Most recent stories

Crush

817817 views11 comment00 favs

I like you

Grandma

17641764 views22 comments11 fav

It was a subtle change. Jeffrey's grandmother was never graceful. Her figure was like a garbage bag filled with rounded masses of leaves and the unexpected angle of the odd stick, the entire shambling affair draped in soiled and yellowed hand-knit clothing…

WE WOKE UP LEAN

978978 views33 comments00 favs

We were careful not to wake the kids & goodbye with a handshake & my skeleton is trapped with your universe inside.

How to Shampoo in French

14301430 views55 comments33 favs

Commencons (let us begin) our deconstruction of la bouteille typique de shampooing (the typical shampoo bottle).

Shots Below the Brow

802802 views1010 comments77 favs

His self-assurance says/ he’s practiced in the art/ of self-deception

For Seven Days

809809 views00 comments00 favs

The fluorescents above a constant hum. A hymn. The child lay on the bed as the parents worriedly hovered. Fretted and dreaded. Tubes and wires led from the broken body to machines and computers that fed and cataloged every minute detail occurring in the collapsing system.…

There Is No Glass

11501150 views33 comments33 favs

I'm a heathen in the church of the absolute.

How to travel with your Demons (4)

14861486 views33 comments33 favs

I also understand if you don't think that's fair. But consider this: If she doesn't operate according to those rules, then where are we? Isn't that anarchy?

A Poem Written About You Because I Missed You

708708 views11 comment00 favs

what i will always remember of you is of that singular sunday / when a black lock of hair brushed against your cheek

FWA (Fiction Writers Anonymous)

12021202 views33 comments22 favs

Sebastian and Janice had been a natural match. They sought to deny this at first because a recovery assistance program was not a place to forge intimate relationships. It worked out wonderfully in Hollywood, but Hollywood, as everyone knew, was just a facade. So…

It is I, Hamlet, King of the Crabs

10301030 views33 comments22 favs

Ronnie comes home carrying two sacks of groceries, one including a four-pack of Virgil's root beer. This is heavy stuff. It amazes me she is able to carry these items up our steep hill, nearly a mile in distance. I watch the news on our French cable station while she…

Dream of the Feast

916916 views22 comments11 fav

I’d caught a small fish but there wasn't enough room on the bridge to reel it in completely so I carried it hanging from my pole along the edge of the traffic A fine black dog joined me following me into the shack at the end of the bridg

Anchored Leaves

15421542 views1111 comments55 favs

i.More and more, for Megan LeMaster, each beginning was its own end. She couldn't bear to buy flowers or dresses that seemed too beautiful. Friendships formed, endured, gave out in a handshake. Each deed in life had an immediate, inescapable…

Cast Off Thy Suffering

13881388 views1616 comments44 favs

Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

PROMISES

10871087 views00 comments00 favs

There was a bird on the windowsill, a sparrow, its silhouette backlit by a view of Uptown. She remembered many sparrows during her forced trips to Mercy Hospital...That was all over now...

Hoop Dreams, Harvard Style

13761376 views99 comments33 favs

“You have no idea what your lives will be like if you can get out of the ‘hood. You could be driving Volvos, eating Tuscan cuisine, getting MacArthur ‘genius’ grants!”

For J.S. Bach’s Three-hundred-twenty-eighth Birthday

11141114 views66 comments55 favs

To listen is to feel embodied reason// sing and dance with consummate grace

For Colleen McCullough

887887 views22 comments11 fav

She was reading The Thorn Birds. Always on her side, in a pink cotton housecoat. The Buddha rested on his side. And drank milk. We drank plenty of milk, but, being Catholic, didn't know anything about Buddha. I would sit there. Piles of books were around. I…

Have to Find a Way

984984 views22 comments11 fav

I have to find a way To evolve To become To grow into something else To become something else I have to find a way To let go Loosen my firm grasp Watch it all fall away Let myself fall away Drop this act This weight This mess of a life This mess I…

The Runaway Conductor

14811481 views99 comments99 favs

For another man she raced through infinite wounds and fists in a monsoon forest. Hands tied to her lover’s for a dance, a roulette of paper cranes exploding across the sky. Cascaded into the sea of black eyelashes.

The Stalker

567567 views22 comments22 favs

I found Marty sitting out on a neighbor’s front porch across the street from his house, which was next door to mine. He was sort of crouched down, early one morning as I headed off to work at the paint factory down in West Berkeley. I wasn’t absolutely su

How to travel with your Demons (3)

15021502 views66 comments66 favs

Watch her now as she tries to not smoke. Considers, reconsiders. Checks her nylon bag for her phone charger, and lights a cigarette anyway, which she immediately extinguishes in the kitchen sink.

Cairn

11591159 views1212 comments99 favs

Your cairns/ are litter in the streets

Dinner with Someone Who Fucks Someone Else

12081208 views22 comments33 favs

say no / to me / and devastate me / and I will take it / as god's will / to drown me / in a vat / of my own / entrails

cities like sepia and the second half of the dusk

826826 views00 comments00 favs

The source of things has broken open and that is why everything is around and about. I keep trying to tell you that but you don't believe it. No worries. If you are self-actualized and going in a routine, well, such is well enough. But I am telling you that I…

The Forest, and Other Shorts

951951 views1010 comments77 favs

I am not thelargest animalin the forest because theforest itselfis an animal but I am theonly thing the shape of me ********************************************** Faerie She was tiny and bright andwhen I touched her…

It's Not Paranoia

9999 views99 comments55 favs

.

A Walk Down Delancey

18631863 views55 comments44 favs

my exposed flu-ridden head

I Don't Know Why I Bother With You

11031103 views22 comments33 favs

I think we had parties with cats before— you were Mr. Gallant, and I Madame Sunshine—we would drink tea laced with toilet spray, and you would complain:…

Miss Ang Has a Very Comfortable Life

10371037 views00 comments00 favs

"Is all life suffering?" Miss Ang asked as she parked in front of the brothel. The concrete monstrosity stood humble and lost in appearance, but the locals knew what transpired there, as did the truckers and businessmen that frequented the Phetkasem Highw