Most discussed stories

Camp Lake (excerpt)

12551255 views33 comments22 favs

In retrospect, we should have been a cult.

The Thief of Words

10601060 views33 comments11 fav

That's my memory, kept and clutched as with a sixth sense, that it was a prim Oriental afternoon, with the pink streaks in the sky going God-knows-where down across the park, but very far away. Ghostly, melancholy travellers. Birds met and crashed headlong somewhere up…

How to Have a Fulfilling Sexual Relationship with Your Own Parents (Part One)

18751875 views33 comments33 favs

Hi, I'm Alexander Payne. I hate sex.

R.I.P.

13381338 views33 comments33 favs

Her funeral was scheduled for the following Monday, and of course Claudia would attend. Trouble was, Monday was a workday for my parents. So when neither Mother nor Claudia could find somebody else on short notice to keep me, it was decided that I would a

The Karaoke Girls

13271327 views33 comments33 favs

The Karaoke Girls are not appreciated. Not nearly enough and not often enough.

THAT KIND OF LOVE

13241324 views33 comments22 favs

I've heard of sucessful marriages where there's very little sex. My heart aches for that kind of love.

Ring, Ring, Ring

12641264 views33 comments11 fav

If this is trouble, please call someone else.

That Crazy-Ass Willy Wonka Boat

13381338 views33 comments00 favs

I was crouched under a bruise-purple sky on a field of battle. I held a World War I-era weapon, an ancient black-iron spear with a spring, and I was told to load balloons onto it without popping them, and then I was to fire the balloons at some unnamed ta

You Know It!

16741674 views33 comments00 favs

"Every single thing ... " Hunk Hokum pronounced from the stage, flexing his muscles and prancing around in his red pseudo-loincloth, "has been totally scripted ... and ... every action ... has been ... preplanned-out ... in advance!"

The Tale of Pregnant Tinkerbelle

14231423 views33 comments33 favs

Everyone was shocked when they heard Tinkerbelle was six days gone and had got so heavy she couldn't fly. Who could have done it, everyone asked, but Tinkerbelle wasn't telling. So no one knew. That isn't true. I knew, and in this Declaration I swear I will tell…

The Infinite Wheel, Hold That Taxi

12201220 views33 comments22 favs

Scientists have discovered what I already did once on dope way back in the Sixties. There are so many other earths out there that they are almost infinite. Now in our other lives we have to shuttle from planet to planet reading our poems. And o

Carousel Horses

13471347 views33 comments33 favs

From this distance, he reminded me of a sleazy pink flamingo, waiting for feeding time at the zoo to deepen the timbre of his feathers and hint at the promise of a narcotic aviation before his commune of hens.

Memoir 2.3

11501150 views33 comments33 favs

Coffee comes in KCups and you can't fight five wars at the same time.

An after-image, a ghost

548548 views33 comments22 favs

It was also witnessing the emergence into explicitness and clarity of everyone's expendability.

Another Supper

11911191 views33 comments22 favs

The man was older and had never found a wife. Years of accumulated pain had short-circuited his instincts so that the first time he met the woman, he doubted her. Each time he spoke to her, he felt himself responding, but he wouldn't allow himself to plea

RE[a]D

14651465 views33 comments33 favs

Stop! the voice commands in a guttural shriek. Do not move. You are under arrest. But the voice is only in his head; he has created it the way a writer creates characters on a page, and it is just as real to him as if someone were really there.

Hot Weather

891891 views33 comments00 favs

I would like to invite the public to an open-air, environmental art piece called Hot Weather. The exhibition will take place this summer. It will not begin until the temperature reaches 90 degrees. This demonstration is available free of charge

I wear my square sunglasses

11761176 views33 comments22 favs

square mannequin-wives who can’t look in their eyes

you see?

850850 views33 comments22 favs

The river is there inside, the liquid living inside like light, moving rapidly over unknown rocks, approaching, and intimate. As if the source of all is inside me. Someone, anyone, says the word “available” from 3 tables away, as if it’s the only word o

Hector's Record Collection

12801280 views33 comments33 favs

Zappa, Santana, Hendrix.

They Come and Go

776776 views33 comments00 favs

Days come and go. Faster through the years. Falling like Christmas tree needles, the longer the tree stands. The days will eventually end. Only one day a year is special. Even when we say we are too old to notice them, we do. We know they are there. Even when we…

THUNDERSNOW

10661066 views33 comments33 favs

I know who done it. Them goddamn taters. I walked around the yard and started picking up pieces of the camaro, wondering if, from above, they’d laid the parts out into some kinda cult symbols or something.

Love

11551155 views33 comments22 favs

Goddamned crabs. He got em. Lenny. Itch. Itch. Itch. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

The Eighth Wonder of the World

11261126 views33 comments11 fav

She says, “He's like, the eighth wonder of the world.” She says this without irony, and this makes you feel embarrassed for her. The laughter in this small, smoky space is getting louder. You chew your chapped lips and put your…

putting our bones together

857857 views33 comments11 fav

I can still see us sitting, somewhere (was it in a café?) imagining what it would be like if our mutual faces blended into the future (the waiters posing as in a Manet painting.) Putting our bones together, our broad features, Bohemia and Sweden. Yo

Luminous Nights, 3

860860 views33 comments11 fav

She also, wearing the requisite Hawaiian lei in this naked wedding photograph, but her low-swung breasts were hanging all the way down to her navel. Her navel itself appeared to be about as round and deep as a shot glass. There was this smear of gaudy flu

Her Sunday Story

968968 views33 comments00 favs

She turned on the television. The newscaster was her husband. She changed the channel. Her husband interviewing her husband. She changed the channel. A baseball game. Her husband pitched to her husband who popped a fly ball which was caught by her husband

Tending Toward Inertia

956956 views33 comments00 favs

She meets her old dance instructor, named Ira, in the back of a bus that wheezes & squeaks. The passengers seem to deny the small clouds of white exhaust

A Bowl of Soup

257257 views33 comments11 fav

Bury my wounded ego Mr Sitting Bull.Keep me from committing suicide Ernest Hemingway.Take me for a ride above the clouds Christopher Reeve.Fly me to the moon Frank Sinatra.Invite me out to dinner Marlon Brando.Give me immunity from Hollywood John Cassavetes.Keep me from…

the custodial cats of the fulcrum of memory + three

831831 views33 comments33 favs

“the calendar of my future was in there!”/ yes: all tomorrows belong to the dead cats,/ their decisions relinquish one day per day.