Most read stories

Oyster

13311331 views11 comment00 favs

"Maybe…" he began searching for some comforting wisdom. "Maybe it's like this. Husbands live for their wives. Mothers live for their children. And children...well...until they're husbands or wives, they live for themselves."

Grannies

13311331 views66 comments66 favs

The four Grannies say, “GO!” and leap from the window. King's pickup is below, and he has lined the bed with his mother's throw pillows. Sundresses fly. Blue plastic diapers billow. They want cigarettes. I light their smokes with King's pearl-handled lighter as…

Split second

13311331 views11 comment11 fav

When people talk about the end moments when one's life flashes before his or her eyes, they often refer to time as slowing down. I can attest to this phenomenon during my final moments, before the collision: the song playing on the radio, the squeal of tires and flash of…

Mom at Night

13311331 views66 comments22 favs

Mom stayed up all night again Tending to her papers Pushing them around Trying to make order of the debts, the dreams and the obligations She couldn't get the columns to add up, So she shuffled them around some more and Rearranged the piles …

Bunking off

13311331 views55 comments33 favs

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

My Neighbor in the Apartment Across the Hall

13311331 views33 comments11 fav

She's an obese woman whose clothes don't fit: shirts that ride up too high her belly hanging out her pants suctioned to her strangely pegged legs. Her ballooned cheeks are always chapped pink her lips little slivers peeled back over small beige teeth like…

Paddy Wagon

13301330 views44 comments11 fav

So many are so sick.

I Am Quantum

13301330 views22 comments00 favs

He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.

Where's Waldo?

13301330 views99 comments88 favs

Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…

Inmate Words

13301330 views1212 comments88 favs

in White Heat there’s a character who reads lips using a mirror to see the mouths of prisoners in other cells that’s how I feel when I talk with you

As the Wine Keeps Flowing

13301330 views1010 comments77 favs

My blood has turned to flour I've been in Babylon too long My heart was singed by fire But it's drowning in my song We raised a prayer to Mary We had to take our share We took our places in the ferry But we didn't pay the fare And we don't know…

Everything that's Gone Wrong, has Gone Wrong Because of Football

13301330 views11 comment00 favs

I’m not ready for football. I’m not ready for it, but I live in a southern town that worships at its altar more devoutly than those suicidal beauties in James Wright’s great poem.

Tomcat

13301330 views33 comments22 favs

And, if you look real close, you see there’s a bullet hole next to his left ear. A stray one went past his head and straight through Santa’s heart.

Metamorphosis

13301330 views66 comments55 favs

One morning as Georgia Samantha was waking up from her girlish dreams, she found that she had been changed during the night into a stiff-spined book.

The Perfect Command

13301330 views22 comments11 fav

He stood in front of her. They stood eye to eye. "You aren't supposed to look me in the eye. If I were anyone else you would be smacked down on the ground right now. Treat me as you would a lover, your master."

What my daughter knows I know or some likely version

13301330 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…

A Poem for Chris Toll

13301330 views11 comment11 fav

we all die from the bottom up

Stones

13301330 views55 comments22 favs

The manicured lawn rolls down either side of the knoll, punctuated with flat granite plaques, the occasional bouquet of cut flowers, a smattering of faded eight-inch American flags.

Flash Before Your Eyes

13301330 views66 comments11 fav

It was the dead of winter. I took my father's shotgun from his closet. He kept it wrapped up in one of those khaki-colored gun tote bags that had a zipper running the whole length of the gun. It was a 16-gauge, single action shotgun. Anyone could tell wha

Building This Thing and That Wall

13291329 views66 comments66 favs

The world has long since been bootlegged by madmen. The new invisible con men are the same as the old visible con men, hiding and lying behind their walls of lingering death. There's a weapon wielding demon hell bent on an insane vengeance crawling around…

cross-quarter days

13291329 views1515 comments1111 favs

sentinels in a frost-blackened field

Put Your Trust in God

13291329 views33 comments00 favs

God is my stomach.

Ul Fas Spe Rea Course

13291329 views22 comments11 fav

Edmund read ultra-fast: “.Ass - ;fuc gav fas no I will fu fuc fu her he wen fa, ha! Ha!

*cute little space bat with scissors*

13291329 views11 comment00 favs

I AM A FIRE SWAN! THIS IS MY QUILT! YOU ARE MY QUEEN!

Found Out

13291329 views44 comments44 favs

The other day my friend, Donald, said Shirley always tells him she loves him and she probably does in her way, but it didn't comport with what he walked in and found her doing again last night. She was back at it, hunched over her computer, having chat sex with the…

Not So Thoughtful After All

13291329 views33 comments44 favs

She put the Necco wafer on Sally's tongue."You can't be the priest, Emma" Sally said nearly choking on the hard, chalky disk."Then why you on yaw knees stupid?""You said to be prayin' and like in church, but you can't be doin' priest stuff. That's for…

Mobiles

13291329 views88 comments88 favs

My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.

Return of the Lost Ones

13291329 views88 comments66 favs

I'm working through the rocky pine cones so you don't have to. I'm stepping over the little dreaming people in your dreams so we don't wake them with our loud and coming loose footprints. The poem passes by like a heartbreaking train…

Rhapsody in the Rain

13291329 views66 comments33 favs

so many bills to pay the list keeps shedding its skin like a snake

Worn

13291329 views44 comments33 favs

The shirts hanging by the back veranda serve as our memorial to them.