Recommended stories

Pain as Mnemonic Device

13521352 views77 comments77 favs

If something hurts enough/ you never forget it. Like the// toothache when you first learned

Tangerine Slip Cat

15291529 views88 comments66 favs

I knew my cat was capable of telepathy when I began to have isolated, random, non-cause-related thoughts about food and feelings, little signals, and I realized that the signs — images of tangerines, tuna, bones; the idea of choice; slate, names; the feeling of…

INGOB

15621562 views66 comments55 favs

They think Van Gogh heard music when he looked at his starry nights. Working at a Bingo parlor, you get to believing in a one-in-a-million shot just as much as you doubt the rarity of a sure thing. I only worked part time at the bingo parlor because I ne

Honeycomb

14621462 views1111 comments77 favs

No bustling inside No extruded amber Wings onyx straight jackets A low hum of displeasure.

Core Values

11401140 views77 comments77 favs

Over dinner last evening she said things have to change because she can never be happy with our lives being so concentric and I knew she meant that while we share the common core of marriage, she felt she was a small circle and I was a larger one, enveloping her,…

Christmas

14831483 views1010 comments66 favs

My first girlfriend had blue Christmas lights strung on trees in front of her stone house. My family had all gone to bed. When midnight came, it was snowing.

Lives and their rivers

14721472 views77 comments66 favs

The pristine Hudson's/waters dance in the dark of/the East River's rinse.

Just Yesterday

946946 views99 comments66 favs

midnight mooring

Roses

14461446 views88 comments66 favs

Your laugh used to startle the nurses.

Hard Time

108108 views1919 comments55 favs

Obesity in America is now considered a felony, thanks to Michelle Obama's biceps and weight obsession. They've sent me to couch potato prison where I'm doing hard time in a dark corner of an unfinished basement filled with cobwebs that…

Milkmen

13731373 views77 comments77 favs

I can barely pick out the numbers on the houses

Orbital Mechanics/ National Poetry Month 2014/ 30 poems

10511051 views99 comments66 favs

Captain Nemo never died./ He cruises all the seven seas/ below the waves in Nautilus 2,

The Committee

15611561 views88 comments66 favs

We are prisoners of anticipation.

November Light

13281328 views1111 comments66 favs

the neighborhood glistens, silver,/ in an otherwise sad November/ light

Dubious Appetite

981981 views77 comments77 favs

Looking back now, examining from a distance the sequence of events I failed to connect as anything beyond queer happenstance...

D.H. Lawrence Ghazal

13701370 views88 comments77 favs

How many shadows in your soul? Close your eyes, my love, let me / make you blind as the wings of a drenched, drowned bee.

even from the moon

13861386 views88 comments44 favs

even from the moon our planet’s truth has not been seen.

version

13831383 views99 comments66 favs

THIS is what happened — the dead went into remission. Dated may 10 2010. Or it could have been some other day. They were going to be restored later. That's what we were being told. The dead were being given stones to mark their remission. They were getting…

Attila the Bun and the Lost Paradigm

15661566 views1010 comments66 favs

I had a meeting with the editor of a well-known magazine. She said, “I think your paradigm got stuck up your monomyth.” “Oh dear. Is that bad?” “Bad? You want to be a writer, don't you?” “Well, I did. I'm not so sure now.…

HOTEL PEOPLE

14451445 views44 comments22 favs

It's 6:45 a.m. A gritty, mundane sort of magic pervades the air at "Valentine’s" in the Hamilton Hotel.

What the heart is

16941694 views55 comments66 favs

The heart is a toothed hole that cannot be filled.

my love for you

12661266 views99 comments66 favs

my love for you/ is like the falling snow

Drifting

10551055 views1212 comments66 favs

it's all a bit like the quiet steam drifting to nowhere off my microwaved hot coffee in the sunflower mug

His house

11311131 views77 comments55 favs

His house incubates memories. As he sleeps, they hatch.His house is neither here nor there. It occupies a space between watchfulness and insomnia. Grey birds nest on its roof.His house is a refuge from everything except himself. The floor, walls, roof are fat with him.…

Revisionist History

12181218 views99 comments66 favs

A break from bleak world history and events...

Suspicious Activity

972972 views77 comments66 favs

I go down to pick up R and get a cartridge of black ink for the printer. It's an extremely pleasant summer day — early afternoon — and the air is exemplary: clear and sweet. So far so good. But as soon as I park and go to a nearby cash machine the fun begins.…

It'll Be Okay/revised version

986986 views99 comments77 favs

It's not that there's nothing new, it's all new. That blue color is not the one you remember, but the one you are experiencing, and at the same time, you bring everything you are, crushing into dust, with you. Green…

The Duck, the Clock, and the Condom

19931993 views99 comments77 favs

Every night famous authors read not only to us, but to a duck. A wild female who emerged from the lake just as we were gathering, settled her gray-brown feathers down not three feet from the podium, tucked her head inside her wing, and remained there. If the duck liked…

Explaining To A Dog

14081408 views88 comments66 favs

My wife tells me/your dog has vomited/ on the carpet AGAIN!

Light

13141314 views1212 comments66 favs

"You gonna be old before you're old," my father had told her.