Recommended stories

Unwritten

19371937 views2121 comments1313 favs

‘I love you' said the man at the book signing. He was one of the last. The shop was closing. The staff were starting to turn off the lights. She was sitting in the glow of a table lamp with her latest novel in stacks around her.

An Ugly Man

30473047 views2121 comments1818 favs

On her lunch break, she dumps Luis for Daniel Towens, the ugliest man in the county.

Moon View Mountain Road

12741274 views2121 comments1919 favs

I once read a book of warnings.

Turning Thirty

15981598 views3333 comments1616 favs

It was a year of red, white, and blue bell bottoms, chokers, and mini-skirts. It was not a decade of pink stretch pants, pink sweatshirts, and pink snowsuits.

What the Dark Matter Says

15081508 views2121 comments1818 favs

There can be no convergence./ There is only the talking that talks about/ an angle of sight nothing else can share.

Broken

19741974 views3636 comments1616 favs

We sat under the broken umbrella, its flowered fabric hanging limp on one side. The rain fell softly at the edges of our backs. I kissed his hand, the one without fingers (not a casualty of his job, only of birth). My lips pressed what I couldn't say into his…

Dog Days

14741474 views3636 comments1616 favs

A forgotten sprinkler is going in a neglected flower garden, water overflowing the bent wood borders and flooding the ground on either side.

Addict

19591959 views1414 comments1010 favs

...what will happen to me buying drugs on the street, at night...?

Tattoos

23962396 views2323 comments1616 favs

Boxing Gloves for when...

Camp Atheism

15551555 views2727 comments1919 favs

We are not alone, not as alone as we think.

A Body of Water Invites All Things

14651465 views88 comments33 favs

My resistance sublimates. There is a long instant of absolute relinquishment, in which I imagine droplets of water plinking into my lungs in a slow, musical fashion, like icicles melting in a perfect cave.

Peach

25012501 views3232 comments1515 favs

He wanted to walk in, take off his scrubs, and not have to look at pictures of peaches.

Layover Memories

998998 views1919 comments2020 favs

It was a pleasant time, my thoughts were mostly good ones, with little effort wasted on regret.

Don Quixote Flash Cards (Being a small chapbook of poems)

20642064 views2424 comments1616 favs

tiny bits each one found meant something had blown apart. that someone was no longer with us. but somewhere that things were crawling towards unity again. another gun had been fired. would peace always start over? it's funny how it will. a hand…

Diversion

26072607 views2424 comments1818 favs

A landscape has the tendency to take on new dimensions when night comes.

The Blue of Milk

18041804 views3535 comments1717 favs

She said this is our abode and it sounded like a warble and she made a sweeping gesture with her arm and the boy started to cry.

Men Are Beasts

13761376 views2424 comments1919 favs

Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"

MAIZE

17721772 views1010 comments77 favs

Now, these explosions announced, political bribes and propaganda weren't going to be enough to push things through. There would need to be survival from blunt force trauma and fear tactics, a relentless forward march

Creep

20352035 views4848 comments1717 favs

Every one of them will tell you I drank so much malt liquor I could barf up a distillery and that wouldn’t be a lie.

Are You Okay?

19781978 views2929 comments1616 favs

Moving is like moving upstream, like swimming underwater against a mighty current. You are salmon people: pink, vulnerable.

Tap Dancing to Voltage

18061806 views4141 comments1818 favs

Tap shoes are the portal to the opening of heavens that will ignite me with the highest voltage of electricity, give me the gift I was meant for at birth. Prophecy.

Rodney & Chelsea

17441744 views3333 comments1818 favs

Chelsea's breasts are more the size of tangerines, but he likes them. He likes that she smells like Fruit Loops and that her front teeth overlap slightly. Her mouth is glossed. He slips his tongue inside.

Advice from Topeka

19161916 views2323 comments1616 favs

... I know all about ax murderers because Elmo, my uncle by marriage to my sister who never had any sense was one. He done killed six women in a farm outside of Topeka in the space of they say three minutes, including my sister and her bingo friends . . .

Tilly Artaud

13621362 views1717 comments77 favs

After not going out for weeks, I went to a bar and met an electrical engineer, a motorcycle racer who raced in the Black Hills, a Renaissance man, in a relationship with a young married woman, and I told him about the toad.

Great Moments in Blindness

17871787 views2626 comments1818 favs

I am complicit in the darkness

"Leda and the Crane-Daddy" by Bobbie Ann Mason and Meg Pokrass

29752975 views2727 comments1313 favs

Co-written with Bobbie Ann Mason

Greyhound

19231923 views2222 comments1717 favs

I stare, out a dirty window, / into the sanitary blackness.

Counting

15961596 views2626 comments1919 favs

For my father, my best buddy.

Paper Elephants

22952295 views1616 comments1818 favs

Every year people came from as far away as Des Moines and Halifax for Elephant Day. They came to see the elephants.

Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk

20542054 views2020 comments1919 favs

A portrait of my sweetheart drawn while she is asleep: a passed-out angel illuminated by the light of dawn coming in from the bathroom window, one of her shoes missing.