Most recent stories

This Is Why I Loved You

18121812 views1111 comments66 favs

Your opal eyesYour sea-blue eyesYour sky-blue eyesYour ice-blue eyesYour gray-blue eyes, your periwinklesYour hazel eyesYour violet eyes(almond-shaped and almost cubist)Your indigo eyesYour topaz eyes, your sunkissed lashesYour turtle-sundae eyes.I loved your black shiny…

boomeander

14641464 views11 comment11 fav

A CEO would also be a an EOC, only inside-out and backward. But upside-down, both are still what they are.

The Case For Foreign Independent Flicks

18431843 views1414 comments77 favs

I cannot make love to a woman who looks like David Byrne.

The Ouija Board Guide to True Facts about Cremation

16041604 views00 comments00 favs

Oh, and take off all your jewelry unless you want your relatives sifting you through a window screen looking for your diamond.

My First Post-9/11 Dream: In Which I Discover Life After Death

13461346 views00 comments00 favs

January 3rd EST/January 2nd PST 2002 It's 1:45 am or 10:45 pm depending on your philosophy about changing your watch when you fly. My plane is scheduled to land in San Francisco soon, but I'm completely disoriented because I've just had my first post-9/11 dream. …

Roots

13241324 views55 comments77 favs

My grandmother didn't like fireworks much. She said they reminded her of the raids during the war, when everybody stayed in the tube tunnels at night, going in buckets and curling up on the tracks.

Petunias

21222122 views2828 comments99 favs

People huddle in their basements like kittens. People laugh, darkly, saying they'd rather be surfing. People wonder if their batteries are charged. People never do get what they want. People grow tired of the sad dog following them around. People want you to know how…

Getting to Work

12731273 views1010 comments22 favs

And I don't know how long it will be until she comes outside and figures it all out. Figures me out.

See Jane

18421842 views3232 comments1111 favs

Jane watched her mother remove her wedding ring with butter.

Sack of Meat

15571557 views1515 comments33 favs

The Nurse left work at five o’clock, walking down Dekalb Avenue toward Flatbush. He didn’t frequent the bar closest to the hospital, although he guessed other nurses and doctors from Brooklyn Hospital did. But he liked to pretend that he cared about h

Florida

14331433 views66 comments66 favs

Now, at last, she finds what she's been searching for. Worms. Like bitty pale larva, like half-moons of air trapped under fingernails. She thinks she sees one twitch; she blinks more furiously and hates herself for it.

Grand Union

10201020 views22 comments00 favs

She suggested just moving in together. A lot less constrained by convention she, on occasion, did not wear a bra.

Threesome

18981898 views99 comments66 favs

Six kinds of crazy, he said. That told me everything. It told me enough.

Trumpet Voluntary

13941394 views99 comments22 favs

"There's a concert next month," Sherry said. "Why don't you come to that and I'll introduce you? Then we can go from there."

Ghostriders and rainbows

12131213 views44 comments22 favs

Ghostriders in the syand rainbows in my mindor was itrainbow in the skyghostriders in my mind?I can't remember ...And apparently this body is not 200 characters long, so I add some text so this pearl too can be read (ahum) My body is only 170 characters long, snif,…

The Telescope

34813481 views1111 comments33 favs

The man meets a woman while out on his lunch break. She seems nice; they strike up a conversation. Before leaving, the woman gives the man her telephone number. The man goes home and thinks about it. It’s been a long time since he’s been on a date.

Lisa

14331433 views44 comments11 fav

She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no. She didn’t say anything. So I helped her to the car and we didn’t talk along the way.

Thicket

13211321 views1010 comments33 favs

Through the window, I see the police. Lots of them, trampling down the blackberry brambles. Something reeks.

Corrections & Clarifications

12431243 views1515 comments22 favs

It was Fredrick Miller, not his murdered son Matthew, who was executed Monday night at Henshaw Prison. (the system won't take anything under 200 characters, so this part is just to take up space. please ignore)

Missy

17601760 views1313 comments77 favs

If I had a daughter, this it how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she'd be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, and I'd see in her eyes, which would be my eyes, that she was starting to hate me, and I'd

Taunting the Tiger

12601260 views00 comments00 favs

I was headed back inside my den since these creeps just wouldn’t stop and thought they were the most hilarious creatures on the face of the earth, and I was afraid, to be honest, that one of their missiles might hit me in the eye. That’s when I n

If Everything is Inevitable

23442344 views1616 comments99 favs

Christine comes back from the future looking tired, which is the opposite of what I expected. For some reason, I imagined the future as being invigorating. But she walks into the apartment and abandons her suitcase by the front door, collapses into a heap on the couch next…

Three

14921492 views1111 comments44 favs

Men and their inevitable disappointments—sure, why not?

Intangible Vectors of Influence (from "Emergency: Three Romances")

12741274 views11 comment00 favs

The young cop says, “Sorry ma’am, you’ll have to wait.” In the strobing red-blue glare he looks like a teenager. Melissa wonders if Tony had looked so young when he started, all those years ago.

Twine

21182118 views1818 comments99 favs

I thought of driving over there across town, steering with buttered hands.

Already Dead

15031503 views1313 comments55 favs

It was already dead and was hanging from her ceiling.

On Living in New York City in 2009, After Watching a Documentary on New York City in the Late 1800s

13981398 views44 comments22 favs

God's honest truth, I wake up every morning when my clock punches out its dulcet, insistent clangs, a setting called Ultra Zen Up & Out. I brush my teeth with a blue dollar store toothbrush and watch one of the five morning TV shows designed to let me know the weather…

This Life

783783 views22 comments00 favs

Me and the wife are tucked away in our little house.

The Book

70977097 views2020 comments1717 favs

The woman returns from the store with an armload of books. She reads them quickly, one by one, over the course of the next few weeks. But when she opens the last one, the woman frowns in surprise. All the pages in the book are blank. Every single one.

Animal Shadows

13491349 views22 comments00 favs

One day when they were sitting on the curb together at 4th Street and Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa and Joe was calling out to passers by in a singsong voice, “Spare change for cigs,” she had persuaded them that they should try to join the circus.