Most read stories

You May Be

15641564 views1111 comments88 favs

beautiful, but you don't own beauty. You may be sexy, but you don't own desire. You may be smart, but you don't own wisdom. You may be good and kind, but you don't own love. You may like trees, but you don't own the forest. You may like to…

in defense of assholes

15641564 views33 comments22 favs

No excerpt for you.

Storms

15641564 views33 comments22 favs

Sirens wake me, screaming warnings in the dark.

Beautiful Are the Feet: Part One

15641564 views22 comments11 fav

Naomi hadn't expected them to come in such a big box. When the UPS man tried to hand it to her, she told him there must be some mistake, but then he pointed to her name¾NAOMI BROWN¾right there on the top. When she finally got off all that tape, she had another…

Regarding Hank

15641564 views00 comments00 favs

Won't speak a word against 'em. Car trunk stunk like bad chicken long after, but I won't speak a word against 'em.

For J.S. Bach’s Three-hundred-twenty-eighth Birthday

15641564 views66 comments55 favs

To listen is to feel embodied reason// sing and dance with consummate grace

Bunking off

15641564 views55 comments33 favs

He looked like a black paper doorway pasted onto a painting of summer.

castaway

15641564 views1818 comments1212 favs

the epiphany at the mast at midnight is not the same at dawn

Reprisal

15641564 views77 comments88 favs

Reprisal The bomb blew away hubris, shocked the arrogant bastards into humiliated silence. None of them had experienced hunger and they'd misjudged its effect. In the lobby of the palace, dirt, plaster, glass shifted, rumbled,…

Fine, she said

15641564 views44 comments44 favs

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

After the Flood

15641564 views1010 comments88 favs

That TV you got me? Ruined. And the ionizer fan? Ruined too. All your clothes you left over here, all my work scrubs and weekend dresses too, soaked with that river stink water. I kept thinking bout all the dead creatures.

5 Things I've Learned After 5 Years of Reviewing Small Press Books and Writing 2 of My Own

15631563 views11 comment22 favs

In today’s print-on-demand and digital world, there are unlimited avenues for aspiring writers to circulate their work, but deregulation and limitlessness often leads to chaos. Writers are more inclined to release unpolished work that fails to rise to the

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

15631563 views33 comments22 favs

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

Winsome Mshindi

15631563 views55 comments22 favs

The cold and the ice’ve really stoked a fire in those old bones of his. He runs with the gait of a racer, front legs straight out—each extension producing a crack like Jack London spitting into the cold...

I Russian Bride - Letters 1-6 (novel excerpt)

15631563 views00 comments00 favs

Online dating. Russian women. Beware.

Legs Unwilling

15631563 views11 comment11 fav

Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.

Purpose

15631563 views44 comments44 favs

I gave you two daughters. I gave you four grandchildren. I'm done.

Take Back the Night

15631563 views1717 comments99 favs

A woman who is, say, a culinary arts champion or an heiress devoted to literature such as Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) or Peggy Guggenheim might be able to turn me on, turn me out, turn me around.

In Real Time

15631563 views1515 comments88 favs

We are the same shits/ we were in the Bronze Age

Sagacious Abridgment

15631563 views99 comments22 favs

A cloudy autumn morning greeted Sean as he stepped from the trolley at Grand Central Station. On his way to the tracks he purchased a copy of The New York Times dated October 24, 1934.

Need food for family

15631563 views00 comments00 favs

The young man pulls out his wallet, grabs a couple of bills and stops short of handing them to the bedraggled man. “So how do I know you’re not going to go out and buy some crack with this money?”

What I Learned From Magazines This Week

15631563 views55 comments44 favs

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

From "One of: A Family Miscellany"

15631563 views44 comments33 favs

" History ...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 34

15631563 views55 comments22 favs

—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?

Feeling fences

15631563 views66 comments44 favs

... he could feel the pointed picket spears.

skull of a sheep

15631563 views44 comments44 favs

You are in a car speeding through Dublin towards the West year after year the journey uncoils past the same landmarks Kilmainham Jail strapped to a chair bullet to the brain on by the Rowntree Mackintosh factory where the black and yellow and orange and r

Trial Separation

15631563 views44 comments33 favs

"You're no good at sex, no good at drugs and, god knows, no good at rock and roll."

Star Crossed Anglers

15631563 views00 comments00 favs

“Got a big one boy! He's movin' real fast! Don't think he has had time to eat the bait just yet, so we need to play him out. Let the hook set. Don't want to loose him! Get the net ready!”

Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue

15631563 views1414 comments77 favs

At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

Fire Alarm

15631563 views99 comments88 favs

You snore and the house is safe again.