Most read stories

women at the bar

777777 views22 comments11 fav

“First I had two men in my life,” she says. “Now I have no men in my life.” And I watch her adjusting a strap to keep her shoulder bare. It’s the aspiration of flesh to beauty that is keeping us alive. Cool and warm pastels above her bare arm, warm red

Late Night Phone Call

777777 views00 comments00 favs

When the phone rings that late at night, it’s not good.

Thick Air

777777 views33 comments11 fav

The only thoughts that come are old ones that are so needy they keep circling through for attention

WHEN YOUR HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE HEART OF THE OCEAN IS NOT IN YOUR POCKET

777777 views44 comments11 fav

Her heart is the color of fuck. Not the color she'd imagined; the soft pink of parting lips, the fading hand print on steamed—up windows, like Leo and Kate in that fancy car the night it sank. His car was a dented jeep…

On Strike in the City

777777 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…

The Pitted Leg

776776 views22 comments22 favs

Pick, pick, pick. Scabrous flesh comes off. Goes into mouth. Picking like a drone. This is my leg. It tastes a little salty. Iron apparent. Partner sits across the room, on his laptop, begging. I can't stop widening the pit. Partner goes to kitchen, eats…

Why Don't You Just Take Off Your Top

776776 views00 comments00 favs

You were there at the beginning almost, when I wanted to write about the dead spider I smashed on my bedroom wall, comparing it to the blue/grey smoke of the blown-off fireworks drifting overhead.

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

776776 views00 comments00 favs

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

Death (and a Girl)

776776 views22 comments00 favs

I toyed with the idea of suicide, then quickly cast it off. Death wouldn’t be interesting. Liberating, perhaps, but not interesting. I hadn’t yet lived enough to die.

Grateful

776776 views66 comments55 favs

What I had liked about Harvard before it showed itself in psychocareerist TV appearances and lid-down disingenuous printed psychotopical drills for maintaining crass privilege was the description online of its linguistics department.

Full of it

776776 views00 comments00 favs

My life isn't exactly what you'd call glamorous. Hell it's not even good. Not like that bathroom cabinet, getting cleaned every other day and handled like it's made of glass.No, my life is literally full of shit. They come, they sit, they shit. On the good days, I'm lucky…

nightwatch

776776 views11 comment11 fav

Breaking the cat's cradled cord she examines her fingernails. She notices a crack in the paintwork, sighs to herself. Makes a mental note to cover it over. Cover it over, paint over the cracks. There's been a lot of that recently, hasn't there?

The Back Burner

776776 views44 comments22 favs

Below them, the clag shears open in irregular patches, the lights of Seattle resolving themselves through the thinning overcast then vanishing again by turns.

Thanks for the Unsolicited Advice

775775 views44 comments33 favs

And what is it I’m supposed to do With all this unsolicited advice?

lepidoptera

775775 views33 comments00 favs

The little butterfly struggled against the wind. As little butterflies sometimes do. Tossed and turned around by relentless, uncaring gusts. The little butterfly would make progress, but then be pushed back. Tantalizing close to where she was heading. A…

Hope Is Not a Political Solution

775775 views44 comments44 favs

Hanging out at the Imaginary Friends Café with all my imaginary friends, poets, itinerant musicians, etc. Writing close to nothing. Can’t finish a thought, so I’m composing a book called “Not Quite Haiku,” which is unfini

again that summer

775775 views44 comments11 fav

And there was Kathi R in the summer of 1969. She was from Wheaton. We had tons of unprotected sex that summer. She was short, almost no breasts, but man, she could reach down behind me somehow and grab my balls at precisely the right moment, and bam, ba

Galactic Bow Shock Romance

775775 views00 comments00 favs

Somewhere outside of the future I am seeing Weinberg, the duplicate failed mimeographed onto the front of ourselvescompromised composite grown from a codependent blastocyte talking to the boxes on the edge of tomorrow, collectiblecrystal lined folliclesharvested at the peak…

In Which Lovers Separate, As Always

775775 views22 comments00 favs

We used to find ourselves watching a World War II documentary, but from the periphery of our vision; because our tongues would be swishing against each other, and we’d be breathing each other’s wind; and we wouldn’t be as in to it as we used to but we wou

Flight

775775 views11 comment00 favs

They’re friends, him and Sissy and Raul, you know, and live upstairs from Asa and he went up there. He kept texting me saying, B here all night, follow u 2 airport. Yelled down through the floor. Real crazy shit.

Spinneret

775775 views77 comments77 favs

It's true. I like to walk on the ceiling. But please. Don't hold it against me. The ceiling is cold. Nobody lives there. Just a spider. A curious arachnid. She lets herself down sometimes. If I'm on the bed, trying to sleep, staring at the ceiling, watching her…

The Lady and the Boy

775775 views11 comment00 favs

The aftermath of a lady's adultery.

Sounding Well

775775 views00 comments00 favs

There is Truth in imperfection,Symmetry in distortion.Like a sounding well,You can determine the depth of me--PlumbTruthfrom myCore.Test your breath against meSay lies all--I will not believe them.Here am I,Proof Against your intransigence.But do not despair:There…

Elemental

775775 views2929 comments1818 favs

It was in the last expulsion/explosion (theories differ) that we became OneWith. Tsunami. Seism. Zud. All matter cast out outcast came back like a gangster on crack. What did it think it was? Who do we think we are? It thinks we think it thinks…

Split Streams Displace the Final Helical Index

775775 views11 comment00 favs

Split streams displace a spliced and shattered walkman with no connection of its dead batteries, projected into Styrofoam and plastic mirrors before hitting the brook water. Michael finds way, out of breath, eclipsed by an elm, his eyes visible with pupil

Confession

774774 views55 comments55 favs

As a boy Edward had stayed in the confessional several times in a row. The priest was drunk and couldn't tell it was the same kid over and over. The tiny door slid open…”Scobbity bobbity…tell me your sins…” Edward confessed what he thought were sins, then said…

Frozen

774774 views33 comments22 favs

The early morning temperature was a typo

The 27 Club

774774 views44 comments33 favs

Jimi, Jim, and Janis Kurt and Amy too They died and gone to heaven And fit inside a shoe Room 114’s where they lie Their eyes wide open

London, The Ungodly Hour

774774 views22 comments00 favs

2am

S.Hallow

774774 views00 comments00 favs

Andy writes porn.