Recommended stories

From This Distance

840840 views33 comments33 favs

Can you remember how we could each disappear completely. . . .

In Small Packages

15191519 views22 comments11 fav

Linus had it right with the security blanket he held like a beloved pet swan. Geneva had it all wrong with a pastel-colored music box, painted with impressionist-styled daisies and tied up in gold-ribbed pink bow. But it had come from her grandmother. Her

The girl laughing in the dictionary.

13681368 views44 comments33 favs

Trigger Warning.

February 1964

15921592 views22 comments33 favs

New York, New York The winter drizzle left the streets shiny like in movies and this night Manhattan looked like it should look, vibrant, clean and sparkling. It was…

Someday, Somewhere, waiting for me.

15611561 views55 comments33 favs

Out in the open air, the sun's rays washing over the dead, open fields, Nick lay, his back against the wall of the train platform, eyes facing the sky, hands outstretched to the…

55 Words #1

25462546 views33 comments33 favs

I would roll my eyes, give one word replies or a smiley face.

The Budweiser Sign and the Ghosts of Saturday Night

12791279 views77 comments22 favs

It waited and witnessed the seasons complete a grouping and form a year. Then it watched them do it again. Winter, spring, summer, fall. It watched from the inside of course. But it could see. Big sliding glass doors and long and wide windows stayed the course also, way…

Noche de las Ranas

20502050 views33 comments33 favs

He pushed aside the netting and trained the flashlight on the dripping courtyard. Rivers ran off the wide pinanona leaves, surged through fissures in the crumbling wall.

Obituary

16281628 views99 comments22 favs

I won't fail at this like trying to fix a leaking sink without mud grease or washers tinier than Cheerios.

Personal Hell - I'm Not Scared, Just Disappointed

14901490 views33 comments33 favs

Satan is a wide-eyed Pollyanna mime who communicates with a ventriloquist dummy that corrects my grammar, speaks in internet acronyms, tells me that I’d be a lot prettier if I just smiled more and lost fifteen pounds, and nags me about how all my problems

Miss Zoldac's Fifth Grade Class Balloon Launch

13151315 views66 comments22 favs

INSTRUCTIONS: To all students, please address your index card: "To the Finder of this Balloon." Beneath that, write something that will encourage the finder to email you back. Then tape the index card to your balloon's string.Happy Ballooning! To the Finder…

Rocky 4

10271027 views33 comments33 favs

Rocky looked iron-built, tall and lean, not round like April. Russian lawn ornament, I said, mistaking the thought as mine.

The small of her back

11921192 views44 comments33 favs

.

Resurrection

20992099 views44 comments33 favs

Rudely awakened, confused and bewildered, he stood stone silent and watched me flee. I barely managed to keep my wits together, didn't and couldn't pretend that I wasn't running out of his bedroom as if my life depended on it. He wouldn't call me a cab,

In the Woods II

566566 views44 comments22 favs

The neighbor was a little woman...

Peter's Office

14601460 views55 comments22 favs

This is Peter’s office. The room is small, and the wood paneling is painted white. Light colors, Peter has been told, make a room appear larger.

Event Particle (9)

12971297 views44 comments33 favs

leaves, starlings and other words fall into thickets of orange or green grasses or tendrils or snakes

i can't have

21012101 views55 comments33 favs

Hey there little hippie girl, smilin’ to the ears and dripping with scarves, I cherish our friendship. However, every time you take off your shoes to dance at a rock show, hair swingin’ like silk vines in the paradise that is your shaking ass...

Halfsies

12061206 views33 comments33 favs

You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.

Numberplate

15511551 views66 comments22 favs

After she died, clearing out her safe deposit box at the local bank, I found more numberplates.

Sonnet I

13771377 views33 comments33 favs

Much as the cockerel crows the break of day/ So, too, has our love similar herald,

Another Irresolute Essay on Lit and Crit

11611161 views33 comments33 favs

. . . we agree that formal standards for identifying literary merit exist and are capable of being discerned, not merely of being ascribed. —but is this itself true?

Roy and Ray

13911391 views55 comments22 favs

Roy Carver owned a big tire retreading outfit over on the Mississippi.

exile on and off the road

12021202 views33 comments33 favs

had I gotten home without knowing it? well . . .

two love tankas

622622 views33 comments22 favs

December scent rains coming down sodden leaves underfoot

gravelortian part 22

11011101 views44 comments33 favs

This grey is going to kill me

Crossed Out.

17921792 views22 comments33 favs

Follow me around a bit. Let me walk you through the rooms, structures, and clouds of my being that reveal junk drawers of "collectibles."

Nathaniel

13891389 views33 comments33 favs

sometimes i have to be in the other room just so i can breathe easy away from you.

September 26, 2016

11701170 views44 comments22 favs

whatever weaknesses you displayed// as empathetic human fellow traveler,/ your command of English survives you,// on into the last echoes of the human/ once we’re gone.

The Tamarack Swamps

14031403 views44 comments33 favs

Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.