Most discussed stories

The Cuckold

22982298 views55 comments22 favs

his wife had made love to another man, out of spite or love or to wake him from his conventional slumber, we never learned. We were there as a foil, a first step towards reconciliation, unction.

Shiny Crimson Trails

10251025 views55 comments33 favs

only thoughts lost in lonely trails of red

Strange Sign At the Outskirts to Paradise

746746 views55 comments44 favs

In an area of high winds and strong convictions, I have lived among the ever-changing crowd that is always the same. I must have died overnight, and now my wings are flapping in my own face. I used to be an owl, a night owl, to be sure

Domestic Sketches

930930 views55 comments33 favs

The cats sniff at the small opening,/ one by one, in a furtive casualness./ They think the outside air is sweet

(I don’t know how the nights can be so long when life is so short)

11731173 views55 comments22 favs

But I think what I remember most was Lynda really letting me have it. “Right now I’m seeing this married farmer out in Western Illinois. I met him at this bar out there called the Peppermint Lounge. Boy, they sure know me out there! Funny how every town

Bonne Fire

11941194 views55 comments22 favs

And the voodoo pins pinged as, folding and imploding, she was reduced to a petro-chemical puddle.

Making Waves in Sculptural Math

788788 views55 comments33 favs

It was a summer full of rage and discontent. The air had a new taste to it, reminiscent of the tang of battery acid.

Three : Sixteen

874874 views55 comments44 favs

We are a city of overworked workers.

In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas

951951 views55 comments55 favs

In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas where over much crowd noise the three of us are discussing Yeats, Joyce and Lady Gregory. We’re in an Irish pub after all, plus the fact we’re literature profs attending a Vegas academic conference.

There are Grandmas and there is my Grandma.

16031603 views55 comments44 favs

Last night Grandma got her walker stuck in the snow almost up to her tits. I feel the mark of a dutiful grandson is to come to her aid. And I always do. Even though she usually gets back home at 2 00 a.m. — or maybe 3 — sometimes she's late and we worry but I…

Without Forgiveness

14311431 views55 comments44 favs

Click-clack, click-clack. The cadence of the tracks below push George back and forth between what happened and what is to come.

Fidelity

13181318 views55 comments44 favs

The night before leaving, we have French toast and red wine in Matthew's kitchen, our packs and sleeping bags and tents surrounding us, looming like golems. Because we're nervous, and a little drunk, the conversation inevitably turns to grammar. "I'm sure I learned…

Night Flowers

988988 views55 comments33 favs

Night Flowers By Zofia Barisas The garden lies in deep darkness even in the noon of blazing day. A steamy pond lies still in wait for uncertain footsteps. Here aquatic green spiders, big as frogs, spin iridescent webs from leaf to leaf. Gigantic, ancient trees stand…

Silent Season

11671167 views55 comments22 favs

we are tired, you and I.

Another Way

10551055 views55 comments22 favs

If there was another way to describe emptiness, I'd word the endlessness of the sky, of the ocean at low tide.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 34

10611061 views55 comments22 favs

—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?

The Dead in Paris, Parts 5 and 6

926926 views55 comments55 favs

The virgins smirk / // We got medieval on their asses

Visitation

848848 views55 comments44 favs

We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.

Zombicil

15801580 views55 comments00 favs

I’m told it hurts. It hurts more than anyone ever thought it would. Every light in the room blinds you. Every sound in the room deafens you. The pain is excruciating as muscles and nerves that aren’t meant to work anymore are forced back to life i

Sarah

10351035 views55 comments00 favs

Rumpelstiltskin cried because you belong to me;

The Sky Just Now

11001100 views55 comments44 favs

has somehow gotten off its swaddled behind and put on its next new face, your own dipped in glass, of many green eyes for simple fair measure , lifting up my own morning lids with softly pulsating …

What We Talk About When We Talk About Photosynthesis

921921 views55 comments22 favs

Minimalist/realist short-story writer Raymond Carver was fired from his job as an editor of science textbooks because of his inappropriate writing style.

A Walk on Ferry Beach, Maine

10471047 views55 comments33 favs

"and I turned to you, at some joke we shared, and saw winter ease its hand,"

The Day I Got Fired From My Foundation Job

663663 views55 comments11 fav

But of course, I didn’t get the grant, so my day job in communications at Katzenfeld continued. It was the first job I got out of college. I had been there for over a year and my salary was less than my rent and student loans combined, so I had to keep my

My Neighborhood is F*cked Up

876876 views55 comments11 fav

There is a couple across the street who fight constantly. I feel bad watching them fight but they haven't had curtains since I moved into my new place and no one in this neighborhood can afford cable. I know that …

Heart of a Poet

924924 views55 comments11 fav

He sneezed Hit the wrong buttonDidn't mean to kill him,but he didHeld onto me then, cryingand could not stopI feel so awful, he sobbedHe was asking for mercyAnd I meant to say, "yes,I will spare your life,"but I hit the kill buttoninsteadIt was an accidentHoney, it's just a…

As Poetry Month Ends, Prosaic Types Get Their Turn

11021102 views55 comments44 favs

“I’m going,” O’Bannon-Krim says with exasperation as she throws trinkets such as Dylan Thomas beer coozies and Edna St. Vincent Millay hair scrunchies into a cardboard box.

Denouement

842842 views55 comments44 favs

No one has the right/ to script how someone dies.

Silver Spring to Phoenix

11911191 views55 comments55 favs

Vibrations of a cavern a mile beneath silver willows.At two in the morning beyond the Sheratona lumination of pollution intercedes realism.Cardinals and doves develop their melodyprogressively caught in beat/heart echoes,as with spelunker canaries fluting noxious gasa small…

Drug Series # 19: Heroin

11541154 views55 comments22 favs

Billie Holiday and I want a cup of coffee and they tell us to go fuck ourselves.