Recommended stories

Texas Weather Triptych

11971197 views1313 comments88 favs

I worry for the daffodils/ and there optimistic yellow bursts./ I worry for the over-eager clover,// prodigious green on crepe myrtles,/ even for the early green of nut grass.

A Story

13971397 views1313 comments99 favs

Like many little towns, ours has an archive. It is a catalog of everything that happens.

DMV

14491449 views1313 comments88 favs

When you bring information, it does not arrive.

Family Friend

10841084 views1010 comments99 favs

My student assistant was a comely young woman. A freckle faced blonde. She was from Ohio.

2 Little Paragraphs About Writing

18571857 views1212 comments88 favs

I write in the morning when the world is bendy.

Rapid Transit

10171017 views1010 comments99 favs

We’re on The Worm. I dread the part where the train goes under the bay. I hold my breath until we safely emerge.

Independent Living

14751475 views1717 comments77 favs

The transformation in their domineering, sour mother revised her children’s memories of their childhoods.

Getting over the man in the moon

890890 views1111 comments99 favs

First have a good window seat

Ars Poetica (for Anonymous)

17381738 views99 comments77 favs

Poetry is my rebellion/ against being what I’m not.

The Artist's Conk

16961696 views88 comments77 favs

Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.

The Piano Player’s Dead Rejoice

13551355 views99 comments99 favs

Requires one of those leaps.

Working Girls

11421142 views1111 comments99 favs

In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…

Two Weeks in a Dristan Land

10501050 views1212 comments99 favs

I smelled the bleach of burst anemones the sweet arousal of the Dungeness crabs the seaweed of sour twigs and feces

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, xlvi - liv

16001600 views1212 comments99 favs

the Great Way itself is very smooth and straight,/but folks take to the challenge of rough, wild roads.

Glad the Moon Worked the Night Shift

14031403 views99 comments1010 favs

When we were seventeen, after her dad, the preacher, finished his Sunday night church services that required our mandatory attendance, we'd walk to my car in the pasture-turned parking lot holding hands and stop at the passenger-side car door to kiss deeply, get…

Framed Papers

786786 views1111 comments99 favs

He fished a tissue from a hidden pocket and dabbed his forehead, then called the cops.

Death, looking over the poet's shoulder, whispers...

13771377 views1414 comments99 favs

Pre-mortem

Long Sticks Are Often Useful

12821282 views1111 comments1010 favs

It was just lying there by the side of the road next to a mailbox, pockets turned out, weeds kinda rolled flat around it. I counted three nickels, a dime, and a cigar butt too. I could sure use the change for gum, but I didn't want to get near it. It looked dead,…

Something Else

263263 views1717 comments88 favs

.

A Sometimes Niggling Notion

13221322 views1515 comments99 favs

A po'm

Missy

16971697 views1313 comments77 favs

If I had a daughter, this it how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she'd be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, and I'd see in her eyes, which would be my eyes, that she was starting to hate me, and I'd

Rwanda Suite: The Wild Man Scale

12931293 views1010 comments99 favs

Abominables do roam the earth; I know it.

Why Can’t God Send Us Some New Kind of Animal?

19201920 views99 comments99 favs

I guess the ultimate, penultimate failure would be to write a love poem that turned on everybody but you.

CNN Student News

15551555 views1010 comments99 favs

We watch the news together every day. 10 minutes total; flashes of tragedy broken up with fluffy current events.

Three

14021402 views77 comments66 favs

Revocable Love It was easy lying there with My head on her left breast Listening to the strong Business-like beating of Her heart. She looked down and said Quietly, I told you my love Was revocable. I give it To many men and then I take It back. …

Farm

773773 views1111 comments99 favs

untilled, weedy, left to rest

The River of the Parched Spirit

11971197 views1212 comments99 favs

anxiety said Kierkegaard is the dizziness of freedom

Sleep With The Fishes

13211321 views22 comments11 fav

Pull her from the water and check her pockets. Shouldn’t death tattoo a message on each palm it removes the pulse from.

Here Comes the Sun

15391539 views00 comments11 fav

I watch my brother carry her into the hospital, and I love him with parts of myself I didn’t know were capable of love. I love my brother with the space behind my eyes, the skin between my fingers, the ends of my hair, the crease in my neck. I love him wi

From The Island Of Final Regrets

16001600 views99 comments66 favs

A friend of mine recently died and went to Heaven, or so I innocently thought. It was only when I received a letter a month later postmarked “The Island of Final Regrets” that I realized he was still in transit.