Most read stories

Jonestown on a Global Scale

12681268 views88 comments55 favs

Picture it-/ air not clogged with the shit// that makes Beijing the dark joke/ of the developed world.

Reburial at sea

12681268 views22 comments00 favs

“Sloshes to sloshes. Drip to drip,” I said, then ceremoniously flushed the toilet bowl, our heads bowed in reverence as Molly and I gave Swimmy its last rites. Swimmy, named by Molly whose overstatement of the obvious is endearing in a three-year-old, was…

Stellar

12681268 views33 comments00 favs

After our first kiss, a team of scientists scrubbed away the cancer of your lipstick.

Echo

12681268 views88 comments44 favs

When the poet loves,/ I said, quoting the poet,/ he loves himself.

You Pour Vodka In Your Coffee

12681268 views66 comments44 favs

I wonder if she is my real mother, if I could get one of those paternity tests and find out if she’s my real mother and if the guy she told me was my father was really my father. I can’t remember him very well, just a lot of him screaming and hollering an

In the Air Tonight

12681268 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

Just When I Thought

12681268 views1111 comments55 favs

Somewhere in the belly of the beast something was stirring.

The Sun's Curtains

12671267 views88 comments66 favs

It must be nice not to have to worry About certain things because those things are not yet In your circle, or in your circus, of life. I don't begrudge you for being almost grown in A much different, sweeter place and time. I'm thrilled By…

(Younger Driest)

12671267 views22 comments00 favs

He did not seek a place on a cabinet, nor to impress stockholders with placards of wealth and return; he did not enumerate the downtrodden and asocial with advertised miracle treatments, or write a best seller on the markings of success. All he did, all h

The Glassblower

12671267 views66 comments44 favs

His beloved are paper-thin when he blows into the free end. Green tint from copper.

Dysplasia

12671267 views33 comments22 favs

In my mind the village of 300 souls is called Nedoweska, but I confess that that's just a dreamy nickname I had for it as a boy. For various geopolitical reasons it had since become noteworthy as a historical site, though our interest was purely personal.…

On the Way To

12671267 views22 comments22 favs

Robbie’s wrists itched hard, the cord was sunk in so tight his hands were bordering now on blue, now purple. Too late to matter.

The Stranger

12671267 views55 comments33 favs

“I can't go to sleep,” Jonathan said, laying on the doctor's couch. He counted on his fingers to keep his mind active. “I'll certainly die if I do.”

A Sight Worth Keeping in View

12671267 views11 comment11 fav

. . . I wanted to put Tiffany out of her misery and mine and shove her in front of the next large vehicle hurtling down the drive-through lane . . . .

Us Kids in Left Field

12671267 views11 comment00 favs

Us kids in left field steal out bedroom windows after dark to pinch hit Lucky Strikes between first and second fingers, arc the glow of shop-lifted hot-boxed cigarettes over the chain link homerun fence sprawl on perfectly ridiculous grass passing a bottle…

Seeds of Summer

12671267 views66 comments33 favs

Excerpt

The Sapaat Swarm

12671267 views00 comments00 favs

About three dozen people, the doctor told him, dwelt in the small village until there had been a dry spell—a drought the likes of which no one in the region had ever seen before. Theories abounded as to the cause of the drought as theories do: a curse by

Disappointed Dust

12671267 views88 comments33 favs

The particles of dust didn't want to be looked at

Sourballs

12671267 views66 comments77 favs

Lights of human occupation burn/ in patterns like the growth/ of a bacillus, lethal and prodigious,

Cairn

12671267 views1212 comments99 favs

Your cairns/ are litter in the streets

Dear Mei

12671267 views11 comment11 fav

I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th

About That Leg

12671267 views22 comments22 favs

I could have said no. I should have said no. Prudence, however, was not in the air. Fourteen minutes later I am at the door of his condo a few blocks from Pier 39. Twenty minutes later I have wriggled into his extra wetsuit and am following him on his wif

Weaving the Way

12671267 views44 comments22 favs

Yellows and reds shed warp and weft bobbins of color spooling...

We Should All Have One Great Love

12661266 views66 comments55 favs

My dumb body that does not speak still cried out your name last night. Did you hear it, maybe in your sleep?

Getaway

12661266 views33 comments00 favs

She’d picked him up at a party freshman year, calling him Danny. Until then he had always been Daniel. He’d said nothing and his name was changed.

Virgo

12661266 views1313 comments66 favs

I said he was cold. I said I like cold.

The Late, Late Show

12661266 views44 comments11 fav

Camilla and I watched a movie, then we were the movie. A man wandered in a decrepit house, or in a dream of a house, which had wallpaper hanging like shredded flesh and little mounds of filth and a madwoman with a butcher knife creeping from room to room with fear or…

The Frog

12661266 views44 comments55 favs

Publisehd in Linguistic Erosionhttp://www.linguisticerosion.com/2014/08/the-frog.html When Jesus and Magdalene began to cross the sunflower field they met a group of boys, squatting before a rocky outcrop. Covered with…

If Hell...

12661266 views11 comment11 fav

the sour waft of a secret

Halfsies

12661266 views33 comments33 favs

You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.