Most read stories

Traveling Lightheaded

19551955 views44 comments11 fav

He lit my cigarette even though he didn't want me to smoke. Buying me drinks all night, he didn't complain, but he thought I drank too much.

Elegy For the Old Republic

19551955 views33 comments22 favs

You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.

Three short-shorts

19551955 views1212 comments99 favs

Wake up! But it was already too late for Charles.

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19551955 views55 comments11 fav

The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n

Me And My Liberal Friends

19541954 views77 comments77 favs

“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f

Rust

19541954 views66 comments44 favs

We lived in a white and mint green trailer in the woods. I was 23. The hanging of the clothes on the line made me feel kind of famous in the eyes of nature

Self-Portrait of Someone Else (excerpt)

19541954 views77 comments33 favs

Recently I think I became someone else. When the alarm clock rings in the morning, it sounds sharper than usual; getting up, my feet don't seem to quite touch the floor; looking into my bathroom mirror, my face seems to be melting, sliding, my eyes dri

My Wife, My Love

19541954 views2121 comments1818 favs

When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.

Anchored Leaves

19541954 views1111 comments55 favs

i.More and more, for Megan LeMaster, each beginning was its own end. She couldn't bear to buy flowers or dresses that seemed too beautiful. Friendships formed, endured, gave out in a handshake. Each deed in life had an immediate, inescapable…

RETIREMENT

19541954 views2222 comments77 favs

Men have a way of doing that, Lord, why? I always thought retirement means you get to sleep longer. Nope He must arise early, make breakfast, after 40 years of eating mine. Next, he insists on coming with me to the market. When I try to…

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

19541954 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

The Night

19531953 views77 comments44 favs

her parents were gone they sat on the love seat side by side saying nothing the longest time

We Threw These At Each Other

19531953 views55 comments22 favs

Jimmy wore a tie to top that torn green tee he toted every day, every other. He smelled of dirt, said he had a feeling we had watermelon somewhere since he caught a whiff from his room inside his house across the street.

What's Wrong With Stella by Starlight?

19531953 views1111 comments33 favs

Suzie went on to become an anchorwoman in Los Angeles after college. She had tiny bruises on her feet where she’d shoot heroin since she didn’t want tracks to show on her arms, where they’d ruin the effect of a little black cocktail dress

Tribal Elder

19531953 views22 comments11 fav

"Look at this," she says while thumbing through the guide book, "look at what we can do on Jooga Booga island. Says here, 'Parasailing over the sapphire blue sea, one soars hundred of feet above water-skiers, boaters, and snorkelers, and the picture is b

Ghostriders and rainbows

19531953 views44 comments22 favs

Ghostriders in the syand rainbows in my mindor was itrainbow in the skyghostriders in my mind?I can't remember ...And apparently this body is not 200 characters long, so I add some text so this pearl too can be read (ahum) My body is only 170 characters long, snif,…

Touching Jim

19521952 views1313 comments1212 favs

He introduced me to key lime pie, and for this alone I would have loved him forever. It was an innocent time for me, and I was easy to please.

Exasperation Management

19521952 views1313 comments1313 favs

We honor fierce, quick, cunning/ thought-in-action types

How to Forget

19521952 views44 comments11 fav

Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

19521952 views33 comments22 favs

In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?” “Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19521952 views00 comments00 favs

An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.

What She Gave to the Sea

19521952 views1010 comments55 favs

1.There's a young woman in a nightclub seated next to a window out of which she watches the slow descent of snow, illuminated by strategic lights. She imagines herself falling with those flakes. Her friend has left her for the dance floor. The young woman is…

El Gabacho

19521952 views00 comments00 favs

She turned to the window, staring into the dark. A smile crept to her lips and she laughed softly. “No, we can’t. I’m Mexican and we speak Spanish.” The smile vanished and she moved to leave. “No sé qué decir… sólo puedo llorar. Nada

The Burning Gulf

19521952 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Summer Reading

19521952 views55 comments33 favs

The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.

Phil's Last Stand

19521952 views11 comment22 favs

Phil was scared. Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.

Happy Hour

19521952 views1919 comments1818 favs

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

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

19521952 views1414 comments66 favs

The handsome man at the opposite table swivels his head at the tall cool slim blonde entering the breakfast cafe. The ordinary woman sitting with him adjusts her chair accordingly. She pretends to ignore her husband's distraction, smoothes her hair, licks her…

Ibambe

19521952 views1616 comments1313 favs

If this was the day when the bribes of whiskey and US dollars would fail to work. If on this day a black bag, smelling of shit and fear, would be pulled over his head – the bloodied roots of a knocked out tooth tickling his neck.

Biography

19511951 views1313 comments88 favs

There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.