Most read stories

Some Kind of Change

19771977 views2626 comments66 favs

She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

19771977 views66 comments22 favs

1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

A Time for Peace

19771977 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.

This is Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

19761976 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…

Tumbalalaika

19761976 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

The Night

19761976 views77 comments44 favs

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

Middle Age

19761976 views1818 comments1414 favs

There are no city-chewed streets,/ only white and lilac blooming dogwood trees.

Hoss Men (continued)

19761976 views66 comments44 favs

"Fax the Beaver" was its last, secret title. The beaver is a dirty trick, and it belongs on the index card.

Circling '84

19761976 views33 comments33 favs

Other things are on my mind when the Tupperware lady says, "First, let's move your couch over by the door and the table here."

Jack's

19751975 views1818 comments1515 favs

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

American Triptych

19751975 views1010 comments66 favs

It’s always fun and easy/ to punish the poor

Lethargy

19751975 views55 comments22 favs

‘Your hands are very clean’ she said to the furniture salesman. His name was Morrison. "After Jim" Morrison Pentworthy. His father specialized in Doors.

Tatters

19751975 views99 comments88 favs

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

Dr. Wong

19751975 views1111 comments55 favs

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

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

19751975 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

Greetings from 17-E

19741974 views00 comments00 favs

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 It's been replaced by a juice bar.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

How to Forget

19741974 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

19741974 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.

Poems Are Scary Things

19741974 views2323 comments1616 favs

They will take you, naked, and put their tongues and fingers into intimate, erogenous openings

Wounded Knee

19741974 views11 comment11 fav

“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst

19741974 views77 comments44 favs

The things we do for books, she thought.

WE NEVER

19741974 views00 comments00 favs

No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19741974 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

Ibambe

19741974 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

19731973 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.

Fat Man in a Blizzard

19731973 views1717 comments1515 favs

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

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19731973 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.

The Bird King in Love

19731973 views99 comments77 favs

1The Bird King has fallen in lovewith a radiator.He adoresher pockmarked skin,her neurotic arias,her coldness,her impulsive warmth. 2Tiring of his dalliance with the radiator,the Bird King woos an armchair.She's amply upholsteredand groans dreamilywhen he sits on…

The Art of Madness

19721972 views77 comments33 favs

He had an addiction to elevating himself to higher levels of potential: some would call this ambition.

Light Shot Water

19721972 views99 comments44 favs

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