Most read stories

Ten Books That Have Stuck with Me Off the Top of My Head as I Make Them Up, #2

15011501 views33 comments22 favs

#2 The Typewriter Inside You by Harmon Gentle—I found this one at a garage sale when I was 15. Intended as a manual for sharpening one's typing skills, by the third chapter it became obvious that Mr. Gentle's sanity had slipped, and that rather than mastering the…

Dignity Village, Portland

15011501 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…

Ouroboros

15011501 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.

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

15001500 views33 comments22 favs

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

Ichthyology

15001500 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.

To All the Sisters on My iPod

15001500 views44 comments33 favs

It was a wake-up call. A sign that I needed to stop and ask if I was making wise and sensible life choices. My iPod was full.

Glossolalia

15001500 views55 comments22 favs

Method of divination. Open a book to any section. Drop your hand onto the page. Read that there is an exorcism happening in the other room.

Snow

15001500 views77 comments11 fav

She talks about window treatments, how the place is maybe too much for one. Wants me to know she’s not much of a cook, and wants me to smell what’s in her oven and compliment her cooking anyway.

Nose

15001500 views1111 comments88 favs

At the conference her boss showed off his knowledge of wines.

Strange

15001500 views1010 comments33 favs

Words are looking ever so strange today like a hole in space a wind in a cloud a face superimposed over a mountain

Worn

15001500 views44 comments33 favs

The shirts hanging by the back veranda serve as our memorial to them.

Lessons from Survivors

15001500 views00 comments00 favs

You cannot go back, you cannot go home, you cannot cannot cannot…Only in memory is it possible to travel back in time. We all imagine it. We relive happy moments, sad moments, we exist, time exists and it passes. We cannot stop it.

Dumb Ass

15001500 views1818 comments99 favs

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

Pop Tarts

15001500 views66 comments77 favs

The currents of events/ strip the molecules from cartilage,// reverse polarity of ventricles—

White Room

15001500 views66 comments22 favs

A white room is empty but for you, a card table and a chair.

July 16

15001500 views55 comments44 favs

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

Herd

15001500 views88 comments44 favs

We may think about so many things and thoughts about rain. We may think about where it is going, where it comes from.

Fine, she said

15001500 views44 comments44 favs

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

Jenny Whistled Through The Mail Slot

14991499 views22 comments11 fav

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

The Listener

14991499 views22 comments00 favs

They think because you are a writer you are not much of a listener and so you begin to recognize all of the great opportunities to be much more of a listener and then you shut your trap and get sucked into the whorls of her big wet brown eyes with Italianate…

Prelude to a Love Story

14991499 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

14991499 views1414 comments88 favs

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

Esmée

14991499 views33 comments11 fav

Esmée sat alone at a table on the terrace at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota. She had been there ten minutes and no waitress had approached her.

Flash Gordon in Iowa

14991499 views33 comments11 fav

I will show you how, in the spring, the sidewalks here look like a crossword puzzle resting under a glass of lemonade,

Thanking Harry

14991499 views22 comments22 favs

At a candlelit table near the back of the restaurant, Jack and Lois greeted the waiter as he delivered their drinks, a diet coke for him, and for her, a vodka and cranberry. He apologized for the slow bar service and promised to return in a moment to take their…

Metamorphosis Revisited

14991499 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…

Paint-Can Harry Lets in Some Much Needed Air

14991499 views33 comments33 favs

Welcome the one and the all of you, welcome all you scraggly long haired weeds, welcome the no longer rolling stones of the new you, welcome you most beautiful little wonderfully…

When The Conversation Ends

14991499 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…

Death by Dinner

14991499 views22 comments00 favs

I can't believe it's Frankie, but there he is at a table on the far side, just in front of the big picture window. I hold the menu close to my face and peek again over the top, watching as he reaches under the white linen tablecloth to plant…

Resource Management

14991499 views1010 comments33 favs

’m sure they have their/ cleverest working on it, though.