Most read stories

Dealing with Sudden Melancholy

22702270 views99 comments1111 favs

Someone who I know only via Facebook and a writer site we both belong to posted a picture of a 12 week old fetus in the palm of a human hand. The message was anti-abortion. You know--how can you consider killing this baby? And the picture was of a tiny, tiny…

I’m tired of being timid.

22692269 views1111 comments77 favs

“Later,” I say to the frisky crickets, verbal cash of the eggnog spa, spot of gum…

Camp Atheism

22692269 views2727 comments1919 favs

We are not alone, not as alone as we think.

Subway Imitator

22692269 views66 comments11 fav

The imitator’s segue to his sad life story was, “But what isn’t funny…”

Luther Loves Lucy

22692269 views00 comments11 fav

Luther Mishmash stood numbly in the yard, dumbly staring at the soiled pair of underpants flapping lazily in the breeze on the wash line. Grandpa had wet himself again. Tomorrow, at school, he knew he’d hear about it. Luther wasn’t sure which was more

The Nielsens (part one)

22682268 views11 comment11 fav

I am one one millionth of a ratings point. A little flash of electronic blue against the wall of an otherwise unlit upstairs room at night. Walk by on the sidewalk feeling lonely, then see that harsh spark of indigo spring from the dark window above and

The Oaten Hands

22682268 views00 comments00 favs

His hands were like that when he was born. No one really understood why. Neither of his parents had any body parts made of oats. Neither of them had even eaten any oats the morning the conception took place. But sure enough, when Edwin MacGrain was born o

I Don't Blame You

22682268 views1515 comments1212 favs

for going forthe river and being blinded by its millionsof invisible fish, all sparklinglike pink enchanteddreams made of rosequartz and shaped like glassroses, who would? I fell for an illusionaftermy own fashion,but I could alwaysadmit mymistakes and catcha laugh out…

Resurrecting Jonah

22682268 views2424 comments1111 favs

"Baby, he turned gray and dead before he hit the floor".

Metaviews at Metazen

22682268 views1616 comments1313 favs

This is self-reflection or self-reflexive writing. Candor but not verse. That is what I write: not-verse. On occasion I write a poem though rarely an occasional poem. Instead of calling it non-fiction we could call it non-verse.

That Godot Guy Again - a True-Life Story

22672267 views33 comments22 favs

This is what happened today.

Cloud Gator

22662266 views44 comments33 favs

First it makes me think about the time I held a live, albeit tranquilized, juvenile gator at a zoo in Florida when I was twelve. (Somewhere these's a photograph, no doubt, of me looking terrified and a gator looking asleep.)

What the Trees Were Expecting

22662266 views1919 comments99 favs

that day is my barking up and leaves falling down story, but in their elephant slowness it seemed no more than the regular run of the sun slightly disappearing here, and then maybe reappearing there, like a lost color, way over the horizon, or the…

Fall Of The Twin Towers

22662266 views44 comments00 favs

Sitting at an outside table at the Bassett Café on West Broadway, I remember, in the background always the Twin Towers behind me in the photographs from that time And the sparrows in New York, bolder than anywhere working over the scrap

The Case For Foreign Independent Flicks

22662266 views1414 comments77 favs

I cannot make love to a woman who looks like David Byrne.

The Fall of Buffalo Bill

22662266 views1313 comments99 favs

It is Cary's favorite time of day. School is finished and he is alone, outside his home; and that is the way Cary likes it. Buffalo Bill is having a grand time today! In one corner of the backyard where the grass is bare, Cary is leading the little plastic Bill to…

The Beatle Suite:7 Beatle Inspired Poems

22652265 views88 comments88 favs

I took 7 Beatle Song Titles and Made 7 Darryl Poems Out of Them"Some musicians heal ethnic groups. Some musicians heal nations. The Beatles healed an entire planet."--Joe Queenan"There was adventure,knowingness,love,and abundant charm.From any angle,they are the…

Conjured love

22652265 views1212 comments88 favs

Love heals. Lovers know this from the start, Yet they may not know with certainty What love is. Not that it matters especially When they find the magic within the power Of unfolding lust, Of redemption, Of unmitigated joy. There's a mutual…

Remarkable Depths of Semantic Ambiguity

22652265 views77 comments77 favs

Thank you for submitting your epic poem I, I, I for consideration. While we are encouraged that you have relented from the ruthless self-endictment you affected so unconvincingly in your previous entry, Why Am I...

House By The Sea

22652265 views1010 comments99 favs

We were young, she said, it was all in front of us. We should never have settled for this.

The Color Spectrum Fiasco

22652265 views1717 comments66 favs

On the very day I was fired from Penn State, in 1971, I was also kidnapped by a short-lived underground student revolutionary group who spelled their own name wrong. They shoved me into the backdoor of a yellow rusted-out car on Atherton Street, blindfolded me. A…

The Making of Mermaids

22652265 views77 comments55 favs

You ran so quickly for a while no one could find you. Finally, you sent us a report. You had retreated to the sea, you had your legs stitched together, you became a mermaid and were applying to join the school.

Hey Jude

22642264 views99 comments33 favs

I laugh too loud cause the world looks good that way and for a minute we both make funny sounds just to exercise our vocal cords and see how close we can come to the line without crossing.

Cavafy's Double Helix

22642264 views1111 comments77 favs

The store was closing for good, and so I purchased a book of poems by Cavafy, that poet of ruins and tombstones, and fragments from disintegration.

Three Flash Sonnets

22632263 views1616 comments1111 favs

Poor souls. Likely they'll be poets.

They Don't Call! They Don't Write! But at Least they Have a Dog Blog

22632263 views44 comments44 favs

“I spent the best years of my life raising you, and now that you've grown, I never hear from you.” Sound familiar? That's the “Mom's Lament.” Mothers have been kvetching at their grown-up kids like this since the beginning of…

Scar

22632263 views33 comments22 favs

Since Patty got the lumpectomy, she won’t sleep with anyone but Cal, because he was the one who went with her to the hospital and wasn’t surprised when he saw the scar.

i am so fucking unsold

22632263 views55 comments44 favs

i am wire i am wiredi am soaking fucking tiredi am sorry i am coldi am so fucking unsoldi am endlessi am statici am past lost time fanatici am wounded i am seethingi am bothered angry leaving.i am metal i am wateri am sister fucking daughteri am nothing i am lazyi am…

Chinchillas in the Air

22632263 views1111 comments66 favs

He rounds his back to stretch again, circles his arms like a ballerina, settles into the couch cushion behind him. “We made plans. Real plans. New York City. Live like bohemians. Fuck like chinchillas.”

Galactic Butterflies

22632263 views2727 comments1414 favs

will we become artifacts?