Most recent stories

Anhedonia

25732573 views1414 comments1111 favs

“When he felt most loved, he felt most _ burdened.” Stephen Dobyns When she loved him she burdened him. She knew he felt a pull but he always resisted it. They went to an old refurbished hotel in Venice and asked if they might see the rooms. …

Night and Day

11961196 views22 comments11 fav

The muezzin calls the faithful, his voice soaring over the rooftops, over the trees and the brooks,

The Silicon Chamber

12671267 views00 comments00 favs

Why did he seek punishment, if he felt no guilt? Why this empty conscious, though he had done such evil?

Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge" (Webster/Mulligan)

720720 views11 comment00 favs

The chorus is a melancholy enlightenment; this is all I have, he thinks, the only transcendence I’ll get out of this day. I should seize it while I can.

Mercury

12461246 views55 comments22 favs

At 11 pm, it is 87 degrees and I sit in front of the air conditioner, eating oatmeal. The oats aren't soft enough, but it is sugary and fills me. Outside, the city hovers at the edge of a brown out, people sweating hopelessly inside small boxes. In Utah, it was cold…

Gemma's Story

16681668 views1414 comments77 favs

I respect mom, she survived cancer and all while she was pregnant with me, but something about getting through all that crap made her heart tough, like an over-cooked piece of beef, and no one likes meat you have to chew forever.

Until Again

12701270 views11 comment11 fav

Methuselah. That’s what they call him, the regulars that ride my train. Other things too, but Methuselah is the one that sticks in my mind. It seems to fit. It’s not as cruel.

Tap Dancing to Voltage

23202320 views4141 comments1818 favs

Tap shoes are the portal to the opening of heavens that will ignite me with the highest voltage of electricity, give me the gift I was meant for at birth. Prophecy.

Sisters

26732673 views5252 comments2727 favs

The gun is heavy. The tiny women hold it in both hands.

Buoyancy

16421642 views22 comments11 fav

When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo

My Voyeur Life

20992099 views22 comments22 favs

It's the way an earnest five-year-old boy pronounces every single letter as he whispers. Something about octopuses, something else about peas.

V-J Day

17021702 views44 comments22 favs

August 14, 1945.Vincent had kissed a lot of girls before then - and a lot of women after. But there had never been a kiss like that one. And because of that photo apparently the whole country, damned near the whole world, thought so too.He'd tried to get her…

Four Noble Lies

20042004 views1515 comments1616 favs

When Carlotta left me, I cried / into my soup. I shriveled into / harsh mathematics.

Penny Candy

13081308 views1111 comments55 favs

Thank you for the flip book with the woman dancing, bird wing elbows, knees this way and that.

Babies

17241724 views22 comments11 fav

“Your brain, your brain tries to make sense of things like this, specially life-threatening weird shit, so in my mind the grass was on fire and driving out swarms of invisible bees that were stinging us to death. Invisible killer bees. You don’t shoot be

To the Folksinger Just Arrived

11341134 views44 comments11 fav

Whisper salutations to your irises

GULLS, GULLS, GULLS

10201020 views00 comments00 favs

"The shipyards of the soul do not exist." The Colussus has always been a colossal waste, and the riddle of Your Father's Identity confounds no one but yourself. What a riddle, what pills! He was known for…

Tuesday Night

15001500 views44 comments11 fav

She comes in with her white bag with its floral patterns scattered, almost accidentally, all around it

Second Collage

10611061 views44 comments11 fav

B developed a thick emulsion that he paints onto the pieces of meat on which he prints photographs.

The Human Car Wash of Self-Esteem

22622262 views33 comments22 favs

It was one of those dinner parties where everyone had had a little too much to drink, and the conversation around the table had grown more . . . shall we say, spirited.

Madison Court House

11811181 views22 comments11 fav

I call beauty to me With the architecture Of this place Beauty that has no doubt Been pulled to me All its life

Night has yet to break its fever

26732673 views66 comments55 favs

Even the neighborhood houses show their sunburnt faces and symptoms of heat stroke in the glow of their night lights.

the long white cloud above my body

10911091 views22 comments11 fav

Butter me up, moon lover. Remember, I was once your warm and hot goddess of flowers, washed to shore with the others you may have forgotten. Now the issue of the earth gets nearer, and we can see each other once again, if only in our dreams. Just be

The Industrious Mice

12401240 views33 comments22 favs

I am not responsible for any nightmares this piece may cause for all you mice lovers!

Joe Wheeler

11221122 views00 comments00 favs

Bearded massage parlors of dissonance whittle away hours for a few dollars and cents

Anxieties of Absence

13301330 views11 comment00 favs

On beach trips with our families, there were bumper cars, jet skis; flash enjoyments, beach-themed distractions.

Have You Seen The Globe Today?

10471047 views33 comments22 favs

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2011/07/17/imagine_mimes_as_the_mbta_noise_police/

The Escapists

15801580 views1414 comments1212 favs

I sought to feel something. I hunted my mortality. I craved that rush of life pulsating through my veins.

Cluck Cluck

25652565 views1717 comments99 favs

So where was I? On the curb, the stingy, gritty curb of existence, hard on the ass, as usual on the rim of it all, the ledge of success, well to tell the truth far from the ledge but about to fall off, floating on the circumference of meaning, riding a c

A Body of Water Invites All Things

18471847 views88 comments33 favs

My resistance sublimates. There is a long instant of absolute relinquishment, in which I imagine droplets of water plinking into my lungs in a slow, musical fashion, like icicles melting in a perfect cave.