Most read stories

More Abandoned Sentences

19671967 views2323 comments77 favs

By morning it was over. I crawled farther out onto the ledge. The three year old was screaming like Donald Duck. Trains ran into the night. Several pigs entered the open window.

Europe, 1960

19671967 views2323 comments2222 favs

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

Caprice Classic

19671967 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.

Thick Rib of the Lamentation Animal

19671967 views55 comments66 favs

This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.

Missed

19661966 views1313 comments1515 favs

How I felt in Ireland.

The Wish

19661966 views00 comments00 favs

Now coins used for wishing are not like coins used to purchase bread or carrots. Coins that have been invested with the magic of hopes and desires are special and have special properties. The difference between wishing coins and ordinary coins is very subtle.

Milton wrote his best lines blind

19661966 views22 comments00 favs

the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

Migration

19661966 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?

The Waves

19661966 views77 comments66 favs

...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.

Blueberries

19661966 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…

another night, another dream

19651965 views11 comment22 favs

She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.

Human Frailty

19651965 views1717 comments1212 favs

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

patti, did art get us?

19651965 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

Child's Play Brings Back Memories of Busted Heads for Greying Protestor

19641964 views88 comments33 favs

"My boy Jake fell in with a bad crowd when he went to college," Coffelt says, shaking his head. "A bunch of accounting majors."

A Country of Husbands

19641964 views1010 comments77 favs

The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

Blink

19641964 views44 comments22 favs

He stands straighter and walks toward the phone in the back, near the bathrooms. His wet sock slaps loudly against the tile floor. The buzz of conversation dims to whispers, barely audible above the roar of the espresso machine.

A Body Divided, 5

19641964 views00 comments00 favs

Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

19641964 views22 comments00 favs

when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

'Bout Apples

19641964 views11 comment22 favs

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

Before California Fell into the Sea

19641964 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

19641964 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 Fish, the Fisherman, and the Sea

19641964 views44 comments11 fav

My father is remarkably clever. That is, for a rundown, henpecked fisherman. He has caught me again. He has me slung over his back in a rickety lobster trap and I can hear him huffing and the water in him sloshing and though I can't see his face, I imagine it is ruddied…

Our Story in Ten Photographs

19641964 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

19641964 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…

The Brazen Bull

19641964 views99 comments44 favs

History is replete with brutally imaginative techniques of torture and execution, but I am the only death machine that doubles as a musical instrument.

21stC irl (easy action) party

19631963 views2121 comments1313 favs

Nobody took pics.

The Damp Place

19631963 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

Noah's Ark, NYC

19631963 views44 comments22 favs

Two by two they come walking down 7th Ave girl with girl boy and girl boy and boy two pigeons strolling side by side two robins two crows walking stiffly like two pieces of anthracite coal two spiders two dogs sniffing each oth

Ten years later

19621962 views55 comments44 favs

Are you asleep? He says. Wake up.

Mr. Twitchy

19621962 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.