Most discussed stories

Cattle Crossing

10001000 views77 comments55 favs

"You wantin' one of them kittens? If we can't give 'em away we're gonna drown 'em. We got too many."

(Platter of) Figs and Oranges (Set to a Warped Organ Fanfare from too Long Ago)

13591359 views77 comments66 favs

Lonely kids only want this thing to go away and stay away. To not be lonely anymore. The lonely, uncool Kids have learned to be absolutely Still in the moment. Who does this fall to? They Haven't read enough Vonnegut for your liking? David Foster…

An Orphan of Fire

13931393 views77 comments44 favs

I break your flesh and make music on the harp of your bones.

The Sunlight of the Mind

12771277 views77 comments55 favs

The nerves are birds that guide us to feeling the loop and lift of reverie.

It's All in Your Head

10521052 views77 comments66 favs

The terms of a broken heart, I guess I nevergot to read them. But they must besomething awful, something numbing, something no sane personwould ever agree to. You're already on the vergeof becoming nothing I can remember without a photograph beingshoved in my face. Like a…

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

18251825 views77 comments44 favs

There was a time when she could quell the loathing that Fred inspired in her. She could force it down. Back then, for instance, when they’d been in counseling, the ball of hatred had only been a little, overripe orange - squishy and occasionally mushed

The Man Who Lived Amongst the Cannibals

16851685 views77 comments55 favs

“Ah Willie! Ah my boy! You poor sweet faced youth. Gone now! Our memories, Willie, our memories will haunt us forever with your laughter, your joy, your enduring excuses, your misspellings & badly slanted penmanship. Oh Willie. My boy. Gone & gone f

The Fine Madness

11391139 views77 comments66 favs

A phrase, a sentence, a stanza,/ sounds among the sums and lists/ and starts a scratched cascade/ of syllables and other approximations--

Summer, 1995.

13841384 views77 comments55 favs

I am no different to her, living seven days ahead of myself, looking forward to looking back, as we Irish do so fondly

79 AD

982982 views77 comments55 favs

No CNN to sing obliteration,/ only Pliny the Younger/ to scratch what fell

Don't Touch

19981998 views77 comments22 favs

Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day

Farming, A Handbook (for Wendell Berry)

20332033 views77 comments33 favs

out here the land/speaks in Quaker silence

Wonkie Eye

11691169 views77 comments88 favs

The bad optical, crossed or dead or lazy or stray

Red Brick

19531953 views77 comments33 favs

The child could hear frogs chorusing outside and she wanted to listen only to that. Inside her grandfather gasped for air and she tried to keep her eyes normal as he smiled at her and put the mask back on. She did not want him to see how much she felt like running…

December 15, 2012

19101910 views77 comments33 favs

Already, I can see that, whenever Harold moves, some of his soul escapes, like an accidental exhalation, like breath on powder.

Reprisal

13601360 views77 comments88 favs

Reprisal The bomb blew away hubris, shocked the arrogant bastards into humiliated silence. None of them had experienced hunger and they'd misjudged its effect. In the lobby of the palace, dirt, plaster, glass shifted, rumbled,…

An Open Letter To My Vagina

30123012 views77 comments00 favs

Dear Vagina,You are my oldest and dearest friend. We have been through so much together, haven't we? I remember the first day I really got to know you. It was about eighteen years ago. I thought I was dying, but it turns out I wasn't. …

Fool of Me

17591759 views77 comments66 favs

This no man's island I'm perched high above isn't always so beautiful to the casual beholder of newly printed maps. Oh don't go and get your clouds all wrong. Puffed or thin, everything I say I believe in is a real feeling, until the music dies…

Life After Les Miz

11871187 views77 comments55 favs

There are many ways to cope effectively with your life after a Les Miserables run, and everyone is different, but here are some things that have helped others work through the process.

Bad Dad

22112211 views77 comments55 favs

When they were seven, he’d taken them out to the desert and let them shoot a .38 at rusted cans. The explosions rocked them back on their heels.

THE RICH RIVER

14461446 views77 comments22 favs

I must have been six years old at that time, but the events of…

Among the Missing: Family and War

753753 views77 comments44 favs

As Sebald says, I grew up in the shadow of war....

Having Read the Poems of Matt Dennison

16351635 views77 comments33 favs

Having read the poetry of Dennison I hereby give up writing.

An Extremely Complex Fall Evening

26272627 views77 comments66 favs

Soon the entire sky load of constellations was carried across the bumpy fields

People of Walmart

11901190 views77 comments66 favs

You look at me with that contemptuous smirk while I'm here in Walmart dressed in sweats and house slippers, sloppy, a bit fat, trying to figure out which electric toothbrush to buy.

Sex on Other People's Lawns

24492449 views77 comments22 favs

Miss Dolan was different in the way she wore her short, curly hair, and in the way she swung her long, well toned arms as she walked so flawlessly across the classroom.

Manliness!! *urp*

13351335 views77 comments44 favs

It starts on the Fallopian Speedway

Autumn in the Afterward

16401640 views77 comments66 favs

A year after we'd last spoken I can still remember your commentary, our ill-fated reunion at the baggage claim forever immortalized as this solitary instance of unobstructed joy.

The Keratin Experience

12791279 views77 comments22 favs

Lisa Pottratz's mother illustrated fashion for Lord & Taylor from home in the 1970s. There is more to say about fertility, naming, and diabetes.

Spider on a Red Thing

10631063 views77 comments66 favs

Equality became the next goal, rendering gay redundant in describing marriage. Gaelic life is ringed with sharing and lent the word slogan.