Short Fiction and Poetry

The cougar’s pacing. I want to shave. I need to comb my hair. This isn’t easy. [...]

all there is inside the burr three perfect chestnuts arthritic hands wringing each other olive trees [...]

A waking stretch and then you try a run the only time of day you want to play wipe out in a valiant lunge for Bear.  Carried to [...]

"I walk along like blood seeking its wound" Like the parched whispers of roots Descending from a sky of sea-holly [...]            

I wasn’t wearing sunglass to look cool, or to disguise my identity to hide from the police, not that anyone would think that I was one [...]

I never expected to have a conversation with Jim Harrison, but that’s where an order of lamb vindaloo, four beers, and a restless sleep [..]

I’m a leg man, never said that to anyone, maybe Elf, but now both Instagram and Pinterest are sure of it, and let me know it, [...]

There’s a necklace in a drawer with the memory of cracked hands, piano hymns, and my grandmother’s bliss singing “Joy to the World” [...]

Spirit is the more accurate word, not poltergeist antics or hints of chill despite the frigidity which first formed. [...]

Tonight the goblin moon burns red And ghost clouds sail across the sky, As, one by one, the restless dead Go marching slowly by. [...]

DarkWinter Press is excited to announce our latest release, Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through by Brian Michael Barbeito! [...]

Oh, it’s not as bad as all that. Lots of fresh air and exercise. We range at a leisurely pace, no one feels the need to get ahead. [...]

Blood and bone, heat and cars. And the dead are after me. Bonnie and Clyde, the Barrow Gang- so young, no glamour, just hard-scrabble [...]

As i lay on a nimbus cloud A cumulous dream had I An enchanted novella Authored by my ego And starring my id [...]

The bus rolls on through the quiet of the night, Its tires humming an endless hymn, a sound Of white noise that coaxes us to sleep [...]

This night is tedious. I turn the pages of a book, but quit after a brief look. [...]

I know the myriad ways a lover loves As once a young poet wrote, counting the ways[..] I know the intensity of a love that is more than love

When I am gone, come sit by my grave And bring along your memories A gift of days, water-colored and soft as rain, [...]

Halfway between one corner and the next, down steps strewn with twisted paper, greasy twine, “going out of business, everything must go[...]

It’s a voice only I understand and then not always. It isn’t the voice that you recognize as mine over the phone [...]