Most read stories

Chemical Assistance

728728 views22 comments11 fav

Through your veins

The Caboose

727727 views00 comments00 favs

His throat still burned and his muscles ached but the codeine put it at a manageable distance. He sank into delicious sleep and was awakened some minutes later by a terrific jolt and the crash of metal.

For Budding Cowboy Poets, Hot Practices Only Get Verse

726726 views00 comments00 favs

You’re wife’s as ugly as a bitch coyote/And you ain’t half the man of Truman Capote.

Photosynthesis

726726 views11 comment11 fav

While searching for wildflowers along an old logging path bordering a ravine, I heard voices. “Damn, Clete. Where are we?” “I think you didn't make the goddamn turn, Mert, you idiot.” I looked over the edge of the ravine beside my path.…

Reel

726726 views00 comments00 favs

They left their great need behind When they were taken out of the country. They seem to live without thought of that blood. They do not respond to anything that calls to it. They seem shallow. They feed on image alone. Blood does not shake the

The Telephone

726726 views00 comments00 favs

Stop talking the phone is asleep. / It is a resting wounded animal. / It is old and made of machines.

Wrong Number

725725 views33 comments11 fav

He tilted his head at his monitor and exhaled “No.” Minutes later, he tilted his head the other way and more sharply exclaimed “No!” Then he began over the next quarter hour simply to stare at the data stream before him, which left him speechless.

The Pope of Rock and Roll

725725 views11 comment11 fav

Pope Leo XIII endorsed a cocaine-based drink and at the age of 90 sat in on a session with a castrato that is still available on CD.

It's Not Too Soon to Feel Crabby 'bout Christmas

725725 views00 comments00 favs

Call it Chanukkah, call it Kwanzaa Whatever the name, I just don’t wanzaa!

The World's a Beautiful

724724 views33 comments33 favs

box of wild animals in a tiny window and not just because you're in it, too,but I can't really imagine its twirling around and around like that without you. The sleek massive bodies of sharks too are beautiful in slow motion rise but…

What Do You Do For Men

724724 views00 comments00 favs

We were in the car and I just learned to drive and we were in the freeway running at a hundred miles per hour, and after a while we found ourselves in the center lane behind a slow-moving truck filled with small pumpkins...

The Straps and the Electric

724724 views99 comments55 favs

The winter sun was going down and she watched it out the window.Light like shards of glass,time had melted.It took hold.She was held down by brown leather straps and she couldremember the smell of incense and little hands and little eyesof an infant cold on the bed.She…

At the Cafe

723723 views22 comments11 fav

The light on his face from a lamp Felt hat with a black band Scrunched down The nose creating a strong shadow With dark, straight eyebrows under the hat Red and orange beard Leaning forward at the café table, watching A damp curl of ha

'How I Came To Find Out I'm Like Thomas Pynchon and Bruce Sterling' by ... yours TRULY!!! The third born of three. Or four. Or

723723 views22 comments00 favs

yup.

FRAT JERK (1960s)

722722 views44 comments44 favs

I threw my cards on the table. The jerk was playing his classical records again. I could hear that lousy music a mile away and he was the kind of kid that makes your skin crawl. But he had a CD sound system and it was up loud this time so that the house

Seamus ne Kevin

722722 views00 comments00 favs

Seamus has the palsy now who once was called another name.

Loose End

722722 views33 comments11 fav

With the crash of a hard drive his world / was destroyed

The Second Extinction of Chocolate

721721 views55 comments22 favs

Cacao production had always been a tenuous enterprise insofar as commercial cacao tree cultivation had always been limited roughly to the land zones within twenty degrees of the equator north and south.

Angel 1508

720720 views44 comments00 favs

When bees die they die with their wings straight out They die of natural causes and their tiny bodies are bent as though landing on a flower Their wings seem too big for them and they lie scattered about the floor, tilted in dead p

High Court Hears Arguments in Right-to-Watch-World Series Case

719719 views00 comments00 favs

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments on a legal issue that tears the nation apart every October: Does the Constitution protect the right of male fans to watch the fall classic even if they have no rooting interest in either team involved?

Proper

719719 views44 comments00 favs

I saw two men trying to help a pigeon with a run-over wing in London,

This Man Waited on Me at Peet's Coffee

718718 views33 comments11 fav

Way stronger than Starbucks turned out to be.

Your Honky-Tonk Heart

718718 views22 comments11 fav

I found you at Darrell’s, the bar down the street. A place where loose women and tight men might meet.

Visitation

718718 views44 comments33 favs

Nothing but the motion

Cambridge Vignettes (from the 1960s)

717717 views11 comment11 fav

I wanted none of her. But also that day I had just finished The Story of 0., and my mind was full of sadistic whimsies and the mood of anythingness that the book instills: the pound of fleshness. Anyway, I sneered at her and told her she bored me, and sat

Swarm

717717 views22 comments00 favs

I send pronouns on walkabouts to where there are only planes and light

Prairie Schooner

716716 views22 comments00 favs

The town is a wheel-less prairie schooner aground in a vast field of static

Real Time

716716 views1414 comments55 favs

November days

The Sporting Club

715715 views22 comments11 fav

There had been a whore house at the spot for a century, since the cowboys drove cattle up the Chisolm Trail to town, to be loaded onto boxcars bound for the Chicago stockyards.

Coffee at Noon by the Window

715715 views00 comments00 favs

I looked at your long fingers in the sunlight, / pale and delicate as paper, and I thought: / Those same fingers were in someone’s pussy