 comments00 favs

The words(worlds) have become abstracted through contempt?

Frances at Virginia Beach

16551655 views22 comments33 favs

My husband waits for him to hurt himself. The boy drinks red wine between movements, Staring hypnotically at the back Of a girl’s head.

Road Movies

16551655 views22 comments11 fav

Like puddles when it rains, like relationships in chains.