Most read stories

A Martyr

14201420 views1111 comments33 favs

I've written of this and I've written of that, Have scriven as you have it either that or this: But if you strive against the wind when you decide to piss, They say, you'll find up firing against your hat- Like some old Brother who was broiled when…

Гумилёв и Ахматова via странников

14201420 views99 comments88 favs

Walking down an unfamiliar street, / I heard a sudden caw of crows, / some thunder afar, strums of a lute— / a streetcar came flying along.

Dirty Deeds

14201420 views00 comments00 favs

Mustard stings the corner of his lips. He swipes it away with a finger, and looks closer at the hot dog. The piece of meat is ripped open like a sliced finger stuck in a doughy bandage

intensely interested (but repressing it)

14201420 views33 comments11 fav

whenever i see youit feels like birds are flyingin and out of my facemy head is ghost-like and birds flythrough iti want to hold the birds insidemy head and turn them intosex maniacs

Hoping For Bones

14201420 views33 comments22 favs

In the backyard with Joey, I make the mistake of answering him honestly when he asks what the gray brick in the dirt is for. “My parakeet is buried there,” I say. And he asks, “can we dig it up?”Joey's grandma lives down the street; he comes over…

Staying With Mattie

14201420 views88 comments88 favs

I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

Some Things Can't Be Fixed

14201420 views88 comments77 favs

Orchids strewn over the floor...

Manifesto of ism

14201420 views22 comments22 favs

We walk though the streets of London, New York, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Skegness, inhaling air heavy with metaphors, eyes set alight by the microscopic pyrotechnics of quotidian symbols hitherto debased by the outmoded conventions of a bankrupt civilisation decomposing in…

Inner City

14201420 views00 comments00 favs

This time he was dressed in a snap-brimmed hat, zoot suit with a gold chain and two-toned shoes; something out of a sad, lost Los Angeles past. I had no choice but to follow him as he walked down stairs that led to the Metro. We stood near one another,…

Senior Center

14201420 views99 comments77 favs

Some of the elderly men and women are coming forward....

My Yogurt Jones

14201420 views33 comments22 favs

And so began my love affair with a thick, semisold substance. Sort of like Mary Van de Velde, the chubby girl who was my partner in my 6th grade polka troupe.

Ambassador of Nowhere

14201420 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…

The Angel Closes the Rain

14201420 views44 comments44 favs

I may have gone A little soft in the brain But I swear I still see it The angel closes the rain Even God has to refrain From causing us pain When the angel closes the rain So the angel closes the rain At the end of time The angel mus

Begonia {part nine}

14191419 views00 comments00 favs

Miles away Coriander was stepping through the forest with a light but determined step. He was exhausted, but the terrors he imagined every time he pictured his beloved in the claws of a dragon were too intense to allow for sleep.

Halfsies

14191419 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.

13 poets in Hell

14191419 views11 comment11 fav

1Paradise Lost is cast into the lake of fire. Satan tells John Milton to rewrite it in 140 characters or fewer.2Filippo Marinetti languishes in a dismal rural idyll. His hand, possessed, scrawls euphonic odes to the moon with a quill.3Henri Michaux floats through the…

Meticulous

14191419 views88 comments55 favs

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

My First Love Messages Me On Facebook

14191419 views55 comments44 favs

He tells me that he thinks he reached out as he needed healing and I wonder if I should diagnose him on the spot, explain what years of therapy taught me about him. I don't. Instead I compliment a photograph of the pot plants he grows, organic,

My Wife's Dream

14191419 views88 comments11 fav

He was a Jack Russell terrier hanging like a baby in a carrier strapped to my chest He had all four legs wrapped around me and was licking me with his long tongue I asked him what his name was, and in a real low voice he said Min

One in the Numberless Series of Requiems

14191419 views1212 comments99 favs

We perform our chosen duty— naming/ beauties and atrocities within

Bearable

14191419 views00 comments00 favs

"Don't be dense."

Trying to remember something else, I recall supreme and utter solitude in a far off time and place

14191419 views1111 comments1010 favs

Before the war...

Woman at the Bar

14191419 views1010 comments11 fav

I saw a woman / at the bar tonight

"Forever You Will Be Mine"

14181418 views11 comment11 fav

“Forever you will be mine” she said to me, and of course I did not believe her. She was a romantic and so was I, and such words habitually dripped out of her lovely mouth like honey from the comb, in a never-ending flow of flattery which I am ashamed to s

Hammer Had

14181418 views11 comment11 fav

They say I'm supposed to see everything as a nail, but I have a silver head. Too soft for bang-bang. Too soft for anything but sitting on a shelf. I sat in her classroom for twenty-five years. She was proud of me and pointed often to the words inscribed on me that I can't…

Diagnosis

14181418 views1010 comments55 favs

I am studying the way/ dust bunnies emerge, grow/ and apparently reproduce.

A Raisin in The Sun

14181418 views22 comments00 favs

I was about sixteen or seventeen when James Miller had a stroke and died. He was a friend of my father's and a preacher-guy. The last time our church had been that full was at the barbecue the weekend after the church was built. Somehow, the structure went…

Audience

14181418 views55 comments11 fav

At 19 words, the whole piece is a snippet.

Upwards, Into the White Eye Rising (Parts 1-3)

14181418 views22 comments22 favs

The Argument: A couple of young female lovers, one slightly older than the other one, decide to part ways. The elder has contracted a terminal illness, and they decide the best way to part ways would be by joining together through a suicide pact.…

Your Guide to a WASP Bar Mitzvah

14181418 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.”