Most read stories

Will #17

19631963 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…

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19631963 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

Jack's

19621962 views1818 comments1515 favs

We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.

Greetings from 17-E

19621962 views00 comments00 favs

Remember the glass changing room just off the pool terrace? It's been replaced by a juice bar. Seems fitting, really.

Apology + Opportunity

19621962 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.

GRACE

19621962 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

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.

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

19621962 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…

Light Shot Water

19611961 views99 comments44 favs

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

How to Forget

19611961 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

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.

Fat Man in a Blizzard

19611961 views1717 comments1515 favs

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

A monkey puzzle rocket burst

19611961 views77 comments44 favs

The things we do for books, she thought.

What She Gave to the Sea

19611961 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

19611961 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

A Time for Peace

19611961 views1313 comments1111 favs

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.

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…

Three short-shorts

19611961 views1212 comments99 favs

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

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

19611961 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

Me And My Liberal Friends

19601960 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

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

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19601960 views77 comments22 favs

They waited until the crowd was gone before making their move. Gill kept watch while Warren bypassed the lock. “You sure about this?” Gill whispered. Voices echoed down the hall of the museum.

Daniel in a Den of Liberalism

19601960 views00 comments00 favs

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

19601960 views1111 comments55 favs

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

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.

Ibambe

19601960 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

19591959 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.

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…