Most read stories

Taking it Easy

13811381 views22 comments22 favs

At the Winslow Funeral Home in Winslow, Arizona, just like in the Eagles’ 70s song “Take It Easy,” only I’m not taking it easy.

Free Form Jazz of Spiritual Harlem

13811381 views55 comments44 favs

we are one

Freedom

13811381 views00 comments00 favs

the darkness held frieghtened by the surveillance of a distant white shimmer.

from Abel, to a reproachful correspondent

13811381 views66 comments44 favs

when you betrayed the vain ambition of my death,/I did not complain.

The Catch

13811381 views33 comments33 favs

His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu

In the Air Tonight

13811381 views44 comments00 favs

But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru

The Birds

13801380 views33 comments22 favs

It had been over three months since he’d left his home and started to walk. He’d kept a journal to begin with, but his book soon ran out of batteries. It was that sort of thing that had irked Neil at the start, but now he’d just let it slide down his back

Climate Change

13801380 views1313 comments99 favs

Every year I have a birthday, and every year another of my friends succumbs to cancer or suicide. That's a shitty gift. That is devoutly not to be wished.

Myra's Mind

13801380 views00 comments00 favs

She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention.

Old Joke

13801380 views99 comments99 favs

How many exceptional people/ does it take to change a light bulb?

“Honestly, I’m Not a Fan of Your Poetry”

13801380 views22 comments33 favs

I will admit it. // I cannot write poetry / to save my life—

summer fields

13801380 views33 comments33 favs

we ran that afternoon/across Bayshore lanes/into green blooming fields, beyond all those

Like 37 Hiroshima Bombs

13801380 views33 comments33 favs

Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

falling

13801380 views1717 comments1010 favs

I arrange my stones in circles

The Madwoman Who Called on My Wedding Day

13801380 views77 comments44 favs

She’d reached me after running through the directory, alphabetically. Apparently no one in the a’s or b’s or c’s before me would talk to her.

In the Chambers of the End

13801380 views44 comments11 fav

Tiny skiers look like beetles/on a white bedspread. /We watch them fall to earth from/the high peaks and tell ourselves this is the week that sealed it

A Broken Frame

13801380 views44 comments33 favs

The photograph has no date,but these are my long-ago kin,ancestors just before the boat,six stone-faced on the English shore,sepia on cardstock under glassstill clear in severe, dark clothesexcept one who has been markedout, maybe with black wax,which runs to the bottom…

Remember?

13801380 views44 comments11 fav

We'd been talking about the baby, about what we would do, when the women began fighting after the wedding held in the church next to our apartment. Their fierce and piercing arguments crawled up the walls to the second story window we sat next to. We'd looked outside…

The Number Nine and The One After That

13801380 views55 comments44 favs

Johnny K. didn't much like taking his exotic drugs any more. He now thought that the common reality was already an intense enough trip without wrapping it all up in enough gauze to cause permanent daydreams to the head. He liked his cheap hamburgers…

A Ship of Bones

13801380 views00 comments00 favs

Make paddles of his hands Use his skull to bail Rig his thigh bones for a mast And his skin to make a sail

At the Jr. Algonquin Roundtable

13791379 views22 comments11 fav

“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

EXAMINATION

13791379 views22 comments22 favs

I had the idea while I was in the county jail. I would get jail glasses; I wouldn’t be me; I’d be some other person. I could pretend that it was someone else rotting away in that 8x12 cell.

Museum Story Listening

13791379 views00 comments00 favs

A sort of invocation of the open sky, in contradistinction to the dark of the Earth whence came the specimens, a figurative marriage of the literal darkness of exploration and the figurative light of knowledge.

Greetings From Karma City!

13791379 views33 comments11 fav

A friend of mine died and went to heaven. At least I thought he went to heaven. I mean Freddie wasn’t such a bad guy and if he had any faults they were mild peculiarities. Like his girl watching. He was a champion girl watcher. Even in this a

Toothed and Thorny

13791379 views44 comments33 favs

Cliffs are not all I've known, but I've seen them every day since I came to light. When I first broke out of the shell that protected me from feet and poisons, I pushed my way into darkness. It was soil. I could not have survived if it was light, and when I surfaced there…

The Gift Garden (Extract)

13791379 views33 comments33 favs

Now I hear a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, like I know her, but in my daze it is slightly distorted, like I am underwater and she is calling to me beneath the waves. She tells me not to be afraid. Her words are calming; they soothe away the panic and confusion. I…

things to know about the people parked along the road that runs though Humboldt Park: part 19

13791379 views44 comments33 favs

And he was wearing a mask. Gorilla mask over his gorilla face.

Unibrow: A Confessional

13791379 views22 comments00 favs

I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "unibrow" except Tsing Tao, which is a brand of Chinese beer....

Face to Face

13791379 views1010 comments66 favs

The face had become a chilling death mask.

Origin Story

13791379 views1515 comments1111 favs

My father taught me how to solder and that's when I first started to write. Now, when you hold the soldering iron in your hand and depress the trigger, the tip of the gun heats up. Novices uncoil the solder and place it on the hot tip, but that just results in it…