Most recent stories

Thunder at Midnight

14931493 views44 comments44 favs

I’ve had it to here you see.

Vanity

171171 views2121 comments2020 favs

=

Convoluted Title

952952 views44 comments11 fav

She came to him with her arms open and a smile on her face; the kind of smile that assured him everything would be fine. He longed for that smile for months now; seeing her wearing that smile that he…

As Faulkner's Birthday Nears, Mailmen Ask "What If?"

11041104 views11 comment22 favs

Before he became famous Faulkner was postmaster at the University of Mississippi Substation Post Office, a fact that endears him to mailmen around the world.

Rags to Riches to Rags: Prologue

16101610 views66 comments66 favs

My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just boy

Friday Briefings

10671067 views1111 comments88 favs

They could occupy the space// left by creatures larger and more/ evolved.

Theology of Forgiveness

10761076 views55 comments66 favs

In my life when I am pursued / by some wildly delicate thing

Obtaining Sophia

984984 views44 comments33 favs

My accordion's name is Sophia and she is from Italy. She was born in fairytale fashion, the way my life in Madrid can sometimes be. A great and nurturing friend gathered money from many friends in our village, to buy me an accordion for my birthday. It was…

Dad, August 10, 2010

13221322 views1010 comments88 favs

Satchmo sings a love song over the sound system. People read books, tap keyboards, drink coffee, eat cake. In Barnes & Noble—more a coffee shop these days than a bookstore—I am thinking about my dad and his stomach cancer.The terror he…

Low-Country Squirrel

13641364 views1919 comments1414 favs

Maddy knew how to make a sauce. It embraced the meat in a thick, buttery ooze.

The Mutes

11291129 views66 comments33 favs

Some people are born that way, and some people do things to themselves that keep them from talking. Like opening up a soda bottle with your mouth.

Something Strange There Is

11431143 views55 comments33 favs

Maybe God couldn’t find His bifocals, and that’s why my check for ten million hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe a stray dog in heaven ate my check. Maybe God went bankrupt like everyone else. Okay, so maybe at the end of life I’ll balance my checkbook. I do

Flight

13301330 views1313 comments1010 favs

Fortunately, when the bird hits the sliding glass doors in our den, I know what to do.

Almost

18491849 views1818 comments1414 favs

From the way she scooped him from his buggy, shushed him, kissed his tears and hugged him...

Tierra del Fuego

959959 views88 comments66 favs

my time there was not one afternoon not / one river not one tunnel not one falling

The Progeny

805805 views00 comments00 favs

1I looked through the window of the drive-thru into the customers vehicle. There, encased in a ton of metal and plastic, sat a balding, rotund man in his mid-forties with flesh that resembled cookie dough sprinkled with beads of sweat. Not only did he defy physics by…

The Grey Day and the Blue Day

928928 views11 comment11 fav

The reality of the now makes tomorrow very distant.

Unravel

924924 views99 comments44 favs

You slit your eyes and flick your cigarette in front of an oncoming car. I see how easily you could be that oncoming car.

What's missing from their bodies is nothing compared to what's missing from their heads.

15931593 views1313 comments1212 favs

What's missing from their bodies is nothing compared to what's missing in their heads. One man in particular, now almost 80. Wakes to the smell of napalm, cigarette smoke, gasoline. Is he still feverish? Will the fungus rot his foot? But he remembers he

The Heart Does Not Know What It Cannot Have

12741274 views55 comments33 favs

“I take him to see all those sexy movies,” she said, “because it puts the passion back in him. I love what he does to me when we get back home after those movies.”

Flower-Gathering

28682868 views88 comments55 favs

I did not understand its meaning until college when I learned that Frost would take long walks—the inspiration for so many of his poems—and would leave his wife at home while he did. And just before he left, she would guilt-trip him just a little by walk

The Last Thing

770770 views1111 comments1010 favs

The last thing I remember is falling below the water, lungs filling with liquid.

My Dad was a ditch digger

11311131 views77 comments66 favs

men sitting on stoops women earning the rent by working as servants in the rich folks yard

Three Bedrooms in New Jersey

18101810 views2828 comments1818 favs

After my father moved in with his girlfriend, my mother sold the split-level and rented a two-bedroom in an apartment complex rife with divorced mothers and the under-employed.

Flickers

10871087 views66 comments33 favs

Saturday at Portobello market. Wind whittles leaves from the trees; casts shop signs into windows, turning glass to shimmering fishscale.

Estonia

941941 views33 comments44 favs

Estonia wore a liver milagro charm on a thin piece of rawhide around her neck and slept with her teeth in a jar. She was dreaming as she often did of the four children she conceived in Mexico. They had  been born in bright colors and dust. Her first child Nina…

Two Wives

11781178 views66 comments22 favs

Two women sat at a small round table near the sidewalk waiting for the same man.

Industrial Revelation

961961 views33 comments33 favs

I tell my students about a timewhen seniority was told by the number of fingers on a worker's hands No weekends or overtime, children — bare toes dangling — twelve hours on the line I look for…

Valedictory

929929 views22 comments22 favs

A speech that could not have been anything but earnestly prepared, sweated out under a hot light bulb while june bugs thumped against screens, delivered to fellow graduates, relatives, a state senator, the high school principle, and faculty representatives, all seated …

Haiku for Jogging

11461146 views22 comments11 fav

Haiku for Jogging