Recommended stories

early spring

14091409 views77 comments66 favs

the late snow, though not welcomed...

Searching for Mr. Bharath Seshardi

15651565 views66 comments66 favs

This tall, very blonde, very female, friend of mine. . . .

Duty

12441244 views66 comments66 favs

Two girls, twelve years old, run down San Pedro Avenue past the market, the middle school, seven driveways, their small chests heaving. The smooth soles of their Mary Janes keep slipping on the gravel driveways. Two men in a rust-orange van bear…

O'Hare International Peoplewalk Tunnel

916916 views55 comments55 favs

At step blinding speed we all alight somewhere in the world

I Will Not Be That Woman

13631363 views66 comments66 favs

Not today. Even when the Isar rolls so cool and deep and I could wade and wade 'til sleep. Not today. When I have the tablets in a drawer in a box winking chalkily at me. Not today. When the church tower soars and it's bells toll out a seductive beat …

Beauty

14271427 views77 comments66 favs

Now, this boy removed his socks in front of me, on the chair beside my desk where I read my books, and said: “My toenails aren’t shaped properly.”

A Year and a Day Then

13731373 views88 comments66 favs

Removing the deeply embedded jack-blade frommy naked side, like any slicked-upsplinter, was just a bit jarring on the first bite, on first try, I must admit. I freelydo so now to your frozen-over faces. You made your…

Officer Friendly

21792179 views66 comments44 favs

The last time Ray and I broke up, I flew my flag at half-mast. It was the kind of thing that pissed him off. He was very big on flag etiquette: how the flag should be folded, the fact that it should never touch the ground, when to fly it at half-mast, the rules regarding…

The lightbulb explodes

237237 views77 comments66 favs

.

Some Nature Haiku

26392639 views44 comments22 favs

The proud, burly tree / Rests on the now crashed TV / Thanks a lot, nature

Summer Flip Flops

20292029 views88 comments66 favs

Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy.

Tierra del Fuego

11911191 views88 comments66 favs

my time there was not one afternoon not / one river not one tunnel not one falling

Writer's Cough

16431643 views66 comments66 favs

Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

Water, Not Fire

13421342 views66 comments66 favs

I'll still want the blinds open and the lights on, to see the papier-mache of our flesh fighting death away to the century mark, even if you only want to live until a ripe eighty-two.

Downtown

12501250 views77 comments66 favs

bullets in flight make sharp, snapping noises.

O Fortuna

30323032 views1111 comments66 favs

This poem begins my poetry collection. It is about the pain and suffering I experienced when I had an attack of two pulmonary embolisms, one in the right lung, one in the left. This nearly killed me. I lived with the pain in my lungs whenever I took a bre

Make Out Party

17051705 views66 comments66 favs

He begins talking about string theory. He reels me back in, from the dinosaurs to the infinite, human evolution and alternate dimensions, until it makes so little sense that everything makes sense.

Naked Launch

15211521 views1010 comments66 favs

I enjoy launching words into space. Please dangle a moment here while I prepare the next sentence. Ok. You can come in now. Take boiling for instance. And hawsers. The sound of words on a sheet of paper. The manifesto for a roll of sleep. Sleep is oblivious to…

Curfew

14931493 views88 comments44 favs

The Houston police devised a punishment for the adulterous thespian that would not hurt the nights or household income of his French young wife.

Thalassophobia

15101510 views66 comments77 favs

Except where its waves break gently,/ white frothed and reassuring along the shore,

The Roses of Gettysburg

10911091 views1010 comments66 favs

Mothers and sons and war, an old story...

Dream Girl

18261826 views88 comments66 favs

There was something wrong with this picture. Was he the man she had slept with last night?

BLACKHORSE

21842184 views88 comments44 favs

All the neighborhood kids waited for the school bus on a small cement slab at the bottom of the first big hill on Blackhorse Road. My mother made me scrambled egg sandwiches on wheat toast every morning for breakfast before I left for school. Then one mor

In This, Our Life

12241224 views1515 comments55 favs

Her captors allowed her the use of the toes of one foot. It was hard to pretend she was numb—as if playing an artic game indoors. With the ball of her foot, she primed the canvas. Her big toe acted as a fan brush, the rest were sable, flat, or pointy. She told…

The Mender

13241324 views66 comments66 favs

I polished his shoes to an avid black; sewed buttons backand mended torn silk and cotton.His clothing was my busy work. Needle, thread, stitch, and iron,I was his apothecary of linens.Blood, wine, soup, vomit --these I cleaned too, until all theircolor and scent…

Don't move

14921492 views1010 comments77 favs

The tech turns off the music. The capsule blares. I am in Jurassic Park with Sam Neill. I am Timmy, descending the electrified fence, almost toast. I am Karen Silkwood, a deer in the headlights, then showering off plutonium. A garbage truck is compacting

You Can't Always Get What You Want

14371437 views77 comments55 favs

I was tired and lonesome when I checked into another insufferable, shop-worn Holiday Inn. It was the only motel around with the internet — dial up only — in that little jerkwater town, Notmuch, Alabama. It was too late for a nap, so I jumped in the shower,…

Already Dead

22052205 views1313 comments55 favs

It was already dead and was hanging from her ceiling.

obituary unsolicited

865865 views66 comments55 favs

po-mo parchments piled high deep: / credentials earnest transcripts earned / coursework scholarships helpt buy.

Acorn Gardening for Everyone

12831283 views66 comments66 favs

I'd like to grow you a new flower. I thinkmaybe I just will. Right now. Here's as good a place as any. Well you'll probably never get to see it, but it will be there just the same and it will be all yours. Kind of like these poems that I make if…