Most discussed stories

Fugue No. 4

978978 views22 comments00 favs

I am learning to write.

On the Anniversary of My Grandfather's Passing

10111011 views22 comments00 favs

What I remember about my grandfather were his fart jokes. When he wasn't telling us kids about how young David defeated the mighty Goliath or how Saul the pharisee humbled himself to become Paul the Apostle, he was telling us about the baby burp that begg

Mom #2

878878 views22 comments22 favs

We’d sometimes find my mother asleep in her chair outside her trailer at the nudist camp when we drove up. She loved her garden there, even with the rabbits eating her young tomato plants. She used to coax the bluebirds down to the railing of her trailer

A Day in the Life of a Public Transit Mime

775775 views22 comments11 fav

We got a lotta people ruinin' the public transit experience. Talkin' loud on cell phones, clippin' fingernails, even flossing their teeth.

Wolf Moon

845845 views22 comments22 favs

Keeper of the balance. Husband of the night.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 6

16121612 views22 comments11 fav

The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe

The Sinking Boat of Evolution

699699 views22 comments22 favs

Living dangerously, I left my house with no glasses, no umbrella. I also forgot my straw hat, no purple dye for my gray hair, my map of the world to come,

Sri Lanka

18381838 views22 comments11 fav

When he turned to the quiet sound of her voice, he knew he'd heard her before, that she had already called out several times, and that she'd reached him somewhere in a recess of…

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

13281328 views22 comments00 favs

...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...

The Town Secrets

13741374 views22 comments11 fav

How old is he anyway? 35? Maybe 40? Old—but in a good and sophisticated way. Everyone says he’s good-natured and generous, Mr. John-just-like-a-movie-star-Wagner.

"What It Means to Exodus" Or, "Brrrraaaawww"

10451045 views22 comments22 favs

"I have consulted the Internet," the man remarks, squatting low, sorting through a mountain of tablets. He snags two and stands slowly, confidently, and I realize suddenly that he is Moses. Two iPads, cradled surely in each wrist, glow with lists.

Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get To the River

10621062 views22 comments11 fav

I think we could be twins, our hands hitching us together like paper dolls, our parkas making blobby round balloon shapes as outlines for our bodies. I imagine each of us holding onto someone else, and the line continuing on from there until we have a cha

1. The Knife (or, Ignorance is Bliss)

920920 views22 comments22 favs

He showed me the knife, said it was his best friend. This knife is older than you, he said. Here, run your finger along its blade. Like this. He showed me how to do it.

Boxes

10181018 views22 comments11 fav

His voice isn't familiar but his words are. He says he knows we haven't spoken in years and apologizes for it. I can hear him pacing on the other end of the line, tapping things and then a shriek of glass shattering. Really, I tell him, no need to…

What's a Horse without a Loofah?

891891 views22 comments11 fav

A horse is a horse Of course, of course Unless it's a horse Without a Loofah You better look into the mirror Check the picture window too I may not be the only one Who's broken Don't it take a little more When I'm not with you? Don

Anxiety

737737 views22 comments11 fav

Scenes of anxious

Our Terror Closet

14311431 views22 comments22 favs

"Honey," I called out to my wife. "Why do we have Spam in the closet?" "You mean unsolicited bulk messages sent electronically?" "No--the canned, precooked meat product made by the Hormel Corporation."

you are the stem that rises, in my dream

660660 views22 comments00 favs

In my dream I am the showy leaf, and you are the stem and you are the strength. I am the leaf turning colors, my face flushed, the blonde hairs at my neck, and there is the deep carnal twisting around your stem that sends me floating to the ceiling over

soften the lazy honey

11111111 views22 comments11 fav

Pots of wine crowding the forehead until irrational thought crowds out the stubborn lizard of sanity and, God knows, my elegance. What else is left? As the young seeks change, so will I. Seeks the carmine lip, so the white bud seeking God, the unchanged

Unibrow: A Confessional

11481148 views22 comments00 favs

I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "unibrow" except Tsing Tao, which is a brand of Chinese beer....

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter One - by Christopher Chik

18831883 views22 comments11 fav

That’s how I’d met him really: drinking games. We’d both been at the local watering hole, challenging the other patrons to drunken games of chance and making a clean sweep of it. A few guys figured themselves for alpha dogs had Teqs cornered after he’d ta

a supermarket horror story

10751075 views22 comments22 favs

stoned,/ i made the mistake/ of walking to the store across the busy street/ to find myself in the middle/ of the pep-up/ for a basketball game/ or something like that.

Things That Should Be Blue

238238 views22 comments11 fav

Time to cough up phlegm.Cover up the feetGive up your stratagem.Find an empty seat. Cuckoos in their element.Parrots too.Best to hide your sentimentover things that should be blue, but instead are burning yellow,or oranges, or red.These…

Miriam

979979 views22 comments22 favs

When daybreak comes, it falls a pall pást mé, For it descends too soon for woken sight to see A shade of any gladness in its dew's first blisters: All my dreams of daylight are in darkling whispers Of…

Belonging

17131713 views22 comments11 fav

Don’t eat your lunch here For this is where the monsters sit.

PASSING CUSTOMS

14771477 views22 comments11 fav

What Mohammed didn’t tell me was the house was owned by drug dealers and inhabited by wealthy playboys who urged me over and over again to accompany them to the bathhouse.

Rubber Chains

10231023 views22 comments11 fav

He turned metal chains to rubber with the force of his mind. He prepared tacos for the paperboy.

Black Wheat, 3

684684 views22 comments11 fav

(it) looks out at the world from behind a film (it) does not participate (it) is slow to love . . . There is the image And they say they are in the world . . . Blood does not shake their hearts They lie and take your s

Puffer Fish in the Infinite Laboratory

985985 views22 comments11 fav

They put me in charge of developing a drug that stifles fear.

A Conversation on an Empty Balcony

989989 views22 comments11 fav

I go with the wind, like the smoke of this Marlboro red as it dances among the palm trees.