Most discussed stories

Second Steps

11071107 views88 comments88 favs

The train station offers a pleasant atmosphere, though it exists as an in between place. People only come here to go somewhere else.

Lavender, A Liberal

16541654 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. …

A Clue Found Aboard a Zen Mind's Floating Iceberg

17681768 views88 comments77 favs

I do so want to bring you into the sacred linguistically eternal loop of all ordinary things on earth, but it can so easily turn into a very sudden unsparing trapdoor, or a hissing angry knot tying up itself into even more tricky sorts …

Did I Tell You I Have Stripes On My Socks?

18921892 views88 comments55 favs

Kids are fascinated by me. Adults look the other way. Maybe it's my size. Or maybe it's the stories in the newspapers.

Flower-Gathering

41154115 views88 comments55 favs

I did not understand its meaning until college when I learned that Frost would take long walks—the inspiration for so many of his poems—and would leave his wife at home while he did. And just before he left, she would guilt-trip him just a little by walk

Commute

18821882 views88 comments44 favs

Fred's ruined face stared back at him from a fractured, mold-spotted mirror. The remains of breakfast pooled around his feet and a pair of lace panties clung to his shoe, glued there by God knew what. Bits of flesh were stuck between his yellow teeth, alo

In Search of Vince’s Quinces

14381438 views88 comments00 favs

Beautiful, he thinks, as he taps the ash of his cigarette over the balcony, but this is not good enough.

Justice

16931693 views88 comments88 favs

“Too dumb to live,” my wife said when cretins on a motorbike blasted around us nearly taking a side mirror with them.

When Hadrons Collide

15961596 views88 comments44 favs

When hadrons collide they’re not always Swiss. They may be cheese or neutral but that isn’t of my concern. Look at them, touch them, feel them, the quirks of the antiquarks, masonic mesons, baron baryon.

Dementia

31403140 views88 comments33 favs

They should have shot me when I turned 80, a bullet right between my sunken eyes.

Tierra del Fuego

12801280 views88 comments66 favs

my time there was not one afternoon not / one river not one tunnel not one falling

M Box

12191219 views88 comments55 favs

I do that now. And I shiver. My mom's eyes don't seem to have any expression. They look lifeless. Her eyes look... dead. Stop it, Alison, I tell myself. You're being stupid.

Sniping

15921592 views88 comments55 favs

Snipers wear camouflage clothing to avoid being seen. It wouldn’t do for a sniper to be seen because then the sniper might become the snipee.

The Dog Catcher

29332933 views88 comments66 favs

I looked around the room at the shit, the dog bed, the dish. Lights burst behind my eyes, knees weak. “Fuck…” I bent over and puked.

Tics

10661066 views88 comments66 favs

The damp suspended/ in the air/ in a faint fog/ discourages coagulation.

My Resolutions for 2015

12881288 views88 comments55 favs

The only resolution I ever kept was when I said I wasn't going to create any more resolutions, and now I'm going to break that one.

Take

265265 views88 comments55 favs

.

Boats for Rent (Thinking About You)

15031503 views88 comments88 favs

We're killing off the elephants. We're killing off the tigers. We're killing off monarch butterflies. We're wrecking the coral reefs. Big sad gorillas don't feel at home in their own homes. And all instead of learning to live in some…

Meaningless conversations

21422142 views88 comments44 favs

“I wanted coffee, not art. That’s why I came here, and the coffee here isn’t even that good. We should have gone to the place across town, their lattes are the best.” “How do you determine the best coffee? Do you think they have judges that go from sto

holding it down

16751675 views88 comments66 favs

You lazy fuckwit! You half-assed shithead!

Darkroom Tech

17251725 views88 comments22 favs

Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.

Breakdown Lane

10011001 views88 comments55 favs

I'm on my way to work the Saturday night dinner shift at Slug's

On Mars

16011601 views88 comments44 favs

We brought oxygen with us because we knew, everyone knows, there is no air on Mars. Everyone told us this as they waved goodbye back on Earth. Jay's mom even said, “Goodbye, honey, have a nice time and remember, there's no air on Mars. Are you aware of that?”…

The Sun's Curtains

13541354 views88 comments66 favs

It must be nice not to have to worry About certain things because those things are not yet In your circle, or in your circus, of life. I don't begrudge you for being almost grown in A much different, sweeter place and time. I'm thrilled By…

Composition: 3 generations and a porch

15201520 views88 comments66 favs

It is 1939...

Late July

10271027 views88 comments66 favs

The cicadas struck their soundsTheir ribs made a clicking drumThe sound was formed over buckling ribsvibrations sounds like a maracas bangle beatingShe sat up in a lounge chair trying to sleepThe tiny ants she found tickling her armThey crawled from some hole…

Albert Walks

22352235 views88 comments55 favs

Albert Walks When Albert walks he is astonished. Ripe fruit falls to the ground at his feet, offering itself. The earth's tremor rumbles, celebratory, through his mended shoes and up his shins. The birds darting through the sky above …

The Solipsist Suffers

17881788 views88 comments88 favs

I can confirm nothing/ but impressions of the world// that appear beyond my/ body’s reach.

Alice White Loves Me Because

14281428 views88 comments44 favs

She loves you when your words leave her dirty, semi-transparent, at times, overexposed.

The Tertiary Stage (he probably thinks this poem is about him)

930930 views88 comments55 favs

They say his irrational outbursts and insane rantsare the results of untreated syphilis. Well, thatmakes perfect sense to me. I've always thoughtof him as a tessellated spirochete, a narcissistic chancre,festering pustule of a blistered imposthume. And whywouldn't a…