Most read stories

Migration

19811981 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?

My Bed Loves Me

19811981 views1212 comments77 favs

Above-board, we sail

If It Isn't One Thing, It's Another

19811981 views1313 comments1313 favs

My friend says there's some kind of bug that bites its mate's head off after they have sex.

Wings

19801980 views88 comments66 favs

Every lunch time the numerous small jukeboxes that are distributed about the dining area fill the air with webs of King Curtis and Benny Goodman.

And We Sell Apples 1977

19801980 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."

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.2 - c.4

19801980 views00 comments00 favs

Madam Mayweather heard the laughter stop and the copy of Jean-Pierre burst into smoke. Her silence was intense. Nobody in the auditorium knew what to expect. No one dared to say a single word.

patti, did art get us?

19801980 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

Miss Edna's Lace

19791979 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…

another night, another dream

19791979 views11 comment22 favs

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

DRIP

19791979 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...

Mr. Twitchy

19791979 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

19791979 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

'Bout Apples

19791979 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

19791979 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

Class

19791979 views55 comments11 fav

Class (appears in my book Breaking it Down; no journal publication) When your neighbor James Frehley cusses you out for hanging a block and tackle from the silver maple in your front lawn, begin to pull the engine from your Galaxie anyway, smile and nod…

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 2

19791979 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.

Caprice Classic

19791979 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.

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

19791979 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

Elevator Neighbors (from The New Yorker)

19791979 views33 comments44 favs

“Do you think she paints?” “Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”

Breathless

19781978 views1616 comments1111 favs

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

Brot und Käse

19781978 views55 comments33 favs

I hoped I did not look as panicked as I tried not to feel.

Fragment

19781978 views2424 comments1313 favs

see the man

Hot Cocoa and Bourbon

19781978 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

The Brazen Bull

19781978 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.

Human Frailty

19781978 views1717 comments1212 favs

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

Milton wrote his best lines blind

19771977 views22 comments00 favs

the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

A Body Divided, 5

19771977 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

Opening Line

19771977 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…

Ornamental Onion

19771977 views77 comments33 favs

i imagined myself & i was phlox saxifrage pompom ranunculus poppy anemone ornamental onion rattlesnake red ribbon nerine & i loved the painted tongue & i wore the rattlesnake

Europe, 1960

19771977 views2323 comments2222 favs

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