Most read stories

Quitting Smack

12331233 views66 comments33 favs

I figured he knew what he was doing–he was the crazy one, after all, not me–so we took turns snorting lines of equal volume.

From The Plague Year 2020

12331233 views1313 comments1010 favs

I went to Costco

Gone Shopping

12331233 views00 comments00 favs

She found Matthew toward the back, cradling an urn with a tasteful black and gold pattern. When he saw her approaching, he held it up for inspection. “You think I’d look good in this?” he asked.

No Exit

12331233 views88 comments66 favs

The bar was packed. Fascinated, Tom watched the shenanigans going on around him.

What You Get

12331233 views22 comments11 fav

In moving crowds I plan to break you.

Free Form Jazz of Spiritual Harlem

12331233 views55 comments44 favs

we are one

who really wants to be a virgin anyway?

12331233 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

Last Night

12331233 views99 comments77 favs

If they are all speaking medicine & I / start speaking French - how / rude am I? Would they understand then / what it is to be entirely left out / of the conversation, unseen?

Airline Passengers! Is There A Right To Recline?

12331233 views11 comment11 fav

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

Character & Fitness

12321232 views00 comments00 favs

Character & Fitness, the opening chapter to my novel, "Death of the Dying City."

Canvas

12321232 views22 comments11 fav

The artist with fork and trowel. The paint; soil, seed, seedling or plug.

Refer Madness

12321232 views00 comments00 favs

There is an old Indian story which says that if a person inhales basil fumes, then scorpions will grow in the inhaler's brain. We have basil growing all over our garden, so this explains the absolutely stinging sensation I feel in my cerebellum after cutting the basil hedge…

Snark

12321232 views11 comment11 fav

His Danger Pistol was out of bullets, his Bag of Tricks was empty, and he wasted his last can of Antimatter back at the lab. All he had was his Charm and his wits. Charm wouldn't last forever, and he'd always come up a little short in the wits department.

Harried or Employed

12321232 views1111 comments66 favs

Irony is written sarcasm. Sarcasm is spoken irony: the opposite of what is meant. Catholic irony in fiction seems deeper and more related to theme. Protestant irony starts with P as do other þing.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 16

12321232 views22 comments22 favs

I still wake up with a start to this day, remembering the sound of that squish. And the cheer from above of all the brutes hanging out the open castle window. And of course the roar of approval and delight from the hordes of Chinese, Russian, and Germ

a girl's mane

12321232 views22 comments11 fav

Wild bore the wind down on me, coming out of the heavens that turned around the stars of the evening. The longing and the appetite at work in the body, all tickling to open a girl’s mane, gaping, health-giving crossroads to the body. Hail and farewell t

Snapshots

12321232 views11 comment00 favs

“Do you have a job? Are you going back to school,” I asked, you know, because I’m hip like that.

lime shed

12321232 views66 comments22 favs

purely fun, humane, scientific, old time religious experimentation

When the Germans Were on the Roof of the World

12321232 views66 comments66 favs

Flew a Messerschmitt. Drove a tank over people in Poland though not in Prague, and claimed he was never a guard at the death camps.

Startled by Towels

12321232 views22 comments11 fav

I woke up when the smoke alarm insisted. Either the curtains were on fire or I hadn't changed the battery.

Dapplegrey (Where He Lived)

12321232 views33 comments22 favs

A short time ago, a man who lived near me got angry. He woke up one morning and torched his house, with his wife and stepdaughter still inside. He drove up I-35 to the Georgetown airport, got his plane, and flew it into the Echelon Building in Austin.

Nineveh

12321232 views00 comments00 favs

My heart was a puzzle completely incomplete, until I learned of love in your embrace.

Good Old Days

12321232 views44 comments44 favs

That night, when Nostalgia knocked on my door just before dawn, I had just enough time to catch her coat as she slipped it off and staggered into my apartment.

Autumn

12321232 views22 comments11 fav

I have never known how gold this time of year, With its palladium arcade, was, of the trees That do not sense the pleasure of their silence; Trees are egalitarian, they do not speak But concourse among themselves, consent to join us At this moment breathing…

Birthmark

12321232 views11 comment11 fav

She sat down in the big soft chair in front of his desk. “In your religion you believe in past lives, right?” “Yes, reincarnation is a tenet of the Hindu faith.” He replied. “As Catholics, I think we believe that only Jesus had the power to come

13 cyborg poets

12321232 views44 comments22 favs

1. Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal designed to be audible only to himself.2. T S El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying order appears.3. C0ler1dge suffered…

Drowning By The Pool(2nd Revised Version)

12321232 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…

Get a Hold of God, Will You?

12311231 views33 comments00 favs

Get a Hold of God Get a hold of God, will you? I have seen a lot I saw a Great Dane licking the dew off an orange bird of paradise Get a hold of God and tell him that Get a hold of God and give him a piece of my m

The Woman with No Skin

12311231 views33 comments11 fav

Far away or up close, she appeared just like anyone else, a young woman with pale arms and legs and a milk-face unblemished by a single freckle or pimple or blotch. Only when she turned a certain way did it become clear that what rested atop her muscle an

The Invitation

12311231 views99 comments44 favs

The poet could not speak of himself but only of the gradations leading toward him and away. ~ Mark Strand