Most read stories

Why I Write- Item Seventeen

11211121 views44 comments22 favs

I feel I am, in fact,/ the dimmest and least wise/ man on earth.

The Demon Rum

11211121 views55 comments11 fav

the Coke made his butt leak blood

How the Other Half Lives

11211121 views55 comments33 favs

Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

Wait room

11201120 views44 comments22 favs

It was Saturday morning."The coffee maker is not ready yet," said one of the old men. Like the present company, his form was swollen with mismatched layers of cold weather wear.It was a white room with a dozen men, three couches, and a large screen television flickering…

Proceed here to read some of my work

11201120 views00 comments00 favs

http://jrleyvas.net

Ode to a Shopping Mall

11201120 views11 comment11 fav

In 1609 Ben Jonson was hired to write a work in celebration of the opening of a new shopping mall.

The Window

11201120 views33 comments00 favs

Out the window, the butterflyhad escaped,beyond my perception and maybe into someone else's.The little boy with the kite stared back,wound his string,and ended his afternoon.

Mister and Miss Marital Bliss

11201120 views00 comments00 favs

The canvas bag lay crumpled and moaning in the middle of the room as Mister and Miss Marital Bliss contemplated what to do to it next. Spots of deep crimson blossomed like spring flowers all over the white sack and a large pool had gathered underneath. Rivulets of blood…

Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

11201120 views00 comments00 favs

Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

Thanks for the Unsolicited Advice

11191119 views44 comments33 favs

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

Like the Goats

11191119 views2525 comments1010 favs

...

putting our bones together

11191119 views33 comments11 fav

I can still see us sitting, somewhere (was it in a café?) imagining what it would be like if our mutual faces blended into the future (the waiters posing as in a Manet painting.) Putting our bones together, our broad features, Bohemia and Sweden. Yo

The beginning of the end

11191119 views00 comments00 favs

(...) I know my eyes are shut and I’m on the kitchen floor but I see her and I’m not confused. (...)

The Ghost

11191119 views44 comments33 favs

I stroll out to the front lawn, and find myself against the sea of grass, painted daubs within the frame of a distilled rock. My ears attuned to the starlets warbling on the twisted branches of the lone tree, flock of wings that find subtlety and shine in the rapture…

Admission

11191119 views33 comments33 favs

I can’t hold a job I can’t hold a hammer

Testament Part 4 of 6

11191119 views33 comments44 favs

We once saw giants in the clouds and in/ connected points of stars, and named/ them, gods. We placed them in their high-halled villas,/ on the mountaintop, to game and frolic

Savages

11191119 views55 comments11 fav

Dream

First sonnet

11181118 views11 comment00 favs

Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

New Year's Resolution

11181118 views22 comments00 favs

“Hey, come on and sit down,” Jake motioned to her. It was three in the morning and after way too many gins the last thing Melisa wanted to do on New Year’s Eve was to chat with her ex-boyfriend. In fact if she had known he was goin

Loretta McKinley

11181118 views22 comments00 favs

After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.

Have You Ever

11181118 views00 comments00 favs

Have you ever Felt As if you were Alone In the world?

Smite the hindmost of them

11181118 views33 comments00 favs

“Hello, I’m Marlene, and this is April,” says the older of two women. Both Marlene and April wear ankle length dresses. The name Hester Prynne flashes through my mind.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 53

11181118 views55 comments22 favs

—Francesco, said Zambrano, rising from his desk and putting his arm around Frank's shoulder. You and me, we're business partners. Regular capital crime buddies.

Writing Poems

11181118 views33 comments11 fav

We bring words together and set them up on blind dates. Watch them build a history together, get married and fight together. Make offspring syllables cradled warm in cribs of punctuation. Phonemes squeezed into existence by two parenthesis. Words…

Intentions

11181118 views11 comment11 fav

As Susan drove the last stretch home, she couldn't help but press the accelerator a bit deeper than usual. Her car zipped passed the neighborhood houses, which were of mostly brick construction, with two car garages and freshly mulched islands of spring flowers.…

Liberation, 2

11181118 views00 comments00 favs

It was Phil Collins on MTV, “In the Air Tonight,” that helped cement it for me. It was the beginning of the end of my marriage. Well, not exactly the true beginning of the end. You would have to go pretty far back, honestly, to find the true root of it

Like Exiles in a Testicle Museum

11171117 views22 comments11 fav

Balls excite our interest because we live on a ball. We travel through space on a ball.

The First Time. Maybe Our Second or Third

11171117 views44 comments11 fav

She sat me down naked on a kitchen chair and fucked me in the dining room, hovering over me, then sitting down on top of me I was upstanding It was outstanding, raw, and exciting No children or adults around, or dogs, cats or birds, no goldf

Dave's Note

11171117 views00 comments00 favs

Dave Sharpe silently pulled his desk chair out of its nook that was conveniently placed underneath his desk. He took a deep breath as he slowly took his place in the seat and nudged it into a perfect…

A glimpse of death

11171117 views11 comment11 fav

It all had to begin somewhere; some moment of time and space which arose in perfection- and dissolved into the now. It was a beginning he couldn't quite remember, couldn't grasp onto- it simply sifted through his fingers, sand floating away with the wind. That's not to say…