Most read stories

Truck, Medusa’s Hair Aflame, Young Boy Watches

11621162 views00 comments00 favs

Air. But fire against the air. An interruption in the blue sky otherwise. Painted without a spread blemish or problem. Now there is a problem. I am roused from sleep. Sister says, Look. Look. Jacob wake up. What? A truck is on fire. What is? A…

how to live on coffee and prayers

11621162 views44 comments00 favs

The coffee filter rustles like the Pages of your notebook, which Only tires you even more. Make your drink strong to Make up for the lack of resolve In your shoulders, and Your weak promises. The familiar sound of percolation And you reach the…

THE TIDE OF LIFE

11621162 views66 comments44 favs

It was an autumn day, late in the afternoon, a Tuesday, when the last murderer died. There was no official announcement. Indeed, she and her crime had been forgotten. Pancreatitis, her cause of death. Quite treatable, the cancer. Nothing could be done for the gene that…

Coal Mine Pickle Jar

11621162 views00 comments00 favs

I can’t move - I try to move my arms - I try to move my legs - If I can scream then that will wake me up - I scream

And then we... Part 2

11621162 views44 comments33 favs

The way I figure it, mom wasn't worth a shit. I'd cry when she hit me but she'd just keep pounding. When I was seven, she burned a hole in my back. It happened one day at the fair. We were walking around. She didn't have any money so all we could do was walk. I had…

Scanner

11621162 views66 comments33 favs

The Bearcat 101 was a police scanner popular with a certain type during in the 1970s. Daddy was that exact type. I found the Bearcat in his apartment after he passed. His illness was a common one, the process gradual, implacable. No red and blue…

Words

11621162 views77 comments77 favs

often visit me in my room, so quietly, so suddenly, buzzing my head with wonderful, possible sentences. Sometimes I find they've been there radiating all along, children ready to burst out in a sneaky fit of laughter if I move just slightly…

Dear A. Lien

11611161 views22 comments00 favs

Time is a form of sandwich. Each component of the sandwich is nestled between night and day, which enclose it like slices of bread. There are minutes, hours, and seconds. Seconds are tiny, like sesame seeds. Minutes are a little larger. Think of them as p

notes on flying

11611161 views22 comments22 favs

Going to Atlanta 6AM Despite all the issues presented by Delta this morning (the rescheduling of my 7am flight at 1am to a flight at 10, giving me a two minute layover time in Detroit, and my eventual own rescheduling of my flight to 6am, and waiting…

Our Enormous Fat Man

11611161 views88 comments88 favs

Pity would have been appropriate. Yet, townsfolk whispered behind his back. Shouldn't he do something about it. So lazy. A gluttonous swine. Hadn't his mother kept him too long at tit, breastfeeding ‘til four? Look. Look at him now. A fat man. Our enormou

The Prompter

11611161 views11 comment11 fav

Here is a not remembering

woke up in 2010//an exercise four years ago

11611161 views33 comments33 favs

I am from slow diagnoses, impatience and parents skeptical of New York City doctors. I am from tall buildings, yogurt shakes, and envy for my brother's asthma machine. I am from here, stay away from there, don't get too close, be careful at the edge, the…

here, winter

11611161 views1313 comments99 favs

a day so brittle

Kathy

11611161 views00 comments00 favs

"Happy New Year Willie."

dream lives and cancers

11611161 views11 comment00 favs

Around sunset or sometime after, we are on the futon talking about dream lives and cancers. He asks me about my ideal living situation, my ideal career, my ideals in general. I would be a turtle, I say. I would travel and have a home I could always go to, I could always be…

the cold envies whom?

11611161 views55 comments44 favs

cold plunges its lethal chill spade/into the dirt before cold takes the earth/to ossify it stiff with ice/the semblance of cold the semblance of death/said only to be felt this side of the grave.

The Unseen Hand Shuffles the Deck

11611161 views1010 comments66 favs

2008Not a bubble burstbut a trust ruptured.The guilty don't survivebut, rather, thrive. 2011The monied are superior.They game the system well.As we work harder, longer,their paper fortunes swell.2017Marie and Louie were monied once.The Romanovs as well.Fast as blades and…

Christ's Fingertips

11611161 views00 comments00 favs

they could be barefoot bastard children for somebody else to clothe

THE PERFECT KIND OF HAPPY

11611161 views11 comment00 favs

I think of particles exploding, coming back together like some physics experiment I don’t know the name for. “Large Hadron Collider,” you say. But that’s not what I mean.

I fell in love with jackal face

11611161 views11 comment11 fav

As we stood there, my hair slung over his shoulder like uncooked pizza dough, I updated my wish.

You Can Look Up Everything on Reality TV

11611161 views44 comments44 favs

Caution, the beer on the shore is lapping at the foam of sanity, and the wind in the trees is speaking thy previous names. Caution, a rise in the ocean will soak your dress above your knees, causing infinite tears, infinite hopes

The Judge's Wife Part 7

11601160 views77 comments44 favs

—A little blood puts some life into the work, said the old artisan smiling.

Afton Mountain

11601160 views1212 comments88 favs

fog settles over the mountain laying a ghostly blue shroud

I Kissed a Shirelle

11601160 views33 comments11 fav

What do you do when a Shirelle asks you if you’re in the mood to dance?

Fateful Day

11601160 views00 comments00 favs

Erica was practically pushed into the dressing room, three dresses in each arm and a tag saying "6 items. Attach tag to doorknob and bring all items and this tag to attendant when finished" in her mouth cause she had nowhere else to put it.

HEART MONITOR

11601160 views11 comment11 fav

They were afraid that the spiders would crawl up their slim, u-shaped gaps and get inside them. He wasn’t sure how it would happen to her, just that it was possible

Sunday Evening, 4:23AM

11601160 views22 comments11 fav

The rhythm of my breathing is a litany of regret.

Mugabe Western

11601160 views66 comments55 favs

They were self-contained, two nymphs in a photo booth. Maria wanted something different—love to spread across her face like a wide smile, a certain grace. Sometimes she had found love like that at parties.

No Rocks On This End

11601160 views00 comments00 favs

Take a flying leap?Mother would never agreeSo away from the campground we sneakTo show the boy where I was a boySummer day shirtless with swimsuits onOne hundred degrees walking through the treesThe season early with winter runoffWater here still seventy feet deepHoping the…

Have to Find a Way

11601160 views22 comments11 fav

I have to find a way To evolve To become To grow into something else To become something else I have to find a way To let go Loosen my firm grasp Watch it all fall away Let myself fall away Drop this act This weight This mess of a life This mess I…