Most read stories

The Fact of the Matter

15681568 views99 comments77 favs

Jeanne and I were married for eight years. I never knew her.

Kindness

15681568 views55 comments44 favs

Two days ago, a friend of mine and I met at my house. She was a nurse, and could only visit my house very late at night when her shift ended. We don’t meet often because she is very busy saving lives and generally being a more useful human being in societ

A Serial Killer’s First Day in Medical School

15681568 views44 comments11 fav

To rival the professor in his knowledge of various body parts is impossible ...

One Sick, Two Sick, Red Sick, Blue Sick

15681568 views66 comments55 favs

I found a diseased fish / wedged between some boulders near the pier

Dignity Village, Portland

15681568 views1111 comments99 favs

A cheap pocket knife was the only sharp I carried in my backpack and they allowed me that. The man with the pot tattoo on his neck said, “All of us here needs some type of knife. You gotta cut up your food. We don't…

Speak

15681568 views00 comments00 favs

She can still be normal, says Momma, knowing my sister can’t hear, forgetting I can.

Storyboard

15681568 views33 comments22 favs

For a time he documented his facial expressions.

Things As They Really Are

15681568 views44 comments44 favs

I slide my CD toward Eric Burdon who sits, smiling and gracious and fatigued from Seattle traffic, at the table at Silver Platters, where I have just purchased ‘Til Your River Runs Dry, and stood in a line of old gray heads to have him sign it. I remove my hat and…

Hope's Amanuensis

15681568 views66 comments55 favs

I was low on carburetor / oxygen and my fraud protection / had just expired.

Everything I Need To Know About Aging I Learned From Lilikoi

15671567 views11 comment11 fav

Behold! Passion fruit!Aureolin sun condensedRolls off palm and tongue.Spurn taut rounded skinWait for wrinklesRipeness revealed, resplendent —The pinnacle of worth.

Solitary Lunatics Up On The Roof

15671567 views22 comments11 fav

Up top, the sky is like a fist fight- fat lip purple and bitchslap pinks get wilder as the tabs kick in. Those hovering lights are aliens! we assert with insistent like-mindedness from where we sit directly beneath the airport flight path.

How to Stop Doing and Be

15671567 views1212 comments55 favs

Monday will come soon enough to get/ what needs to be done, done.

It is Midnight

15671567 views66 comments33 favs

It is midnight in Utah, but I can’t tell. It always looks like midnight in a cave.

Loose Ends

15671567 views33 comments33 favs

He looked peaceful.

Lucky Strike

15671567 views1717 comments1111 favs

...when they entered eager lungs hungry from deep and sweaty love

The Caselvetrano Olive

15671567 views88 comments44 favs

He spotted her in Sarasota Whole Foods surveying the artichokes

Regret

15671567 views99 comments88 favs

Regret takes the shape of little clouds ...

Accident Assurance

15661566 views44 comments33 favs

They found your athymic neck/clipped like a bag of Skittles/and your lifeblood left a Rorschach test on the dash/in which they saw the future/and their own exits/(straight ahead and to the right).

Swords of Rome

15661566 views00 comments00 favs

Rome and Carthage wage war as Hannibal crosses the Alps and invades Italy. With him, he brings an army of barbarian hordes hellbent on reducing Rome to ash. For one young Roman soldier, Gaius, he is trapped between his loyalties to the republic, and to hi

Nothing

15661566 views11 comment11 fav

I dream about the boy in The Neverending Story, the gate of mirrors, and the Nothing, a dark cloud that floats in the sky, takes away everything.

The Silicon Chamber

15661566 views00 comments00 favs

Why did he seek punishment, if he felt no guilt? Why this empty conscious, though he had done such evil?

What's that on your glasses?

15661566 views33 comments33 favs

The shit just doesn't want to come off.

Question

15661566 views99 comments1010 favs

When the dark shadows of his limp eyes told us life was slowly seeping away, stolen by his stroke, his wife signed the “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order and, tearfully leaving the room, she turns, asking a final question, “Think a needy family could use his…

The Hunger of the Waxing Moon

15661566 views11 comment11 fav

I took advantage of a free period this afternoon to nap. When I awoke, I tasted blood. My tongue was swollen. I checked myself in the mirror and saw twin punctures on my lower lip with pinpricks of blood on each. I winked at my reflection and lifted my li

The Bird Nests of Lascaux

15661566 views66 comments66 favs

With their brightly-colored bits of found string woven into the walls of their nests to teach their baby birds what the worms of the future will look like. Somewhat like the cave paintings of Lascaux for early man in France, when hunti

Dumpster

15661566 views11 comment11 fav

When flash and bang merge you are, according to the manual, in deep do-do.

before Creation

15661566 views88 comments66 favs

Before Genesis, digesting the primordial soup.

The Monday Wednesday Friday War

15661566 views77 comments33 favs

Ginny, the mother, was a lark in every respect of the word. Born and raised in central California farm country, to a family of lower middle class means, educated in public schools in whose bathroom stalls she was deflowered as unceremoniously as a pig ta

Harv & Julianne

15661566 views00 comments00 favs

Harv and Julianne He has woken here now, on this bed, and on this particular day, many times. His fifth year in the cabin, his fifth December in Helen, his fifth, he is sure, of many…

Monday Lunch

15661566 views99 comments66 favs

Earlier that morning a tree in the yard had filled with starlings, and on the way home after lunch, the sky held planes that looked like starlings, floating together.