Most recent stories

Driving Years

13291329 views2020 comments1111 favs

There was a form to it, not reproduction. I wanted to write Moby Dick without a man in it. [I wanted to write Moby Dick with only a woman in it.] But I didn't do it. It's like a seven-year diary, and it did happen. I might write it as memory then.

Oh Captain, Good Captain: Part I

12191219 views00 comments00 favs

I once knew a sailor...

My Wife, My Love

18891889 views2121 comments1818 favs

When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.

Rat Hunter

14571457 views44 comments33 favs

We came to the dump at dusk to shoot rats.

Woman

19801980 views1717 comments1414 favs

When you move to the music of a woman

(4) Caution

14471447 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

18391839 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

17781778 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

27012701 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

12011201 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

14001400 views22 comments11 fav

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

care & danger

16361636 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

18641864 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

13781378 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?

18511851 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

15791579 views33 comments33 favs

eleven o'clock spills despair all over our bedspread

The Highwayman Teaches Me About Sex and Death

19811981 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

11951195 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

38603860 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

16121612 views99 comments77 favs

I remember meeting you many years later.

Tainted Love

21282128 views1515 comments1010 favs

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

writing in loops

11871187 views00 comments00 favs

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

Butterfly Morning

11651165 views22 comments11 fav

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

Wheelbarrow

17321732 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

17641764 views11 comment00 favs

He was the tall, whippy type. Dangerous.

The Man Who Loved Purple

974974 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

13111311 views44 comments22 favs

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

The Deepest Cut

21822182 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...

15281528 views77 comments66 favs

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

The Gift

10211021 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.