Most read stories

Contract Love

19971997 views55 comments44 favs

“If you guys ever get back together, I’d make him sign a contract.” I smiled, but cautioned, “Not sure that would work.” She answered with emphatic confidence, “You haven’t seen how good I am at writing contracts!"

Significant Things

19961996 views00 comments00 favs

“This is a Kneeling Bus.” They’re all kneeling buses, why do they even have to say that? Almost every person gets off in the front now when it says it even says right on the bus to please move to the back and exit from the rear side doors. I hate having t

Finding the bog body

19961996 views1010 comments55 favs

It’s a bitch of a day, devious. It started out calm and then those monsoon showers hit. The lads legged it back to the vans for a bit of a warm sup. He was going to follow them. The rain machine-gunned the window.

And We Sell Apples 1977

19961996 views11 comment11 fav

I hear the car door slam. Steve, about to duck daddy-duty: Just gonna take a run to the Quickway. "Rudy," I say, "go get in the car. Tell Papo I said Wait."

Vernon, Last Seen In Hawaii

19961996 views00 comments00 favs

Dear Bess — I go to the First Assembly of God's church. (a Praising Spirit-Filled Fellowship.) It is in Maui. Dr. James Morocco, Senior Pastor. He has been pastoring the church for over twenty years. My, what a big change I am finding in my new l

Repatriation

19961996 views1717 comments1111 favs

When he woke he carried the body of a cat instead of a man. Next to him his cat dreamed it had a human body.

He Was Slim And His Eyes Were Wrong

19961996 views1414 comments88 favs

Trying to hide, and yet, what continued to permeate was the shiny.

Jelly Doughnuts (from The New Yorker)

19961996 views44 comments33 favs

Simmi's only been in New York three weeks, but the second night she was here Buck took her to a coffee place he knew, and now Simmi makes sure he takes her there every night...

How the Plum Fell, and Not Necessarily Why the Apple Flew

19951995 views1111 comments88 favs

A friend of mine is killing me With all of her lies. If I die tonight, you can bet it's Because of her. A friend of mine Is killing me with those lit eyes like Twin pyramids holding up her rambling Blue skyline. Look I don't have to …

More Abandoned Sentences

19951995 views2323 comments77 favs

By morning it was over. I crawled farther out onto the ledge. The three year old was screaming like Donald Duck. Trains ran into the night. Several pigs entered the open window.

Things You Can Do, Some Can't Be Done

19951995 views00 comments00 favs

The deep breathing has helped. My heart rate is back down to a normal resting rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 beats per minute, about one solid thump every second like clockwork, a precision I can truly appreciate.

Gathering

19951995 views1212 comments88 favs

In the office supply store on Union, Jeremy, the stock boy, shelves tubs of rubber bands. Tubs with an easy-access pop-top and a see-through container. If Hendy saw these tubs, she would think these particular rubber bands resembled anorexic gummy-worms,

Tuscumbia, Alabama

19951995 views1111 comments77 favs

My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…

The Leg

19951995 views3131 comments1111 favs

They all looked for Vic's leg after the accident.

Three New Poems

19951995 views99 comments88 favs

Letter(s)The sky set itself on fire, butit really didn't make a whole lot of difference. Birdsknew not to worry any more thanusual. Trees thought and made the mostof their landscapes as a way ofbeing modern and yet timeless. It's onlypeople who suffer from too much…

Freeway Deaths Attributed to Talk Radio

19951995 views66 comments00 favs

"I was just coming home from work listening to Consumer Dave," said Murrietta resident Mick Baylor, through his attorney, "when my eyelids started getting droopy. And he was just talking about how Circuit City was going out of business and I was. . .well,

Frieden

19941994 views2626 comments1414 favs

After each piece cancelled the other the generals folded up their checkerboards,

Breakfast

19941994 views1010 comments88 favs

Wake up, stretch. Check the curtained windows for sunlight or that dreaded grey frame that forces the covers to come back up and the alarm clock to be set to ‘Snooze’.

The Brazen Bull

19941994 views99 comments44 favs

History is replete with brutally imaginative techniques of torture and execution, but I am the only death machine that doubles as a musical instrument.

An Old Sweet Song

19941994 views33 comments22 favs

Rob thought he might even make it. He'd stopped off south of Seattle, in Kent, and filled up the tank and went back in the can and topped off again. He got back on the road, to all appearances blase, blase. The montages were muted, at least for…

First Chapter of Rain (novel)

19931993 views22 comments00 favs

Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love. At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.

Jesus Had a Tat

19931993 views88 comments44 favs

Jesus Freaks will go tat head... crowns of thorns for their noggins and so on. Christ had one too...

Fear

19931993 views00 comments00 favs

Vito sat alone on a bench, hunched over, staring at his running shoes. He wasn't having fun. The club wasn't nearly as crowded as usual. There were no outlandishly-dressed or made-up people present. Most in attendance were huddled directly before the band

Migration

19931993 views2020 comments1313 favs

She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?

The Pixie

19931993 views1111 comments77 favs

On the bank of the stream, we take off our clothes and dash into the water.

Noah's Ark, NYC

19931993 views44 comments22 favs

Two by two they come walking down 7th Ave girl with girl boy and girl boy and boy two pigeons strolling side by side two robins two crows walking stiffly like two pieces of anthracite coal two spiders two dogs sniffing each oth

Zen and the Art of Enjoying the Last Laugh

19931993 views66 comments55 favs

What doesn't kill you gives you great material.

july 23

19931993 views88 comments55 favs

I get that drunk feeling right before it starts to rain. The sky is dark and heavy and the clouds break open with a flash and suddenly there is water running down all of the windows like one million pairs of eyes crying hard. The street is suddenly …

The Waves

19931993 views77 comments66 favs

...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

19931993 views77 comments44 favs

There was a time when she could quell the loathing that Fred inspired in her. She could force it down. Back then, for instance, when they’d been in counseling, the ball of hatred had only been a little, overripe orange - squishy and occasionally mushed