Most recent stories

Migratory Mistakes

18771877 views00 comments00 favs

Unadorned tragedies pinpoint the worst angles of the road; simple crosses or bouquets line boulders painted with car crash smoke or skid marks that tiptoe to the edge of cliffs and then, apparently, leap.

Wolves and Butterflies

25622562 views3434 comments1818 favs

But I do not dig graves, only cradles...

(There Are Ways) to Come Home

25112511 views1515 comments88 favs

When you return home, one year to the day that you left us, you will wonder if you can do it all over again.

Old Media Fixes: Finding Other Ways to Avoid Reality

124124 views00 comments00 favs

It's been nearly a full week since getting rid of our cable. As my lady put it, "It feels good not to be connected to the social unconscious." Do I feel like less of a programmed drone? Only to a certain extent.

Heaps ain’t Enough

27352735 views3737 comments2020 favs

"And I listened, too, sitting at the table with him with my palms on my chin and my fingers on my face ‘cause I love listening to my man talking about why he loves me."

To Really Hear

15601560 views66 comments22 favs

He's driving in the Sierra Nevada with his wife and their small daughters and the girls are fighting and he can't take much more of it.

Magnetic Soup Wagon

13991399 views11 comment11 fav

We may sniff a gush of something in the rush of heat round a petrol bomb. Or reap a gift from the cracked head of a hero.

Hey, Boys, Bandits!

13511351 views66 comments11 fav

I remember one time that summer I was with you (1964) going to a bar in maybe it was Melrose Park, or Northlake, or somewhere along Roosevelt Road closer to Chicago, not as far as Cicero though. I went there with a crazy gear-head named Roger Hudson, wh

Brian Wilson Says

16971697 views99 comments33 favs

There is only one other person in the pool, in the adjacent lane. I stop to adjust my goggles and notice his waterproof ear buds.

The People Who Won't Get Back to Me

16751675 views99 comments11 fav

Literary agents, also editors, But most assuredly not my creditors, Someday they won’t mean jack to me— The people who won’t get back to me.

let’s play hooky

15331533 views22 comments00 favs

There is just something about a thin, white cotton v-neck t-shirt, he thought, as he ran his hand over bleary eyes and dehydrated lips. He wanted her, as always. But he needed just a little more rest. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail. It…

Castanets '84

19641964 views22 comments11 fav

At 1 a.m. Route 205 is empty. Del drives. Carla sits in the darkness with the directions to the Nassau County Jail on her lap...

DENSITY

13021302 views33 comments00 favs

There were more of us before, laying in a puddle cuddling on the floor with heads tucked into the crooks of arms where light scattered their crowns in the morning and no machine exists for me to use trying to find that morning again. Carl could go off the side of the…

Like Trial and (Also) like Error

21942194 views1717 comments1010 favs

We sat all in a muffledlittle line up, on theconcrete lips of tomorrow'ssleepy chin, like all the world's good little children should, as the paradelimped itself slowly by, slapping itself against the young day'sexcitement like a damaged flattire, trying its…

Charles the Bold Signs His Name

16131613 views44 comments22 favs

Charles the Bold is holding a pen.

The Color of Pebbles

32543254 views2929 comments1111 favs

...her touch held such wisdom that it put babies to sleep...

Lost Kites

909909 views1616 comments77 favs

Unseen, he slides through cracks, unbound, liquid fear of mothers.

The Time of His Death

11401140 views44 comments00 favs

…if something happened to you so horrible that you no longer felt like living, would it have been better if you had died at birth? Okay, that's probably too early. No reason to act in haste. Maybe you should die when you're eighteen years old, just before…

Gritty City Creates Knowledge Zone, But Some Feel Left Out

829829 views00 comments00 favs

Worcester, Mass. is a gritty central Massachusetts city known to some as the Industrial Abrasives Capital of the World, and to others for its numerous railroad car diners.

RailRoads

18891889 views22 comments00 favs

We all have friends that would drop everything to save us. It’s the times we don’t need help that they’re not nearly as attentive.

From Eternity To Here

926926 views22 comments00 favs

I don’t know how the nights can be so long when life is so short. Can you tell me that? I always thought you were maybe fooling around a bit when we met, with that evasive bull about your initials on that brandy snifter, with that JAM person! I ju

Twilight and Evening Bell

8888 views00 comments00 favs

sherry the color of mahagony its aroma round, crisp, velvety on a plate an apple sliced thin one sees most by candlelight when one sees so little I saved his letter to read after our Vespers open pour as his mind was…

Countdown

14741474 views11 comment00 favs

My bones will rob me blind, corpuscle by corpuscle.

Lake Erie on a Monday Night

13181318 views11 comment00 favs

As if I should have expected better of it.

Loretta McKinley

11131113 views22 comments00 favs

After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.

Johnny Mercer's Pier

31443144 views1313 comments1212 favs

I’m a black and white figure--out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon.

The Power of Bad Words

17691769 views77 comments33 favs

Her skirt is so short, said the teenage girls to each other. I was 7 years old. I said: she looks like a slut. They laughed; I blushed. Later, the slut smiled at me. I tried to find the teenage girls but they were gone. I wanted to say: it's actually a pair of…

Along the Battlement

12241224 views11 comment00 favs

We creep the hill, flat on our bellies through yellowed grass and stone, black dirt grimed on our bright faces like powdered war paint. We are sitting ducks as we approach, out in the open like this but Cobb believes no one will be watching this side; it

A Night Ride With the Girl Scout Legbreakers

22402240 views66 comments22 favs

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake, drenched in sweat. I know what I need–a Thin Mint cookie–but I don’t know where I’m gonna find one.

Pectoralis Minor

18711871 views11 comment11 fav

Her thumbs tucked beneath the waistline of her pants, slightly pulling them down to expose the eternity between belly button and bliss. I looked up at her as I slid my tongue along the rail of her hip, sucking at its point.