Recommended stories

the cold the day left

17341734 views55 comments66 favs

in our teens as tough as the cold/we wore denim and flannel with our boots/kicking at whichever wind blew . . .

Table Thoughts

17031703 views77 comments88 favs

“You should've let him drown,” she once told me. Doesn't she see that I did? I'll let her drown, too.

Somewhere

23082308 views1414 comments1212 favs

...but still, when she whispers that going out now might put her in the mood later he unties from his mooring and sets them both drifting toward the gin-splintered latitudes

The Man From the Circus

28892889 views1111 comments1010 favs

‘Last week,’ I said, ‘on the radio, there was a competition. The DJ played a sound-bite of a car going over a cattle grid, and people had to phone in to guess which cattle grid it was. I didn’t phone in, but I knew the answer.’

A Night at the Opera

16841684 views1212 comments1212 favs

I picked out a book to read on the airplane. The title was The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich.

Amends

153153 views1414 comments1111 favs

We met in graduate school. We were both taking a course on teaching using the case study method over at the Business School. I was from psychology. She was from biology. We were both getting Harvard doctorates. But as many people…

Glass

24722472 views1919 comments1111 favs

Her bulldozer of a husband died five years ago.

Hitting the Wall

17231723 views1313 comments1111 favs

I tried to talk, but only / whispers slithered out.

the ethics of graffiti

18291829 views1212 comments1212 favs

Honey

18211821 views1212 comments1111 favs

Cellulite is legal to have, either way.

WHAT WE REMEMBER MAY NOT REMEMBER US

24772477 views1212 comments1010 favs

1. The clouds and the shadows of the clouds. The early light, like the night undressing herself revealing pink beneath, underneath the glory and the intimacy like early love made of arms only arms fingers and…

Rice

29072907 views2020 comments1010 favs

We construct a paper bridge. The droid walks across it. We follow, one after another, like sentences in a story.

a face made of glass

337337 views1111 comments77 favs

.

An Earnest Prayer

20832083 views1111 comments1111 favs

It’s like faith. My battle buddy is out there, I know it, but I can’t see him, nor can I hear him. I just know he’s there, trusting he’ll do what he’s supposed to do, and he’s trusting in me.

April Haiku

20362036 views2020 comments1010 favs

A sardonic moon/ surveys our plight and cackles.

We Walk by Night

21682168 views1313 comments99 favs

Walking those damned dogs is a pain… a PAIN every night. If it’s not urban skunks, it’s Mormons on bikes… the bastards

cross-quarter days

15301530 views1515 comments1111 favs

sentinels in a frost-blackened field

Morning and Coffee

14861486 views1717 comments1111 favs

A dirtied light falls through/ the grimed windowpanes.

Songlines

20742074 views1313 comments1111 favs

When the planes crashed,when the levees broke,when the ground shook,there was a song I dreamed of,humming subsonic,a chorus of voices and prayersuncorked like the little brown jugthat holds all the love and memories.In the outback, Aborigines believewe create the world by…

Sparks Beneath the Surface

16561656 views2323 comments1010 favs

If I should wake/ before I die,/ just shoot me through/ the one good eye.

Abduction

25852585 views1313 comments1111 favs

they’d been pumping him with Dilaudid at night, to adjust his palette for what was coming, in the soft lamp light he watched his long fingers sprout pink caterpillar fuzz, knuckles morphed into hinges for Monarch butterflies,

Hogging the Lady

14551455 views1515 comments1111 favs

She was not the usual member of the band, not the girl nextdoor, not next to any door, not a regular housekeeper or woman. She was a ditch digger, a pied, circular piper, a mouse hugger.

The Loss of a Child

21042104 views2424 comments77 favs

I watched as the light fled from your eyes, No slowly dimming lamp,

tchotchke

16301630 views1717 comments1111 favs

tuck me

Lost among the Riff-raff

16421642 views1515 comments1111 favs

Poor, pocked Ceres- dwarf planet/ trapped among mere asteroids-

Lavender, A Liberal

16881688 views88 comments1111 favs

Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at all. …

Hobo's Pastor

20372037 views1616 comments88 favs

The three of us traveled seven hours that day and Al traveled as far in the service of finding the right tool for his writing.

Sweet Sorrow

15831583 views1313 comments1111 favs

He sat at the bar and waited for her. He looked at the noon drinkers with indifferent eyes.

Bumper Repair: $129.95

22022202 views88 comments88 favs

They ask about WWII and he claims no kills...

BEYOND THE LANE

21762176 views1313 comments1212 favs

She learned the difference between listening and hearing, between looking and seeing.