Most recent stories

Night fear illusions

482482 views22 comments11 fav

Sometimes/in the middle of the night/awake under a panoply/as caustic as Doré/illustrating Dante

From The Plague Year 2020

875875 views1313 comments1010 favs

I went to Costco

Lavender Blur

699699 views66 comments55 favs

Donna and I get out of the car...

Where is His Grave

467467 views22 comments11 fav

She took a desolate road as the wind blew.

Extraterrestrial Bingo

543543 views22 comments22 favs

Let me tell you about extraterrestrial bingo: it's loud. They put the speakers over my head. And the microphone keeps moving. Most of the organisms here are old. And from another planet. I see a lot of tentacles. A lot of auras and bugeyes. Everyone seems to know the…

verses versus verses versus verses

410410 views33 comments22 favs

poetry less than poverty: / fair warning to poets, but a good sign.

Ode to Flannery O'Connor

534534 views22 comments11 fav

Gert sat in the car and wiped at the inside of the window while the defroster blasted at full strength. The shards and slivers of ice that networked across the windshield were just thick enough to hinder visibility. Bane wrenched the door open and shoved

Emily's Letter to her Husband's Lover

775775 views1515 comments1313 favs

I almost kept him on the shelf with all the trophies.

Texturality

593593 views1414 comments88 favs

A.The poem of rational progression is dulling.Make the leap. Go beyond juxtaposition to collision.We like poetry that does double duty, triple duty, quadruple duty. We like poetry that mixes the grit, poetry that has the texture of complexity.Reason asserts an…

Two Drunken Elves Don't Know a Good Hobbit When They See One

602602 views55 comments55 favs

Wait for it. It's not the end of the world, it's the end of certain things. It's not that the sky is falling, it's that the coral reefs are dead or dying. I don't know how the ravaged trees have managed to survive this long with us breathing…

air hugs

719719 views2323 comments88 favs

but all I can give them now are air hugs

Unnamed

684684 views1212 comments1313 favs

The child was delivered, set to breathing, and whisked away before Fae Anne could even catch a glimpse of her.

Warm Day, Virus City

459459 views44 comments33 favs

From inside the baking hot car we watched our father, nervous in his face mask and gloves, step through the wooden gate into grandma's front garden. She was waiting for him, thin and lonely behind the frilled lace curtain. She held the iPad in her left hand, and she…

far outside

719719 views99 comments55 favs

I'm staying in swinging all night Hell not just all night but every night I can possibly sink my teeth into

In the Face of Death

569569 views00 comments00 favs

She put on her hat, and walked into the back area, where she found a locker that held her name badge and a tube of chap stick.

The Truth About Storytelling

795795 views33 comments33 favs

irretrievably we tell ourselves stories irretrievably as beaded water slides off our skin

Jangling Note

841841 views1717 comments1616 favs

The art of boozing can't redeem a bastard.

2 Queers on a Seaside Bench Discussing the Ocean

604604 views55 comments44 favs

An impromptu anniversary weekend up the coast.Our hotel was parallel with the highway, which was parallel with the aforementioned bench, which was parallel with a footpath, which was parallel with the shore, which was slowly eroded by the Pacific. He was sitting on the…

The Virus

679679 views55 comments66 favs

It all felt so tentative, he thought. The whole set up. Running water. Electricity. A vast network of instant communication. Food in all the stores. It was the latter that gave him the most concern. He'd never really been hungry. Even in his poorest days, in his early…

Not as a Poet

703703 views1919 comments1212 favs

She's not a poet, but does she have to be? She comes to the reading to read the poems of her recently dead husband, for she made a vow: that she would read his work at an open mic. Now she is keeping her word. It's her way of keeping him alive or maybe it's his way of…

No Prada, No Burberry, No Gaston Lauvert

865865 views99 comments77 favs

Although it was unlikely that she would witness mobsters racing up or down Wabash Avenue with guns ablast, she paced behind the hotel's ground-floor glass eyeing traffic for fifteen or twenty minutes . . .

1972

137137 views00 comments00 favs

A daughter is stuck between the sun and the moon. She is excavating on a distant planet. She's a scientist or an astronaut. She's a time travelerknowing she will be conceivedon a sanctimonious day.This is the daughter you dreamedof having while you played with…

MOMENT

737737 views1111 comments1010 favs

It was a cruel question, coming on breath that stank of the grave.

Deliverance

610610 views55 comments44 favs

Bleeding quietly

Forever KAP

844844 views99 comments77 favs

She mustn't...

I'm Hoping, I'm Reaching

718718 views99 comments44 favs

I'm hoping, I'm reaching, I'm scratching the sky...

Where Has All the Laughter Gone?

665665 views77 comments55 favs

The despair that comes and goes is here again I saw a woman who was holding herself As she walked past, as if a fire were about to Lunge out of her parts She was in such great need of being held The despair that comes and goes is here again

All Stories Need An Ending

647647 views44 comments22 favs

Drugs, after all, once in the system, demanded unfalteringly more drugs.

Improvisational

706706 views66 comments66 favs

This is not her death. This is absent-minded omniscience. This is impossible. And then again, the inside-out, implosion. And the hall was clogged with bodies; none of them hers, but who could be sure?

leave the dog, take the cannoli

919919 views1818 comments88 favs

he who laughs last is probably a dumbass fuck