Most read stories

4 Chapters

16781678 views55 comments44 favs

But I don't see the cabinets, or know how to put the 4 chapters he's talking about today into the drawers that are invisible, floating, above his bed he's been in for a year, me sitting next to him, becoming a spinster.

My wife denies being my older self.

16781678 views44 comments33 favs

What are you, my judge?

Political Poem

16771677 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…

Assiduity Six

16771677 views1212 comments66 favs

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

A Babe in the Mirror and Another in the Woods

16771677 views00 comments00 favs

“Would you look at that one!” my father said. “Who did she know?” my mother asked. “Who did she blow?” my father said loudly, and burst out laughing. I laughed too, although I didn't know why. My mother shot him one

Sparks Beneath the Surface

16771677 views2323 comments1010 favs

If I should wake/ before I die,/ just shoot me through/ the one good eye.

Sax Named Pegasus

16771677 views77 comments44 favs

I was just sitting in the corner, stirring my stories with a straw that sucked characters out of bars.

Geode

16771677 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.

The Beach

16771677 views22 comments00 favs

The wind blows off the ocean soft and cool. I close my eyes in hopes to strengthen my sense of touch. A bit of sand wriggles through my teeth; crunchy and salty like spoiled oven-roasted peanuts. I imagine the air would smell like low tide if it wasn't constantly…

Need and Desire

16771677 views66 comments33 favs

“I mean it, Hanna. I don't want you to.” But his leg felt carved away where her head had lain. One stupid thing jostling another for attention. He was afraid that if she touched him again, he'd have her on the ground.

The Ebsen Reaction

16771677 views00 comments00 favs

...the fatal bleeding-out of the love receptors. They call it “Juliet's Tears.”

the menace from prague

16771677 views11 comment11 fav

...the dead have...communicated into the high tech microwave towers of modern Prague. And their messages now may mount to the stars, confusing millions.

Chip's Bar

16771677 views00 comments00 favs

Bill texted me at 3:44, invited me to join him at Chip's, where he was having a drink. Chip's Bar is a great dive, and I accepted without hesitation. Ten minutes later I was on a crowded bus filled mostly with fat people, and twenty minutes after that I was…

Moony Star Moony Star

16771677 views44 comments22 favs

a lost children…

Chocolate Diamonds

16761676 views1010 comments77 favs

with facets

Fanmail to Ellen Page

16761676 views00 comments00 favs

You and I will never meet. You will never even know I existed. Even in dreams you will never imagine me. Someone told me once that your sleeping mind cannot conjure up new faces. It just spits out all the ones you’ve ever seen and that’s it. That’s it.

Tour Guide

16761676 views11 comment00 favs

“It is not your shoes the Americans complained about!” Roberto yelled, sitting behind his desk, cigar smoke curling around his purple face. “It is your UNDERWEAR!”

Quicksand

16761676 views55 comments00 favs

At 25...

Over The Moon

16761676 views1616 comments1212 favs

She was as beautiful as flowers in a dream

Everything You've Got

16761676 views66 comments55 favs

I reach into my pocket for my keys and discover the cough drops Iput there a week ago have melted. Now my fingers are sticky. And I don’t have my keys.

The mannequins

16761676 views44 comments44 favs

I try to enjoy my bookbut the mannequins keep tapping at the windowWhen I look up they vanish Outsidefibreglass clouds are kept in placeby invisible wires——Sometimes the mannequins …

Passion vs. Security

16761676 views77 comments77 favs

They blew in the doorway of the café at the French Hotel like two sparrows chasing each other. Their wings down in the dust, unheeding any danger in their hunger for each other. I knew the man who was about to become her husband, so maybe this was her las

9/11

16761676 views77 comments77 favs

He laughs and runs just like the other boys even though he doesn’t have a father now, just his mom.

Ah, The Drink

16761676 views77 comments11 fav

My mother was Irish as Paddy's pig. So all her family. Lovely people they were. Also, seldom seen among the Folk; stone cold sober. My father's family; Bavarian German. Bavaria's the wrong side of the German tracks. Frankfort people laugh at Bavarians as people in…

The Ex Flies

16751675 views55 comments33 favs

"My ex Maxine claimed red wine was the healthy alcohol choice. When we were married and I still had money she drank the expensive stuff, as if drinking Chateau Montrose 2005 instead of two buck chuck made her any less of a wino. She would have been better

For My Sons, a Poem

16751675 views1212 comments77 favs

In time, I will forgethow he said "smooshie" for "smoothie"and "eyebrowns" for "eyebrows,"how his upper lip dimpled when he laughedin that uproarious, wild toddler way.How he wheedled to be wrapped and rocked,after a bath, even at age five,his long calves uncovered by…

Mockingbird, Mockingbird

16751675 views33 comments22 favs

I remember when I first came to California, I heard a mockingbird sitting in a tree, calling out in the names of other birds. It was down in L.A. I was staying at my brother's house in San Gabriel and driving in every day to the campus at UCLA to go to s

bunk

16751675 views1010 comments88 favs

I bit her ear and / it was burnt toast

Bloodsport

16751675 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.

The Caganer

16751675 views00 comments00 favs

Jaume jumped up from the bar, a wide smile across his face. He hugged his old friend and planted a kiss on his wife's cheeks. He was buzzing from the chance encounter, marveling how life had brought them together after all these years. There had to be a r