Recommended stories

Composition: 3 generations and a porch

15571557 views88 comments66 favs

It is 1939...

The Summer Of My Beautiful Idiocy

10101010 views77 comments66 favs

In the summer of '68 my father persuaded me to go visit my grandparents on their farm in North Dakota. I had long hair and dressed like a French symbolist outlaw. Took the train to Minot, spent the night in a hotel (watching Your Cheatin' Heart, movie about Hank…

Liberty of Cooking

13201320 views1212 comments55 favs

My dish was slut ("all done" in Swedish). It tasted good though aroused no draft, of mutton, for example. My grandparents' bed held flat. I filed alone, in realist kitchen, reading Froeding, standing, striding, continent as gym.

Dark Matter

12221222 views1414 comments55 favs

The darkness isn’t evil but invisible/ in the otherwise excellent light of day

Ghost

21532153 views88 comments22 favs

It would wander the hallways after the 3:45 bell, after the last class, after the students had all disappeared with the homework they'd never finish, the papers they'd forget to write, after Nate the janitor pushed his broom through the endless doorways,

Ann Patchett Writes Her New Novel on the Treadmill

295295 views66 comments55 favs

I write my new poem in the gardenBut not like Mary OliverMore like meDirt under my fingernailsReal dirtI can feel the grit of it Something that shouldn't be thereBut is.

Sleepless #3

16671667 views88 comments66 favs

My ex-girlfriends live in a pastel-drenched cabin on the edge of a hemlock forest in Canada somewhere,

Snatch 7 (come 11)

15791579 views88 comments66 favs

...the scream and the face...

What I wanted 1976

18451845 views1010 comments77 favs

turn my Dorothy Hamill into a golden shadow

Move Along

15621562 views1111 comments66 favs

W here do you think you're going what'll you think you'll do running down this highway that you never even knew

Halfhearted Objections

18511851 views88 comments66 favs

The old man behind the counter recognizes fear and anxiety in the boy's face, and sees the brown paper bag clenched in his other white-knuckled hand.

Vanishing Vapors with Mister Van Gogh

14041404 views77 comments77 favs

These clouds are what I havewith me. Their language is minebut it is drying today aswe speak. I catch the darkeningsparks, but that's not to beyour concern. I am sure youshall go on. What I wantis to deliver your song. Idoubt it is for anybody else.Clouds are good at…

Because we cannot know

14471447 views99 comments66 favs

Because we cannot know, we keep walking, keep getting up each morning, feeding the cat, drinking coffee. Because we cannot know I'm drinking coffee that morning in Thailand, not on the beach but just off, because there is only one spot where you can get real coffee,…

Did I Tell You I Have Stripes On My Socks?

19141914 views88 comments55 favs

Kids are fascinated by me. Adults look the other way. Maybe it's my size. Or maybe it's the stories in the newspapers.

On an Iceberg of Words

14201420 views88 comments66 favs

She cut me adrift On an iceberg of words And words melt As you know Looks like we may have Gone out on the limb A little too far without A toe-hold on Reality Doesn’t it? But I saw the headlines: Cows Bound for Slaughterhouse Make

True-Life Microaggressions or How I Learned To Live In America

16801680 views88 comments66 favs

You speak English so well.

Beyond Steps that Falter

16811681 views1111 comments66 favs

I might wish I was anything including some dust on the shelf where maybe I might blow away unseen like the coming of rust

No Regrets

15201520 views66 comments66 favs

The ability to "see the ball" is a gift.

Keepers

18821882 views1313 comments44 favs

His hands go up and down on me. You love me don't you he says. I don't know I say.

the wall

13041304 views88 comments66 favs

Looking at an image of a graffiti on a wall on our computer screen we ask ourselves: what is the image's main graffiti-like property? We might answer: its location. But that is a contextual and political interpretation. There's nothing in that answer which addresses the…

The Pigeon Savior

15731573 views77 comments66 favs

The window washer started saving pigeons whose feet were wrapped in fine black thread, the result, he informed me, of picking through trash bins. They are very intelligent, he went on to explain. (Right, trash bins, I thought to myself.) People tend to av

The Three O'Clock Sun

15141514 views77 comments66 favs

Here the three o'clock sun is an old patched up fellow, with a stained yellow beard, walking in a small crispy rain of brown leaves, looking at something that requires a bit of squinting no one else can see, on the far side of the softening…

After the Poison

18171817 views66 comments77 favs

I've measured out our time togethersealed it in airtight bottlesthe one labeled 1998 kept closelike smelling saltsOne whiff a camphor waking memaking me high on the idea of usputting blinders on your infidelitiesdouble vodkas and damaging wordsAnd when that isn't enoughI…

Assiduity Six

16511651 views1212 comments66 favs

"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"

Easter

17591759 views1414 comments66 favs

Marge didn't eat lamb or pork.

Ribs

19561956 views77 comments77 favs

The moun­tains of humil­ity went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes

Wesson

18541854 views1010 comments66 favs

I'm not. I am.

The lyre bird

10531053 views1111 comments55 favs

When silence makes his way next to me on the narrow path, I let his arm brush mine, and I stop singing with the birds. So, in the vast forest filled with songs and rustling, silence and I follow our path to the edge. Two tranquil strollers, meditating on the ancient voices…

Permission to Go

18881888 views1010 comments66 favs

Now that I no longer sleep to see you, propelled by this motion that is not magic

Hole

18021802 views66 comments44 favs

For a person you don't know, a stranger with a lot of place, you think much of him.