Most read stories

Happy Birthday to Me

14141414 views22 comments22 favs

Happy Birthday to me. It takes just a second on waking to remember, It's June but it feels like December.

Easy Lessons

14141414 views11 comment11 fav

A hinge in my heart is broken.

The Bachelor's Hymnal

14141414 views33 comments33 favs

OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

The Green Eyed Lady in the Glass Café

14141414 views88 comments44 favs

Is this sought sea dream of the Arctic fox? The green below the circles of the white, above her eyes? On Formica tables where the woman smocks beneath glass borders of their vacant smiles, they pass by windows formulating styles,…

About The Author

14131413 views55 comments55 favs

Gnarly Berger was born in a guitar case in Istanbul. His mother was an Iranian singer from Israel accompanied by a Turkish santur player & a French guitarist (Gnarly's biological father) and into whose guitar case Gnarly entered this world, somewhat by accident,…

Purpose

14131413 views44 comments44 favs

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

Killing Dennis Gauda

14131413 views44 comments33 favs

I killed him. I know you probably don't believe me, but it was an accident. I'll bet everyone in this room knows Dennis Gauda.... or should I say knew him? He was District Governor a while back. He also won quite a few speech contests. Yes... he's competition,…

Cube of Boxes

14131413 views33 comments22 favs

...he was suddenly and hazily relieved that he had something in Persepolis and blue agave plants to talk to her about.

From "One of: A Family Miscellany"

14131413 views44 comments33 favs

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

Under This Cover of Quiet

14131413 views22 comments00 favs

Originally published on Six Sentences:In a family of many hushed secrets, only so many years could pass before the cracks would begin to show, and usually started with the creative girls. Though her aunt had been dead for two years, Shifra knew the cracks the family…

Childbed (cenotaph song)

14131413 views1313 comments99 favs

Those who don’t die, desire, descend. No song aloft arises from my irk. The seeing chieftain, not of sea, nor sand, nor boat, I till nightfall stammer alive, dig boneless trenches against tiding dregs and lathe, hunt, wallow, plow the hours, call in awei

Good Belongs to You

14131413 views22 comments11 fav

I hope you enjoyed the celebration last night. Good things always come to you. I thought your family would never go home. I didn't get to sleep this morning until 2:59, although I had set my alarm to 6:10. I didn't want you to miss your plane. At daybreak,…

Blind date

14131413 views11 comment00 favs

“I'll have the Ribeye cooked medium rare,” says Bill, who looks over at Julia, blonde hair and disarming smile, and he thinks that she's not bad for a blind date. He doesn't like the way she butters her roll, however, and it agitates him that she spreads…

reality concedes, for once

14131413 views55 comments66 favs

beckoning with citrus streaks blue cobbled streets/and stuccos lit with gold lamps guide strollers here/to Place du Forum in Arles and this café . . .

To Whom It May Concern:

14121412 views00 comments00 favs

Now, we can argue about how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but there is no doubt that it takes eight spritzes of Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner, three spritzes of Lime-Away, and then a 30 second spray of Oust to incapacitat

I Am Not Like All The Rest: Funny Lines From Online Dating Profiles

14121412 views1010 comments99 favs

After becoming single at age 62, I joined an online dating site. After a year of perusing profiles and meeting men for coffee, staying single is starting to look better and better to me. But I've stayed on the site, in part for the pure enjoyment of…

Three Facts

14121412 views1010 comments11 fav

These are the three facts of my life.

One Way (for Tina Kieffer)

14121412 views55 comments33 favs

This mother, she buys a one way ticket whenever she visits her three daughters who have wandered far from the eyes of her pearlescent knitting needles and tutti-frutti yarns.

Books

14121412 views22 comments22 favs

'Like poems,’ I said she paused and nodded her black mop.

The Safety of Breakers

14121412 views77 comments77 favs

I could put on some music, but it just pushes me further away from you, so it seems. It takes me out far beyond the safety breakers and then reintroduces me to my own splashing two-fisted fear of swimming. You can swim through …

An Orb for a Better World

14121412 views11 comment11 fav

Max sighed. Solving for x was boring, so mind numbingly boring that he didn't notice the flickering blue light hovering in his room. It crackled and popped, growing until a shimmering rectangle stretched from floor to ceiling.A hand pushed out from the rectangle, and a…

Music That Tastes Like Blood

14121412 views11 comment00 favs

It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

14121412 views33 comments22 favs

Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.

Caterpillar on a Chalkboard

14121412 views33 comments22 favs

What do you want me to tell you about this next full moon cycle that you don't already intuitively seem to have touched upon in your latest bout of almost there dreams? It too will pass? That it is a totally different unfair animal from the repellent one already…

Separation

14121412 views55 comments22 favs

The increasingly furrowed lines on his forehead made her stomach clench.

~she dance~

14121412 views22 comments22 favs

the lightning horse you never mounted in your inherited dream~wetter than the oceans you never traversed~will you ever ride pure abandon?

GENESIS

14121412 views00 comments00 favs

And God said unto the oil can: “Thou art cursed above the cattle, and above every beast of the field. And deep the ground shalt thou go.” “Mother,” said the oil can, “fucker!”

Untitled Haiku from Japanese Game Show by JANEY SMITH

14121412 views11 comment11 fav

It's a haiku. It's its own snippet.

Harv & Julianne

14121412 views00 comments00 favs

Harv and Julianne He has woken here now, on this bed, and on this particular day, many times. His fifth year in the cabin, his fifth December in Helen, his fifth, he is sure, of many…

Screaming Woman - Excerpt

14121412 views11 comment00 favs

Bree was mean as a bag of snakes and had done laid out most of the eligible bachelors in Culloden County at one time or another to the tune that at this point no man who’d heard of her wanted much truck with her.