Most read stories

visionary

13781378 views1212 comments1010 favs

let it lie

Ambassador of Nowhere

13781378 views66 comments55 favs

Before you tripped on the third rail, you were like any other: coat a shard of midnight-blue, eyes filled with gratitude but for nothing. You were a lost coyote on a snowy hill. With sad magnificence you wandered, terrorizing passengers who secretly wished to pat your…

Airline Passengers! Is There A Right To Recline?

13781378 views11 comment11 fav

It's called the Knee Defender. But I prefer to think of it as the Schmuck Identifier.

2

13781378 views55 comments55 favs

Then I am in Washington DC impersonating an accountant.

Drowning By The Pool(2nd Revised Version)

13781378 views66 comments66 favs

The entire room seems waiting for me like an octopus behind a closed, chained door. The monk of the lamp knows he will get his daily turn-on if he prays loudly and just enough for it. The favorite chair has my blue dent in its punched…

Getaway

13771377 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.

Hooves on the Sand

13771377 views00 comments00 favs

It was a bright day in April, the cruelest month, and the gears and pumps of the train beat on into the still air.

Bare Ruined Palace

13771377 views88 comments55 favs

Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key

Faith in the Rest

13771377 views22 comments00 favs

She had the smile of a pixie on mushrooms in a disco ball universe, and I dug her style.

the hunt

13771377 views77 comments55 favs

.

Not as a Poet

13771377 views1919 comments1212 favs

She's not a poet, but does she have to be? She comes to the reading to read the poems of her recently dead husband, for she made a vow: that she would read his work at an open mic. Now she is keeping her word. It's her way of keeping him alive or maybe it's his way of…

Your Guide to a WASP Bar Mitzvah

13771377 views66 comments00 favs

“The first thing you must remember,” Polly tells the Levensons, “is that every penny you spend on your guests is that much less you can spend on your horses.”

One Story Above the Boy in an Old Car

13771377 views77 comments44 favs

Near dusk today a car backfired on the street beneath my office window

Meticulous

13771377 views88 comments55 favs

Have you measured the cups, the conveyors' yield? Do you know the span? I am the LORD your God, she murmured.

Excelsior - A Poem in 9 Parts (post 3 of 5)

13771377 views44 comments11 fav

IV. From Hoover Dam The intent of passive presence wreathes an endless ring, Invisible, beyond all thoughts and change to sickness. This hour beats sibylline as vacancy, breathing Through mouths that do not taste their nothingness. I do not know where you are;…

Buzzard

13771377 views22 comments22 favs

what lies, in my eyes

Paradise

13771377 views00 comments00 favs

The oval-shaped, pearl-white objects shimmered soundlessly in the warm sunlight. Suddenly one object veered off and headed towards them stopping to hover not twenty feet away. Suddenly their phones vibrated simultaneously. They both looked at their messa

The Eyes

13771377 views99 comments44 favs

I've never liked kind eyes;I prefer drive.Or fire.And when a woman's eyes are described as "doe,"I hear "dumb."Like an animal.

Next Time, Academics

13771377 views1414 comments55 favs

I suggested when we passed the flesh shack that we turn around and that I go in and say to the sex workers that the Russians are fetching $3.5K per hour in Manhattan and it's private, unlike there at that road-side shack.

the genes of Edouard Manet

13771377 views33 comments33 favs

was entering into a new phase of its existence, a peculiar paradigm of the wider world where, presaged by science, economic and political ideologies were conspiring to displace the old verities of religion and aesthetics, but where…

who really wants to be a virgin anyway?

13771377 views22 comments22 favs

I remember thinking virginity was highly over-rated. Who really wants to be a virgin anyway? I got out of that state as fast as I could. Sixteen years (okay maybe 15 and a half) is long enough of not knowing what to do with your body. Screw that! But th

Storms at the Door

13771377 views00 comments00 favs

My Mother always said that a storm was death knocking.

Bringing a New Poet into Your Home

13771377 views66 comments33 favs

You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w

Weather Forecasting

13771377 views33 comments33 favs

By the time the forked tongue of the flag extended flat like it was pressed between two of my thick volumes on weather forecasting, the man was still walking with his nose glued to the ground.

Story to Forget

13761376 views00 comments00 favs

The white Boeing 747, all three hundred and sixty eight seats of it, prepared to depart from Johannesburg Airport. Mild conditions on a clear flight path coupled with the soothing voice of the first officer didn't allay my unease. I offered a friendly nod to the…

Scared Of Paradise

13761376 views77 comments44 favs

It was if you memorized my ever detail but not the why. And perhaps that is what love is. Was that love? I lie in bed waiting for the man who came after you to join me. I hear his heavy footsteps and know he wants to go to Hawaii too, when our bud

Head in the Clouds

13761376 views11 comment11 fav

Damn, the light turned green on me. Wasn't ready.

(children, children)

13761376 views55 comments55 favs

Her name was Carrie. And yes, it was love at first sight. Yes, she was a client, and you were supposed to keep your hands off the clients. Everyone in real estate knew that. She came into my office and took a seat in the reception area. I had a listing on Cedar…

Myra's Cigarettes

13761376 views55 comments00 favs

I know from the experience of too many odd sideways glances that folks are seldom interested in my brand of observation. No one else seems to wonder how many commas there are in the library or how many other people own that exact shirt.

Tracks

13761376 views1111 comments77 favs

When dogs run free