Most recent stories

To Walk Backwards

930930 views11 comment22 favs

Tom wasn’t crying. A few snowflakes, the first of the season, flittered down and landed on Elizabeth’s new headstone, christening it. Tom didn’t have his topcoat, and he never buttoned his suit. He tried not to shiver. Lynn lifted her face from Tom’s c

Living in the Death Industry Could Kill You; The Q&A

11111111 views22 comments11 fav

Q: Tell me briefly about how you got into the death industry.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Place

728728 views33 comments11 fav

The first time ever I saw your place With furnishings of orange and blue--oo oo oo.

Together in Tuscany

10011001 views33 comments33 favs

Here comes the bus. It’s going to Tuscany and is full of pronouns: he, she, me, you, it, them, us, we, and you again.

Induce Me

11011101 views33 comments33 favs

Life's a beach? A bitch? Same thing.

take

14521452 views55 comments44 favs

THERE'D been mutterings on the shareholders' board about a dodgy deal shoved through. In the rush after the towers' thing to get out relevant stock an executive producer had signed off on some film school kid for five big ones to shoot a…

As a Film Cassette Enters a Camera

828828 views00 comments00 favs

"...only images I can know,"

Slight of Hand

12291229 views2020 comments1212 favs

Our ironies don’t make us happy

Bums of the Bird World

920920 views44 comments44 favs

Yeah, okay, so pigeons are the bums of the bird world So what are a flock of crows working over a wheat field while the artist Vincent is desperately trying to live with his bleeding ear or to sell at least one painting during

B.U.N.N.I.

10661066 views33 comments22 favs

Then I see her walking down the grass aisle: my assignment. She looks nothing like the image I have been trained with, but her identifier is strong.

Hot Rocks

856856 views77 comments66 favs

We go to the spa on my wife’s day off and get a manipedi. A swarm of little women pounces and works on our fingers and toes.

1918, 1944, 1991, and now

17041704 views1212 comments66 favs

Disability is indivisibility—all of us could be its members—unlike its affirmative action forebears who remain underrepresented, even as the groups’ selected contestants prepare to retire early, a distributed group whose specialty is American anthropology

Startle Reflex

12451245 views77 comments77 favs

I’m decades in and it hasn’t gone away. In all other respects, I am normal. Life is hard, but I’m not complaining. The thing is, I am in a constant state of falling.

Carmen Rental

10311031 views44 comments44 favs

But in 1991 Carmen developed a heroin habit and was forced to sell her powder blue, convertible Mercedes 500SL...

Hip-Hop Elephants of the Golden Palace

10941094 views22 comments22 favs

Hello floaty word man / suspended in smoke / chortling coughing with collapsing colon / spraying sounds into the day / making it night and ending the line

John Ruskin doing a Swan Dive

13971397 views66 comments55 favs

She used her right breast. Lifted it to her chin, aimed at the can, and shoved it down as hard as she could.

My Bunny Hop Years

10531053 views55 comments22 favs

The Bunny Hop represented that riot-like atmosphere–in cuddly guise–described by Claude Levi-Strauss in his seminal essay that I have forgotten the name of it’s so important.

Scottish Independence

10051005 views99 comments88 favs

with peaty aromatics, opened,/ and a welcomed sting, swallowed,

It is Easier Than You Think To Ride A Train: The Q & A

11731173 views44 comments22 favs

Q:What made you want to be a person who rides a train? A:As soon as I learned there was such a thing, I wanted to be one.

The Opposite of Fear

10911091 views66 comments44 favs

The rocks were pillows around her shorn head, the crimson stream running from her ears the only sign she had not chosen to lay down on them. Behind us, the rockface stood stoic; below us, the water lapped our feet.She held my hand in hers, giving me succor as I…

Decided

10271027 views1616 comments1212 favs

Millicent asked me to stop over at her place for coffee after work because we needed to talk. While pouring, she said she was torn about telling me what her father used to do to her when her mom was not around, but she thought I needed to know how twisted her life was…

Mick Dever

14761476 views1616 comments1212 favs

The P-36 used for gunnery exercises was twitchy and stubborn...

Ten Books That Have Stuck with Me Off the Top of My Head as I Make Them Up, #2

12501250 views33 comments22 favs

#2 The Typewriter Inside You by Harmon Gentle—I found this one at a garage sale when I was 15. Intended as a manual for sharpening one's typing skills, by the third chapter it became obvious that Mr. Gentle's sanity had slipped, and that rather than mastering the…

some poetry will shut you up

12671267 views77 comments55 favs

o christ/ here you are again/ you sickness appearing in my brain/ pouring smog from my jaw/ my body hot and cold as though sleepless/ while i could sleep/ centuries/ undisturbed/ and awaken, tireder still./

Polite Grafitti

17881788 views1919 comments66 favs

He was entirely guilty of what he had done and wanted that to be acknowledged and understood by the arresting officer.

On Perfect Marble

864864 views44 comments44 favs

So the subtle shadow settles onto perfect marble on the floor of the ocean when the sunlight blooms over space and time but only in the near future as it has always been

Landmarks

10391039 views33 comments33 favs

Play somethin’ solemn, they told me, or somethin’ that sounds like home or the mountains in summer.

Raw Meat

940940 views99 comments88 favs

I took Annie to the zoo, and the tigers got out. The little tigers, that is. Cubs.

I'm Dreaming of a Nihilistic Christmas

12321232 views66 comments44 favs

The mind sparkles with Shakespeare. It's like hearing the rain fall. The world becomes silent and dark and the rain becomes snow and falls like snow and rests on the ground like snow and informs the mind with the values of heaven. A distant oboe pins its sympathies…

Food Porn

10141014 views11 comment11 fav

Thin slices of ruby tomato, red onion, and green peppers joined the bacchanal, wilting in the bliss of chile and cilantro raining down on them.