Most recent stories

You Couldn't Pay For a Review This Good, But I Did

652652 views1010 comments00 favs

I’ve previously tried the old-fashioned route to get my books reviewed, calling up editors, asking friends who work at newspapers and magazines to put in a good word for me, stalking . . . I mean, contacting freelancers.

Improvisation on a few lines by Mark Strand

882882 views11 comment11 fav

I am tripping on poetry. Purple ink drips from my eyes like ergot of rye.

Masquerade II

10251025 views1414 comments44 favs

. . . once you start reading and thinking about what he's saying, it's like looking at the reflection of your soul in a mirror . . .

You Wear Camo?

16421642 views99 comments66 favs

Got me a 50 pound bat ray.

Legs Unwilling

10881088 views11 comment11 fav

Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.

I've Seen You Naked

10991099 views55 comments33 favs

and watched you grinning from your opulent spinning cages and although you were never less than always remarkably perfumed, toappeal I'm guessing to the sniffing about masses, to me they've…

Thank ya, Jesus

21072107 views2222 comments2020 favs

We were always thrilled that the moon worked the night shift. In high school, often bored with the two drive-in movies, we'd sometimes go to tent revivals on our dates and get healed or get saved depending upon what that “tent-housed”…

Point of Grace

12231223 views66 comments55 favs

Say the world is a smudged charcoal drawing. Slit from its frame, smuggled out of the Vatican. Don't say it couldn't happen. Who would know.

Luminous Nights, 6

684684 views00 comments00 favs

We had to walk up to the fourth floor, and on those steamy hot Chicago summer nights in August, sometimes I would strip off my top before we even got in the door. I lived with my Siamese cat, whose name was Caesar.

A Story About You

10821082 views44 comments22 favs

“I wrote a story about you today.”

Ripping Good Poetry Lures Boys Who Curse With Verse

11051105 views66 comments33 favs

Pringy practices an aesthetic variant of the “muscular Christianity” that is a tradition at Groton; a program of Sunday poetry classes for boys who violate the school’s ban on swearing.

Context and Confessional Poetry

999999 views11 comment11 fav

I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …

The Bicycle Mechanic

14221422 views1414 comments1212 favs

The hour reflected those pleasant moments when evening hunger can be satiated by anticipation alone, before the pangs become demanding.

Don't You Think

847847 views66 comments44 favs

a war forever seems so sadly stupid, pretty petty on our perky part in the ongoing play, a terrible loosed thing to have to always keep holding up our hostage hands to-- at least when being compared to…

The Mouth Is A Swell Place To Invent Things

981981 views33 comments22 favs

Yesterday I saw Marco Polo getting a tattoo on East Olive. He was practicing Mandarin Chinese with the tattoo artist who was also Chinese. He got a yin yang symbol on his bicep. He looked to the east and saw the hills lift themselves into sky. He grimaced

Alice

14751475 views2323 comments1919 favs

Alice writes three different versions of the letter. The last one is the most tempered, the most like her, but still it is such an unlike-her thing to do. The couple who lives above her has been disrupting her sleep nearly every night for the past three weeks. The woman's…

I Wish

540540 views00 comments00 favs

I wish I had money I would give it all to you I would give you more than I could imagine I would pull the fetus out of your heart Between my two fingers And glue us together I would glue our faces together too After putting in all my

Masquerade

11651165 views66 comments33 favs

. . . music and dance, theatrical performance of tragedies and comedies . . . a primeval orientation, celebrating the cultivation of herbs and vines . . . ritualistic use of intoxicants, to remove inhibitions, to liberate participants . . .

Minus Mammalian Skin

831831 views00 comments11 fav

It's soundless, but they're saying please, don't let it hurt, don't let us be consumed by the air, don't let it be madness. My muscles tense in bare rhythm.

A Not-For-Kids Dream That All Boys Have

973973 views11 comment11 fav

The room turns red and I start screaming and ejaculating. The whole class is watching as Mr.Smith slams down my copy of the test with his right hand and swiftly tears off my penis with his left.

Luminous Nights, 5

825825 views00 comments00 favs

It turned out that my brother's newly acquired building in downtown Pasadena, was what developers called a "see-through" building. That meant you could look from one side of the building all the way through to the other side, without obstruction. In oth

Rain Dance

12221222 views22 comments11 fav

You were gone, long gone, and I could no longer smell your scent as I walked through the empty house. I couldn't bring myself to unpack the boxes, and they lurked like a forest of overgrown drab Legos.

Wherein the Air

798798 views22 comments22 favs

He inhaled the spears of aroma...

Agrarian Joys of Ornamental Lawns

842842 views77 comments66 favs

The leaves/ that clung through February/ fall, dung brown,

Eyes Off the Road

14511451 views1616 comments1515 favs

One by one I lost my desires.

Seamus Has the Palsy Now

882882 views44 comments22 favs

Seamus’ hands are shaking now that once were still as stalking cats.

Woman Things

10231023 views22 comments22 favs

...when the doctor scrapes the baby out, he cuts out all the things that make babies, too...

Save the Spinning World

800800 views44 comments44 favs

or do we tickle each other's private stocks of fancy instead? I know which one I would choose, but so do you, and that's how the question's always changing places with the wrongheaded answer's velcro-lined vest, bullet to blasting…

No More Dogs

15711571 views2121 comments1616 favs

Highway 45N cost me four dogs when I was growing up. Actually, having our backyard abut the highway was the real problem. It got to be where I was afraid to get too attached. We lost Nicky,…

.38 In the Glove Compartment

542542 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