Most recent stories

Wanderer and The Temple

855855 views00 comments00 favs

the odd stone stands/taller than trees/it protrudes from the young forest/an old mecca but smooth

Turning Thirty

15991599 views3333 comments1616 favs

It was a year of red, white, and blue bell bottoms, chokers, and mini-skirts. It was not a decade of pink stretch pants, pink sweatshirts, and pink snowsuits.

Black Wheat, 4

576576 views33 comments00 favs

They like drugs They are concerned with the self (alone) and they say they are in the world . . . Maybe they don't have this blood that calls out to them or they do not hear it Ride in their convertibles unconcerned Nothing is calle

Jimmy's Glass Eye

12111211 views99 comments44 favs

We weren't supposed to talk about Jimmy's glass eye. We just had to watch it stare at us all wonkie, without knowing a thing about it.

Having

10211021 views33 comments22 favs

I guess it was, you know, a daze thing: He, lightly drunk, turning red in parts of his head, in his cheeks mostly, and his chest, to which my eyes were drawn because of his v-neck douchebag shirt; and I, sleepy beyond belief, sustained like a zombie only

Existential

13911391 views3333 comments1515 favs

To envy faith, to envy love --// is there a fate more hateful? Choices/ scatter like stars. Too many.

Lola

938938 views33 comments11 fav

I know you through the rich dark brown soilcrumbling in my fingers like chocolate cake.I imagine you nurtured bell-shaped papayas,coaxing their smooth, leathery skinfrom green to yellow,while mangoes, the colors of the island sunset,hung with their tantalizing sweet…

The Distance Between You

12301230 views22 comments11 fav

It wasn't that I couldn’t imagine it. Rather, I could almost conjure the choreography to mind. One of his hands would graze at the side of my face. One finger would extend and stroke me, from my temples to my chin. He would press my body against something

Head Holding

10291029 views11 comment11 fav

"...a head dizzy from my abuse."

Now Go Find Your Water

610610 views00 comments00 favs

http://fictionique.com/?p=15392

The Lonely White Elephant in Rome

907907 views00 comments00 favs

the gambling priest stands in the morning fog/red moon hangs in the sky/the army of seven houses marches over the hill

The Miracle of My Father's Hat

388388 views3131 comments2020 favs

During the liberation, a Jew in the Russian army, asked him who had been the cruelest. My father gave them the name of the farmer who had murdered his father, and was later told the farmer's son was sent to the front and killed.

Black Wheat, 3

656656 views22 comments11 fav

(it) looks out at the world from behind a film (it) does not participate (it) is slow to love . . . There is the image And they say they are in the world . . . Blood does not shake their hearts They lie and take your s

Literally Choose Your Own Adventure

13211321 views00 comments00 favs

You enter the lobby of the office building tentatively at first - you're a little nervous about this interview, after all - but you recall how spectacular and professional you dressed that morning. Plus you read through the company's LinkedIn profile at least five times…

To Sleep

888888 views00 comments00 favs

The woman wrings her hands again and again, reaching up to place one under her chin, then to her cheek as though there is some pending trepidation no one else can see...

On Desire

10861086 views22 comments22 favs

For two days his parents had been fighting, and they would tell him to tell the other one something every morning that was supposed to be some sort of slight at their personal failings, which had been inflamed by their twenty years of marriage.

Illumination,with grace

736736 views11 comment00 favs

Jerry peered out into the dark landscape with no fear left.

So Comes Love

12461246 views33 comments22 favs

Her students read their work aloud in class, haltingly, sometimes proudly, and their willingness amazed Miriam. They were immigrants and retirees, carpenters, security guards, Indian nannies, Iranian escapees. She loved their odd word choices, the lack of editorial impulse.…

Not the Prelude in C# Minor?!

4949 views00 comments00 favs

Richard played the piece again, slowly, fingers stretching for the high notes while the left hand kept the bass line moving. Then the theme, both hands hard. The notes on the score blurred, every phrase reminding him of a different melody from a long-forgotten time and…

Reading Without an ISBN

915915 views1111 comments44 favs

The goal is to perform along with Jason Lee Norman--who is touring with his book of very short stories called Americas--a selection from my own collection called Country Without a Name. The symmetry excites me.

Similarities

14121412 views99 comments11 fav

She was skinny and with breasts like a wound up skein of yarn.

Meticulous

987987 views88 comments55 favs

Have you measured the cups, the conveyors' yield? Do you know the span? I am the LORD your God, she murmured.

Black Wheat, 2

11421142 views55 comments22 favs

They are really living (they) say things they don't mean . . . Do not know what they say Take the path without heart, seeing the image . . . The moon rises above them It does not move their blood Nothing calls out to their blo

A Stolen Pipe Goes a Long Way Towards An Empty Pouch of Nothing

553553 views22 comments22 favs

We were always blowing stale enough air into each other's faces from the smallest roundest tables available looking at each other sideways at the same sad time as the puppet show…

The Cat Beneath the Off Ramp

818818 views11 comment11 fav

Like Smart’s cat Jeoffrey, he’s a mixture of gravity and waggery.

A Delicate and Ancient Art

12701270 views33 comments33 favs

He was a sushi chef, and he would spend hours in their kitchen practicing his knife skills, and the speed with which he can put that there and this in that and so on; and she would see him on the floor most mornings, still wearing that dirty, tattered ban

Pig Girl

512512 views6363 comments3939 favs

"In the camps we ate whatever garbage they gave us." This according to my mother. "We had no choice." But I had eaten pig with gusto at an anti-Semite's table. Somehow this had to be undone. Burial in soil was all I could imagine.

A Drowning

13061306 views55 comments33 favs

Her time was spent in its usual way, breakfast, pills, organizing and cleaning. It was just hours behind today; hence the late swim. She was proud she did it, that she went outside. She swam, moved herself in the pool, chilly as it was. The pump made a wa

I Once Knew a Sparkledrop

10531053 views55 comments00 favs

"And then I, and I believe, I alone, saw this small child run..."

Rewind

29592959 views4141 comments3131 favs

++