Most read stories

our ragged wits, ragged minds

14291429 views22 comments00 favs

Our ragged wits, ragged minds, after acting out all, imitating all honey-like tunes, air song, excellence of song, true flower of the world. So the sun has some of its honey wintered away, to bring it into contact with such a human voice as yours.

Payton, Pelt & Hargrove: 3 (Sorta) Young Lions of the Jazz Trumpet

14291429 views00 comments00 favs

It’s the middle-aged jazz musician who tends to get lost in the shuffle; no longer news, and not ready for the marble statue-treatment.

Gentility

14291429 views00 comments00 favs

The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…

The Glassblower

14291429 views66 comments44 favs

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

JOSEPH YOUNG

14291429 views55 comments00 favs

JOSEPH YOUNG Joseph Young You might start with the top of the head, where the heat goes. This is first, first from the womb, the first word. Joseph Young There might have been a faith that placed it in the mouth, not the…

On the Way To

14291429 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.

Bible Stories for Atheist Babysitters

14291429 views22 comments11 fav

What the five-year-old I baby sit for wanted to do yesterday was torture his Barbies. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked.“Because we're bad guys!” said Hanina. “Can't we be good guys?”“Not today. Today we're bad…

Open Face

14291429 views33 comments22 favs

All the time I'm eating I can't help but think of the many different tuna melts I have ordered in diners and coffee shops and how each of them disappointed me...

Head Holding

14291429 views11 comment11 fav

"...a head dizzy from my abuse."

Reburial at sea

14291429 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…

By Misadventure

14291429 views33 comments22 favs

...when they spotted each other through the glass, with he inside and she outside, she quickly began licking her fork obscenely, attempting to exhibit her sexual prowess with regard to the dexterity of her tongue and mouth...

Upstream

14291429 views11 comment11 fav

Rain pours down in a world transformedthrough thunder. The storm rages, night takes on a weight, and everyone hides, most from habit, some from fear. She stands there, soaked and beautiful, responding to the…

Unintentional Hermits/ Animal Cities- The Helper

14281428 views33 comments00 favs

So this was how it started. The next day Kia returned to sit with him a bit and the next day and the day after that until the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Eventually she found out his name was Saul, that he had no 'proper' job, was o

Elementary

14281428 views11 comment00 favs

He, an irregular chap, Was known for his hat with a flap. Had fleet feet and a very strong back.

sunburn

14281428 views33 comments22 favs

I used to compare her to a sunburnthe first of the summerit is always the worst oneexposed skinalmost hot to the touchturning warm and pinkthen raw and redit is a transition that is effortlessbut still you can feel it happeninga lot like loveyou can feel it all around…

Pablo Picasso and Pornhub: What I Learned From Magazines This Week

14281428 views22 comments22 favs

Reading magazines this week, I learned that:Sally Field dislikes gefilte fish.(Vanity Fair, 3/16)Pornhub, an explicit-video-sharing site, gets 2.4 million visitors per HOUR. (Time, 4.11.16)There are 641 million obese people in the world today. (Time,…

The 83rd Meridian West

14281428 views11 comment11 fav

The priest went into the place in those parts, the priest an old pear or grape gotten ripe and then moreso, but never actually expiring . He was hunched and it looked like he was broken at some integral part, but nobody could tell for sure where. One time, a bat…

Vacation

14281428 views55 comments33 favs

The week before she left for Costa Rica with her new lover she called me. Often, she did this. We talked for hours. What should I pack on my trip? she asked. Setting out with him …

Assiduity Twenty Five

14281428 views33 comments33 favs

" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "

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

14281428 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;…

60 is the new 20

14281428 views00 comments22 favs

I once saw a TV commercial that showed a group of Anglo retirees laughing around a card table. The slogan 60 is the new 20 floated beneath their fat, fun-loving heads. My parents are bona fide Baby Boomers. Their lives are build on credit and catchy…

Pathology

14281428 views88 comments88 favs

PATHOLOGY How awful it is to dissect a marriage! It lays naked on the therapist's steely table. He makes his first incision into the bloated stomach of our malnourished union. He polishes his glasses and peers, cuts the thin taut skin of our…

In the Seoul Metro

14281428 views33 comments11 fav

I’ve seen your tired souls riding under the city lost in the drowsiness of morning calm commutes.

About That Leg

14281428 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

The Zone of Forgotten Things

14281428 views55 comments22 favs

In the zone of forgotten things, everything moves through a weak gravitational field

Life After Les Miz

14281428 views77 comments55 favs

There are many ways to cope effectively with your life after a Les Miserables run, and everyone is different, but here are some things that have helped others work through the process.

A Drowning

14281428 views22 comments22 favs

This is the record of a drowning.

The Exiled Realm

14271427 views00 comments00 favs

destinies bring me to a damned desert

Cleaning The Dead

14271427 views33 comments22 favs

"Don't pull too hard," warned Father. "You might sever it from the body, spraying blood into your eyes."

Third Shift

14271427 views44 comments22 favs

Some great, doubtless precious; some hollow, likely empty; some only shards, but you never know...