Recommended stories

Quitting

22152215 views2828 comments1717 favs

If you outlive me, she said, it won't be because I smoke but because of what you put me through when you quit.

Vanity

171171 views2121 comments2020 favs

=

Unwritten

23012301 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

36993699 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

Moon View Mountain Road

15801580 views2121 comments1919 favs

I once read a book of warnings.

Turning Thirty

18981898 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

17871787 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

34943494 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

17371737 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

25632563 views1414 comments1010 favs

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

Malady

14481448 views88 comments55 favs

When the malady struck and the world fell dark at noon, she and I groped the walls and found our front door. Outside, bewildered, we heard the whine of jets in free-fall, explosions in the imagined distance. And we heard a car — or was it a truck that veered…

Wish I Had

387387 views1919 comments1818 favs

A pet scorpion. A pet scorpion named Chris.(1)

Tattoos

27322732 views2323 comments1616 favs

Boxing Gloves for when...

Camp Atheism

18441844 views2727 comments1919 favs

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

A Body of Water Invites All Things

18941894 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

31313131 views3232 comments1515 favs

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

Layover Memories

12841284 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)

23812381 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

30183018 views2424 comments1818 favs

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

The Blue of Milk

21582158 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

18311831 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

21752175 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

24182418 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?

23742374 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

23662366 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

20552055 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

23512351 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

16601660 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

20892089 views2626 comments1818 favs

I am complicit in the darkness

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

33023302 views2727 comments1313 favs

Co-written with Bobbie Ann Mason