Most read stories

Archer

22932293 views3333 comments2424 favs

No one explained triumph would feel like this.

Drinking an Orange Julius While Listening to Pink Floyd

22922292 views2525 comments1212 favs

I was strapped for cache

Hearts in Exurbia

22922292 views55 comments11 fav

Silent Murf was largely toothless, and the gaze from his eyes diverged in opposing directions; his skinny arms were a fancywork of jailhouse tattoos and what appeared to be scabbed-over claw marks.

Passing Time

22912291 views22 comments00 favs

A surreal conversation in a library hints at something else.

How Poets Die

22902290 views2121 comments1616 favs

Mark Strandover decadesa steady diet of dictionenlarged his heartone day it just burstRobert Frosta crazy ideathat he couldbuild a wallwithout mortar tookpossession of his mindhe piled stoneon stone higherand higher untilthey toppled overcrushing him beneath Wilfred…

almost a still life

22902290 views1818 comments33 favs

(a sidewalk poem)

NEEDS FROM THE FOREST

22902290 views66 comments11 fav

Holly Hope had met Latest Girlfriend once and was pleased to see that the woman wore stylish dresses, even if the end results looked like Liz Claiborne had tried to clothe a cigarette machine.

The Oscars

22902290 views44 comments66 favs

Her husband goes hard on her. No blushes--he goes hard all over, not just in the assumed area. He could have Blip! disappeared instead, how would his wife have liked that? He has to make a choice, his captors are waiting, they don't have time, that is to…

Why do I put up with this woman?

22882288 views1414 comments99 favs

She doesn't even know who wears the Adam's apple in this house.

Just One Sentence

22882288 views55 comments11 fav

Blinking, Eleanor frowned at the words she’d uttered. They were absurd… foolish. Unequivocally unscientific, but beautiful nonetheless. The notion of the sunless hours embodied as a clumsy artist struck the student as interesting.

The Spirit Upwelling

22882288 views11 comment11 fav

Too late, I feel a bite under my left heel, but before I can look, I blunder into Robert and Paul rolling across the bedroom floor. They knock me over like a bowling pin, and I grab Robert’s hands and try to pull them from around his father’s neck.

Whites in Hot Water

22882288 views00 comments00 favs

To his astonishment, he discovered Maggie curled up inside the Maytag dryer, head down, shoulders hunched over.

Hunting the Thylacine

22882288 views00 comments00 favs

“Ah, there’s the Tasmanian tiger,” the visitor says in an American accent, maybe midwestern. “It’s called a ‘thyracine,’ right?” “Thylacine, yes.” “Un huh. Thylacine. Extinct now, isn’t it?” “Oh! Let’s hope not

The Open Perch (Valentine's Day Challenge)

22872287 views66 comments33 favs

… in truth I am not waiting, but also flying in my soul to meet her, a journey that has taken me across the span of my own lifetime and the gulf of that same mysteriously mapped universe.

Smiles are for Suckers

22872287 views22 comments11 fav

I walked her home. She lived eight blocks in the opposite direction of me, but it made her smile —I made her smile.

Central Washington State On Five Dollars A Day

22862286 views2020 comments1515 favs

The tailfins of our ’57 Plymouth Fury dip and rock from the stress: Three boys—say no more?—jumping into the car. And Dad, loading suitcases into the trunk, working them around the steel cooler heavy with Cokes, root beers, ice. He slams the trunk lid dow

Poem for the Poet

22862286 views1515 comments1515 favs

for Bill YarrowPoetry is a way of breathingagainst the enemy's chest withoutlosing consciousness again. Itis a ghost dance. Poetry is tobe determined by the plight of bees.Poetry is a waterfall ona mailing list. I've never tasteda finer whiskey than poetry.Poetry is half…

No One Is Listening

22862286 views33 comments22 favs

Bum on a Parisian stoop begging with his big Jackson Pollack bare head in the rain The water running in streaks all over his brain reminding him of a painting he once thought of Man standing outside a bar talking to his own reflection

Eyes that Said Don't Leave Me Here

22862286 views33 comments33 favs

Two friends follow the train tracks by their neighborhood.

Her blue eyes floating on twin clouds of innocent beauty

22862286 views22 comments22 favs

The girl I sat next to said she had just looked up in time to see it, Randy, and it was quick thinking that you avoided it. Randy said he nearly missed it and commented on how Judy was the only one in the world who could discover plastic bubble paste, bab

The Last Birthday Party

22862286 views1616 comments1313 favs

The boy giggled, splashing his father and howling at the cold.

Like Jeremy Irons

22852285 views33 comments22 favs

Usually, you shop around carefully before condescending to see a new doctor, but this time you go to the first gynecologist who would have you, who has time available. Usually, you refuse to see a male doctor (you hate having male doctors!) but this time,

23rd Psaltery

22852285 views99 comments66 favs

The Lorelei is my sherris ; Ibibio shall not want. Head count maketh me to lie down in green patchwork: Head count leadeth me beside the still watercress. Head count restoreth my sounding: Head count leadeth me in the pathway of Rig Veda for his Namen…

Rodney & Chelsea

22842284 views3333 comments1818 favs

Chelsea's breasts are more the size of tangerines, but he likes them. He likes that she smells like Fruit Loops and that her front teeth overlap slightly. Her mouth is glossed. He slips his tongue inside.

Starfight (working title)

22842284 views00 comments00 favs

In the sky, like it was a big movie screen, two ... well, she didn't even know what they were, but it was clear they were fighting. The one on the left, which looked something like a man, was dressed in some kind of loose blue and red tunic with baggy pan

The Snowman on the Moon

22832283 views33 comments33 favs

'Tis a cruel season. I have nothing and no means to order anything. Nobody to shop for and nobody to buy things for me. But the catalogues keep coming. And these catalogues don't bring out the best in me. The catalogues switch on what I call my want switc

3 Haikus for Dutch Kickboxer Gilbert Yvel

22832283 views00 comments11 fav

silent black badass unstoppable foot of God now the sweetest sleep

My Anonymous Career

22812281 views1212 comments77 favs

I signed on with a large national restaurant chain to write descriptors for menus, and I was the very first to use the term "farm-fresh" to refer to eggs.

Animals in Reverse

22812281 views2424 comments1313 favs

She was still alive when I started to write the story of her life, called Lucy's Story, about her recovery from catnip, but it was not the real story. In the fake story, she took the subway to A.A.

Phlegmatic

22812281 views33 comments33 favs

Eddie Dorsett was a dumb kid. Nobody could dispute it. More than that, Eddie Dorsett was a fat, slothful, whining, shilly-shallying, phlegmatic zero of a kid, the lowest of the third-graders for certain and a prime contender for the lowest of the entire R