Most read stories

About My Dad

19821982 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

Vow

19821982 views44 comments22 favs

“You buy shit, it’s gonna smell like shit,” he said. “You should’ve come to me like I told you and got a good deal with my nephew.”

Memory Box

19811981 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.

HOMELESS OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

19811981 views1010 comments1010 favs

Only the occasional kindness of a stranger,// The curve of his back, a slope rushing past me,// Is luminous, the coin pressed in my hand . . .//// And yes, I beg.//// I open my palm// As Jesus did.//

It Takes Three Heartbeats For Me To Fall In Love

19811981 views33 comments22 favs

...and 55 words to tell you about it.

Life of the Writer

19811981 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.

The King Provides

19801980 views1919 comments1515 favs

Our sons do nothing but drink and roar

Common Sense

19801980 views33 comments22 favs

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

Yes You Can--Buy My Book of Bad Poetry

19791979 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?

April

19791979 views2020 comments1010 favs

A riot of greens

Take our marriage and replace it with blue cheese dressing,

19791979 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

19791979 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

19791979 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

Hattie Hanratty Does the Previously Unthinkable

19791979 views66 comments33 favs

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

Seattle November

19791979 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…

In the Woods

19781978 views1212 comments22 favs

...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.

Fractured Memories of Hope

19781978 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.

When I Became a White Girl

19781978 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."

A Traitor of the Better Kind

19781978 views1313 comments1313 favs

Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.

April

19781978 views2020 comments1111 favs

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

Pentagon City

19781978 views1313 comments88 favs

I had been in bed for a couple of days and by this I mean sleeping for fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. I don’t think that I believed in God anymore. I no longer knew how to stay awake.

Finite Automatons in Winter Quarter

19771977 views66 comments11 fav

To my right, blank stares interchange with closed eyelids on an unkempt face. The minutes drip into the endless sea of night outside the window, each time creating a deeper blackness.

Why I Don't Write Sex Scenes Anymore

19771977 views1111 comments99 favs

I’ve had my face talked off by those types (and I’m sure you’ve met a few) who need to say and hear “special” words, and they go "unh-hunh, unh-hunh, o yeah, o yeah, unh hunh."

An Object for the Sun God

19761976 views55 comments22 favs

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

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.1

19761976 views00 comments00 favs

Azure spent these years learning how to harness the four elements and find the four creatures that shackled her.

Lester

19761976 views44 comments11 fav

Richard bounds up the stairs to his apartment. He can’t wait to get home to his new kitty. He found the poor cat right outside of his building just a few days ago, and already they’ve become fast friends.

Mona

19761976 views66 comments33 favs

Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.

A Debt No Honest Man Can Pay

19761976 views1919 comments1414 favs

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

December 15, 2012

19761976 views77 comments33 favs

Already, I can see that, whenever Harold moves, some of his soul escapes, like an accidental exhalation, like breath on powder.

dinner for one

19761976 views88 comments66 favs

no one else comes in my back door but you