Most read stories

THE ROOF NEEDS REPAIRED & ALL YOU CAN THINK OF IS RAIN, RAIN, RAIN

10061006 views00 comments00 favs

no, you said. like how the moon strangles with the side we can't see.

LLC

10061006 views22 comments00 favs

The formula is fucked.

the plight continues

10061006 views11 comment00 favs

but at least I wasn't drinking as much anymore.

I'm Just Not Interested

10061006 views44 comments11 fav

in making your sad blown apart hearts rise up and squeeze out the kindness juices ever so sweetly anymore. Tried that. Didn't work out too well, not for me, wasn't a BIG time of waste, but did eat up some important wee…

Agrarian Joys of Ornamental Lawns

10061006 views77 comments66 favs

The leaves/ that clung through February/ fall, dung brown,

The Story Teller

10061006 views00 comments00 favs

I would read her stories on quiet summer days as we sat along the river, just the two of us stretched out in the tall grass, hidden in the shade of the pine trees lining the banks of the Mullica while a gentle breeze cooled our skin. She liked the way I read to…

On Strike in the City

10061006 views11 comment11 fav

The first day of the Steamfitters and Pipewranglers Local 175 strike was exhilarating. Every man (accurate; there were no women in the union) showed his support outside the Willgarden High Rise Corporation's company headquarters on Fifth Avenue, shaking unreadable signs…

in the bad dreams of bums under the freeway overpass

10061006 views22 comments11 fav

In the bad dreams of bums living under the freeway overpass dwells the laughing gas of their previous lives the humorous opium operas of unsatisfactory whore-wars and the open sores of ether-filled balloons in the bad dreams of bums under

The Summer They Walked On the Moon

10061006 views22 comments00 favs

That summer I fucked Kathi R. from Wheaton, as much as I could. She called me Professor Obsessor. She was short and practically without tits, but must have had the longest arms, because she could somehow reach down around my ass while I was on top and she

Still Life

10061006 views33 comments22 favs

They called him Camel because of his humped back.

Bananas

10061006 views00 comments00 favs

Dog winged the monkey's gerdonderplonk just past ceremony. Winkle-wizzened water garglers awoke wanderjanked while apple-gated confederates slept on. Rusty pipe smack-down cancelled water lily gumbo's two o'clock and Patsy sang Crazy for the millionth time.…

The new year begins

10061006 views22 comments11 fav

martyred young women lie in hospital beds

The Confounded

10061006 views22 comments11 fav

Your left hand cups your balls which are drawn up tight under a turgid fireplug cock. Your right hovers over your temple, thumb cocked at the cheek. Your eyes are dreamy, mouth wry, chest and belly furry and fat. You're a picture in a file on my desktop on which…

mythical son

10061006 views33 comments22 favs

I would have given your son to you. I would have had him in a heartbeat. And I would have showed him your inner beauty, even though you were absent. I would have hidden nothing from his nature. I would have given him everything and anything he needed, s

narcissus, remember me

10051005 views22 comments00 favs

You were never at all like Narcissus, trying to remember girls’ names with marble in their eyes. You never adored your own image, looking at yourself in the river, not like I did (looking in the mirror that brings sleep.) I remember you admiring the dre

Wilbur

10051005 views00 comments00 favs

This girl who looks about ten years old and her Pomeranian puppy are staring at my left arm and my right hand keeps filling out the form and I know I shouldn't but I say what she's been begging me to for the last half hour: It wasn't Wilbur. It was a woman. A girl,…

When I Met Sally

10051005 views11 comment11 fav

When I met Sally I was all Unsuspecting Of what powers Might be found In this world and In a woman.

A Measure of How Far Behind We Are + Anecdotes from Recent Rambles

10051005 views1010 comments55 favs

[T]he Thwaites Glacier . . . still exists as of August 2021, though probably with at least five hundred and twenty fewer gigatons of ice mass than in August 2011.

Proceed here to read some of my work

10051005 views00 comments00 favs

http://jrleyvas.net

It Was the Heart of the Sixties

10051005 views55 comments11 fav

I remember Freddie K bringing these fat Thai joints back with him from Viet Nam, and just one of those things would get us all so stoned at parties in Jolene’s upstairs apartment that we felt as if we could float down the long flight of stairs like we w

One Man's Post

10051005 views22 comments11 fav

There was a bottleneck ahead. We slowed down single-file, me behind, to wait our turn to pass the doorway of a vacant storefront church. In it, a lone black man sat atop an empty plastic milk crate. Nobody looked at him; they were all slowing down and cro

Fall From Grace

10051005 views00 comments00 favs

My usual angel fell from the ceiling and onto the couch.

A Pantry of Unusual Sounds

10051005 views22 comments11 fav

The cabinets in D’s kitchen are a pantry of unusual sounds. It is where they are stored.

Floozy Walks Into a Bar

10051005 views22 comments11 fav

Floozy Walks Into a Bar Toting a handbag the size of a small suitcase Because you never know Floozy Walks Into a Bar Dragging her reputation behind her And everyone looks behind her too Floozy Walks Into a Bar To test the temperature of

Disparity

10051005 views00 comments00 favs

These were strange realizations, and each built upon the one before until I was completely mystified and unsettled in my life.

Dinner at Wendy's

10051005 views44 comments22 favs

bodacious Titten.

Annabelle

10051005 views22 comments00 favs

Jess threw her books on the bed then grabbed a notebook from a shelf and slammed it onto a writing table. It made a hard pop gunshot sound. Flinging open the book, a page tore. Her diaries were named Annabelle. It was with a blue felt tip pen that she wrote: …

Fill In the Void

10041004 views55 comments22 favs

I’m not in the habit of just hanging out on the corner handing out “free stuff,” you know. I figured it was going to cost you. But I was wrong. It cost me instead. You can only float near the ceiling when you’ve become an emptied vessel. No hope or

Florence, of Irvine

10041004 views22 comments00 favs

she said, point blank, “Can you help me? I need a lover, and a friend.” “I can be both,” I said. I don’t know, I just opened my mouth and out it flew. You don’t even stop to think what you might be saying at a moment like that. I mean, she knew I was s

Midnight in Arizona

10041004 views33 comments11 fav

I am in a war against the literal. I have sewn these words together to make a stand of birch. I wander the earth gathering moon shadows and swords. Kerosene dots punctuate the Dakota night. An apparition of words hops through a calculus problem and falls into a…