Most recent stories

Unsuccessful Assault Upon a Prey Thought Unsuspecting

751751 views00 comments00 favs

The fox sees a duck he thinks he can catch. I stop to watch: I could intervene with a shout but I let him play his gambit out.

What I Love About History

14911491 views33 comments44 favs

What I Love About HistoryMy roommate, Cara, wears all black, which she thinks scares me. I've never bothered to tell her I wore all black for two years, eighth and ninth grade, and I'm just over it, not that I think she's lame or passé, but there's nothing remotely…

Balconies

19721972 views77 comments11 fav

In a few brief moments the entire sky became full of this wetness and greyed to the point of almost blackening, and it was a Sunday morning, and the man thought that thoughts were strange things, because he had a piercing epiphany that there was no God..

happy hour

11291129 views55 comments00 favs

I remember seeing five young losers standing outside this bar, smoking cigarettes in their baggy shorts and flip-flops, giving the occasional high-fives. They weren’t even eating their calzone, and I was getting upset about it. (I hadn’t eaten the whole

Weather Channel Music Writer

14151415 views55 comments33 favs

He can become anyone. If he wants. He'd rather not but it's not his choice.

Lucky Tuesday

11181118 views33 comments11 fav

Ha. “Real damage.” The guy was in the ICU when I woke up in the jail cell. Turns out he was a cop. In a small town. The town where it happened. How I ended up in the state police holding cell, I have no idea. Just lucky, I guess.

The $64,000 Question

13401340 views11 comment00 favs

One day over a hardscrabble dinner of gristly beef and lumpy mashed potatoes, his uncle looked up at him and said, “Kee-rist, boy, school’s gonna start any day now. And winter ain’t far behind. I can’t keep you here. We gotta figure out something for you.

Three Short Fictions

23542354 views1717 comments1313 favs

We were to eat just meat and to become discombobulated over vegetables and bread and not to indulge in sex with strange men—men were all strange once you got used to their distance—were Lincoln logs, poles, boulders and scrub trees.

Pre-Natal League a Hit With Hockey Moms-to-Be

742742 views22 comments11 fav

Peggy is expecting and in order to give her child a head start in the highly competitive world of youth hockey, she straps on her pads and takes to the ice with other pregnant women in the world’s first pre-natal hockey league.

Ricky's Condition

16451645 views22 comments00 favs

At first it was just holding hands and talking about Ricky's condition. Then it was leaning into each other on the sofa, Ben whispering my name into my hair, me wanting to put my hand on his thigh.

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

19511951 views1010 comments44 favs

"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."

Men and Babies

13991399 views44 comments22 favs

"Mama skipped the training bras and just gave me her old bras. I'll be 25 before I can wear her old bras..."

Up at Night

979979 views00 comments00 favs

made of meat and born to breed

the last day of the world

11171117 views22 comments00 favs

I thought that was the last day of the world (when I floated up near your ceiling,) but it was the first. I thought I had seen the worst. But that was nothing. I know you had no idea what was coming when I first met you. But when we looked in each other

The Last Bailout

18141814 views00 comments00 favs

In desperation, the city council imported a shaman to exorcise whatever demons had possessed the house.

Where hearts have no conquerors

14281428 views1515 comments88 favs

Let's just rest and let the wind blow through our hair, while the mountains quake and the trees shake their leaves. Towards another destiny, a new world ... where greed is only a word without significance, hunger doesn't belong in a dictionary and money is only an…

The Comforts of a Robe

17301730 views33 comments22 favs

Woman With Water Bottles has taken up a little spot in the back of my brain, her hair tickling her eyes in the breeze.

laundry

17701770 views1212 comments1010 favs

She’d once read the Time-Life Encyclopedia on The Universe and became obsessed with the woman from Alabama who was singled out, by a rock from a far place, in her sleep.

Now I'm not a virgin anymore

11591159 views33 comments00 favs

On my second trip home from the University of Illinois down state in Urbana, it was during our break between semesters, I remember it was a particularly freezing cold and miserable January (1963.) I had a date with Lynda.

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

13551355 views33 comments22 favs

Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.

Boyfriends

22952295 views2727 comments1717 favs

He's Eric Roberts, the stalker and eventual killer in Star '80.

How To Give Dating Advice as a State Social Worker

12461246 views22 comments11 fav

I tell him if he wants to impress a girl he should learn to cook. He shifts his body. I add, crab cakes work well.

Raw Salt

20322032 views2020 comments1616 favs

It was Gatlinburg in mid July

A Pleasant Fiction

12331233 views00 comments00 favs

We pull up under the port cochère (which I am NOT allowed to call ‘the car tent’, even though I built it) just as the front door opens. Jackson, our eldest, saunters out with a dish rag over his bare shoulder like he owns the place.

The Chair

20112011 views1818 comments1717 favs

"It's time to move the chair..."

I

13141314 views1111 comments44 favs

I thought of you todayand what you put me throughthe time you saidwe couldn't rest.

Hoping For Bones

13111311 views33 comments22 favs

In the backyard with Joey, I make the mistake of answering him honestly when he asks what the gray brick in the dirt is for. “My parakeet is buried there,” I say. And he asks, “can we dig it up?”Joey's grandma lives down the street; he comes over…

(I don’t know how the nights can be so long when life is so short)

14751475 views55 comments22 favs

But I think what I remember most was Lynda really letting me have it. “Right now I’m seeing this married farmer out in Western Illinois. I met him at this bar out there called the Peppermint Lounge. Boy, they sure know me out there! Funny how every town

Cat Haikus

12461246 views11 comment11 fav

You have more names Than a Spanish grandee. Your lives I’m too envious to count.

Ethnomathematics

14961496 views33 comments22 favs

His academic nightmare is set in an examination hall, where the student takes a seat at a folding table in the center of the room.