Recommended stories

Something Going Down, Like a Branch Snapped by Wind

14261426 views11 comment11 fav

This is 57% of middle America, I'm convinced: doomed.

wolf of my soul

861861 views22 comments11 fav

Happiness is the twin disobedience, to hear, to burn, to fret, desiring union. They shall touch flesh, bluish even, that elicited the happy city's sin. Why be silent? The untouchable nothing? Let there be that place, a little swelling therein, which

Thing To Do In Deptford When You're Dead.

10701070 views66 comments00 favs

Velvet answered the door in a red leather dress that was made with just about enough material to make a wallet, and looking like a long limbed drink of water calling out to a thirsty man.

faking an orgasm

947947 views22 comments11 fav

There’s an account of roasting inward, holding myself like a rock inflamed, my inward joy rotting my veins. How was I supposed to go on loving anything after you? Like a pigeon hated at home, awaiting your passionate kisses? Knowing how your classical k

In the North Woods (or, The War of Art)

10871087 views22 comments11 fav

For the residents of Oak Morrow, entropy is an art form. They break their own windows and crash their cars into their living rooms. Grannies and pets can usually scoot out of the way before they’re crushed under the juggernaut of creativity.

Releasing Your Inner Bigfoot

964964 views22 comments11 fav

In the ’70′s, Bigfoot was romantically linked with Farrah Fawcett, spotted in an Arkansas 7-11 with Elvis, and tabbed the front-runner to be Secretary of the Interior had Gerald Ford defeated Jimmy Carter.

Deviance

897897 views22 comments11 fav

I tried to enlighten them. For my trouble, they tried to have me deprogrammed. I condemned their narrowness of mind; they pitied me my naiveté. I ridiculed their religious bourgeois complacency, but they really didn’t know what I was talking about.

washing in the dawn

982982 views22 comments11 fav

Here and there a few bits of beauty, with the highest respect, reverence, erect with pride. Almost twice a thousand dawns, ten thousand in intimacy, the breasts, the nipples, means of the world to nourish itself, by the intimate bay. It's almost pun

Where Does Love Come?

912912 views11 comment11 fav

He was rummaging through his giant pile of clothing on the floor, looking for something to wear to sleep. When he couldn't quite tell what was dirty and what was clean, he knew it was time for laundry. Just as he was going to…

Flop-Flip

11041104 views44 comments00 favs

Little stuff at first: mistaking their dog for a cat, attempting to start the car with a bar of soap, or using a newspaper to dry the dishes. Lately, he’d been slipping: calling her by his mother’s name during sex, berating his boss for lackluster profit

Trajectory

968968 views22 comments11 fav

Soon the world is on film that is burning.

The Girl Next Door to Andy

926926 views22 comments11 fav

Then there was this short little girl, Jo Ann, who had a daughter and was divorced, who lived next door to my buddy Andy. She told me right after we did it one night that she had always wanted to have sex with me when she was growing up, as a teenager, I

Box Kite

619619 views22 comments11 fav

The box kite floats high over the marsh.

Ophelia

10401040 views11 comment11 fav

Her ghost/kept coming back/to Hamlet

Extra Ticket

12591259 views11 comment11 fav

My best friend died yesterday. His name was Franklin Seever, but we all called him Lin. It started when we were in Little League. There were two Franklins on the team so Coach, who was my dad, called the fat one Frank and my best friend Lin.

Jill Walks Across the Snow Covered Gas Station Parking Lot, Sits Next to Jack on the Curb and Gives Him a Cigarette

921921 views11 comment11 fav

Maybe adulthood isn't the destination I always thought it was?

Cow & Fly

857857 views22 comments11 fav

If I can eat a cow...

fragments of their lives survive

970970 views22 comments11 fav

Only fragments of their lives survive, like broken Sapphos. I have known them, alleged killer of themselves for the love of a man., but we know this is an invention. The leader of a whole guild of girls, who wrote 7 books of poems. What happened to them

Particle (7)

777777 views22 comments11 fav

By the time he says “I am tired of the smell of pig shit and death” you’ve already lost interest

Lester Young, Grand Daddy of Cool

845845 views22 comments11 fav

Young is credited with the first use of “cool” as a expression of approval, and he embodied the concept in his life and in his playing. His only problem was he was born too soon, in 1909.

to a gregarious stranger

10861086 views33 comments00 favs

Three lines.

Across from Margaret Atwood's House

990990 views11 comment11 fav

Been running so long You've been running so long I bet you can't remember What you're running from

Good for the Gander

890890 views44 comments00 favs

“This isn’t fair!” I rail to my late wife. “It’s all right for you, why not me?” She never answers me directly. Not in whispers, or with knocks, or even dreams.

Parsing We

10091009 views22 comments11 fav

An excellent plan. Just like old times.

Hammer Had

978978 views11 comment11 fav

They say I'm supposed to see everything as a nail, but I have a silver head. Too soft for bang-bang. Too soft for anything but sitting on a shelf. I sat in her classroom for twenty-five years. She was proud of me and pointed often to the words inscribed on me that I can't…

Wind Calling

822822 views22 comments11 fav

Listening to old friends speak the same way, the same things tells me they have been dead a long time. They are in their form of living, their self, there is no new season of growth. I witness each of them continue on the same path because it is familiar

that whistle of yours

805805 views22 comments11 fav

I heard a story once that said we are all entitled to seven good years. No, wait, that is not exactly what it said. Rather, it was more plaintive and inquiring. The feeling that song gave was more one of asking the question: Wasn’t I supposed to get sev

Myra's Cigarettes

955955 views55 comments00 favs

I know from the experience of too many odd sideways glances that folks are seldom interested in my brand of observation. No one else seems to wonder how many commas there are in the library or how many other people own that exact shirt.

Motley Crew

13041304 views11 comment11 fav

Paul had come to Hawaii, like many young haoles from the mainland, to party. Partying proved to be lucrative for him. By early October 1982 he had done well for himself in Hawaii, living in a country house with sprawling lawns that held back the jungle foliage…

A Hundred Feet

854854 views22 comments11 fav

Why I roamed these flats, choir-Like floors of a century forgivenAnd wedded in an XXL gownIs beyond us. Give me something extra, please. This Town rides in like a school bus.