Most read stories

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19691969 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

How to Forget

19681968 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

19681968 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.

Rust

19681968 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

Black Wheat, 2

19681968 views55 comments22 favs

They are really living (they) say things they don't mean . . . Do not know what they say Take the path without heart, seeing the image . . . The moon rises above them It does not move their blood Nothing calls out to their blo

WE NEVER

19681968 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…

The Crescent Caretaker

19681968 views22 comments11 fav

Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole where electric, shoeless uncles allocate their copper goulashes to catch white dripwater.

Phil's Last Stand

19681968 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.

RETIREMENT

19681968 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…

Tortoise

19671967 views00 comments00 favs

Seven black and orange Tortoise-shell kittens nursed in a crate the day Sue returned from rehab, to her parent's Atlanta home.

Poems Are Scary Things

19671967 views2323 comments1616 favs

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

My Wife, My Love

19671967 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

THE WEDDING

19671967 views66 comments33 favs

I am at a wedding with a new girlfriend. The bride is her old college roommate. I don't really know anyone else here. The wedding is being held at a huge estate, located on the edge of enormous cliffs that overlook the ocean. Despite the danger of this precarious…

Three short-shorts

19671967 views1212 comments99 favs

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

The Mitzvah

19661966 views1717 comments1111 favs

There were only two students in the sculpture class: an 86 year-old Jewish woman and myself.

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19661966 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.

Out of Uniform

19661966 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'…

Summer Reading

19661966 views55 comments33 favs

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

Coffee Shop

19661966 views2424 comments1717 favs

He wore his hip in his hips, his lipsShe wanted to know if he would lick the edgesWhen he pulled the coffee cup from his mouthA bit of foam clung to his moustacheShe watched it there, wondering if he wouldTwirl it off with his fingersOr lick it, his tongue darting out like…

Happy Hour

19661966 views1919 comments1818 favs

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

Hoss Men (continued)

19661966 views66 comments44 favs

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

Anchored Leaves

19661966 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…

Stupid's Rising Up

19651965 views99 comments11 fav

Stupid's rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that's not how the alphabet goes.

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19651965 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.

The List

19651965 views1616 comments1616 favs

There were one hundred titles on the list. One hundred books that could neither be assigned nor put on a recommended reading list.

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, xlvi - liv

19651965 views1212 comments99 favs

the Great Way itself is very smooth and straight,/but folks take to the challenge of rough, wild roads.

Anti

19651965 views99 comments55 favs

“What do you call this place?” I didn't really want to talk much in there. For some reason, talking felt too—linear. The words seemed to have a kind of reverberation into associations that seemed somewhat meaningless at the time.”

The Burning Gulf

19651965 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Tribal Elder

19651965 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

Moles & Scraps

19651965 views1717 comments1212 favs

A starved hunchbacked figure covered in blanket gently steers a one eyed dog along with him. A four legged shadow serving as his longtime companion against the all-consuming vacuum of the universe. A friend for all times.A thin scar runs from his cheekbone to…