Most read stories

Late Eulogy

936936 views77 comments33 favs

We wished it had been murder./ It’s easier to hate for hurtfulness/ One you never knew.

Kog Zadare, only living person...

936936 views00 comments00 favs

The poems and the Lies of Zog the Obscure It was said of old, shut the doors, close the windows; get into the spaceship and eschew mankind and every earth and like Neitszche put it "wipe away the horizon with a sponge".Negative 272°C (or Not Yet Absolute Order For These…

Dateline: Dumbass

936936 views11 comment11 fav

Take a ride past Larry Crane’s 'Jackpot!' recording studio — right here! in the neighborhood! where Sleater-Kinney recorded 'One Beat' and Elliott Smith 'either/or' and Sarah Dougher 'The Walls Ablaze!' woo hoo! — and the kids are singing karaoke.

Vintage Orlando

936936 views55 comments22 favs

"Benny can't come over anymore." I was 12. Latchkey kid, but we didn't call it that. Mom working in another town. Dad working in another town. My brother. 2. My responsibility. "Why? Why not?"

The River

935935 views99 comments55 favs

The sinuous river of your childhood. Do you remember how it slid between your young legs before winding away, making its lively and bubbly sounds. You would have made it light-headed with your games and screams. When you lingered late in the afternoon after school, and you…

You Couldn't Pay For a Review This Good, But I Did

935935 views1010 comments00 favs

I’ve previously tried the old-fashioned route to get my books reviewed, calling up editors, asking friends who work at newspapers and magazines to put in a good word for me, stalking . . . I mean, contacting freelancers.

wanna ball?

935935 views22 comments11 fav

There was still another, in 1971. That would have been this girl who had been a student of mine at that little Midwest college (her name escapes me right now.) She came out to Laguna Beach one time when I was already living up in Santa Cruz, and we saw

His Heart’s In the Right Place

935935 views22 comments00 favs

Andy was puzzled. “Why, then, does everyone say my heart is in the right place?” “I think that’s just an expression,” Doc said. “It should not be taken literally.”

Sometimes, Death

935935 views22 comments11 fav

He was surrounded by bats and stalactites and skeletons greeted him and dead celebrities moaned and neon signs -- props from defunct game shows -- were hung up as far as the eye can see.

Neverfull

935935 views00 comments00 favs

Neverfull There are still things out there I haven't seen— a mere tadpole blindly clinging to the base of the pond. I reach for every star in the inkwell but none are close enough— even on toes tickling the edge you'll never…

The Wood Hover (a parody of GM Hopkins)

934934 views55 comments22 favs

My trousers turn when her these eyesights earn is learned in light,Like limn of laugh or limbs hers — do I know her, no? — but gauzy Greyhair ravings greyscale havens of Old Jake whose floozy Wooed, ne'er raised the wood that, pencil-perched, arrests…

From This Distance

934934 views33 comments33 favs

Can you remember how we could each disappear completely. . . .

Beckoning Silence

934934 views00 comments00 favs

Your silence is beckoningDrawing us nearThere's truth in a silenceCome over hereTell me your secretsTell me your liesTell me the reasonWhy happy clowns cry...And put on a show for the people to seeAnd why people watch them and want to believeThat the illusion is real and…

Father's Day

934934 views44 comments33 favs

I nudged my old man's boot from the coffee table and picked up beer cans. The boots were chewed-up and he still wore the shirt with his name, but he'd retired. There were little burn holes in it from welding and smoking. I emptied the mound of Lucky Strikes. He talked in…

we were just dolls

934934 views11 comment11 fav

I had a dream where everybody was dressed in paper. By the end of the day there was a long line of people waiting for new clothing, since what we had on was torn to shreds during the day. Our uniforms hanging from our bodies. We all looked unwrapped. Pa

My Memoirs, To the Best of My Knowledge

934934 views33 comments22 favs

This country needs a self-administered memoir veracity exam, like a home pregnancy test, that could weed out made-up memoirs before they hit the bookstores.

Off of the Train His Mother He Threw a Kiss

934934 views00 comments00 favs

Off of the train, endlessly rocking, He threw his mother a kiss.

How To Tell If He's A Psycho (Online Edition)

933933 views2020 comments1616 favs

Aside from smearing your mascara, destroying your freshly manicured fingernails, and pulling up your skirts in an unladylike way, being slain is a drag! How do you know if murder is on his mind when all you see are his words?

living in the flames, again

933933 views11 comment00 favs

I was meant to stroke, touch, handle the union of love, the egg, the ova with desire. Hurling the self forward so you could handle the semi-virgin loaf with your four flowered gloves, your soft kid gloves, and deprive the night, thank God, of its natural

Afternoon In The Park

933933 views00 comments00 favs

He liked to say that he was taking a moral and spiritual inventory check. Well, he would like to say that if anybody asked what his problem was. He was a ticking time-bomb, as his grandfather liked to…

there's a light moving toward me in the sky

933933 views00 comments00 favs

There’s a light moving toward me in the sky. How often at the edges of reason, the howling desire has taken me. Howling desire! How often it has taken me in its mouth, naked, and shaken me. And now there’s a light moving toward me in the sky. There’

Quick Dissolve Mel-atonement!

932932 views11 comment33 favs

"Find the part where you need closure." said She.

Now's the Time: Three Women of Jazz Today

931931 views33 comments00 favs

The world of jazz resembles the Elizabethan stage: bare, unadorned sets, little of what is performed is reduced to writing, no, or hardly any women.

There Were Giants In Those Days, and the Wickedness of Men

931931 views99 comments66 favs

We laugh at them, parading two-by-two, the elephants rolling tail to trunk across the makeshift gangplank, wide slats flexing under their sway. A pair of snakes contemplates gulping a pair of frogs and their clandestine movements stun a cricket and his mate. Birds squat…

Going Commando

931931 views11 comment11 fav

I have the fear of comedy I have the laughter of war I have the need of a commando To come sack and ransack us Over and over again, O I am a pillow, a rock, an ant A soft Southern deer in the headlights I have the mask of Anonymity Lyi

Death of a Toothbrush (a random observation)

930930 views77 comments77 favs

Gone are the bristles bristling.Embedded with memoriesof crevices that oncefought to hold the spinach or walnuts within.No more feeling the undulatingresponses as the velvety tonguewinces and curls asthe wine is scrapped away.Is it wine, as we stare, oris it blood.Ah, the…

Sprouts

930930 views33 comments22 favs

I feel more like sprouts than cucumbers. Oh, hey. Icame here to tell you something you already know, butmaybe can't remember. Or maybe it's me who is rememberingsomething I meant to say, but didn't. Oh, hey. There's alfalfa and mung bean. I love those skinny little…

They Come and Go

930930 views33 comments00 favs

Days come and go. Faster through the years. Falling like Christmas tree needles, the longer the tree stands. The days will eventually end. Only one day a year is special. Even when we say we are too old to notice them, we do. We know they are there. Even when we…

Life in Outer Space

930930 views00 comments00 favs

Conveniently, the vistor had arrived when she was between tasks. It was still difficult for her to believe that it had occurred but she had the tangible proof there in front of her, within reach.

Meanwhile the consultant is saying

930930 views66 comments33 favs

For example a comet hits the earth and everything is on fire is the kind of changed change that can really disrupt your change management and change your journey of change into a running away.