Most read stories

"The Misses Moses," from my collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton 2010)

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The Misses Moses by Brad Watson from Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives The Moses sisters lived together, alone, in the fine old brick house near downtown where they…

The Three Of Swords - любовь среди волков

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A look flashed across his face as if someone had hooked up his genitals to a car battery.

Beach Busker

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I fondly remember those warm, weekend evenings at twilight on the beach. After the frolic of the waves flattened, sending the surfers home and, after the last bait was spent, sending the surfcasters away, I'd set up the little, foldable, 3‘x4', rectangular stage I always…

Greet Death

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where are you now?

D.H. Lawrence Ghazal

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How many shadows in your soul? Close your eyes, my love, let me / make you blind as the wings of a drenched, drowned bee.

The Old Dog (in response to Brian Warfield)

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Blend the dog a drink and sit down beside him and draw straws for regrets.

The Trapper Boy at Work, One Mile Underground

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The coal carts come and go like the seasons, never stopping.

Alternate Tale

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Suppose Eve, strolling through the sunlit Garden, had not stumbled on that particular Tree at all, the wily serpent twined in its lower branches?

Desire

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She said “I have to go”, he answered with his eyes “Don't” and they stepped closer to each other in the kitchen, a step on the tiled floor, the remnants of their tea cold on the counter top.

to a gregarious stranger

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Three lines.

Mob

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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.

Pinnacles

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Pinnacles State Park lying on our backs stoned on hash around a campfire looking up at the clear see-through blue green stars to the other side of the universe I know now you are out there I float up to within 2

Everything the Traffic Will Allow

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there’s more to life than poontang but not when you’re sixteen and your hands are full of heavy breasts

Blackish by Reason of the Ice

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"Sara, do you taketh it with your eyes?"

perfectly...fine...

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You left for the glittery wild of West Hollywood. I guess L.A.'s off-limits now. My heart goes fucking tachy when I drive over Kellogg Hill past Forest Lawn and see the skyline glowing through the rainbow haze of sunset. You're out there, out in the…

Terror From Above

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A shadowless torpedo shaped form plummeted from the grey, overcast skies upon the many unsuspecting. No remote pilot thousands of miles away guided this particular descent. 

The Rest of the Story of Mom

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Easing her hand with her other hand.

A Scalar Boson a Day

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. . . the empiricism of the mechanical had wound tight into her, lessons her few calendars could never impart without aid from sundials, hourglasses, clocks.

Conversations

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That won’t kill me, will it? I asked. Maybe, the doctor said.

#2 Feeding Fire (Poetry)

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It is like truth on the battle field. Muted

Flamboozled in the Beak

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I was looking for an inn to get a cup of calf soup before jacking ribs at the mutton joint. Feng calls, running numbers on an engine zone out in the valley.

Txt msging

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Forty years later he was still her Romeo, she his Juliet.

Private Red

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Your favorite nickname existed only in the bright red cherry smoldering at the end of your smoke.

Sniping

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Snipers wear camouflage clothing to avoid being seen. It wouldn’t do for a sniper to be seen because then the sniper might become the snipee.

The Road

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My mother moved her things out of my parents’ bedroom into the attic guest room. When I asked where guests would sleep, my father said, “Matthew, don’t be an asshole.”

My Literary Pockets

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I don’t know what to do with all this money flowing from my books. It’s burning a hole in my literary pocket.

Creative Handwriting

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I found the hand eight months ago, after I planned to grow a meadow of tiny yellow blossoms in my yard.

Shits and Crazies- a Pas de Deux

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Anson Chi/ tried to kill my wife

Pain as Mnemonic Device

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If something hurts enough/ you never forget it. Like the// toothache when you first learned

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…