Most discussed stories

Pretty New Landscape

16461646 views77 comments77 favs

It's important to make a sure sound. It's not impossible you know. It's just funny I suppose, like being in a dream of another dream. All these things could be mashed and tumbled together to make us one big clay hero, someone…

Prairie Rose

19541954 views77 comments44 favs

Every Friday night she gets liberated at The Haymarket Square doing a bunny hop or a do si do with ex-members of The Saint Augustine Women's Choir. She remembers how as kids, shy or awkward in dresses, their voices formed the harmony, the flight of something V-shaped…

All Kind of Ruin

16811681 views77 comments66 favs

They broke both of Jimmy's shins. / Gambling debt just like in the movies

Radioactive Rain

16891689 views77 comments66 favs

It’s an almost mystical experience, walking in the warm, radioactive rain. It’s a rare moment of peace, a gathering of breath before the next storm, before the next wave of panic, before those frozen in shock come to themselves and rush through the stree

Snap

13301330 views77 comments44 favs

An eternity in a crashing moment.

Rose Gold

17941794 views77 comments66 favs

He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…

Ant Farm

19401940 views77 comments55 favs

Every time I squished an ant with my finger, I felt a piece of me loosen and chisel off.

Tostoi's Last Fiction: a footnote to a note

16081608 views77 comments66 favs

The note was a lie, multiplied through each member of its potential audience....

The Judge's Wife Part 7

12781278 views77 comments44 favs

—A little blood puts some life into the work, said the old artisan smiling.

Cold, wet and dreary.

11761176 views77 comments22 favs

Cold, wet and dreary.The three words that describe Belgium. A country that owns so little identity. Sure, there are the mussels, beer, wafels and chocolate ... But that's about as far as it goes. The lack of identity rules the country, grayness rules the horizon. And…

Starlight Standup

12931293 views77 comments66 favs

They wink at me as if to share/ a cosmic joke whose punch line’s still/ a couple dozen light years out

Suspended Heart

23122312 views77 comments77 favs

The suspended heart became an oracle of sorts. Hung from a string, immersed in the kind of glass container in which tulips grow, it was located between Bath and Body Works and Kleinfelter's Jewelers at the north entrance of the mall. Someone had lost it,

3 short poems (2)

17211721 views77 comments66 favs

Clear as my conscience may be, you still haunt me as the brown settles to black sit there and recommence as if nothing had ever happened, your hands conducting the orchestra of your purity.

Planet Crabby

39093909 views77 comments44 favs

On Planet Crabby a boy met a girl and a girl met a boy but neither couple got anywhere because they dismissed their prospective partner as just plain too crabby. Alternative arrangements were unthinkable. This happened a number of times.

Parts 2 Through 5 of a piece called Wilderness of Humanity, or, We Can Always Clean This Thing Up Again

18931893 views77 comments66 favs

2. humility You know what silly does? Silly guarantees that you will enjoy the moment as the moment for the moment. Clowns make fun of silly. Isn't that ironic? They are in essence the opposite of their own image. That's why so many people see them as evil--because you…

Poof

634634 views77 comments66 favs

Yesterday's protest...

The Piss-Colored Man

22632263 views77 comments55 favs

His open door was interpreted by the neighbor as an invitation to all but place a mirror under his nose. She demanded opportunities to fluff his pillows and coerced him into accepting gifts of food, more than he could possibly eat, and sometimes ate with

My Night with Sarah Palin

77937793 views77 comments33 favs

I admired her stamina. Her ability to Charlie Sheen it night after night.

Munchausen's By Sick Time

134134 views77 comments33 favs

I will never waste my sick time on my own sicknesses unless I am in a coma.

moving forward

20532053 views77 comments33 favs

see this:/ ink-stained paper/ littering miles

Whistler's Mother

13871387 views77 comments66 favs

Whistler pounded a nuanced nail, into our inferior foreheads.

Off Day

17201720 views77 comments33 favs

The world is having an off day. The sun is now lavender in color, soft on the eyes, and we stare at the new sun all day without ill effect.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

11731173 views77 comments66 favs

Marcel Proust had never been to a big-box store before. He was dazzled by the sheer size and scope of the store and the seeming impassivity of the shoppers. So many products, so many shelves, such strangely intriguing examples of the human condition. The people seemed…

Turtles Don't Have Hair

21162116 views77 comments33 favs

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Skip says. My husband laughs. He has a high girlish chuckle when he’s truly delighted. He can sing really high like a girl, too. “All right,” I say. I leave my headband

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 19

20672067 views77 comments33 favs

His wings were down when he got into the truck. It was a used UPS truck we’d bought from someone in Berkeley, and we painted out the letter “S,” so that it just read “UP.”

Wintering at Montauk

25392539 views77 comments55 favs

Montauk was the solution. He had no job, no money. He could stay for the winter at the summer place. It would be a lark. He had come home to Great Neck after losing the last job and they were making broad hints at him to move…

Dog Horse Man

45124512 views77 comments22 favs

His appearance had never suggested health, but his body had once been fleshy, his skin pale and soft because he never went outside in the daytime.

I Beat Myself at Chess (revised)

22252225 views77 comments00 favs

There we sat, myself and I, at a small folding table in the middle of the lab beside the main, l-shaped workbench. The lab was empty - always was - except for the two of us.

Tsunami

19151915 views77 comments77 favs

Tsunamis are quiet at first: not one big wave but many small injustices, so chaotic all the pressing all the weight of the noise, like a stone holding you under.

Motel

16981698 views77 comments66 favs

Brody was standing against the wall with one hand in his hip pocket, as if he was holding a gun. The motel was set in the undergrowth of several weedy small towns, but a flashing neon sign made it impossible to miss from the road. We used it as a safe hou