Most read stories

Girl in 'Nam (Part 1)

15561556 views00 comments00 favs

Licking my wounds. That's what my mother calls it. I'm not really sure what that means or if it's true. Sure, losing your boyfriend, apartment and job in a matter of months can drive someone to do something impulsive. Something crazy. But I've always b

Prologue (excerpt from a novel)

15561556 views55 comments11 fav

The clip-clopping of footsteps now echoes from the opposite end of the alleyway, and as you turn to face the figure who appears behind you, the figure wearing a fierce Noh-drama mask, you determine that this time you will enlist its aid in decoding this r

To Zephyrus

15561556 views66 comments44 favs

In a field of barley, I see you, ...

The Song of Jerome

15561556 views77 comments55 favs

"My love is with eggs!"

Feeling fences

15561556 views66 comments44 favs

... he could feel the pointed picket spears.

Betrayal

15561556 views22 comments00 favs

My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

This Cowgirl's Lament

15561556 views44 comments33 favs

A tornado and peacock were bred in his paddock; the couple gave birth to a turquoise lasso.

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

15561556 views66 comments55 favs

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

Love Story

15561556 views1111 comments77 favs

You are a warm winter Despite the presence of snow

Meteorology

15561556 views1111 comments55 favs

Among the raindrops/ occasional plopping snowflakes.

crave

15561556 views44 comments33 favs

The look that warms.

Fine, she said

15561556 views44 comments44 favs

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

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.6 - c.3

15551555 views00 comments00 favs

Mother’s eyes stared outward in a trance, on her throne, visualizing the world Azure made. Though it was right before her, she could not reach it.

Style Shifts

15551555 views55 comments55 favs

Style Shifts “Oh, yes, my cousin. We were rude boys until the armed gangs started to gather. Used to be we could pass a night driving, playing our songs, acting tough. Yeah. We'd mouth off, flash some teeth, spark some anger when we felt like it. We…

Rest

15551555 views00 comments00 favs

What do I understand? What have I mastered or come to terms with?

Laughing All The Way To The 2020 Election

15551555 views55 comments44 favs

After President Trump was elected, my first impulse was to spend the next four years cowering under the bed, whimpering.While I knew that I needed to keep track of what our new commander in chief was up to, watching the news made me too angry and too sad and just too…

Myself Today

15551555 views22 comments22 favs

Suddenly I'm not feeling it anymore. / Poetry has become insufficient. / I can't do it like I used to.

Highway 17 South

15551555 views1919 comments1111 favs

did I read that right?

The Washing of the Quilts

15551555 views33 comments11 fav

Sweaty feet, drool from the weighty sleep of mid-afternoon naps, the inescapable perspiration of the South: all combine to create the entwined scent of socks and stale toothbrushes...

In Search of a Meaningful Moment

15551555 views00 comments00 favs

She wheeled more deeply into the office towards Mason’s desk. Keith hurried to the desk and pulled the chair out of the way for her and a sat down next to her. She was blue-eyed, pale and completely hairless, which made it difficult to guess her age.

What I Learned From Magazines This Week

15551555 views55 comments44 favs

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

Archaeology

15551555 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…

From "One of: A Family Miscellany"

15551555 views44 comments33 favs

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

A Bad Year

15551555 views55 comments55 favs

It's been a bad year, People dying. Some too close to home, Some too far away. I cry down to you, In your casket, and think you might sit up. You were not sick You went in just a moment, Looking stunning and alive. Not…

And so, like a kind of molting

15551555 views44 comments44 favs

So for now, let the snow fall, but let it fall gently, each flake as a soft piano note

Frenchie at the Fair

15551555 views1414 comments1313 favs

Frenchie hustled waffle irons.

The Big LARP

15551555 views44 comments22 favs

The ambient sound wheezes on.

Twelve Pens

15551555 views55 comments55 favs

Their last story

The Actual Poets

15551555 views66 comments66 favs

And here’s a picture of you at the end of the line to the great toilet of fiction, waiting to relieve yourself, quick before the poetry gets to you. Or worse, the actual poets.

Reprisal

15551555 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,…