Most read stories

dinner for one

19961996 views88 comments66 favs

no one else comes in my back door but you

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

19951995 views66 comments55 favs

We didn't wear shoes in the summer, except for Sunday school and church. The soles of our feet were black and tough as shoe leather.

my father's fear

19951995 views99 comments88 favs

my father has a phobia of dentists./ he also once felt/ that if the house ran out of toilet paper/ he would lose his job.

Close those lips

19951995 views1010 comments44 favs

Ma tells me not to put a tampon between my legs. For fear of cotton fornication.

Sophie's Choice

19951995 views66 comments44 favs

Sophie is a cat. I tell you this upfront so as not to get you all wound up about moral angst, Nazi's or a mother's love.

Fractured Memories of Hope

19951995 views11 comment11 fav

May as well have lived two lives, he thinks: one before memory and one after. And how can you remember someone else's life? You can't. After forty years of living, he realizes that there's no way of knowing what his own eyes have witnessed.

Like Counting Raindrops

19951995 views22 comments11 fav

When I glance at the bedside clock I realize that we have been making love in one way or another for nearly three hours now. I am filled with a certain secret smugness that I am still going strong. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything quite li

About My Dad

19951995 views88 comments22 favs

My dad drove a Model A Roadster and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin with one leather boot up on the running board and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one My dad ro

A Traitor of the Better Kind

19951995 views1313 comments1313 favs

Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.

Siblings

19951995 views55 comments55 favs

It seems the people of this house were a happy family – The smiling faces, the children’s enthusiasm tells me as much. I wonder what happened to them.

The Maze

19951995 views00 comments00 favs

The man with the truncheon emerged at the monorail car's forward connecting doorway. One moment the space was vacant, a faux metal canvas for the dazzling sunlight streaming through a grime-encrusted window. When next Theseus Harrow looked up from his seat the dark-suited…

The Perils of Open Hand

19951995 views22 comments22 favs

There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.

Smoke

19951995 views88 comments55 favs

On his last day of high school Jackie York woke up to the smell of burning books. He didn't know it was his last day of high school. He did know the smoke coming through his rusty window screen was book smoke.

The King Provides

19941994 views1919 comments1515 favs

Our sons do nothing but drink and roar

The Zilch Belches Out Its Own National Anthem To the Trendy Crowds

19941994 views2525 comments55 favs

" Not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow"--Maurice Manning Crazy's alright by me if it's a harmless plea for some little sanity, or unavoidable by birth but it just won't do for tricks. Like say I go over there right…

Orange Tears

19941994 views44 comments00 favs

Remember me? I am the large, dented acorn you threw at your brother, Ken, during the huge acorn war of 1969. You were thirteen. He was eleven. And the entire neighborhood was in your backyard that day. Steve, Jack, Jerry, Tom, Dan, Jeff, Drew. A bunch of the kids…

April

19931993 views2020 comments1010 favs

A riot of greens

Life of the Writer

19931993 views1212 comments77 favs

I am a romantic writer, true. But what comes after the romance is what fascinates me. A lover dying is the most beautiful scene I want to write. The most beautiful scene I have yet to write.

Seattle November

19931993 views88 comments44 favs

He ate husks of bone and old paper scraps with yesterday's headlines, blowing down the street like tumbleweeds now at four o'clock in the morning.He wrapped himself in an old army coat against the November winds as he tramped back and forth, back and forth, up the ten…

This Is Who I Am

19921992 views99 comments99 favs

I'm not interested in her that way.

Animal Park (Part I)

19921992 views00 comments00 favs

“The robin is the one. …

Memory Box

19921992 views00 comments00 favs

Soft voices in private, in the street, city noise violence disappears she blinks her eyelids and I can hear the lashes intertwine and pull clear.

Who you are

19921992 views1010 comments88 favs

a mid-life crisis in 55 words

A Debt No Honest Man Can Pay

19921992 views1919 comments1414 favs

I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart

April

19921992 views2020 comments1111 favs

...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...

Cupcake Footprint

19921992 views55 comments00 favs

once wedding cake under pillows. now fluffy frosting on squashed defeat

Hemingway for Gloria

19921992 views1616 comments88 favs

He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

What the Dark Matter Says

19911991 views2121 comments1818 favs

There can be no convergence./ There is only the talking that talks about/ an angle of sight nothing else can share.

Dust and Blood

19911991 views22 comments00 favs

A black wind raced ahead of the Merbreth and Juko could smell the thing's fur, matted with the blood of men. The coppery scent mingled with the fear coming off the men around him, a fear so palpable it became a tangible thing, something to be tripped over

How to travel with your Demons (4)

19911991 views33 comments33 favs

I also understand if you don't think that's fair. But consider this: If she doesn't operate according to those rules, then where are we? Isn't that anarchy?