Most recent stories

Ten Dreams That Raised Some Of the Dead

14211421 views00 comments00 favs

Dreams will show you a life that might or might not be yours, but you better believe that they've got to serve when you're asked to come up with a story."--Frank Baron, the night he made bail and left town1. First Blood in Dreams Long Ago The…

Nineteen in '72

11031103 views00 comments00 favs

bursting girl there is no moon

Not Again!

19451945 views11 comment00 favs

"People just weren't getting it," he continued, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and hiccuping mildly. "It looks like it's time to UP the ANTE!"

To an Unlikely Muse

785785 views00 comments00 favs

These frail things, swimming to shore, heads barely above the foam.

Martyr

16951695 views00 comments11 fav

The everlasting shone through when skirting the tenuous threshold of the two worlds.

Gravity Does Not Apply

13871387 views00 comments00 favs

Gravity? What does that have to do with writing or with this improbable tether of blue marbles?

Waiting for "Barney" (Mordecai Richler's version)

21862186 views33 comments22 favs

But there’s a special place in my heart for Richler’s tour de force of a novel, his grand finale, Barney’s Version. It has everything — humour, a whiff of mystery, poignancy, a suggested reading list for a literary illiterate like yours truly, the Falstaf

almost

820820 views33 comments00 favs

The only time Terry and I came close to fucking, when she was still underage, I mean, was once when I went to see her at somebody’s apartment where she was baby-sitting. She invited me over to have pizza, I think. Of course, I brought beer. And we start

The seduction

13771377 views00 comments00 favs

1. HeWomen's heads turned when Remy stopped in the doorway — as they always did. He noticed — as he always did — but paid no attention as he scanned the room. Too nervy to care. No sign of Fiona. Good. It paid to be the one doing the…

Carlos The Impossible (Part 2)

17381738 views00 comments00 favs

La revancha! The rematch between the great matador and the impossible bull was set for La Fiesta de la Objeto Inamovible. Red-lettered posters announced the event on shuttered tiendas and busy bus stops and papered-over graffiti on the city’s walls for al

Future

16951695 views22 comments00 favs

Just thinking aloud, really. And by aloud, I mean typing for someone to read haha.

Big Dipper

17411741 views55 comments55 favs

“You’re not in Saigon anymore, Mai Bi'ch,” I said, craning to read her name badge. “They’ll need to be much better than that if you want to stay in this country.”

I'll be Home for Christmas

14101410 views2121 comments66 favs

She hasn't called me in days. Before calling her, I search my memory for something romantic to say. Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 says exactly what I'm thinking. But she doesn't need to hear it. She already knows, as all human efforts come to an end, my core energies are tapering…

They're All Bleepin' Poets, Jack

14831483 views1010 comments33 favs

Occasionally I will pick up a quarterly— As a budding poet, to do what I oughterly, And peruse the pages for helpful examples That I can crib or use as samples.

Black Friday Crime Scene

12391239 views55 comments33 favs

Her name was Christine and she was nailed to the cross of their lust and their greed, and their vengeance

no one answered

10431043 views44 comments11 fav

I knocked on all the windows, on all the doors. No one answered. The television was glowing. I went around behind your house and saw it through the curtains, blowing in. (I knew you were hurting.) Knocked and tried the sliding glass door, the flimsy scr

Continuing Sundown

12541254 views44 comments11 fav

He gave her everything she hoped for, with the exception of two things.

Tales from the fictionaut Fave Side

13521352 views55 comments33 favs

Into the bowl I put Tales from the Crypt, The Far Side and an episode of Numbers. Wisked for a moment, then let the dough rise.

A Dull Roar

15391539 views22 comments11 fav

The other night while we stood in the kitchen locked in each other's stone silence, he finally said, “You're waiting for something to get you to the other side of grief. But there's no such thing.”

Dessert Buffet

15801580 views1111 comments33 favs

“Your husband is an asshole, isn’t he?” he asks.

Things Left Unsaid

23912391 views3232 comments1414 favs

I knew I was on the wrong bus, but jumping off was a death sentence. I was afraid, but by then I was used to that.

Mussel Memory

22132213 views1717 comments1717 favs

Andreas Cappelanus taught that the word / “love” comes from the word meaning / “to fish.”

Intermezzo

662662 views00 comments00 favs

Outside, Santa Claus has put on cat eye sunglasses and lights a cigarette.

Wisdom the Hard Way

13371337 views22 comments11 fav

Loaded on acid, Billy blatzed into a 7-11, holding his dick like he hoped the store guy would think the thing was an Uzi. The guy laughed and pulled out a .38 Special and the cops carted Billy to jail. …

the longing

10811081 views22 comments11 fav

It’s the longing from another life inside that pulls me along by the fine hairs below my navel (at the exposed midriff) and by the short blonde hair at my neck, and by the dense bunch between my legs, if you can imagine. It’s the longing of the love I’v

What Goes Above Our Heads Sometimes Does Not

10481048 views1010 comments22 favs

We floated balloons to my dead uncle in Heaven for closure. I couldn't figure, at age seven, how he was under the ground and in the sky too. Mom touched Dad on the arm. It was Dad's brother. It seemed like Mom was sorry for something…

King boy

21622162 views22 comments11 fav

“He had emerged from slavery, -- not the worst slavery in the world, not a slavery that made all life unbearable, rather a slavery that had here and there something of kindliness, fidelity, and happiness, -- but withal slavery, which, so far a human aspiration…

Carlos The Impossible (Part 1)

17811781 views22 comments11 fav

And so the deal was struck. It was arranged that the empresario for the Plaza Mexico would buy the giant bull from Button for Hernando to fight. Come the Fiesta de la Fuerza Irresistible, the Great One would meet the bull that was born of a thunderclap at

Kinesiology

16051605 views1010 comments55 favs

I tell my doc I’m special, 1 in 1,000,000 special: unhitched, pushing 44, and knocked up. "Call Guinness," I joke, and fake jab his right arm. He puts his two hands over mine, smiles gently, like a father.

underwater with their thumbs

13001300 views55 comments33 favs

And your daughter, Mrs. P, and your daughter Mrs. Q, underwater, underwater in the old swimming hole, in the backyard swimming pool. “They’ve all got children there.” La la. Yet when I’m naked, when I enter with my own body the mirror, the small sha