Most read stories

End of the Cloud

13381338 views55 comments33 favs

Somewhere between the bleating of sheep And the laying of eggs Comes the licking of frosting And the eating of the cake We’re not young enough To know everything anymore And you may think there’s no rush But I know this There’s a limit t

For all we know, we'll never meet again...

13381338 views44 comments00 favs

Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her

Almost There

13381338 views66 comments33 favs

On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing. “I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!” My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93 right after she turned 92. And 92

Alfamadog

13381338 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…

The Campus Socialists

13381338 views33 comments11 fav

The Campus Socialists Paul and Mary Jo lived in an apartment at the top of a long, dark flight of stairs that were so high, I remember as if it were yesterday thinking, the night she pushed him down the stairs, he would surely be dead by the time h

The Writing Class

13381338 views88 comments77 favs

I ask if anyone has a poem or a story they would like to read. Everybody's hand shoots up.

The Master of the Air

13381338 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.

Prairie Flowers

13381338 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.

instead

13381338 views44 comments44 favs

instead of gun metal deceit, sounds of malice;be a drop of rain.

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

13371337 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…

Hold on

13371337 views11 comment22 favs

I slept and it was pleasant. Then there was the kiss, and it was hot. Later you turned away, and all was November chill. Now there are touches, caresses and shouts, Marvelous nights flavored with favors bestowed, and blackened days,…

Snapshots

13371337 views11 comment00 favs

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

the leisure to walk about sweetly

13371337 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.

Violet Hour

13371337 views55 comments22 favs

“My name is Violet,” I add. I am trying to stop lying. Going without cigarettes has been easier.

Hook

13371337 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…

Song Against Unwarranted Cheer

13371337 views77 comments22 favs

If I should stumble into cheerfulness/ remind me of all the business models

Full of Mad Hope

13371337 views1212 comments22 favs

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

Edward Ogle the fourth

13371337 views44 comments44 favs

Charted stars by the dozens / with a side of frizzle onions / dawn showers us with glitter.

WE WOKE UP LEAN

13371337 views33 comments00 favs

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

Frankenstein's Monster Eats the Brains of Virgins at the Witches' Chainsaw Orgy Massacre

13371337 views55 comments22 favs

If Heaven holds forth its own Infinity, What of selves, of ours, could we stand to see? Cradled with harsh fangs of Memory, Deep forgetfulness, give rather me- Let bright dreams be our self's divinity: Forever holds, in morrow's hours, such little…

The Exiled Realm

13361336 views00 comments00 favs

destinies bring me to a damned desert

Everybody Was a Virgin Once

13361336 views00 comments00 favs

Most women simply don’t want damaged goods. That’s a fact I’ve been brought face to face with throughout my life. It's something you can continue crushing your brains against, like an impossibly high hurdle. At first you take the damage without unde

(Withheld) 1970

13361336 views00 comments00 favs

The Moon The hatch of the lunar module hissed as it opened, a few puffs of leftover water vapor escaped toward them in a sparkling white cloud that rapidly dissolved…

Midwestern Charm

13361336 views55 comments33 favs

He slathered the glue on my scalp and talked non-stop about Harlem. Electrodes or nodes, I never asked which, would measure something inside my head. I doubt they actually did though, measure anything. I've had the pleasure of having wires glued to my skull before and have…

ExsanguiNations

13361336 views88 comments66 favs

leaches fatten-up

Gentility

13361336 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…

Brief excerpt from the Fantasy thing I'm writing.

13361336 views33 comments11 fav

Lucien Lucien Tidesquall lay almost sleeping amid the soft green grass. His eyes irradiated green midnight under vanquished brows. A plover hovered somewhere in the distance. It reminded him of a poem he had written as a teenager, a haiku that went as…

With Eyes Closed

13361336 views1515 comments88 favs

I believe I will become a bear, snuggle up in a deep cave, coil myself inside my fur, close my eyes on hurting images, turn a deaf ear to the uproar of the world. Bolt my door to the deceiving voices outside. Sleep. Forget. Wait, as we wait for spring, for the violet and…

Rags to Riches to Rags, 1

13361336 views11 comment11 fav

1 Al Capone was ruling the backstreets and alleyways of Chicago during Prohibition, and we lived in a little house right next door to a speak-easy. I could peak through our curtains and see right into the bar next door when cops came in to get pai

The Fields

13361336 views00 comments00 favs

Swat at those screeching children with tufts of harp-grass. Flail, mad eyed and sad sighed with all gleaming hope gone out of the daylight. Swat and screech swat and screech. We continue until their thick bark-like hides are smooth and polished. We sand them with…