Most read stories

We Wore Our Hair Long

14791479 views77 comments77 favs

You don't have to push back so hard. We wore our hair long. We wanted the animals to trust us in their wild open spaces. Everything will come undone. We wore our hair long because we wanted to Be able to find our way home in the dark…

In Knucklebones, This Is What We Keep

14781478 views22 comments11 fav

Outreach the ostrich

In Real Time

14781478 views1515 comments88 favs

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

Dumb Luck and the Fall of Empires

14781478 views88 comments66 favs

At some point we all reach the end point/ of something. Something important/ if only to our fragile self esteem.

Mercury Unbound - 5

14781478 views1616 comments55 favs

As the music concludes, I'm finally in control of my emotions . . .

First Rain of the New Year

14781478 views1212 comments88 favs

Compartments trickle together/ in light diffuse and unreliable./ Fortify yourself against the day.

Betrayal

14781478 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

Fulton Flapper

14781478 views33 comments22 favs

The Italian was late. She was supposed to come into the store, meet him in the back, and arrange to take the last of his liquor.

Sayōnara

14781478 views33 comments22 favs

He painted a woman on them, identical to the woman that kneeled by his bed.

Apex

14781478 views66 comments44 favs

You left paint and blood smeared on the wall.

Ineluctable

14781478 views88 comments88 favs

I attended the burial of our affair when I found the notebook-maybe it should be called her diary-she had foolishly forgotten, leaving it on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago and I was numbed at first, unsure how to…

The Exhaustion of Dreams

14781478 views1010 comments55 favs

I like it best when I wake up And the wild rain of dreaming ends.

Spoke

14781478 views00 comments11 fav

Laurel's new bike is powder blue, with silver tassels on the handle bars. Jenny's mouth actually waters at the sight of it, as though it were a fresh loaf of bread or a perfect, juicy orange. “You can ride it if you want,” Laurel…

Houses Are Havens and the Outside Plans Your Destruction

14781478 views44 comments33 favs

The first of the fires that started by the river in the abandoned mills were so hot they burned white and pale blue

The Ice Scraper Symphony

14771477 views22 comments00 favs

Stay tuned for my next short - Candle Smoke Wishes - COMING SOON ON A MONITOR NEAR YOU!!

Small Ghosts

14771477 views1111 comments44 favs

the mother tells her child the flashes at the horizonare fireworks, not bombs, so he will not be afraid.at night he curls by the door or else he follows her to a different place. he is quiet, then. as if he knows the secret challenge.better if he and all the others…

Things of Beauty

14771477 views33 comments33 favs

The cover features Lincoln as a woman. Lincoln as a woman is not a thing of beauty.

The Cherry

14771477 views00 comments00 favs

He then spent his walk home to his single apartment spitting up various textures of red, combinations of cherry and blood mostly.

Dear Poet(s) of Tomorrow

14771477 views55 comments11 fav

you'd do him more of a favor to kill him, than place upon him the burden of such an abrupt change in travel plans.

What my daughter knows I know or some likely version

14771477 views66 comments55 favs

He doesn't call, not even on her birthday. She doesn't mention it or complain. She knows she doesn't have it as bad as some, even in this privileged Triangle of North Carolina. She is white and pretty and belongs to what's left of the middle…

One Kiss

14771477 views99 comments66 favs

"It was one kiss. No tongue. What does that even mean?" Lindley tried to see Leah as any other patient, "What do you want it to mean?" "I don't know," Leah whined, tears welling, "something, maybe. You know I hate surprises." Her sister was not another…

Skin and Bones

14771477 views11 comment00 favs

She lay there, skin and bones, unable to speak. Little did we know those were our last moments togethter. How cruel for her, to want to share a lifetime of thoughts and feelings in those waning moments only to be robbed of the chance. My brother and I…

thank you, for everything

14771477 views44 comments22 favs

I was in life, in my dream. I was feeling around underneath your clothing. My fingers were shining in the underwater afterlife of memory, searching for those lovely nipple-sized mollusks. I lived in a land somewhere between the past and the future. Now

Un Americano

14771477 views1818 comments1414 favs

His eyes are wide then narrow and brown. Hers are gray then they look away, toward the back door where a delivery driver has walked in, carrying a tray. Nothing is going to happen today.

The Old Man and the Cigarette

14771477 views55 comments00 favs

Flicking the cigarette into the river the man's face becomes soft, as if waving goodbye to the only real attachment that he has felt in decades.

Things Get Fuzzy

14771477 views99 comments88 favs

We can’t just bomb Berlin or Dresden,/ Nagasaki or Hanoi, to make things safe

Our Last Night at the Nunnery Motel 2.0 in Milano

14761476 views99 comments66 favs

They make you work For your pizza in Italy You have to slice it yourself While wearing a gas mask To ward off the cigarette smoke From every neighboring table While chasing away the Mosquitos and the pigeons The flies and the gypsy r

Messages from Upstate

14761476 views22 comments11 fav

My eyes are wide open. I look like a graphic novel. My world is black and white. I’m poorly drawn. All sounds have an exclamation point.

Rock and Sushi

14761476 views00 comments00 favs

If I remember him at all it’s because I decided not to flunk him so he could graduate. I had this theory that teachers should be bound by the same oath as doctors, First, do no harm.

The Next Best Thing to Dying

14761476 views22 comments22 favs

Later, my daughter told me that she hadn't been scared because as I lay on the ground unconscious I continued to laugh, gradually relaxing into a big smile as I came around a minute later.