Most read stories

Two Takes on a Flickering Moth

14581458 views77 comments66 favs

Take 1. The Love Letter to an Unspoken Name Well we're beyond our appointed Moment now. We must step On what's left, alone, but That begs some explanation to These days that pinball between Stars and to the sad dreamers…

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

14581458 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.

Split second

14581458 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…

Supernova

14581458 views44 comments44 favs

Ben had us over, me and him and his boy, Benji, to look at the supernova. Ben was always coming up with these things with the telescope. Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings. On his wedding night he made everybody stop dancing and run out to the golf course so he could show us…

PAPA'S TEARS

14581458 views55 comments11 fav

Darkness was fast approaching. I stuck out my tongue at Naya, and she reached out as if to grab…

Half Awake in a Fake Empire

14581458 views00 comments00 favs

Cooking dinner for one in a city that isn’t my home. A beautiful city that I’m slowly losing interest in, just as I become a local. In a tiny apartment set in the most realistic part of town, I’ve turned the music up loud to drown out my thoughts.

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

14581458 views11 comment00 favs

There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows.

Consider The Son

14571457 views55 comments22 favs

Don’t forget, I’ve watched the evil you’ve done to the lawn for years, not to mention the chaos you’ve made of the woodshed. Don’t you remember me showing you how to properly stack the wood?

August 1976 Jefferson City, MISSOURI

14571457 views22 comments00 favs

"We gotta find a way to get high!" "Shh! My parents will hear you Tommy! Their bed is right above us." …

The James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

14571457 views55 comments33 favs

In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.

Tiger Milk ( Part 3)

14571457 views11 comment11 fav

"Soviet Mandelstam rose like Christ from the Nightmare, Rises from the gulag, sunrise on the page."

Faces of Death Revisited

14571457 views1010 comments99 favs

He looks outside, sees everything disappearing like crumbing cookies into what appears to be a giant mouth.

Veined and Green

14571457 views33 comments33 favs

Where we’ve penned heart shaped question marks, seeds sprouting bowed heads, a congregation of confused supplicants.

Grannies

14571457 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…

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

14571457 views00 comments00 favs

It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Honey Bee Men

14571457 views66 comments44 favs

"...she's been seeming like she's been dreaming while awake lately..."

Pen Pals

14571457 views1414 comments1010 favs

Sitting together at Starbucks, we composed a long love letter which we've been mailing back and forth to each other, signing our name upon each receipt and returning it for the last nine months and it has grown to eighty seven pages, barely fitting in a shoe box.

Scar

14571457 views22 comments11 fav

I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

Childbed (cenotaph song)

14571457 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

surrogate

14571457 views33 comments11 fav

the vigilance that informs a parent's every hour had momentarily lapsed

The Green Eyed Lady in the Glass Café

14571457 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,…

I Am Quantum

14561456 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.

Safe

14561456 views77 comments66 favs

Safe does not ride horses at sunsetSnorkel in MolokaiRaft down a swollen river.It does not steal kisses in a darkened theaterTouch the inside of a thigh under a restaurant table.Safe does not declare war.It chooses dinner every night at sixMass every SundayConfession once a…

Books

14561456 views22 comments22 favs

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

Is This Seat Taken?

14561456 views22 comments22 favs

A single woman should regard every train ride as an opportunity, I once read in one of those “How to Find A Boyfriend” books. “When boarding the train, don't take the first available seat,“ the author advised. “Walk through all the cars…

Mobiles

14561456 views88 comments88 favs

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

Trip the Rime

14561456 views1717 comments1010 favs

politics only add to assault and distract

The Lycanthrope Fun-Time Activity Book

14561456 views11 comment11 fav

an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.

His Name is Chaos

14561456 views00 comments00 favs

Should probably be faster at the cash register

our notorious youth

14561456 views22 comments11 fav

Be aware the dog is king, radiant, emitting many beams, renewed by and restored by his fullness, his satiety. In many ways underlying all our hearts and minds, out of our notorious youth, ever the flower of our flesh on fire like a little reed next to the dried…