Most read stories

Actor-Activist

19121912 views00 comments00 favs

A dark-haired, handsome man adjusted the headset he was wearing, leaned toward a microphone, and eyed his host, a curly-haired man with a toothy grin, who sat up straight as he received a cue from his producer.

Book Killer

19121912 views1010 comments77 favs

Sometimes after bookbinding for a few hours at the hand-sewing table, Jillie would, after scraping her knife too roughly over the glue of an old book's spine, feel not like a resurrector of literature, as she should, but a killer. Not a calculating or

Happy Hour

19121912 views1919 comments1818 favs

We were in the car more than anywhere else. A few days driving, then a few days to get back home.

13 Halloweens

19121912 views22 comments22 favs

1. The Walking Heart Attack Man has two outfits. In the summer he dresses in a short sleeve checkered button down shirt and high waisted Bermuda shorts with sandals. In the winter he wears dark pants and loafers with a gray corduroy coat…

The Caveman Attends the Symphony Without His Club

19111911 views88 comments33 favs

“Would you consider renewing for the next season?” “We’re not interested.” “Can I ask you why?” I considered my reply. I was thinking of mincing my words. The man on the other end of the line seemed, how should I put this, somewhat s

Tatters

19111911 views99 comments88 favs

They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.

The Watchman

19111911 views1212 comments1010 favs

The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra

Saturday Night at the Yeti Fight

19111911 views33 comments00 favs

“What part of ‘only bettors can watch the Yeti fight’ do you not understand?!”, he yelled. “Either place a bet or get the hell out of here!” I begrudgingly gave him all of the money I had on me, about two hundred, and placed it on Demonio B

Trust In Wolves

19111911 views55 comments22 favs

All wolves, my child, want to be eaten.

Repatriation

19111911 views1717 comments1111 favs

When he woke he carried the body of a cat instead of a man. Next to him his cat dreamed it had a human body.

The Fish, the Fisherman, and the Sea

19111911 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…

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

19111911 views1313 comments1313 favs

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

All Art Is Betrayal

19111911 views2929 comments1616 favs

a world of probability against plague

Black Wheat, 2

19101910 views55 comments22 favs

They are really living (they) say things they don't mean . . . Do not know what they say Take the path without heart, seeing the image . . . The moon rises above them It does not move their blood Nothing calls out to their blo

The New Dark Ages

19101910 views77 comments33 favs

It was only later, much later, that we would discover that the war we were fighting was a war between ourselves. Melissa and I left the machine, with Carlton lost forever inside. We abandoned the warehouse. Our backs were scalded from the heat, and the hole in the…

Woman Gives Birth At Cafe, Refuses To Leave Until Latte Finished

19091909 views11 comment00 favs

There was a man crying, walking his dog and a woman drove by on a flat tire They brought coffee to the tables in large glasses on white saucers There’d be long silver spoons with which to stir in strong

Welcome to our community

19091909 views00 comments00 favs

“Yeah, she's a real slut,” many contestants' mothers say. “If he could only keep it in his pants, he'd probably be able to stay in the country,” others say about their sons

Muslin

19091909 views1515 comments99 favs

Outside I see the daytime moon, and it is faint as a fingerprint. My cousins have up-turned the biggest rocks and removed all the Sow bugs. The land is damp and red, and the trees feel wet to the center.

Milton wrote his best lines blind

19081908 views22 comments00 favs

the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

Opening Line

19081908 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…

Oddities

19081908 views1818 comments1717 favs

One day my wife got so mad at me she raked her fingernails down my face.

Albert's Mother

19081908 views44 comments22 favs

The stern tone of the chairwoman made him miss his mother, the snap of her accusations, the sting of her belt on the backs of his legs.

Three New Poems

19081908 views99 comments88 favs

Letter(s)The sky set itself on fire, butit really didn't make a whole lot of difference. Birdsknew not to worry any more thanusual. Trees thought and made the mostof their landscapes as a way ofbeing modern and yet timeless. It's onlypeople who suffer from too much…

An Old Sweet Song

19081908 views33 comments22 favs

Rob thought he might even make it. He'd stopped off south of Seattle, in Kent, and filled up the tank and went back in the can and topped off again. He got back on the road, to all appearances blase, blase. The montages were muted, at least for…

Take Your Gun to Work Day

19071907 views2929 comments1515 favs

In a rousing show of support for guns and the owners who love them, the Legislature passed and Governor Greg Abbott gleefully signed a law proclaiming April 15 as Take Your Gun to Work Day in Texas.

DRIP

19071907 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...

Unsaid

19071907 views2424 comments1111 favs

whistling some blithering tune, trotting around the kitchen in his underwear with his ribs, a long row of meatless tragedies that screamed for something other than the meal he was making.

Before the Fall (Pt. 2)

19071907 views33 comments11 fav

Newsome glared at the sleeping woman, slumped over the edge of the hard, metal table, her head settled comfortably into the crook of her arm. Over an hour she's been in that position, he thought. Despite the harshness of the room, the fluorescent lights,…

'Bout Apples

19071907 views11 comment22 favs

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

Alice

19071907 views2323 comments1919 favs

Alice writes three different versions of the letter. The last one is the most tempered, the most like her, but still it is such an unlike-her thing to do. The couple who lives above her has been disrupting her sleep nearly every night for the past three weeks. The woman's…