Most read stories

July 16

14981498 views55 comments44 favs

Last night as a duration spent hovering in electronic media-space.

Dignity Village, Portland

14981498 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…

Fine, she said

14981498 views44 comments44 favs

A rope is cleaner, he explains with a straight face. He's calmed by the visual.

Professional Pizza Patter

14981498 views44 comments00 favs

We all stared, somewhat shocked and mostly disgusted.

Jenny Whistled Through The Mail Slot

14971497 views22 comments11 fav

We all thought, Birds! We all thought, Nests inside the chimney!

Poem in A Dead Language Only I Understand, Translated for You

14971497 views33 comments22 favs

I used to be a poet, you know. / Better, in many respects, than you.

Accident Assurance

14971497 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).

Prelude to a Love Story

14971497 views00 comments00 favs

Slipping into the Sydney Harbour Tunnel like a nocturnal creature fleeing the light, tears stream down my cheeks, spilling from my lips, the pain too great to care about self-preservation. Drunk still, hands clenched, I strain to focus on the world fading into a blur of…

Confinement

14971497 views1414 comments88 favs

Even music relies on what/ you know as music/ for its power to enthrall.

Global Arms

14971497 views1010 comments22 favs

~(+)~

Unexpected Flying Objects

14971497 views00 comments00 favs

Meanwhile it was four o'clock in the morning, Pacific time. Seven o'clock eastern. The cat was busy chasing imaginary mice around the hammock—at least Manuel hoped the mice were imaginary. He loaded the next digital images onto the screen. It seemed to

A Strategy to Overcome Rejection

14971497 views55 comments55 favs

“If your work is good you will get published. Just keep at it."

What I Learned From Magazines This Week

14971497 views55 comments44 favs

In his heyday, Burt Reynolds owned $100,000 worth of custom-made toupees.

Archaeology

14971497 views66 comments11 fav

I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…

The Head

14971497 views1313 comments44 favs

So I've got this head in a jar and I'm not sure who it belongs to.

Visitation

14971497 views55 comments44 favs

We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.

~with every breath~

14971497 views11 comment22 favs

she goes jogging with the feet of an angel the sound of crunching leaves like wrapping paper torn open to reveal an expensive doll and the light in her mother's eyes.

You Don't Need To

14971497 views00 comments00 favs

You need only one who notices.

Dumb Ass

14971497 views1818 comments99 favs

I want to tell you how the odor of the flowers/felt her funeral day

You're Breathing My Relapse

14971497 views11 comment22 favs

I was an alcoholic for ten years, starting in my early twenties and continuing into my thirties. Then finally, after many attempts, I got myself straightened out. My son's birth finally did it for me. It wasn't like a switch flipped in the delivery room…

Ouroboros

14971497 views11 comment11 fav

It matters little who thought of it first, what mattered was the schism. Or, to be more accurate, those on the opposite sides of the schism. And, of course, you are a part of this, dear reader. You are of one side or the other.

Sort of Like Bukowski, But Completely Oblivious

14971497 views00 comments00 favs

My eyes don’t close but hers are shut tight, and something inside tells me that to this girl, I could be absolutely anyone.

The Poisoning

14971497 views1111 comments99 favs

The Poisoning I used to call my dad Serpico. Thirty years on the police force, and though a respected officer, he never fit in. He never had beers with the guys at the end of a shift or engaged in the more lewd locker room talk. None of the other cops were privy to which…

Love's Hinterlands

14961496 views22 comments11 fav

Sit down at night and stare into the fire. Consider if Cupid is just another liar.

No Good Hubcaps - song

14961496 views55 comments44 favs

I got no good hubcaps My van is up on bricks It's held together with duct tape And a couple of crummy sticks I caught the guy who did this And tied him to a tree I kicked him in the windpipe And kicked him in the knee I'm a man witho

Ichthyology

14961496 views11 comment00 favs

The doctors said, when she was born, that the gills would eventually fade away on their own. Nothing to fear, they said; no more unusual than the rare child born with a tail, or a dense pelt of fur, or a single sharp tooth jutting from its new pink gums.

Metamorphosis Revisited

14961496 views44 comments33 favs

When I met Gregor Samsa he was still a cockroach, erratic and skittish whenever the light came on. We often spoke in the dark. I empathized with the man. I mean bug. Ok. That isn't fair. You can't call a man a bug because he chirps and eats dried skin cells. A…

When The Conversation Ends

14961496 views22 comments11 fav

It was a strange mood, unfamiliar, not one of her usual “I'm busy wrestling with my personal demons” type of moods. She'd been steeped in it all day and I, like a shipwrecked victim reaching out for any piece of flotsam…

Intractable

14961496 views33 comments11 fav

~ ! ~

It is Midnight

14961496 views66 comments33 favs

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