Most read stories

Estella

16141614 views99 comments66 favs

Everyone loves a story of love unrequited. But what about the stories of the unrequited lovee?

from: The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars

16141614 views66 comments55 favs

I got on the Greyhound Bus at 11 a.m. and sat by myself staring out the window. I could see the reflection of my own dark beard in the window, a 27 year-old man with a huge poem bursting my heart, gasping to get out into the bright lit-up world out there,

Jack Arnfinn

16131613 views33 comments22 favs

... and the train pulls up and my shadow from yesterday steps off, and I'm standing on one leg balancing just like the weather between winter and spring, I hear a siren and my heart races, I'm about to step aboard when I hear footsteps behind me and two hands cover my eyes…

Reversal

16131613 views55 comments33 favs

For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.

Assiduity Two

16131613 views1717 comments55 favs

I'm old enough to be her father.

Geode

16131613 views77 comments44 favs

There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.

What I Am

16131613 views33 comments11 fav

I am a happy cog

My Name is William Hurt and I Am a Movie Star

16131613 views22 comments22 favs

Not to sound too ridiculous, but Hurt was giving me the hurt, and it felt good.

Text Adventure

16131613 views55 comments33 favs

Twenty-two tornadoes tore through Toronto, spiraling steel and stone to the streets where she stood, texting her best friend.

Express

16131613 views2121 comments77 favs

Once, asked what time it was, M. replied, "Eternity."

The Nature of Things

16131613 views66 comments55 favs

She’s not coming today. She didn’t come yesterday either.

match point

16121612 views33 comments33 favs

two roses her eyes aqua-blue no, blue-green

Assiduity Six

16121612 views1212 comments66 favs

"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"

Bloodsport

16121612 views11 comment00 favs

At last one of the men on the line bowed his head in a silent prayer for deliverance from what was about to come, then lifted his head and shouted loudly for his fellows to charge.

Our Merchant-Ivory Weekend

16121612 views00 comments00 favs

“A shibboleth is a test—a way to separate da wheat from da chaff that's as old as the Bible, but as new as the latest trend in men's fashions,” Gus says.

Seasonal Poem

16121612 views66 comments55 favs

One of the poems in my collection, One Day Tells its Tale to Another, published December 16, 2012. Available on Amazon. My first book!

If I Could Locate the Tether that Keeps Me Here I Would Chew Off the Limb That It's Tied To

16121612 views1010 comments66 favs

She is face down in the snow

Crazy Eyes

16121612 views1212 comments1010 favs

The kid with a testosterone chip Instead of a brain

The Underlying Order

16121612 views11 comment22 favs

“Choices overwhelmed us,” Thomas continued, years later, “like waves crashing.”

Chalk, Fish and Monkey

16121612 views22 comments11 fav

She picked the fish out of the box leaving a pool of mucus and blood slowly congealing on the shelf and dripped it toward the kitchen table. Outside the wind lashed the tops of the poplar trees together and rain sprayed from the barn roof opposite.

WARNING: I Brake for Plastic Shopping Bags

16121612 views66 comments44 favs

"...innocent butterflies of pollution trapped and entangled,"

we're already at the movies

16121612 views66 comments66 favs

israeli flares light gaza/ casting incandescent nudity/ upon jumbled puzzle piece buildings.

Meadows

16121612 views77 comments77 favs

The whole thing is broken. It's like an egg. I'm not saying this to get you to say something else in the sunny opposite direction of the tattooed scar upon my painted backyard scene. I don't really care. It's only on me. Not on you. I'm glad as…

Larry's "Gonna Die" Parrtayye

16121612 views11 comment11 fav

When we started plans for the party, none of us wanted Larry to die, most of all Larry himself. Actually, when we first started plans for the party, Larry wasn’t dying.

The Shadow People

16121612 views55 comments11 fav

Two summers later, the ritual began. Carol left her house at midnight, having served her husband and daughter a heavy dinner that left them caged in their sleep. She was like a thief working in reverse: she rose from bed with her husband’s first snore,

Six Tiny Memories

16121612 views66 comments22 favs

I took a lover on Ibiza either because he was clean-smelling or because he had a hotel room and there were none to be had.

A Little Load of Paint

16121612 views66 comments55 favs

Cézanne sags during a moment of paint. There is an umbrella in the room whose surface collects his thoughts. Outside, in the rain, the grass and garden smell strongly of spring. Fruit litters the table. Light through the window writhes in conversation with shape and…

Hide & Seek

16111611 views00 comments00 favs

I have never seen doubt on the face of a Roman general,' he said, ‘but when you looked at me and said “I know”…that was a certainty I'd never encontered. You have crossed the Acheron twice.'

Political Poem

16111611 views1010 comments1010 favs

As if to ask if I'm okay, as if to ask aren't we the same two on this wet December morning as ever, as yesterday, a month ago even, she shoots me a look as I stand by the bed, then her sane mild brown eyes…

Kickstand

16111611 views22 comments22 favs

Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.