Most read stories

When the Moon Becomes the Sun

13521352 views66 comments33 favs

While most spread their time in other occupation, I traveled through books and grew my imagination. I knew endless bliss. I was a book eater. I would just devour books that I loved and slug through those I didn't, just to make myself eat the truths and li

Dear Earth, On the Occasion of Your 40th Earth Day Birthday

13521352 views22 comments11 fav

Everyone is tromping around in work boots like an army of happy gardeners. The park is smiling from all this attention, from the sound of kids who think work is play. It's not even sunny but we don't mind. I know you don't. Grey days are just as good. They've…

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

13521352 views33 comments22 favs

I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. / We were never happy. I realize that now.

Buck, naked

13521352 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 Black Madonna

13521352 views1212 comments77 favs

They say I am filthy. On this high pillar I perch like a stuffed avian relic, flightless, no prey. The horizon before me is broken by scuff and foreign tongue, by atomized evil. Pleas, and there are many, are answered by the only prayer I know, the one prayer, which…

The Donkey

13521352 views1111 comments88 favs

Since dawn doesn't understand my words, I will give them to the donkey, finely cut for him, let them ferment some time and add a few sprigs of lucerne. The donkey grazes in the meadow down the road and always welcomes me with a grin that displays his mauve gums and his…

Snapshots

13521352 views11 comment00 favs

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

Alfamadog

13521352 views44 comments44 favs

It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…

Zero

13521352 views77 comments77 favs

The arithmetic of human experience/ is always a losing game for some. Poor Jane. Rich Dick.

the leisure to walk about sweetly

13521352 views00 comments00 favs

You seemed to have that leisure to walk about sweetly when I was with you, honey-singing the reward for the intensity of emotion you lunged about in. Nothing seemed like it was going to hurt or harm anyone, even while I was going nuts between the legs.

Katie

13521352 views44 comments33 favs

Katie died on Tuesday.

Why Men Compete

13521352 views44 comments33 favs

It starts on the Fallopian Speedway:

His First and Only: A Love Story for Halloween

13521352 views00 comments00 favs

It was the woman, Mary Lou Compton, that he cared about. They would've been happily married by now if Bryce hadn't killed his Uncle Ned.

Pura Vida

13521352 views22 comments11 fav

The girl lifts my head, and I sit up straight once again. She hands me a pair of old work gloves, helps put them on my swollen hands. She wipes my face with a wet, warm towel. Her thin arms tremble. She cries. I cry.

Dark Cave, No Candle

13521352 views00 comments00 favs

Writing books is like raising children. You do your best, nurture them, discipline them, coddle them, feed them, patch up their injuries, sing to them, try to sell them, but no matter what you do, they are what they are.

It’s a compromising situation...

13521352 views00 comments00 favs

It’s a compromising situation... The would be Bride of Christ begins perspiring before the crowd. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring echoes through the antique church just one more time, a little loud. With every added verse and every flickering vigi

My Daughter On Wolf Hill Farm

13521352 views11 comment11 fav

I survived as a brave thought,

Moving Out

13521352 views33 comments22 favs

Lying in the blissful glow of young television. Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.

Prairie Flowers

13521352 views55 comments11 fav

As a kid he had run away from the family farm and shoveled coal back East to put himself through college. Now he was just another old man in a nursing home, desperate for a drink, his blue eyes bleary, a sticky goo filming at the corners of his lips.

Autumn

13521352 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…

Wheatfield with Cypresses. van Gogh

13521352 views00 comments11 fav

There's no sky like that with twisting clouds shot up into by cypress trees that are so like dark green flames leaping out of the earth as if a dark green oily pool were on fire underground, and this was all that could escape, was its essence.

Dreams Bright White Smash

13511351 views00 comments00 favs

She was there then gone then there again. We were naked and wet and touching, she let me touch her, but she didn't want to be there. But she was, despite herself. It was my dream. You can go if you want. …

Nocturnes

13511351 views44 comments44 favs

You go out on a night with no moon, when all the stars are flush in the sky, when all of everything, even you, is just a shadow moving softly, and I swear, you can hear it, if you listen hard enough. The music. It’s like it’s coming from under the ground.

My Gall Bladder is Really Warm Today

13511351 views11 comment00 favs

The English phrase "Nice to see you" translates into "My gall bladder is really warm today" in Berik, a language of New Guinea. What Language Is, John McWhorter

The Master of the Air

13511351 views88 comments44 favs

He thought of it as magic, but magic that he understood, the way a magician knows about the hidden compartments in his hat and trunks.

Hook

13511351 views22 comments11 fav

“What the fuck!” Duke muttered, amazed at what he was seeing in the darkened store. A thin curtain of smoke was rising from under the baseboard like an inverted waterfall. It stretched the entire length of the left wall. Holy shit, the joint's on fire! I…

Sisyphus

13511351 views55 comments33 favs

I build pedestals.It's hard workHeld together by sweat, love, and lofty thoughts - an unsound foundation.The tiniest bit of heartbreak,and it comes crashing down. Always, I blame the builder and not the vandal. The next one will be…

The Fine Madness

13511351 views77 comments66 favs

A phrase, a sentence, a stanza,/ sounds among the sums and lists/ and starts a scratched cascade/ of syllables and other approximations--

Full of Mad Hope

13511351 views1212 comments22 favs

full of mad hope / we dash into the street / leap into the fray / and enter splendiferous lists

WE WOKE UP LEAN

13511351 views33 comments00 favs

We were careful not to wake the kids & goodbye with a handshake & my skeleton is trapped with your universe inside.