Most read stories

I See Your Face Before Me

15161516 views00 comments00 favs

The summer was announcing itself in thick waves of heat that rolled like a slow motion hurricane inside Mark Keeler's 1971 Mercury Montego. The car baked in a…

All These Poets

15161516 views77 comments66 favs

All these poets with their wrinkled hands full of freshly poured over poems are driving me into the dried wheat fields like a black block of crows. Offering a collectable cigarette, they light the damned thing with another hand-rolled poem,…

Larry Swain's Universe

15161516 views66 comments33 favs

By fiddling with the time space continuum and mixing in liberal quantities of quarks from his "Li'l Bang Dimensional Digester", Larry created an entirely new universe in his garage. This was a flagrant violation of Cosmic Law. It could not be ignored, nor

Dashboard Jesus

15161516 views99 comments33 favs

When I first started this, a few months ago, I was timid about looking people in the eye.

Harbinger

15161516 views22 comments22 favs

Smoke from the oil lamp traced the wall. It gave Nana something to read.

Losing It

15161516 views11 comment00 favs

The following is a true story, or rather it is a true experience from the story of my life. Some say that just because something happens doesn't really make it "true".

Moi et Stendhal's Lust for Women's Eyebrows

15161516 views22 comments22 favs

“Oh yeah?" I said to Stendhal. "I found six references to women's eyebrows in Travels in the South of France. That's all you think about!”

For my lost child

15161516 views1010 comments77 favs

and where have the years sped how distant was your youth

On Making Love

15151515 views11 comment11 fav

He did many things for love: Once he placed his tongue in his boyfriend’s nostril during sex, because he seemed to have read in the internet that this was a “thing” among the younger of their social class...

Hammered then hungover

15151515 views00 comments00 favs

When she got back to Claire's, she was hammered and she had no idea what time it was, what day, or, frankly, what planet. It was the first time she'd been that drunk in years. The last time she could remember getting even close to that wasted was at a Christmas party right…

Trade-Offs

15151515 views11 comment00 favs

Smiling, holding hands, Joe and Lara basked in the sunshine of the mid January day as they approached the diner. The temperature was warm enough for golf. Joe had played in far colder weather in spring and fall.

On Desire

15151515 views22 comments22 favs

For two days his parents had been fighting, and they would tell him to tell the other one something every morning that was supposed to be some sort of slight at their personal failings, which had been inflamed by their twenty years of marriage.

benedictus

15151515 views33 comments33 favs

he wanders the house/ crying for the hairless tomcat/ (gone for the night/ on an overnight job).

You May Telephone From Here

15151515 views88 comments77 favs

There's something in the space youare tonight that's for me asweet presence in my own life,and so like any othercoward I write a poemin vain. It will never beseen as itself by you, butpossibly be mistakenfor an open window. Somewill definitely call itfurniture, some will…

I, TOO, DREAM....

15151515 views22 comments00 favs

A dream that seems Impossible When fresh blood soaks the ground

The Writer and the Talker

15151515 views77 comments44 favs

"I’ve always wanted to write a novel. Like Catch-22, something off-beat that would start by word-of-mouth, you know, and become an underground classic."

BOXES

15151515 views33 comments22 favs

Lama’s mother is dead. She died when Lama was just outgrowing her ballet tutus. When Lama talks about it, it is with the air of one who picks honeysuckle over jasmine. It gives sunshine, she says, to graves. Our epitaphs are so mechanical otherwise. Un

The Gift of the 12th Congressional District of Michigan

15151515 views22 comments22 favs

Other men looked up and, rather than feeling pleasantly surprised at the sudden sound of ethereal metal crickets in their presence, left the restroom after hastily finishing their silent shaking. Mitch joined them, feeling like a coward for being afraid o

Martin

15151515 views44 comments44 favs

He'd sit or stand, as if this was common to see: in the street walking by, such a man.

Possum

15151515 views11 comment22 favs

A possum sits on a fence. The fence is downtown in a not-very-big town. Hard to say about possums and fences; this is not the first possum to sit on a fence. Once, during a suburban backyard party a possum sat on a fence and observed. Before long he could walk more…

There's A Place I Know

15151515 views44 comments55 favs

“Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water."- W.C. Fields Around the next corner is a dark green door a dark…

Chancing the Moonglow

15141514 views77 comments77 favs

It's become sort of a habit now when Elsie's husband is away on business two or three times a month that we take the afternoon off and drive nine miles across the river to Marginalia, Arkansas and the Moonglow Motel with its red, neon vacancy sign and although to some, two…

cross-quarter days

15141514 views1515 comments1111 favs

sentinels in a frost-blackened field

The Commodore

15141514 views1111 comments99 favs

The commodore drives a 67 Caddy rag top All fin and boatish power

Hotel Mechanics

15141514 views55 comments44 favs

He switches to quantum mechanics and starts tinkering with his sleeve memorizing a theorem he'd figure out if he had the time for a deep breath, he takes a deep breath.

Grimace

15141514 views1010 comments1010 favs

I dreamt I was raped the other night. Sometimes it was me, that is, and sometimes it was another woman with a dark bouffant hair-do. Definitely outside though and the hulking back of the man was covered by a charcoal wool…

The So White Woods

15141514 views22 comments11 fav

The sun becomes hot. She removes her skirt. She is left with a black bodice, with white laces, leggings underneath and a pair of twelve hole Doc Martens.

Man and Dirt

15141514 views11 comment11 fav

Wherever you decide to grow Please remember to ask the dirt ‘Am I still dust’

Lastborn

15141514 views00 comments00 favs

Being the baby in a family forces a focused outlook on life. Not necessarily profound, not even wry, but a perspective that pushes for two things - recognition, and to be in on whatever is going on.

Span

15141514 views1212 comments88 favs

That’s a long time/ to live with the certainty/ of your death