Most read stories

Me And My Liberal Friends

19361936 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

The Burning Gulf

19361936 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Blind

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In this coaly no-time/ strewn with fallen stars,/ you are a roaming panther/ and I am a tangle of snakes.

Carlos The Impossible (Part 1)

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And so the deal was struck. It was arranged that the empresario for the Plaza Mexico would buy the giant bull from Button for Hernando to fight. Come the Fiesta de la Fuerza Irresistible, the Great One would meet the bull that was born of a thunderclap at

Greetings from 17-E

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 It's been replaced by a juice bar.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

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

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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.

Brot und Käse

19351935 views55 comments33 favs

I hoped I did not look as panicked as I tried not to feel.

All Fur and Bones

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I wonder how much time she has left. I think she’s seventeen. I don’t know for sure because she was already grown when I got her from the pound, just before Christmas, years ago this was --back when I had hair and hope.

What's Wrong With Stella by Starlight?

19351935 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

Out of Uniform

19351935 views44 comments55 favs

Between the wars, I hung around in an air-conditioned room. It was tiny, and I was shoved to the back, but after living outside on another man's back for months of bullets and bombs, I welcomed the stuffiness. White paint kept close walls from reminding me of the trenches'…

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

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

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

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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…

Circling '84

19351935 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."

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

19351935 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

Exasperation Management

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

Letter to the Editor

19341934 views1212 comments99 favs

Some time ago, I began to write you letters with the idea of helping your newspaper become a more complete map of our little shared world.

GRACE

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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

Albert's Mother

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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.

Tribal Elder

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"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

Leox

19341934 views66 comments22 favs

Whoever came up with the term kismet is an absolute moron. There isn't a single reason, or word, that can describe what exactly my brain has concocted in the face of him. No, kismet isn't what makes it happen. It's my own stupidity..

Ghostriders and rainbows

19341934 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,…

The Illuminated Dream

19341934 views11 comment11 fav

It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.

Sack of Meat

19341934 views1515 comments33 favs

The Nurse left work at five o’clock, walking down Dekalb Avenue toward Flatbush. He didn’t frequent the bar closest to the hospital, although he guessed other nurses and doctors from Brooklyn Hospital did. But he liked to pretend that he cared about h

My Wife, My Love

19341934 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

RETIREMENT

19341934 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…

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19341934 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

A Selection From Einstein's Letters

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My dear Papa: I don't care to join you on holiday. Last summer when I came you and Frau Himmelfarb played "Wildlife Management" so late into the night that I got no rest.

April Haiku

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A sardonic moon/ surveys our plight and cackles.

What She Gave to the Sea

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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…

The Bird King in Love

19331933 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…