Most read stories

The August Heartbreak Suite of Sorrow's Poems

29352935 views1919 comments1414 favs

My heart hurts as I miss you here./This was your intention, I know./ And nor is my reaction unique.

Mixtape

29342934 views2121 comments1111 favs

12. Paper Wings (Gillian Welch) This one's really depressing. Maybe you shouldn't listen to it so much.

Who In This Room Shared a Drink with Johnny Cash? (Memoir)

29342934 views1111 comments55 favs

...where I grew up the only celebrity one could count on seeing was Santa Claus...

Lullaby

29282928 views99 comments99 favs

One morning, she used a few prim phrases to break up with me. She had her suitcases packed by lunch. She was gone by dinner. Two weeks later, she emailed me a picture of herself sitting on a small brown couch.

Johnny Mercer's Pier

29252925 views1313 comments1212 favs

I’m a black and white figure--out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon.

An Admirer Visits Paul Bowles

29252925 views3333 comments3030 favs

I dropped out of college and flipped a coin, a 1929 half-dollar, and decided if heads, suicide. If tails, a life of perpetual travel.

Snow Bird

29242924 views00 comments00 favs

Snow Bird Then Bess was officially a Snow Bird. She was on the waiting list to become a permanent resident at the camp as soon as the expansion they were planning was completed. But it was being held up by some county people who were doing every

The Light at the End of You

29232923 views1717 comments1414 favs

I'm reading your remains.

4P28

29222922 views6464 comments2525 favs

He’d kept the parking space open. She used it most often, whenever she and her husband, an old drinking buddy, came to visit.

Frankie and Alice, 2013. Brooklyn, New York

29182918 views99 comments1010 favs

1.)At the corner deli, sweat dripping down my face, I ask for black, but Frankie adds milk. Just to spite me. Because I won't sleep with him. As if. Wonder what his wife would say? Punch me in the jaw, right? Like maybe the rules about holy wedlock vary…

Jail Bait

29182918 views1111 comments88 favs

Jessie and Hannah drop mescaline together, and screw in an abandoned storefront crash pad. We call it the Rock Shop.

Getting There

29152915 views2525 comments1414 favs

The monarchs that migrate to Mexico and California in the autumn every year live for only a month.

Speak

29142914 views1717 comments44 favs

I was not the first to hear the dog speak, though I was, I think, the first who thought to listen.

Waste

29132913 views22 comments00 favs

Roger's assigned route had him picking up medical waste at most of the plastic surgery offices in town. He smelled it on his skin by the end of the day. The plastic surgery places were less of a hassle than the hospital and worlds away from the free c

The bamboo stick

29122912 views1515 comments1010 favs

I no longer go for walks without my bamboo stick. Tightly held in my hand, thin and light, it beats the invisible particles which try to land on me and bite. My face is hidden as in shame under a rough gag, my hands are getting rusty, missing the touch of other hands. My…

The Night Before the Last Day of Summer

29122912 views22 comments22 favs

Tonight is our last night to dream.

Whose Barney's Version is This, Anyway?

29082908 views00 comments00 favs

Early reviews of Barney’s Version (the film) had prepared me for finding the book’s most amusing attributes – particularly its skewering of Quebec nationalist politics and Canadian cultural nationalism – left out. After all, turning a 417-page account of

Jesus, Borges, Jelly Roll

29072907 views1010 comments66 favs

It was Judge Fogarty who said “Thirty days in the market—take him away. Give him a good broom to sweep with—take him away.”

Along Came Doreen

29062906 views6060 comments1616 favs

I didn't really know her. Yet, to me, she and her friends epitomized the local hip scene.

The Defective Detective : The Curious Case of the Kilchester Courier

29052905 views00 comments00 favs

In which Clint is sucked into a remarkably civilised but mildly deranged crime scene. There he encounters almost-blackmail, not-actually prostitution, probable-sex scandals, genuine-imposters & the very real theft of something incredibly important. Twice.

Soliloquoy on Ma

29052905 views2525 comments2121 favs

“Your sister is a slut,” said Ma to me over supper.

Carver Country

29042904 views2222 comments2121 favs

My first love was a woman of principle. Never deny your man was her motto.

Black Lace (a revenge fantasy) 1

29002900 views66 comments22 favs

The stainless steel tiles are cool upon the soles of her feet. Attendants have arranged all of her equipment, both digital and mechanical, including ink and needles. An overhead screen snaps into view, and his young muscled body is revealed.

Rome Ants In The Sky

28992899 views3939 comments1616 favs

~!~

Responsible

28992899 views3939 comments2020 favs

This morning, she woke to the banshee: “Individuals must get up early and put in a full day’s work in this economy!”

Things I Should Have Done - #3

28972897 views6262 comments1919 favs

Should I have shooed the cats from my bed? Shaken awake the silky tangle of feline true love curled at my feet? Shut their bedroom door against them? Perhaps, maybe, I don’t know.

Seal Skin

28952895 views1515 comments66 favs

I had told myself that I would not cry. That I would hold on to my anger so tightly, there would be no space for pity.

Dirty Mother For Ya, a response to Memphis Minnie, with a little help from Roosevelt Sykes and Blind Boy Fuller on Mothers Day

28942894 views1414 comments88 favs

Just stay at home woman, and do your job / wash those dishes, mama, its what I pays you for

Mr. Seale Goes to Antioch

28942894 views44 comments11 fav

Black Panther Founder Bobby Seale has come to Yellow Springs, Ohio—a leafy village east of Dayton-- to carry his message of "the continuing human liberation struggle" to the 2002 graduating class of Antioch College.

The Lonely Snake

28942894 views22 comments22 favs

A solitary snake, his belly full, stretched out in the sun. His uncoiling swept sand and small rocks to the left and right. Ah, he thought, I have the power to move mountains from my path. See how the lowly earth makes way for my comfort.