Recommended stories

Apprehensions in the Garden of Gethsemane

13471347 views1010 comments99 favs

The thumb, incarnate, knows/ the moment of the misplaced hammer blow;/ the tongue, incarnate, the cool invigoration/ of water drawn from the dark well.

(There Are Ways) to Come Home

25142514 views1515 comments88 favs

When you return home, one year to the day that you left us, you will wonder if you can do it all over again.

Objects in a Field

14231423 views1515 comments77 favs

Cacophony of an engine-braking eighteen-wheeler/ scatters the crows to fences, trees and wires/ in a startling chant of caw, caw, caw.

Confinement

15011501 views1414 comments88 favs

Even music relies on what/ you know as music/ for its power to enthrall.

Wedding

13841384 views99 comments88 favs

It was cold in the church. The Lutherans were freezing to death. The Catholics brought their winter coats.

I Don't Know What I might say

18921892 views1111 comments88 favs

But it all works out. I guess. Truth is something I'm sure I've never seen before, but the more time goes on, the Less I'm inclined to believe in it. Still I don't want To be one of those giving the finger to God And begging for a showdown with an…

House By The Sea

21892189 views1010 comments99 favs

We were young, she said, it was all in front of us. We should never have settled for this.

1888: Mrs. Sherwood

15791579 views1010 comments99 favs

Margaret will take her seven away from his raging Irish hammers slurry Saturday night honks smashing red eyes. They'll board a secret train countryside bound where they sing the songs of her own dead Mam who lived poor in the world but…

Perchance to Dream

16061606 views1010 comments99 favs

Catherine, after another haunted, bewildering morning wondered if there might be a way to hide from her nightmares. Was there a way to trick them? Shouldn't she try? She drove over the bridge, something she didn't often do, to buy…

Office M

18231823 views1515 comments77 favs

It is a sunny day in the autumn of the patriarch.

Understudy

17941794 views1212 comments99 favs

All young and loud and big and I swear her face like a lighthouse lamp, glowing—I remember thinking, ‘She’s drunk at nine in the morning.’

Uncle Moscow

18151815 views1111 comments99 favs

He asked me to bury him in Vegas. Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.

You Know Who in The Hell You Are Not Playing For (We Are All Performing At Being)

20562056 views1111 comments77 favs

I've been avoidingyour beautiful fact for years in just the past few hours it seemslike it was the scariest plague on earth. Andit worries me becauseit's something so new that Idon't know what to dowith myself.Yes I wouldn't knowwhat to…

20. Smitten

13891389 views1010 comments99 favs

Your tunamelt cadence / Sank me to ocean floors

Tuesday

15531553 views1010 comments99 favs

Only last Friday, he was introduced/ around, smiling, healthy,/ a fine young man.

Kind-hearted Assassin

233233 views1212 comments99 favs

.

The 24-hour Date

24952495 views77 comments88 favs

We watched kids tweeze snapping turtles out of the park grass. They dropped them into a styrophoam cup and called it the snap turtle home. When they grow up they will bite your arms off, their father said laughing.

Still Life

25482548 views1212 comments99 favs

One rainy day I walked to an out-of-the-way section of town where the buildings were old, and the streets were cobblestone.

Language

18071807 views1515 comments88 favs

this reaching, this striving to love like it's there becoming something we need.

Omen

14291429 views1010 comments99 favs

The bird sat there some time. Several minutes. My wife and I grabbed out i-Pads and took pictures.

August

14731473 views1919 comments99 favs

One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.

Migrants

16041604 views1515 comments88 favs

She is too stylish to be crazy, is what the migrant probably thinks. And he's right.

One in the Numberless Series of Requiems

13971397 views1212 comments99 favs

We perform our chosen duty— naming/ beauties and atrocities within

Lamenting Lexiconical Loss

17771777 views1111 comments99 favs

Neglected long enough, uncalled for/ by the shrinking language of the day,// my words abandon me.

Aloha

19781978 views1010 comments99 favs

It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

To Do List

17451745 views88 comments99 favs

Throw them up there but try to make it look tidy. Try to become a little bit paranoid, just enough that you slightly overestimate how much they think of you at all.

Museum of Everything

17641764 views1010 comments99 favs

It is the monad.

A Broken Ankle, Canasta, and a Weirdly Sexy Jesus Sighting

19231923 views1010 comments88 favs

nothing can stop a group of genteel Southern women from a card game, and divine intervention makes one's participation in such an event quite worthwhile

The most tender thing

23922392 views77 comments77 favs

Somehow, I have your body, but you’ve gone missing.

Boardroom Bullshit

17381738 views1212 comments88 favs

Push the envelope