Most read stories

Rags to Riches to Rags: Prologue

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My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just boy

Better Boys, Early Girls

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... tomatoes swelling and turning pink...

Dunes

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I went out through another cold still morning erasing my steps behind me not because I did not want to be followed but because I did not want to find my way back again.

The Sodomized Dictator

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Ghosts.

None Of It Grace

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I made him stop at an AM-PM. We bought a bag of barbecue chips and a yellow rose. Those days, we were testing our keels, sloshing against whatever rose most wicked. On the way to Beth Anne's apartment, we passed a man on the shoulder heaving a couch back

The Last Words of a Genius

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The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words. He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w

Ain't Comin' Back

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He told of the wilting heat, the fulgent landscape, the people....

After Bukowski

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The night she left she claimed she fucked Bukowski.

My Other Mother is a Ferrari

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******WARNING: Long-ass story****** Click at your own risk.

Miss

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On Saturday mornings, by noon, the delivery car comes from Boston and unloads fresh bread and sandwiches, pork ribs and ground pork stuffed inside of breads and buns and banana leaves, bean shakes, and sticky rice desserts.

Hoss Men

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I stood there skinny-as-a-half in “big hair,” ankle boots, and black eyeliner. P. was in radio, not books. He had a sense of humor. I was researching a different man for a novel.

Simmer Time

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Usually the predawn light means bedtime for wicked guitar players, but not that bloody Sunday.

Often I think on who pulls the strings,

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In a plush leather chair, / high up a shiny skyscraper,

Who Is Don Galt?

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Don Galt’s butterflies swallowed Peter Robinson’s holdings on a cool and cloudy December afternoon.

Cactus Subconscious

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The voice in the sand: "If it has soul you must funk it."

Eleutheria

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She watched an inky cloud suck all the color / from the trees.

Le Sucre Brun

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The commandant pried her lids open with steely thumbs.

Clover Grill: A Short Story

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I'm somewhere on I-10 in Mississippi, barreling westbound at 80 miles an hour through a rainstorm on a late Wednesday afternoon. The last road sign I remember was for Beauvoir, some Confederate general's…

The Hole Between Them

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Opposite the foothills, on the field's southern edge, was a stand of old eucalyptus trees, each one a gnarled sentry with bark like burnt skin peeling from its trunk.

Phenomenology as Snapshots

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The fluffed-up clouds, darkish in spots,/ are moving fast, opposite the wind/ where I stand and look. Equations// could describe the multiplicities

What Einstein didn't say

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First you must accept / the speed of light as constant. / If you can’t do that, stop reading.

White

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“White,” he says. -- “Black,” I answer.

Dinner at the Bigelows’

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Mrs. Bigelow loaned Tessa a black tulle maid’s uniform and helped her pin it in at the sides. She tied on Tessa the stiff white apron. Slippery, pale, opaque stockings of real silk oozed through the girl’s fingers, secured by a heavy satin garter belt

Women Making Love to Monsters

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I started dating the Minotaur because of Colleen; at the time she was going with a friend of his. The whole thing was a surprise to me because I'd never been attracted to Greek men. This is how it happened. Colleen's new guy, Ian, was known by many…

The Fault In Our Three Stars

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So there are these teenagers and they're all dying of cancer, or at least were dying of cancer, or might be dying of cancer, and then a couple of them fall in love and lose their virginity to each other, and these teens, they're all smart and charming and only a little…

Anhedonia (excerpt)

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Things have happened. It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.

The Circle of Life

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Maybe you could buy a Volunteer,” Carol suggested. Ma huffed. “You know we don't have the money for that. And besides I never liked the idea of Volunteers — taking advantage of the poor like that.”

The Accordion

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If I play my accordion too loudly while you're painting, you complain. You stamp about in your room under mine. You fetch the broom from the closet and use it to thump vehemently on the ceiling. I feel the vibrations through my feet.

...And Nail

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For twenty-eight years, Cochran Baines removed a tooth from the mouth of every dead child that spent time on his table.

The White Cloud

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Like a small meteorite, a white cloud falls. The journey seems to have been long since it cannot spring up again, its wings being exhausted. Like a scared and shivering bird, it curls into my hand. Its apparent fragility prevents me from tightening my grip. A unique…