Most recent stories

Rat Hunter

12521252 views44 comments33 favs

We came to the dump at dusk to shoot rats.

Woman

16291629 views1717 comments1414 favs

When you move to the music of a woman

(4) Caution

10941094 views00 comments00 favs

“You shouldn’t have gone inside,” he said, after she told him what had happened. “I know that’s what you’re used to doing here, with people we know. But he’s not from around here. Don’t go back over there, okay?”

Ambitious

12951295 views44 comments22 favs

Why do men become explorers? he asked. Because they want to cannibalize the unknown; to leave the chemicals, the furniture (and, yes, the shrew) behind; to make their way hi ho into the brush, whose weeds and lianas remain empty of the exhortations of Jesus Christ, whose…

Duck Sauce

15341534 views22 comments22 favs

In principle, Sergeant Brock Lumley resisted superstition, but if you were to stop him on any given day he was patrolling Baghdad streets with his rifle squad and ask him to open the front left ammo pouch on his flak vest, he’d get this look on his face..

Death's Noisy Herald

22802280 views33 comments11 fav

Lying there, with the terrible screech emanating from his chest, blaring from his open mouth, he thinks about jet planes and jack hammers and nuclear explosions. He doesn't have quiet thoughts.

Garbage in, garbage out

990990 views00 comments00 favs

Sam tapped the stick against the small mountain of trash bags, a dull thud predictably followed by a dozen rats scurrying out of the mass. He's started to make a personal game of it — seeing how many he can kill with one whack; if he swings hard enough, and in…

Doll Parts

10791079 views22 comments11 fav

She’s always had one foot on a pedestal and the other in a gutter.

care & danger

14001400 views88 comments44 favs

When Roger was small his two favorite toys were a tiny, squat doll called Care and a rubber millipede.

The Illuminated Dream

14831483 views11 comment11 fav

It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.

The Perfume Of Wisdom

11301130 views44 comments22 favs

I give you the rattle of the rattlesnake. I give you a daub of creosote. I give you the metaphysics of glue.

What The Hell Nationality Are You?

15871587 views00 comments00 favs

It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to

11

10431043 views33 comments33 favs

eleven o'clock spills despair all over our bedspread

The Highwayman Teaches Me About Sex and Death

16891689 views1010 comments88 favs

hooves moon dark latch eyes rope / Bess the landlord's daughter, the landlord's blackeyed daughter / gun breasts dress shame shouts blood blood blood

The Calamity Train (Pulling Seven Cattle Cars):Remixed for the Occupy Yourself Movement

10571057 views66 comments44 favs

We believe in our love storyin spite of the ferocious efforts ofserial bankerseverywhere to discourage us from looking our damned nearprettiest if we really feel like it. I meangranted they do do their ugly troll dogimpressions of…

Little People

29522952 views5252 comments2929 favs

If you consider yourself neither little nor big, remember that anything large, colossal, macroscopic, ample, sizable, blown-up, bulky, mighty was once small, lesser, minute, tiny, dinky, gnomish, weeny or lilliputian.

My No. 1

13711371 views99 comments77 favs

I remember meeting you many years later.

Tainted Love

17001700 views1515 comments1010 favs

...skinny love, skinned and thinned weak broth love...

writing in loops

961961 views00 comments00 favs

Antique pens better allow an old soul to express what needs expressing.

Butterfly Morning

10291029 views22 comments11 fav

We woke up and we were whirlpools of spilt turquoise oil / with wings for flying

Wheelbarrow

12181218 views88 comments44 favs

He was ready for the rub. Tense. She could always tell. The legs, the shuffles. He had to be frantic before he would come to her, his own wife. Vanity, fright. She could read him like a book open on the table, turn his pages the way a fish flakes. "It's comfort night,…

The Whippy Guy

13971397 views11 comment00 favs

He was the tall, whippy type. Dangerous.

The Man Who Loved Purple

806806 views33 comments11 fav

If it had a surface, he painted it purple. If it didn’t have a surface, he painted it purple.

Better Spent Time

11381138 views44 comments22 favs

there is a tunnel / between your skin and the ground / for kisses to crawl

The Deepest Cut

15481548 views77 comments33 favs

Smoke is pouring outta my ears! (And outta my mouth and nostrils, but that's normal.) The Fast-o-matic Supermart has changed their coupons. Now you can't swap them for plastic surgery. So all those tubes of New Orleans-style Cottil-i-Lard dog sausage…

Egypt is Wisconsin is...

12821282 views77 comments66 favs

Regime is elected officials ignoring constituents, ignoring protestors, ignoring history

The Gift

852852 views1111 comments44 favs

There is no need to worry about art. Art in its ideal forms stays safe. Real art resists being the object of attention. It directs your gaze, and it swings in you forever.

Dear Helen

13351335 views1111 comments22 favs

I watched you knee deep in water with a little boy you were hitting.

A Glimpse

26352635 views3636 comments2323 favs

I am everything she wanted me to be. I am crossed legs, chest out; I am wearing a soft white dress—lacy and completely inappropriate to the Midwest, to 2011, to anything about my existence.

the fine hair on your belly

10781078 views55 comments44 favs

On the beaches in the summer the fine hair rose up from under the material of your bikini and swirled around your deep navel, almost invisible to the naked eye, but not to the mind, which imagines everything funneling down into the center of your being,