Most read stories

We Threw These At Each Other

19621962 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.

Window

19621962 views1717 comments1010 favs

Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"? Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.

Will #17

19621962 views88 comments44 favs

I want crazy at my funeral. I want clowns, a petting zoo, fireworks, craps tables, male and female strippers, and a three-person band composed of old men wearing striped vests, black pants, and straw hats: one plays a banjo, another on tuba, and…

Light Shot Water

19611961 views99 comments44 favs

Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.

Better Days

19611961 views66 comments55 favs

I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.

Apology + Opportunity

19611961 views44 comments11 fav

What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.

A Time for Peace

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When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.

His Laugh is My Yellow (or explaining skin color to a six-year-old boy)

19611961 views55 comments44 favs

Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.

Hometown News: The Ballad of Ray and Rose

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There’s an old journalism adage, usually uttered by editors who haven’t had their butts out of a comfy leather newsroom chair in years, which goes: “You know… the news just doesn’t walk in the door.” ... But sometimes, it does.

RETIREMENT

19611961 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…

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

19611961 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…

Tumbalalaika

19601960 views66 comments44 favs

When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never

Exasperation Management

19601960 views1313 comments1313 favs

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

How to Forget

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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

Fat Man in a Blizzard

19601960 views1717 comments1515 favs

There he was. Minnesota Fats, short and pudgy, jowly and blond-haired.

Daniel in a Den of Liberalism

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He had forgotten what the culture was like in certain parts of the city. At the lower end of Second Avenue, there lived an amalgam rare anywhere in the world, save other pockets of Manhattan. Punks, hippies, gays, the homeless, and artists of all strip

Dr. Wong

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Hippy health food. It all began with Hannah’s homemade granola.

What She Gave to the Sea

19601960 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…

GRACE

19601960 views33 comments22 favs

The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders

El Gabacho

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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

My Wife, My Love

19601960 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

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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

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

19601960 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

This is Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

19591959 views66 comments55 favs

At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…

Me And My Liberal Friends

19591959 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

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

19591959 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.

Rust

19591959 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

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

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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.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst

19591959 views77 comments44 favs

The things we do for books, she thought.

Traveling Lightheaded

19591959 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.