Recommended stories

Munchausen's By Sick Time

134134 views77 comments33 favs

I will never waste my sick time on my own sicknesses unless I am in a coma.

This is

617617 views33 comments33 favs

nothing. But it could be something. I don't know. We'd probably have to agree on at least one thing for it to turn around and face us. Then it would have to be named, set free. We could watch it fly away together. That's a portend to…

Band Names Too

944944 views44 comments33 favs

Gun Notches Working Stiffs Garlic Torch Dog Crouch Menbrain Membrane Ein Zwei Drei Fake German Soldier Wet Tissue Tissue Paper Pants Tough Stain Adam and Evil Closed Loophole Wait For It Fiscal Cliff and the Cliffhangers Repu

A Night in Saudi Arabia

10761076 views55 comments22 favs

I walk through nameless streets, narrow and winding, past shops selling scarves, spices, skins.

Poetry is like baseball

16011601 views33 comments33 favs

Poetry is like baseball.

Butterfly, a novel by Julie O’Yang (excerpt)

13711371 views55 comments33 favs

‘So what exactly did you decide?'It was two years later that Sato-san put the question to me. The two of us had been hiding for two bloody years, moving about in the marshes along the river, living off small, skimpy meals. We couldn't turn back to our unit, because Cesaru…

Haiku for the Worried

13191319 views66 comments33 favs

Real life escapes you.

Cooperman

10671067 views44 comments33 favs

Unconsciously she shook her head at her own weakness in coming out to see Wayne when things were in shambles at home. Guilt had beat resolve in the cosmic game of rock paper scissors.

Lunch Business

955955 views66 comments33 favs

It's lunch in the car time at 5:30 pm The car sits next to the mattress delivery truck in hope of receiving a blanket of shade

Rhapsody in the Rain

11201120 views66 comments33 favs

so many bills to pay the list keeps shedding its skin like a snake

The Second Extinction of Chocolate

320320 views55 comments22 favs

Cacao production had always been a tenuous enterprise insofar as commercial cacao tree cultivation had always been limited roughly to the land zones within twenty degrees of the equator north and south.

Un(en)titled

988988 views99 comments33 favs

Our trouble decided when the CUNY PhD student, a poet, cried out, “Racination!” during discussion of my poem.

Woman Outside Funeral Home Lighting Up

726726 views55 comments33 favs

If you ever find yourself outside a funeral home lighting up contemplating the future of the unknown, contemplate this Maybe the cigarette’s wet on your lip and you are wondering why Or in the middle of the night you are lying awake and try sa

At Last — My Dream Come True!

13931393 views44 comments33 favs

Some fiftysomething woman with a small dog in her arms was waiting for him, backstage. Security hadn't succeeded in restraining her. Strange.

New Moon

14561456 views66 comments33 favs

circa the early 90s, Buzz Aldrin and my father had been invited to a dinner at someone's house on Bainbridge Island and gotten lost.

What's It To You

11431143 views77 comments33 favs

Oh I'm melting all right, into a foul vapor rising from a dead volcano, not even able to spit fire, but only cold old frozen rock like dribbles of putrid plasma.

Three Short Slips About Plants

984984 views44 comments33 favs

That twig looks pretty dead to me, He will never ever be a man.

Bar at East Capitol Road

10381038 views33 comments44 favs

My friend, drunk, spoke to me / outside a bar where we hung out; / and his eyes were red from tiredness,

excerpt from a forthcoming novel

15951595 views44 comments33 favs

I wriggled in the bed and felt the sheets soaked with perspiration. My arms were lined with tape and tubing, needles pressed in veins. I reached for the cloth again and again, and every time they stopped me. The hands that came were cold and hard, urgent

Pieces

13281328 views88 comments33 favs

I was a whole man once.

Asking an Accomplished Poet Friend to Read My Poetry in a Starbucks at 2PM on a Thursday

12231223 views66 comments22 favs

Your usage of the English language / is awkward and passé—

The Purple Prose of Cario

11961196 views33 comments33 favs

I contemplate the words that did not make it; the lost ones. The words deprived of their moment in the sun. These words. These words that are not part of the story.

Book of Days

12021202 views55 comments33 favs

The arrangements of lights on the cracking towers are a segment of Orion’s belt, the handle of the Big Dipper and a section of Andromeda’s spine.

Lovelandtown Tavern

666666 views44 comments44 favs

James Hubert III sat at the bar. It was late. His wife and kids were long in bed and he knew he should be, too. But with the Lovelandtown lift bridge stuck in mid-air, a drink beckoned him. He sat next to Vince DeSantos, a small, stout man, with a bowling

Low down dirty fame.

10121012 views55 comments33 favs

I admit it ... I started writing when I was completely depressed. When I had nothing else to do than just sit back, relax, feel bad and wait until the hurricane slowly passed by (luckily there were few casualties).I thought I was an exception ... but a lot of…

In Virtual Medieval Europe

10801080 views44 comments33 favs

They divided over worthless gain, while I came too late for the battle.

Against Nothing

786786 views44 comments22 favs

To be free of pain. Is that what we all want?

Shadow Play

11991199 views66 comments11 fav

I was quite alone in this small room with the tarp and the dying fire.

Sink, Sunk

13791379 views44 comments22 favs

the moon's got it out for the far-sighted punkish usuper supping on the upswing of a downward slope

Things You Should Know, By Heart, If You Must

765765 views44 comments33 favs

The light is always on in reality The Gelatinous Mass is not something made up By the Catholic Church And even though a small deer may have come to the side of the road once To lick the salt from your wounds There will definitely be cheap fish