Most recent stories

headaches not worth having

975975 views33 comments00 favs

this is one of those "there are two kinds of people" sort of things.

Puppet X, 1

13841384 views22 comments00 favs

I know you, ladies and gentlemen We see the near future through you Your factual face as you sit indoors Youthless In your ordinary chair

PASSING CUSTOMS

16551655 views22 comments11 fav

What Mohammed didn’t tell me was the house was owned by drug dealers and inhabited by wealthy playboys who urged me over and over again to accompany them to the bathhouse.

After the Shark

796796 views33 comments33 favs

each to his / secret dream of the thing

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

14861486 views22 comments00 favs

...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...

Faceless

12981298 views66 comments22 favs

The sting of a slap will be remembered, as will sex, or at least a fragment of it, such as the face of a man in your room who tied your hands with the belt of your plush terry bathrobe.

Plum-Woman

22752275 views2222 comments88 favs

"...when my daddy found out about Jasper, it was too late— mama was already round-&-radiant with Jasper's child. "

Letters from the Asylum (3)

16051605 views22 comments11 fav

She stepped into a pair of high heeled slippers and began to dance. She was Salome, a witch, dancing like the most beautiful, the most skilled whores of Paris.

Crescent City, Spring '97

13641364 views22 comments00 favs

It takes almost an hour before I drift to sleep on the bus. When I wake up in Crescent City, I’m surprised. Maybe I was going somewhere else in my sleep. Walking out of the station, it feels like a strange place. Somewhere I’ve never been before. The

Music That Tastes Like Blood

11501150 views11 comment00 favs

It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.

Leda and the Swan: Paul Gauguin

14451445 views11 comment00 favs

Leda looks back over her shoulder at us as the swan grips her from behind while at the same time nipping at the nape of her neck. She's a freckled child and a little frightened. There's a dark smudge beneath her eye where the shadow runs. The swan

The Warden

25402540 views66 comments33 favs

But others maintained that Billy Navins was a mad dog that needed to be put down and were just as glad that Lester was around to do it. " Call it a mercy killing," someone said. " Put the poor bastard out of his misery, didn't he ?"

Dear Plant Life Magazine

13461346 views22 comments11 fav

I have enclosed a newspaper clipping so you can see I’m telling the truth. I’m in the picture on the far right, standing near a maple tree with my mouth wide open in a scream. On the far left is a rearing horse with one of the local farm kids on it,

the global obscenity of your monthly $100 coffee habit [revised]

12811281 views1010 comments33 favs

My sixth grade teacher used to tell us all the time about how being poor is nowhere near the same as liv­ing in poverty.

My Drifter Doppelganger

12951295 views22 comments11 fav

Looming ahead was another polite suburban party at which, after a couple of pops, I'd say something that embarrasses my wife in front of her girlfriends. Or so she claims.

Shining Against Each Other

12381238 views44 comments00 favs

They keep shining against each other

The first sense of desire

11461146 views22 comments11 fav

I want to own you, even if it is only for a few moments or a few hours, but it will not be worth it unless for that brief span of time I know that the only purpose of your existence is to be a woman whom I own.

Tongue / Giddy

13681368 views1515 comments44 favs

A delicate thrill buzzed my face.

Secrets; Opening to "Woolgathering"

12591259 views33 comments00 favs

Some of us, however, turn our secrets over in our souls, churning them with the fury of the howling winds of a January night. They are eroded and shaped and fine-tuned with the precision of a jeweler; the deeper and darker they are, the more brilliant of

Amanda Palmer

13011301 views33 comments33 favs

Amanda Palmer's explaining the eyebrow thing. An altercation with someone at Roadrunner, or maybe old boyfriend shit to burn— She's animated but he's losing signal, filling in the blanks himself. Whatever, it won't light at first, and then WHUMP and she…

One Thousand Incarnations and One Thousand Deaths - Part II

11651165 views33 comments00 favs

The door flew open, hitting the wall, and the woman seated in the corner across from her pressed herself against the bench. Loretta saw that down through her petticoats came a trickle of yellow liquid, which pooled on the floor.

Easy Rider

12471247 views66 comments55 favs

She stood there with her back to me and her dress around her ankles.

Four Haikus

943943 views22 comments00 favs

The crow in darkness;visual palpitationsunder the street lamp. In the dark morningmy car disrupts the still cold;a blister on earth.Never mind the cat.The Japanese Peace Lillywill steal your last breath.The blacktop highway;a rough scab to cover thedeep man-cut…

Morir Soñando

18611861 views00 comments00 favs

While Erik rubs my back, I fall asleep. I'm not lying on my bed in Florida - I'm face down on the pavement outside Brooklyn Pharmacy. And it's not Erik's hand smoothing oil of cassis into my skin, but that Officer Green's meaty one gripping me . . .

Skinny in her Black Dress

13041304 views33 comments11 fav

black hair/ (damp) around her ears Keys on the table Drinking coffee from a glass

An Admirer Visits Paul Bowles

26722672 views3333 comments3030 favs

I dropped out of college and flipped a coin, a 1929 half-dollar, and decided if heads, suicide. If tails, a life of perpetual travel.

The Nightly Dance

14701470 views55 comments33 favs

The electricity animates my body into myclonic dance. I do not rest. I dance with the demons; I dance with Nijinsky rage. I dance with the fury of Saint Vitus and his wooden cross. My shoes are fashioned with my own fear, tanned and stretched over my feet

A Selection From Einstein's Letters

16271627 views22 comments11 fav

My dear Papa: I don't care to join you on holiday. Last summer when I came you and Frau Himmelfarb played "Wildlife Management" so late into the night that I got no rest.

We All Fall Down

13581358 views2121 comments55 favs

I didn’t give her enough skin. The world will always hurt her.

Though the Heart be Still as Loving

16551655 views22 comments11 fav

With my heart preserved, I shoved a handful of baubles back in its place: some pages torn from my favorite books, a bass guitar string, a butane lighter, a shot of vodka. I stitched myself back up and left the roof in favor of the attic, where I hung my s