Most discussed stories

Yellow Dining Room (from The New Yorker)

12311231 views22 comments22 favs

...you should pick a VERY OLD millionaire. Very old, and NOT VERY WELL...

our notorious youth

10061006 views22 comments11 fav

Be aware the dog is king, radiant, emitting many beams, renewed by and restored by his fullness, his satiety. In many ways underlying all our hearts and minds, out of our notorious youth, ever the flower of our flesh on fire like a little reed next to the dried…

Posted for Non-Payment of Dues

512512 views22 comments00 favs

The little notice talked its trash, a J’accuse! “Posted: For Non-Payment of Dues.”

Love at First Sight

16581658 views22 comments11 fav

Life ascends gradually—just like they always said. I stop counting on immediate transformations—the overnight best-seller, instant enlightenment—and instead focus on what I can do: Writing a little each day and making it to Mass on the weekend. I even giv

People Get Haircuts

757757 views22 comments22 favs

like they are trying to not get noticed by fickle death. It clearly marks them in a targeted way. Very ironic. Here's the only message I want you to ever have from me : quick, scramble like a monkey with a stolen banana in your tiny hairy…

Now Fox News is saying

502502 views22 comments11 fav

We were in love with the same disease.

The Artist

11481148 views22 comments11 fav

The story itself is not much longer than a snippet. What is a snippet anyway?

Dinner with Someone Who Fucks Someone Else

11091109 views22 comments33 favs

say no / to me / and devastate me / and I will take it / as god's will / to drown me / in a vat / of my own / entrails

A House Alive with Oblivion

258258 views22 comments11 fav

.

Chemical Assistance

514514 views22 comments11 fav

Through your veins

A Death by the Sea: excerpt

14011401 views22 comments00 favs

I began to imagine the shadows, so rectilinear, were arcing and flowing. I saw shoulders moving, the sinewy upper shoulders of wolves running in a pack. . .

The Men Who Forgot Math and Poetry

13591359 views22 comments11 fav

"They treat us like shit," the mathematician said. "They think they can just take us and electrocute us and drown us."

Betrayal

10221022 views22 comments00 favs

My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

Caprice Classic

11691169 views22 comments00 favs

A cloud of light, white smoke floated out of the driver’s side window. Nate and Zach sat on the front bench seat, talked, and puffed away. “Breath in and say Mom is coming,” said Zach.

In transit

937937 views22 comments11 fav

Clare sits bolt upright in the hard plastic chair, warily tracking every passer-by. In her lap, Kim’s hair is damp with sweat, dark blonde curls melting against her flushed cheeks. Clare absently strokes the length, soothing both of them.

Haibun: Elegy for Caroline

129129 views22 comments11 fav

George Herbert, poet and Anglican priest, died of tuberulosis in 1633 at age 40. His friends described his last three weeks in sickbed, attended to by them and members of his family. They recorded his words: "I now look back on the pleasures of my life past, and see in…

the last day of the world

751751 views22 comments00 favs

I thought that was the last day of the world (when I floated up near your ceiling,) but it was the first. I thought I had seen the worst. But that was nothing. I know you had no idea what was coming when I first met you. But when we looked in each other

White Room Trials

10941094 views22 comments22 favs

November 24th-- Subject began to chew the flesh of his forearms. Researchers considered interfering but decided against it because subject was only bleeding slightly.

Affairs of the Heart

680680 views22 comments00 favs

The next morning, I was shaved, skinned and stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey for its untimely demise.

The Key

944944 views22 comments00 favs

"No idea yet, why it was so important, what could it possibly mean to her? Was it someone who she knew, a distant relative, a character for her novel, something was just so strangely haunting about it that she could see it even when she did not have it in

Horace

11021102 views22 comments22 favs

The young boy sat on the swing, hearing sirens in the distance. The tops of his shoes were dirty. His fingers as well, where he drew stick figures of people in the dirt. His…

Mike's Confession in the Basement to Being Allergic to Balls

10551055 views22 comments22 favs

He arched an eyebrow.  He was "thinking" — a tricky thing to do, when you never read, even the newspaper.

So Different Now

11511151 views22 comments00 favs

She’s right there in Thirsty’s. In her usual spot. Drinking her usual drink. Yuengling on tap. One after another. And he’s there too. Behind the bar. Pouring drinks. One after another. Sometimes they speak. But mostly she orders. He pours. And

The Lives of Felix Gunderson

28042804 views22 comments00 favs

The lights turn on, the audience cheers. He raises his guitar, steps up to the microphone and sings. The rock star. He is a god.

Begonia {part two}

11461146 views22 comments00 favs

perhaps because they were holding hands and sharing tears; perhaps because the moon shone so brightly; perhaps for no reason at all; but both the Coriander and Isabella felt a surge of hope so strongly that both smiled a genuine smile.

FIREWORKS

859859 views22 comments00 favs

It's eight fifteen in the morning, my favorite time to call, and a guy named Ernie DeCampo answers the door in his work pants and a t-shirt. “Good morning, Mr.De Campo,” I say. “Do you have any fireworks in your home?” …

actual flesh

742742 views22 comments00 favs

With nipples like those, rose-colored, we could have fed a nation!

Tiger Milk (Part 4--the last act.)

10991099 views22 comments11 fav

"In the grave my lips will still be moving."

A Day at the Fair

890890 views22 comments11 fav

“You just missed that last time,” the carney was saying as Sue Ellen walked up. “Give it one more try and I’ll bet you get your girl a big teddy bear. C’mon.”

The Lot

10341034 views22 comments00 favs

The inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhood steered clear of the Lot, mindful of its existence, its countless drags of scrap, drenched with the fused association of many scenes and emotions from memory and experience. Left to its own devices, the place is now…