Most read stories

Optimum Condition

12201220 views00 comments00 favs

I have hate and it is black not midnight, crisp fresh clear. Unadulterated. It is dirty, poor, gritty solid rough like unripe stone fruit. A peach, mealy and dry. The killing, effete, endures. Silent, my repugnance, sick, eats…

My Great Sensitivity

12201220 views99 comments66 favs

I'm mucked now for sure. No one's going to discover my difficult poems in a locked away desk drawer somewhere after the dying fact. I remember how it feels to be knocked out by someone standing next to me in a simple white dress. This…

Payments

12201220 views11 comment11 fav

What it was for, didn’t matter. When Susan walked into Fred’s house every few weeks and start talking, he’d just nod and say, “Sure, I know how tough it is out there, baby.” Then they’d drink some wine and put on some music, and he’d give her a little mon

Blood In Heaven

12201220 views11 comment11 fav

She felt the ants crawling across her arms, felt them digging into her flesh. The needle was still attached to her flesh, bruises lined along the stretch of skin. Her body convulsed until she slipped into slumber. The following morning she could no longer continue her self…

Me and Frisco on the Road

12201220 views77 comments55 favs

I don't think I minded so much watching the trucks hit him, one breaking his spine with a decisive snap, and the other finishing the job by splitting his skull. I don't think I minded watching as much as I did watching those two boys poking around at his

What Happened To The Rain Dance?

12201220 views22 comments11 fav

The water quality will give you a hint

Sunday Evening, 4:23AM

12201220 views22 comments11 fav

The rhythm of my breathing is a litany of regret.

Tons

12201220 views77 comments11 fav

Drink tons of water they keep telling me...

Rock the Rhombi

12201220 views1111 comments88 favs

This is the place you need a third hand

Edward Ogle the Second

12201220 views11 comment11 fav

doomsday kittens

The Doorstop of Time

12201220 views55 comments33 favs

And then there was a man pissing in 2 urinals, going back and forth between them, saying, “You know how they say 2 heads are better than one? Well, now I get it!”

The Man Behind the Curtain

12201220 views11 comment00 favs

I find it more fun to be a pirate

Nostril

12191219 views11 comment00 favs

The damaged lining of this awkward appellation is just bewitching, begging of the light test prod — OW! and then stern mastery: Introducing the cruelly hooked thumb with ragged nail, plunging up, ripping into and down…

Pacific

12191219 views33 comments00 favs

this orient tide come occident: this roll of wreck and reckoned eyes that fathomless are found or made to find her keep within the tight shut shell in soundings deeper than the plumblined soul these western waves gone east: these…

Each Planned to Kill the Other

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What was heinous about it was how easy I assumed it would be. That was truly heinous, and it was a mistake in the end to think of it that way. But I’ve learned from what’s heinous. I’ve bought a plastic cylinder filled with nylon zip ties. They’re great f

And then we... Part 2

12191219 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…

Let's All Go Down to the Rising River

12191219 views11 comment00 favs

As the pastor of a small southern church, I'm often asked by our younger members about this prickly notion of global warming. They herd around me, as adolescents are prone to do, and they ask me, “Dear father, is this something that we should fear, these…

Dissecting

12191219 views11 comment00 favs

skin is soft and too easily sliced away

Twisting Destiny

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And so, many ideas and stories and wonders crash onto the shores of my conscience...

He's All Man--And He's All Mine

12191219 views22 comments11 fav

My man’s got a habit that’s kinda strange. I’ve got a feeling he’s never gonna change. Whenever I take a trip, when I git back, my underwear’s ripped.

It is I, Hamlet, King of the Crabs

12191219 views33 comments22 favs

Ronnie comes home carrying two sacks of groceries, one including a four-pack of Virgil's root beer. This is heavy stuff. It amazes me she is able to carry these items up our steep hill, nearly a mile in distance. I watch the news on our French cable station while she…

Spider on a Red Thing

12191219 views77 comments66 favs

Equality became the next goal, rendering gay redundant in describing marriage. Gaelic life is ringed with sharing and lent the word slogan.

LEAVES

12191219 views00 comments00 favs

...black birds fall from trees...

Cakewalk

12181218 views00 comments00 favs

She could estimate herself around 30, though this was debatable since she had stopped counting years ago. She looked like a person who would be very pretty if she wore make-up, but she didn’t and therefore wasn’t.

Dear A. Lien

12181218 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

Oddities

12181218 views88 comments77 favs

Sometimes he would get up at night, go outside, and stand in the middle of their back yard.

Handicapping the Saints

12181218 views44 comments00 favs

I've been a fan of hagiography—the lives of the saints—since first grade when Claude Dunham and I were asked to represent St. Stephen and St. Sebastian, two martyrs of the early church, in a tableau vivant of bored boys.

The Answer at the Bottom of the Stairs

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She knew she had missed a step as her body rolled down the stairs. Panic set in as the world flew by her at lightening speed. Would she survive?

missing glory

12181218 views55 comments44 favs

i found her world cluttered and noisy, a place where logic frowns

Coal Mine Pickle Jar

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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