Recommended stories

The Works

11591159 views00 comments11 fav

The woman in green doesn’t want to encounter the meter maid who is actually a man and so waits to one side at the newspaper racks as if purchasing a paper while that person writes the parking ticket (this city needs that money) and drives away in his li

Mescaline Blues

15261526 views11 comment00 favs

This is about a mescaline trip that went wrong. It happened back in the '60s and I know, the '60s have been done quite to death and nobody ever gets the trip right but--you'll like this one. Joey and…

You'll Know

11621162 views11 comment00 favs

When you see him, you'll know.That's what the prophecy was. Well, part of it, at least. The prophecy that Tabitha was to be the next Earth mother. That when she saw her partner, she would know. Keith, and his mission partner, and the elders, they had made it so. Made it…

Priming the Pump

673673 views11 comment00 favs

I saw Sharon one more time, in the summer of 1969, when man first set foot on the moon. I met her at that nightclub over on Hwy. 83, near North Avenue in Elmhurst where everyone still hung out from high school. She came back to the basement at my parent

I heard You Like the Back Seat, Honey

700700 views22 comments00 favs

It’s okay if you do

HIT AND RUN

967967 views11 comment00 favs

HE DREAMED THAT NIGHT OF A SMALL BLACK CHILD LYING INJURED IN THE STREET, UNABLE TO CRY OUT

Without Knowing It

973973 views11 comment00 favs

If this isn’t Paradise, what is?/ Your own eyes wide with/ the imagination, the knowing,/ the not-knowing of it all.

Morning in Louisiana

536536 views11 comment00 favs

Sunlight slaps the asphalt hard. Steam rises. It looks like thought. The sweet vapors of rumination.

Flo Rida!

674674 views22 comments00 favs

Ida Ho

Above the River's Edge

11931193 views22 comments00 favs

On the plains there are no cliffs, no vast mountain ranges to persuade us that we were somewhere above the world. Yearning to escape the pull of the Earth was the big dream of a plains boy…

Death (and a Girl)

861861 views22 comments00 favs

I toyed with the idea of suicide, then quickly cast it off. Death wouldn’t be interesting. Liberating, perhaps, but not interesting. I hadn’t yet lived enough to die.

Get More Protein From Your Music

865865 views00 comments11 fav

“Kids,” I say, commiserating with my partner Bink. “You can’t live with ‘em, but you can live without ‘em.”

Heroic

14821482 views22 comments00 favs

This is an older story that was inspired by research on naming conventions while trying to find record of my own ancestors in the Ukraine. I did not find them. Instead I was inspired to write this.

sirenia sirenia

844844 views11 comment00 favs

He leans back in the desk chair in his home office. He clicks on “Inbox” in his Gmail. He spins around in his chair. He clicks on “Inbox” again. As he spins again, he realizes how silly it is to keep clicking “Inbox” when Gmail…

Mother of the Earth

776776 views22 comments00 favs

On Terry’s eighteenth birthday (the summer of 1966, the same year you graduated from high school, and the year I broke up with Sharon) I took Terry out to Fox River on my dad's ski boat, and opened up my robe and showed her all there was to show of myse

.38 In the Glove Compartment

639639 views22 comments00 favs

I accidentally opened the glove compartment and stumbled upon his snub-nose .38 caliber. He saw me looking at it and smirked. “Protection,” he said, picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick after lunch. “In my line of business, you hafta have it.” “Wh

Behind the (Beekeeper's) Veil

18041804 views00 comments00 favs

While I tried to work calmly, internally it was a non-Zen zone. I was experiencing a major adrenalin rush.

Time Travel Telephone

12971297 views22 comments00 favs

And now, the weather. The Cloud Wranglers have roped three solid clouds this morning, preventing the clouds from raining iron bars onto Human Brain Storage Center #17.

The Ferry

12251225 views00 comments11 fav

The two of them stood at the long end of a pier that cut sharp into an L 25 feet out into the river. It was an old wooden pier that relished in its every crack and splinter regardless of the fresh coat of white paint that melted lazily over the rotting bo

Ennui

992992 views22 comments00 favs

I've done the math, it didn't count. All the days and years of endless boredom. Of waiting for the next best thing, trapped inside your mind like a lifetime prison sentence. Maybe one day we'll be free, maybe one day we won't feel so oppressed. But when does that day…

Reburial at sea

10551055 views22 comments00 favs

“Sloshes to sloshes. Drip to drip,” I said, then ceremoniously flushed the toilet bowl, our heads bowed in reverence as Molly and I gave Swimmy its last rites. Swimmy, named by Molly whose overstatement of the obvious is endearing in a three-year-old, was…

Rush Hour

962962 views11 comment00 favs

All I need is a place to getaway from the rush hour worldThe crazy crazy rush hour worldA place to hide from the rush hour worldMy nerves are shot from the rush hour worldIn need a place to dream from the rush hour worldMy nerves can't take voices of the rush hour worldCars…

water therapy

764764 views22 comments00 favs

The timing could not have been worse. Because of the heat building up over the weekend, my bathtub had cracked.

karmic youth

915915 views22 comments00 favs

We were so easy, so willing to be drained, that to start making those puffed-up stories about us now, our courage, etc. would be purely misleading. Put a bottle, or glass of wine in our hand, and our panties flew off, and gladly we would have followed y

My Brother's Bedroom

10551055 views11 comment00 favs

they say the sense of smell is the strongest sense connected to memory, but not for me

From The Files Of Mitt Romney, Bounty Hunter: Genesis

973973 views22 comments00 favs

Mitt looked at his one-time running mate and took a deep breath. He was beginning to think that throwing all of his money and belongings into the ocean and eloping to Key West with Paul Ryan was a bad idea. Paul had turned out to be more needy than a danc

Everybody Was a Virgin Once

810810 views00 comments00 favs

Most women simply don’t want damaged goods. That’s a fact I’ve been brought face to face with throughout my life. It's something you can continue crushing your brains against, like an impossibly high hurdle. At first you take the damage without unde

Arcana Magi - c.7: Instinct

16201620 views00 comments00 favs

Her body shivered from the liquid and she felt loose. Her mind relaxed and a veil of pink mist covered her body.

What He Didn't Tell the New Kitty

14921492 views00 comments00 favs

“What the hell kind of name is Angel? Who were you with before, some little girl?”

Anxieties of Absence

11701170 views11 comment00 favs

On beach trips with our families, there were bumper cars, jet skis; flash enjoyments, beach-themed distractions.