Most read stories

Storm and Shelter

16071607 views66 comments22 favs

Sometimes one person's shelter is another person's storm.

White girl/boy angst

16071607 views33 comments11 fav

I’m secretly hoping for a huge bouquet, a fruit basket, a pickle jar of urine in a lunch bag on my doorstep, even.

What you're waiting for.

16061606 views00 comments00 favs

I figure maybe I’m mostly alone; they are all running down staircases or falling down fire escapes, some of them naked, some of them with towels, mostly probably naked though.

Chocolate Diamonds

16061606 views1010 comments77 favs

with facets

Ilex Cahokia and A Common Piece

16061606 views88 comments66 favs

remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter

Voyeur

16061606 views66 comments33 favs

Morning's first blush, their world in repose. Sated, drained, spent; …

Sax Named Pegasus

16061606 views77 comments44 favs

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

I’m Afraid You May Have Made Some

16061606 views99 comments77 favs

awfully evil decisions upstairs in your head that could come back to haunt you in your later years;I'm here to report your zooming about hair isn't really one of them. You have found the infernal wheel works in all four directions at once. Good for you.…

Fa La La La La

16061606 views1111 comments66 favs

A pinprick breaks the black/ and pins the spin of constellations/ around its still point.

IRON Meditations (thoughts while pressing a clean shirt for work)

16061606 views11 comment22 favs

An yet we are all inmates...

version

16061606 views99 comments66 favs

THIS is what happened — the dead went into remission. Dated may 10 2010. Or it could have been some other day. They were going to be restored later. That's what we were being told. The dead were being given stones to mark their remission. They were getting…

Subsistence Culture

16061606 views1212 comments66 favs

Defy the impulse to grow beyond/ your means and the means of the/ place where you lie at night.

Real Heart

16061606 views44 comments11 fav

A heart which is alive despite everything in the world that wants to deaden it.

Brave New World

16061606 views55 comments55 favs

awoke in confusion, fear and hurt never seen before that day a year past

Biz One-Upmanship 101

16061606 views00 comments00 favs

"One-upmanship" is a strategy for defeating an opponent somewhat unfairly without actually cheating.

Hard Times

16061606 views1111 comments88 favs

None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…

Rain Dance

16061606 views22 comments11 fav

You were gone, long gone, and I could no longer smell your scent as I walked through the empty house. I couldn't bring myself to unpack the boxes, and they lurked like a forest of overgrown drab Legos.

Tying Flies

16061606 views77 comments55 favs

He plucks the feathers and winds thread to simulate an insect’s torso.

Snuggle

16061606 views1111 comments55 favs

“I’m tired, Art” The Virgin said. She was already curled up beside their dog, Lance.

Navigation and Perseverance

16061606 views44 comments44 favs

“Gladys Miller!” the dog shouted. “Live a little. TiVo it.”

Three Micros

16061606 views1515 comments1313 favs

I asked the hospice nurse about maggots.

Killing Hope

16061606 views33 comments22 favs

Hope was beauty before I even knew what beauty was with her golden pigtails, brilliant blue eyes and an infectious smile — even after Jamie Delano flung his Frisbee, knocking out Hope’s two front teeth.

The First Day of Summer

16051605 views88 comments88 favs

It is the first day of summer, a blue-green afternoon, and we sit beneath the English oak, Quercus robur. Everything has at least two names. It is the first day of summer, or the last day of something else.

My Poetic Nemesis

16051605 views44 comments33 favs

Except for the bathroom stalls—you know the one that goes “Here I sit all broken-hearted”—the only poetry in the house is composed by Hazel, recited to her fawning sycophants.

A Figure Left the Building

16051605 views1616 comments1010 favs

A figure left the building.

Greenback Fly

16051605 views88 comments77 favs

It doesn't take a genius to figure how he sank, in the drink, like Jeff Buckley. Like a stone.

The Unicorns, Part One

16051605 views11 comment11 fav

Later, your father stared, confused, at the empty spot where the wall paint layers ended in the shape of the old machines. He stopped coming in.

Grocery Deliveries

16051605 views11 comment00 favs

I was shooting baskets in the driveway when the Mexican kid delivered the groceries. He drove in fast and loud . . .

Brain Cleaning & Repair

16051605 views77 comments77 favs

You've been given some really cruel thoughts that are not your own.You've been given some really stupid sets of rules which are impossibleto follow. You can learn to manage for yourself. Remember who youwere before they told you who you were. You've been trainedsince birth…

Ah, The Drink

16051605 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…