Most read stories

Darwin at the Zoo

16231623 views1717 comments1313 favs

This year we have no need of spring!

Ten Dreams That Raised Some Of the Dead

16221622 views00 comments00 favs

Dreams will show you a life that might or might not be yours, but you better believe that they've got to serve when you're asked to come up with a story."--Frank Baron, the night he made bail and left town1. First Blood in Dreams Long Ago The…

Pull Another String

16221622 views55 comments55 favs

Now as my fearful hand goes unwittingly up I search the faraway trees for the closest possible answer I know I don't know. The clever waiting beast is looking my way with an intelligent roving eye that says he likes to hit. It doesn't matter. You're worse…

Coleridge on Urine

16221622 views1616 comments1111 favs

What a beautiful Thing / Urine is

The Beauties Abandon You

16221622 views2323 comments1212 favs

The skin will stay but you won’t see it,/ camouflaged by creases, tags, and curious/ deposits of renegade fat and pigment.

Big Al Dissects Literary Fiction since No One Else in the Bar could pronounce Aristotle

16221622 views11 comment00 favs

“Well” I say. “What do you think about the dilemma of a guy who’s tortured by a history of incest and bondage?” “Depends” Says Al. “On who was cested and who was bonded.

The Loam

16221622 views11 comment11 fav

From above we see the trampled grass circling the house. Trampled grass from where half starved alligators circled the house, hissing and issuing low moans. Half starved alligators deranged by the red skies circled the house in the late August of the last year. Beginning in…

Monster

16221622 views11 comment11 fav

My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…

Sleep Music, No. 1

16221622 views55 comments22 favs

Now they are sleeping in a poppy field, sun-drenched warm afternoon girls lying on their stomachs and sides, faces in flowers, and flowers blowing, blowing. If this afternoon were every afternoon, the world would be cured.

Down

16221622 views00 comments00 favs

Locked at the highest rung Unable to budge at all

Plastic Jesus in an Upright Tub

16221622 views1111 comments88 favs

Me and Dale chuck rocks at it.

The Man Who Defied Gravity

16221622 views33 comments11 fav

Let us be stranded in the Andes and have to eat human flesh or at least toothpaste to survive! Let there be an earthquake! Let there be a flood! Let there be a tornado, a new ice age, an invasion from Mars. Only: let me survive.

Nineteenth Century Noise

16221622 views2121 comments1313 favs

The virtuoso tortures a violin/ in homage to Paganini.

Lavender, A Liberal

16211621 views88 comments1111 favs

Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at all. …

The Hangman's Poor Gift

16211621 views1212 comments1010 favs

of placing the rope just so; of settling the veil with care --

black tulips

16211621 views1212 comments55 favs

the memories return like they do every year at this time

Processes

16211621 views1212 comments99 favs

How to Boil Water How to Cook an Egg How to Eat How to Think How to Love How to Die

Tiger-eyed

16211621 views00 comments00 favs

The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known?

The Perfect Plan

16211621 views00 comments00 favs

They screened the thousands of mosquitoes that hatched, and found a few carrying the botox transgene. In a few months time, several billion mosquitoes had been bred, ready for release. Now to wait for that diplomatic flashpoint, when war could be declared

Prisoners (edited)

16211621 views1515 comments44 favs

This cell the sole certainty, all else steeped in mystery. Why should we be here?

On the Bench (Matthew III)

16211621 views1414 comments77 favs

turn your face

Beelzebub

16211621 views55 comments55 favs

The jewels were dragonflies, buzzing lazily, Beelzebub’s hair a golden meadow.

Crack in the Cosmos

16211621 views22 comments22 favs

There’s a crack in the cosmos, and pink is leaking through. There’s a crack in the cosmos, fix the sink, the toilet leak. There are many cracks in the cosmos, numerous. This is how time escapes. Good grief, they’re going to suck the cream

from Presence

16201620 views55 comments44 favs

facts are facets are / things in the act // the truth speaks softly // as time saying amber / to the enduring sap // words come and go / like leaves like men // we the tree remain ...

Secrets and Piles of Money

16201620 views1212 comments77 favs

The dog awakens at the sound of a petal falling, sure that barbarians are at the gate. She opens wide her yellow teeth.

The Land Collector

16201620 views1010 comments77 favs

He liked owning acreage.

Drive-by Neighborhood Fiction Flash

16201620 views99 comments77 favs

It's about dinner time. My neighborhood is in Sa-bur-bia. Driving my gold 2007 Malibu i pass Chick. She notices me and stares standing in front of her house. We were friends about ten years ago. Chick is still divorced. Tall skinny legs. Educated blu-ish eyes. Wet…

Mastery of All Thangs Including Sonatas and Piledrivers

16201620 views55 comments44 favs

My old buddy Snoop Dogg saunters into the room, and we go through a handshake routine that takes over ten minutes, ending with double-backflips and some brotherly penis swordplay.

Heat

16201620 views1111 comments88 favs

Flames dance behind glass

The Puppet Maker

16201620 views22 comments00 favs

My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top