Recommended stories

The Tortoise in the Hair

18361836 views33 comments33 favs

Pete told me, honest to God, that the first night he had that tortoise back home with him, he woke up the next morning bald. The damn thing had eaten off all his hair. So then Pete figured he'd strike up a deal with Clarence Magee, the barber.

Valentine

12791279 views44 comments11 fav

"His middle name is Valentine, and when asked about it, he isn't sure why."

Trees on Fields

13161316 views99 comments22 favs

Dear Jackknife Ponderosa, I'm stupid. Let's move on. Let's move past the part where I complain, where I struggle with circumstance, where I display my petty arms, and shoot holes in the air. …

Miracle Bra for my behind

15921592 views1010 comments11 fav

Do you want an ass mi Nina Bonita? I buy you jeans that work like a Miracle Bra for your behind.

Swaying on This Articulation Until We Slow

967967 views33 comments33 favs

In Nebraska, I looked up from the flatness, to her face, then down to the page and saw this: Real people have joy.

Imaginary Photo Album

12181218 views44 comments33 favs

Let me swim into your eyes. Let me show you my world. My album. My Albania. My albumen.

To All the Sisters on My iPod

12401240 views44 comments33 favs

It was a wake-up call. A sign that I needed to stop and ask if I was making wise and sensible life choices. My iPod was full.

The Color of Sleep

12081208 views55 comments22 favs

Have you ever seen a body of words give birth to a paragraph? I won't lie. It's a little gross. But quite moving. First there is the biology of reproduction. A blackbird living in an electric guitar, for instance, and its inexplicable urge to mate with an elephant.…

the custodial cats of the fulcrum of memory + three

805805 views33 comments33 favs

“the calendar of my future was in there!”/ yes: all tomorrows belong to the dead cats,/ their decisions relinquish one day per day.

Reconceiving the Resurrected

865865 views66 comments22 favs

among and begin / bouquets

I Love a Man Who Whistles

822822 views33 comments33 favs

“Hey! You can’t be whistling on Greyhound,” the bus driver said, looking up in the rearview mirror.

Time

13341334 views22 comments11 fav

time. Night after night he's up, restless. What if she knew his plans? If only he'd bypass his miscalculations and slip through

My Brief Career as Sloganeer for HAP

817817 views55 comments33 favs

I needed a job. They needed a writer without humanistic moral qualms to create slogans for the Human Annihilation Project

Word Burglar

12341234 views55 comments33 favs

Oh my god - A plagiarizing pony - I know someone must have said that before

A Love Letter To The Glasgow Transport System

10701070 views44 comments33 favs

Skulk like a lovespun spider in a record store corner on the orange formica subway car

Weather Channel Music Writer

12241224 views55 comments33 favs

He can become anyone. If he wants. He'd rather not but it's not his choice.

Exquisite Now

11861186 views44 comments22 favs

In the exquisite now, I feel everything around me, in me, before and after, I think, I should call you, say goodnight, but I do not, choose instead to write this poem, as though I can capture the magic of what is happening between us in words, A…

Miranda

10351035 views1010 comments22 favs

...cinched the handcuffs.

Where's My Phreakin' Nobel Prize in Physics?

13041304 views77 comments33 favs

Where I went to college, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a physics lab without hitting a Nobel laureate. I know–we tried. They finally made us stop–it wasn’t fair to the cat.

Professional Judgment

929929 views33 comments11 fav

Biting my tongue instead of lashing red stripes

When Dreams Come Knocking

14081408 views88 comments22 favs

“What are you doing after this?” I asked, faking a self confidence I didn’t truly posses at fifteen. I didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t old enough for any of the clubs they’d go to. I’d heard that fans sometimes followed the band to an after-party.

Assiduity Twenty Five

10781078 views33 comments33 favs

" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "

Submission guidelines

14241424 views44 comments33 favs

Somewhere in her the name triggers/ a grainy chain of Cheech & Chong

The Cost of Love

11801180 views66 comments22 favs

I was, so I was told, the product of much hard work and a lot of invasive procedures. Initially, I'm sure my parents were making love, but then came the slog, the repeated failed attempts at getting one of mother's millions of eggs fertilized. Those tadpoles just couldn't…

On The Day That Norman Mailer Died

11541154 views33 comments33 favs

Hollow as spit over rock Was the mood in the library...

A True Story?

718718 views22 comments11 fav

A couple, an unlikely match, came together for a brief interlude of time. It was marked, almost a kind of bar code; beginning, middle and almost end. Almost end was not "the" end because it was seemingly fated that they continue the journey through life, if not together, at…

Hemingway On Trash Day

14561456 views22 comments00 favs

The morning sun rose up over the flat prairie, and the powdery snow crunched as you walked on it, and the air was so crisp it hurt as you took a breath. That is good, I thought. That is how you knew you were alive, and I was truly very alive, and there was not much to do so…

Buy Me Some Peanuts

11531153 views33 comments22 favs

The voice on the other end mumbles, not forming words, but I understand: I am to be the starting third baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

Twenty Questions

15651565 views66 comments22 favs

Did you take out the trash? Did you water the ficus? Did you cancel the cable? Did you take my black sweater? Did you tell the neighbors? Will you get the friends? What about the cat? Will you send me a Christmas card? Will I tear it up? Did you know…

Isn't It Funny How Some People Don't Think They're Contemptibly Stupid?

13481348 views33 comments22 favs

[VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.]