Most read stories

The Gallery of Wounds

14481448 views1616 comments99 favs

The blood is memorable/ as is the copper taste of that/ momentary certainty of lockjaw.

Settled

14481448 views44 comments11 fav

Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…

The Three O'Clock Sun

14481448 views77 comments66 favs

Here the three o'clock sun is an old patched up fellow, with a stained yellow beard, walking in a small crispy rain of brown leaves, looking at something that requires a bit of squinting no one else can see, on the far side of the softening…

Your Depression On Replay

14481448 views1010 comments99 favs

I offer you a peanut butter sandwich full of unconditional love and you say I'm being controlling, so I let you eat cake, eat cake.

Carrying you

14481448 views66 comments44 favs

I woke up to the humming of an empty space in the shape of a sweatshirt,

Abyss

14481448 views1515 comments1111 favs

When Lois finally found him down there, Johnny was wedged between a large rock and the trunk of an old, long since fallen, cottonwood tree. She said as she got to him, she heard his gurgling breath, fighting fiercely to stay alive. When she saw the deep, gathering, red…

My Glass is Waiting

14481448 views33 comments11 fav

The trouble with alarm clocks is naturally that they are miserable. And their curse is that their misery is useful: we employ them because we want to get away from them. But we would never have one as a friend.

stung

14481448 views1212 comments66 favs

Lust

Noodle

14471447 views88 comments66 favs

Our painter man was killed by a bunch of snotty kids who were making fun of him. A gun went off. What is a noodle to do? He wasn't sitting alone in his world, anymore. Where was his famous straw hat? His trusty pipe? He desperately needed to smoke…

Hip-Hop Lit: New and Noteworthy

14471447 views44 comments33 favs

Her son was doubtless the biggest wanksta that ever went to Andrew Jackson in the whole crumby history of the school.

Substitution

14471447 views55 comments22 favs

Once there was a man who wrote in code. He was comfortable among substitutions

Ichthyology

14471447 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.

Trade-Offs

14471447 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.

Augustine

14471447 views1010 comments77 favs

You stretch my heart / in sacred ways

The Night

14471447 views22 comments00 favs

Meanwhile stars continue to surprise...

A New Chapter to Song of Solomon: A Poem

14471447 views33 comments11 fav

My beloved lets me crawl into bed and put my feet on him since his skin is warm and hot like a fire roaring from within his soft flesh.

All Men With Well Trimmed Beards

14471447 views22 comments22 favs

Or, do my own red flags counter balance his. My back and forth, my restlessness, my one foot out the door, my ‘once a leaver… always a leaver’, my pitter patter for a former flame... peppered with my transgressions, my mistakes. Or, worse, the way I have

Why I Love You

14471447 views66 comments77 favs

I love you because your eyes are both crossed When you do it, because you’re focused On the inside of the universe I love you because You’re on a roller coaster Through life And I can ride along For the thrill of it I love you because

George Burnett's Secret

14471447 views11 comment11 fav

He roared back at her, shaking his empty gun in his right hand, waving his left hand in the air. “I am George Burnett, esquire, late of Balliol College, Oxford! I am a hunter, a killer of pigs! I do not fear you, bear; take the pig and be content!”

Slide Steel

14471447 views00 comments00 favs

Fat Patty sniffs the delicate waft of peat and sidles over, proffering a grope in exchange for a few wet-lipped swigs. Hell yes.

Afterworld

14471447 views1212 comments88 favs

We suffer// the one agony only- of having no longer/ any physical effect nor way to speak/ of what we watch to those we watch.

Bookstore Reading, Telegraph Ave, Berkeley

14471447 views55 comments55 favs

There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

No Word for Enchantment

14471447 views1111 comments66 favs

fanned lashes on rouged cheek a glamorous sea creature in violet perfume

Animal Crush

14471447 views33 comments33 favs

two pairs of arms and legs

Firefly

14471447 views22 comments11 fav

Smiling at stones and chunks of earth pounding in...

The Wind Is Going To Take You

14471447 views55 comments33 favs

Before the railroad tracks are blown off by the wind, the wall tiles morph to trace 34th Streetwhile a silver balloon emerges from the end of the tunnel. A child’s hand reaches out for the gleam and she, the woman in a black-dress with a mandarin collar,

Showtime

14471447 views1414 comments66 favs

Showtime on Broadway.

Cassie Fly

14471447 views33 comments22 favs

...the relatives didn't seem nearly as fucked up as she thought they would be considering...

Sit Down, Here.

14471447 views22 comments22 favs

“The window is a much better place to read,” she said.I wasn't aware she was talking to me, at first. In my typical manner, I was thinking about far off possibilities and realities completely detached from my own. Yet, here she was, a far off…

Brasita de Fuego

14471447 views11 comment11 fav

I still picture her waving her bare arms and hands into the purple bellied clouds above the trees, her crooked smile, the spiraling silver maple seeds cascading soft circles around her determined reach, as though the very tree limbs shaping the sky above