Most recent stories

The Heart Does Not Know What It Cannot Have

23502350 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

42514251 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

My Dad was a ditch digger

16411641 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

29532953 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

14811481 views66 comments33 favs

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

Estonia

12761276 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

17471747 views66 comments22 favs

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

Industrial Revelation

13381338 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

13521352 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

15831583 views22 comments11 fav

Haiku for Jogging

Nine Months on the Picket Line

964964 views44 comments00 favs

It has been more than three decades since I returned to work from a noon union meeting to find myself, along with about twenty others, locked out of the printing plant where we worked.

Cornfield

21872187 views2727 comments1313 favs

This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.

The Death of Narrative

21052105 views2323 comments1515 favs

“Why, you tell a story,” one young fellow said. The expression on his face said “How gauche, how passé!”

For August and Enkidu

13651365 views88 comments77 favs

Even among the thousands of black cats/ in the world, though, he would nonetheless/ be my favorite with those impurities of light brown tufts

Carousel Horses

16601660 views33 comments33 favs

From this distance, he reminded me of a sleazy pink flamingo, waiting for feeding time at the zoo to deepen the timbre of his feathers and hint at the promise of a narcotic aviation before his commune of hens.

New skin

20312031 views22 comments11 fav

For ten minutes I would have to sit perfectly still on the edge of her bed, thinking of Road Runner and the Flash and wishing I could do anything but sit there with my feet in warm, foamy water.

In Season

13711371 views44 comments22 favs

He saw in her something fierce and wild and gently led her to his open palm...

GOT

18421842 views1616 comments1111 favs

I don't know how long I was down on the curb. When I came around it took several minutes to realize that it wasn't the moon overhead at all but a street light and the sticky feeling stuff I was lying in was, yeah, my blood. And the hand on my shoulder wasn't hers. I…

This Story Isn't About You

31063106 views99 comments1010 favs

"This story isn’t about you, even if it seems as though it is."

April

13391339 views33 comments33 favs

Well, hello hunger: what a sweet surprise.

bunk

17431743 views1010 comments88 favs

I bit her ear and / it was burnt toast

The Day You Told Me You Fucked Her

19701970 views11 comment33 favs

I imagined you going at her in ferocious fucking-- / O, O, O, O, O, O, O Immortal Glistening Cock,

Birds of a Feather

16361636 views1010 comments77 favs

Contention over market share/ is bred in them and we are cousins

Hyena Spit The Poem

19311931 views44 comments33 favs

is

The Chance of Rain

19411941 views1515 comments1313 favs

I'm still working on this. I'm always open to your thoughts.

Queens and Kings

15101510 views22 comments33 favs

I underline the passages Momma does in her Bible and circle the same words she does, of the oil Samuel uses to anoint David...

Ethics

19031903 views1616 comments1717 favs

If I wanted cautious I wouldn't be in her bed. She would only sleep with her husband. Adultery is not for pussies. So I dive back into the conversation which has made my dick limp and ask where I'm wrong in our post-coital chatter and she says it doesn't

Conditions of a Narrator

17691769 views44 comments44 favs

Moore doubted, perhaps, that readers could sympathize with a man who had killed someone for a cause or a girlfriend who forgave him. Perhaps she felt that maiming is (not) worse than murder. Perhaps she decided that the story should be about that.

The Energy of Girls

19511951 views1212 comments77 favs

Emma and I were in a shabby part of town with vacant lots and overgrown yards, and I wondered if something would happen as we loped beside Tom, who was slow-witted and 21. We were 13 . . .

It's a Wonderful Life

18141814 views1111 comments99 favs

My wife is making lunch. I suggest leftover pizza. We are going over to the neighbor’s house for pizza tonight, my wife says. I tell her that’s okay. I like pizza.