Most read stories

Did you ever kill someone?

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Well, yeah but no one that wasn't pointing a gun at me, mostly. I shot at a lot of people but there were only three times when I can honestly say I know that I blew someone away.

Shakedown Street

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The combined smells of ocean breeze, grilled cheese sandwiches, incense and sweat and burning herb that wafted over from Shakedown, along with windblown notes from tinny car speakers all rolled into a potent sensory cocktail he hadn’t tasted in far too l

Some Things I Have Learned As A Writer

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1. Poor grammar does not sleep. 2. We'll never finish every idea we have. 3. No matter how hard you try, you still might make it into my book

Ghosts

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I see ghosts. They accost me in their sleep. Hundreds of them. When I wake up (after a long night of half-waking), I think, What wold ghosts want with me? I have nothing for them. But at night they're there again, watching, tapping my shoulder as I lay awake. Sometime…

The Queen of the Underground

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Study decay, says the Queen of the Underground.

I Wonder About the Trees

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I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause

The Hound - Part 3

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The bullet split her head in half before she could finish her sentence. Her blood sprayed out onto my face and covered my lips. The taste of life as it suddenly ended.

The Sweetness of Youth

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On my twenty-second birthday, in the spring of 1979, I had a crawfish boil, my first. Ninety pounds of red mudbugs on a picnic table spread with newspaper, my birthday cake sitting at the end of the table like an afterthought.I hadn't…

Some Assembly but No Singularity Required

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The phone rings. The oven beeps./ The locomotive whistles and howls.

Bestiary

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A woman posted a story on Fictionaut about discovering that her husband was a werewolf.

A Fine Life

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It's really not too bad. The personI am was me. We laughed insidethose sacred places at all the monieswell spent. We walked in the gardenswithout any shoes on. Not one singleflower seemed to mind. And now it'sa forgotten mess or so I've imagined.I'd rather you think about…

The Four Despairs of Lumpy

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children love to push the gas up and down my limbs

Carousel Horses

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From this distance, he reminded me of a sleazy pink flamingo, waiting for feeding time at the zoo to deepen the timbre of his feathers and hint at the promise of a narcotic aviation before his commune of hens.

Poem: Admonition

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"Why, before the summer has passed You won’t remember her name. . ."

chicken coup

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" I have no idea what's goin on out here, and I'm gonna find out one way or another."

The Dock

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Row, Caps of white, A salted escape beneath reflected light. Brother, remember those old lies? I’m off to sea to make those things right, now.

Fear in a Handful of Dust

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I fear my personal information travels the World Wide Web/ and mad Ukrainians will steal my name and wealth./ I fear the fiscal cliff and raising the ceiling on national debt./ I fear a death by taxes.

The City of Lights

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Paris is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

"Beautiful Boy! I am doomed"

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Beautiful boy! I am doomed / to have attended your presence; / time consumes us, but you / have changed so little...

from Presence

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we gave divided houses / child stand up anyway

Staying In Place Staying In Place

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The way each intersection in a city where you’ve lived a while becomes layered with personal archeology. The cafe that replaced a liquor store you avoided, and the friend (or lover) you broke up with there, and the way on the day of the big fire you

Relics

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Theresa Esposito woke to the smell of pignoli cookies baking. The sweet scent made her stomach rumble. She was ten-years-old today. And she felt ten. Her hair, her ears, her eyes, her toes — everything felt ten.

Migrants

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She is too stylish to be crazy, is what the migrant probably thinks. And he's right.

By Derangement of All Our Senses

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We will collapse in a storm of images

Great Rift Valley

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she shivered in the ceasefire like a virginal nude brought to life.

A Change in Status on the Facebook of Cement

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First he wrote it in wet cement at the intersection: “Tad Loves Kimberley,” with a big heart around it. He was real proud, you could see. But then later on that year, the graffiti began appearing everywhere, on all the store walls: “Kimberle

The Taste in My Mouth

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whose spit is this?

Axes

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You think about the first time you saw an axe

Genocide City Zone

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Welcome to the genocide city zone I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay We've been killing folks here All the live-long day If you want to join us You'll have to pay the price Your soul's the cost, so ante up C'mon and shoot the dice Welcome to the genocide city zone …

Speaking to the Dead

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I didn't hear your last words or see your lasteyes. I didn't reach you in time, so I sat by your corpse,silently saying goodbye. I am in that process,not sour, not sweet, that yoked speaking which can't(because the heart won't let it) utter its whisperedlast word, but…