Most read stories

dinner for one

19881988 views88 comments66 favs

no one else comes in my back door but you

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

19871987 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.

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

19871987 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…

People Called Our Windows Art

19871987 views55 comments88 favs

Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.

When I Became a White Girl

19871987 views66 comments00 favs

“Actually, children, none of us will be having birthdays this year,” my father sighed. “Not even me? Why?” asked Charlie. "Son, this is what's known as a ‘one-party democracy."

About My Dad

19871987 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

IGGY (Iguana Iguana) — A Novel (Chapter)

19871987 views22 comments11 fav

After he’d told her on Friday that No, he wasn’t going to sign that contract for the cemetery plots she’d picked out—“I don’t want to spend my whole life knowing exactly where I’ll end up” is exactly what he’d said—the marriage, as far as she was concerne

The King Provides

19861986 views1919 comments1515 favs

Our sons do nothing but drink and roar

Yes You Can--Buy My Book of Bad Poetry

19861986 views99 comments44 favs

America has given birth to many great poets--Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Muhammad Ali--but why should talented people have all the fun?

Fractured Memories of Hope

19861986 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.

April

19861986 views2020 comments1010 favs

A riot of greens

The Lottery Ticket, First 20 pages of a novel excerpt

19861986 views00 comments00 favs

SO ABOUT TEN minutes later Heidi arrived at the house with her boyfriend in tow, looking as if she had stepped out of an MTV music video, her black leather jacket loaded with sequins and silver studs, her blonde hair now colored green, all frizzy and unke

Seattle November

19861986 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…

my father's fear

19851985 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.

Memory Box

19851985 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.

The Fallow Heart

19851985 views2424 comments1616 favs

I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.

Common Sense

19851985 views33 comments22 favs

'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'

Who you are

19841984 views1010 comments88 favs

a mid-life crisis in 55 words

April

19841984 views2020 comments1111 favs

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

This Is Who I Am

19831983 views99 comments99 favs

I'm not interested in her that way.

Sad News

19831983 views00 comments00 favs

They got out wearing their crisp brown Army jackets and khaki pants; she saw the cross on the lapel of the officer's shirt and just knew. These men brought sad news from faraway places.

Take our marriage and replace it with blue cheese dressing,

19831983 views1010 comments1111 favs

the brand we like best and buy whether it's on sale or not. Surely there is another blue cheese dressing that is sold, possibly in San Francisco and made in a Berkeley basement by hippies who scrape together all of their change twice a year and buy cheese from an ancient…

Siblings

19831983 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.

Mama's Boys

19831983 views22 comments11 fav

A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?” “Do I know you?” “It's Bill.” The side of his little brother's thin face

this time it really may, quite possibly, be the end of all of this ambivilence

19831983 views66 comments22 favs

her heart just nodded knowingly ....yes, dear

Hattie Hanratty Does the Previously Unthinkable

19831983 views66 comments33 favs

"Hattie? What are you doing?" Bosley asked, the quaver in his voice an indication of an impending erection.

How to travel with your Demons (4)

19831983 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?

Life of the Writer

19831983 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.

An Object for the Sun God

19821982 views55 comments22 favs

this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh

Ancestry.comedy

19821982 views2121 comments1414 favs

all paths converge on Africa/ and Eden, and the fall from animal grace