Most read stories

Canvas

13401340 views22 comments11 fav

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

Worth a Thousand Words

13401340 views11 comment00 favs

He was triply satisfied: he’d come twice and he was a damn good-looking man.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 14

13401340 views22 comments22 favs

“Gentlemen, how could I go about attracting the KGB?” Now that got the attention of Boris and Vladimir. Their eyes bulged right out of their heads. They both started huffing and puffing. “What are you, crazyman or something?” said Boris. Vla

(Younger Driest)

13401340 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

Sunny And 78

13401340 views00 comments00 favs

Tombstone is a tongue of stone in the mouth of the desert. The desert is a living entity. It speaks. It speaks with a tongue of stone. It says: Tombstone.

Buck, naked

13401340 views88 comments11 fav

Buck, naked, has no words. The best he can manage is a dopey strangulated cough. His wife, who is clothed, stands before him, next to the waterbed that took Buck half a day to force into the trailer.

the girl who was my suicide

13401340 views1313 comments88 favs

last night a girl came to me in the shape of my suicide.

A Slick Story

13401340 views1717 comments1414 favs

After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…

Pieces of the poet

13401340 views88 comments22 favs

This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.

My First Horror Show

13401340 views00 comments00 favs

I remember screaming and wanting to run from the living room that time you came home drunk.

Honey Nut Cheerios and Chocolate Milk

13401340 views22 comments00 favs

Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …

House Next Door

13401340 views88 comments88 favs

It all began with me. I was first and for many years, the only.

Post-apocalyptic Fable # 8

13391339 views1212 comments66 favs

Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old house, slowly

Deliberate Music

13391339 views1111 comments1010 favs

My emulations always fail. At heart,/ I don’t want bougainvillea nor blushing pilgrims

MARTIAL LAW - LOCK DOWN IN PARADISE

13391339 views00 comments00 favs

Six just left to drive 8 hours thru the jungle. They’ll emerge in a year in military guerilla uniforms. One guy threw up getting in. A friend writes, “I started a Free Mike Todaro Campaign. Hope to raise a couple of hundred dollars. We will, of co

Anonymous Gamblers

13391339 views44 comments11 fav

1. They Don't Know When To Fold 'Em Gambling junkies are lit on losing their ass and almost can't wait to unload their money, and then reel on home and bounce off the walls or whatever. For these guys, losing's the jackpot, and deep in the hole for…

Born Lucky

13391339 views33 comments11 fav

He's gonna find he wasn't born lucky after all, his propaganda has got up on the wrong side of the bed and sidled onto the couch.

Osmotic potential

13391339 views55 comments44 favs

Guttering semiotics, The jeremiads of delirium; Drinking lukewarm tea over a late candle Like Hamlet in a power-cut; Affecting his own audience of himself, Hastening soliloquies through gritted sophisms, Withered and spun to intentional…

Staying With Mattie

13391339 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…

Wild Dreams of Reality, 14

13391339 views00 comments00 favs

We both looked toward the house. We could just make out a light that was barely visible coming from the side where their bedroom window was. Slowly an evil grin appeared on Darrell's face. He looked at the knife in his hand. "This will do it!" he sa

Some Things Can't Be Fixed

13391339 views88 comments77 favs

Orchids strewn over the floor...

The Tourists at the Museum

13391339 views33 comments22 favs

For the camera she smiles otherwise not and only when she is standing beside him But for the camera? for the crowd for posterity yes For their children for the future? yes, again yes a thousand times until her face be

Leaving Home

13391339 views11 comment00 favs

it is heavier than it looks with edges smoothed by the passage of time

A Love Letter To The Glasgow Transport System

13391339 views44 comments33 favs

Skulk like a lovespun spider in a record store corner on the orange formica subway car

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 13

13391339 views33 comments22 favs

Tuesday morning while Frank was in Dr. Jawarski’s office, Michiko was sitting in the waiting room of a gynecologist’s office.

The Hostage

13391339 views1212 comments88 favs

My mother should have been a minister or a peace officer. Instead, she was a homemaker who ran the home like an agency. There were certain hard and fast rules.

Red and Blue Lines of the German Painter, Otto Dix

13391339 views22 comments22 favs

They can’t help Seeing a child even there In the crude brushstrokes. They say it is me.

Seasons of You

13391339 views55 comments22 favs

Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall, the Good Lord made them all.

When Deer Attack

13391339 views11 comment11 fav

Carla woke up from her hospital bed screaming. "Somebody please help me. Please save me. I am begging you."

We Should All Have One Great Love

13381338 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?