Most read stories

Caprice Classic

19771977 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.

Hot Cocoa and Bourbon

19771977 views00 comments00 favs

Walking into the living room and next to the tree, he handed his wife Kathy her Minnie and plopped himself on the couch. Their three kids, two girls and the youngest a boy, tore through the wrapping paper like a pack of rabid wolves tearing through a deer

A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING

19771977 views11 comment11 fav

My best friend and roommate Eliza woke up one morning with the sudden conviction that she had to become very fat, as soon as possible.

Blueberries

19771977 views66 comments11 fav

Cold water shocked Ernest's face. The evening with Gracie had his nerves hot and popping. She was his fifth date and the closest to his memory of Sadie in college so far. He looked up at himself in the bathroom mirror with his mouth agape. Redness flooded…

Breathless

19761976 views1616 comments1111 favs

I sit down next to a youngster on the couch. “Would you like to see?” she asks. “See what?” I reply....

DRIP

19761976 views2020 comments1111 favs

...you lick you ice cream, little pink tongue like a cat's, flick, flick... lick fast, girl, the heat's gonna melt it...

A New Notion about an Old Story

19761976 views1010 comments88 favs

A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…

Mr. Twitchy

19761976 views22 comments11 fav

I used to think the world was fucked and it was up to me and me alone to see it unfucked. That's really what I used to think, but I've been trying to work on that. It's not a particularly flattering characteristic I have. I'm trying to be more positive.

The Damp Place

19761976 views88 comments55 favs

As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe

And We Sell Apples 1977

19761976 views11 comment11 fav

I hear the car door slam. Steve, about to duck daddy-duty: Just gonna take a run to the Quickway. "Rudy," I say, "go get in the car. Tell Papo I said Wait."

Miss Edna's Lace

19751975 views22 comments00 favs

When Elvis died, I felt so empty that I headed straight for Jimmy Choo's, but quietly, with the half-veil of my pillbox hat draped low over my face. I didn't want to draw attention to my vintage Dior mourning outfit, since I normally wear pants, even here. The voices…

Migration

19751975 views2020 comments1313 favs

She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?

'Bout Apples

19751975 views11 comment22 favs

Sawyer walked toward the lone house with the sentinel trees. Behind him there were no tracks in the snow.

The Sky is Simply White

19751975 views1414 comments88 favs

The rain is no terrible epitaph

Europe, 1960

19751975 views2323 comments2222 favs

The painting was on loan from a gallery in Chicago. We stood there connecting the dots.

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 2

19751975 views00 comments00 favs

Sometimes I have really violent dreams where I smash Libby’s face in with a liquor bottle, a brick, a mounted boar’s head... really whatever my brain makes available to me. I always wake up satisfied.

The Illuminated Dream

19751975 views11 comment11 fav

It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.

The Truthmobile

19751975 views33 comments22 favs

She's had a magnetic sign made for the side of her Honda, TRUTHMOBILE, simple and elegant. Maybe too simple; she's worried it suggests a religious affiliation.

Before California Fell into the Sea

19741974 views22 comments11 fav

The trail wound through oak trees and climbed up a hill. The sun was high and hot whenever we came out from the cover of the trees. We stopped under a tree. “OK old man,” Leda said. She came to me and kissed me. Then she was unbuttoning my pants and kne

Opening Line

19741974 views44 comments33 favs

I cannot read one more award winning novel by a female Asian author about the atrocities committed against their childhood, she thought. Then she sat down with her trusty yellow pad and Papermate fineline to write the next lyrical story of a female Asian writer and the…

The Leg

19741974 views3131 comments1111 favs

They all looked for Vic's leg after the accident.

Our Story in Ten Photographs

19741974 views2727 comments1818 favs

1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…

The Messenger

19741974 views77 comments11 fav

Sophie didn't stop for lunch when she worked. She showed up first in the morning and worked through until the last package was delivered. She pedaled from building to building and walked quickly, at just shy…

patti, did art get us?

19741974 views1111 comments88 favs

often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/ we never had any children, he said ruefully/ that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/ robert, dying: creating silence

Jesus Had a Tat

19731973 views88 comments44 favs

Jesus Freaks will go tat head... crowns of thorns for their noggins and so on. Christ had one too...

Ten years later

19731973 views55 comments44 favs

Are you asleep? He says. Wake up.

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

19731973 views1111 comments77 favs

I'm trying to read a Poetry in Motion poem on there wall of a crowded electric train

Fragment

19731973 views2424 comments1313 favs

see the man

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

19731973 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

Human Frailty

19731973 views1717 comments1212 favs

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori