Most read stories

Damn Headache

18651865 views1414 comments55 favs

Less than 5 seconds...

WE NEVER

18651865 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…

Voice of the Century

18651865 views2020 comments1515 favs

Feminine, safe, though disembodied,/ she shapes your life in ways/ your mother never could.

Kitchen Scrap

18651865 views55 comments44 favs

Her pudgy face, flour-coated and sugary and so life-nurturing in the past, had a different spark now, a searching look I’d seen as soon as she opened the door.

Night Swim

18651865 views99 comments33 favs

She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely held the rope and later he could not have said if it happened above or below the water’s surface.

A Little Fishing

18651865 views1212 comments99 favs

Harpo sits and looks at something I can't see. I drink beer and ask him questions. I ask him how they found the cancer. Backache, he says. He went to see a doctor.

The Burning Gulf

18641864 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

The not so great Popsicle caper

18641864 views2222 comments88 favs

"Ha ha!" I said triumphantly, "I've got some left and you don't!"

Stay. Sit. Listen.

18641864 views2121 comments99 favs

There is a small church in the south of Italy, with a stained-glass window depicting the sister of John The Baptist.

The Empty Bed

18641864 views1313 comments1212 favs

But by day the birds / of prey were in control.

My Wife, My Love

18641864 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

Anchored Leaves

18641864 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…

Elevator Neighbors (from The New Yorker)

18641864 views33 comments44 favs

“Do you think she paints?” “Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”

Where the ocean ends

18631863 views2121 comments1717 favs

For my Dad Happy Father's Day!

Preliminary

18631863 views1111 comments55 favs

After court, the three of us skipped third period, walked down to the river and huddled under the 6th Street Bridge.

What Remains II

18621862 views22 comments00 favs

Duh. It’s all the same sky. Instead I nod, and don’t say anything.

The Devil in Converse

18621862 views00 comments00 favs

In se'enties style serenading strut A passin all the pretty birds in kin', The feathered Stetson ‘clipsin crimson suit, A whistlin Dixie blues ‘cross county-lines.

The Last Quiet Morning

18621862 views1313 comments99 favs

Things don’t happen here, life is so boring in this little Irish town.

Beckett not Joyce

18621862 views66 comments44 favs

Gorgonzola. It's what she was to bring this time. Plumtree's potted meat. What it was last time.

Martyr

18621862 views55 comments11 fav

The waitress says, “That’s a memory,” as the smoke dances around her head.

Berthier Door

18621862 views44 comments33 favs

On Day 1122 at 4:14 AM the door which has remained since installation firmly glued to the masonry behind opens and a man emerges blinking shielding his eyes against fine stinging snow.

Scents

18621862 views11 comment11 fav

"Ah, finally the rain stopped pouring!" She opens the window to let the sticky air out of the house. The colours outside have changed. The air is clear and the sky turns into light pink while the sun is drowning at the horizon. She takes a deep breath. The…

Jack's

18611861 views1818 comments1515 favs

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

Walking To Gibraltar, Epigram & Chapter 1: So It Was Cancer

18611861 views44 comments22 favs

So it was cancer. And so he was screwed, royally screwed. He was screwed all the more because he knew how screwed he was. He had to carry the shame of knowing, as much as he wanted to deny it, that this had been his first thought when he found out about h

Songlines

18611861 views1313 comments1111 favs

When the planes crashed,when the levees broke,when the ground shook,there was a song I dreamed of,humming subsonic,a chorus of voices and prayersuncorked like the little brown jugthat holds all the love and memories.In the outback, Aborigines believewe create the world by…

Will #17

18611861 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…

SUPER DAD flies coach

18611861 views33 comments33 favs

“I don’t want to scare you,” the stewardess says, “but there are ten police officers waiting for you outside the plane.” I reach into the diaper bag and grab an Elmo raspberry/pear cereal bar, rip it open, take a bite, sip some apple juice fr

Wild Dreams of Reality, 10

18611861 views11 comment11 fav

I spent the whole day at Oliveira's, writing furiously in my notebooks. The words came pouring out. Just before seven, Darrell picked me up. I grew anxious driving down to Parker's studio because it was in a bad area on the border between Oakland

A Marriage of Bodies

18601860 views11 comment11 fav

In sleep their bodies drift between the sheets until they find each other.

1985...What I wanted

18601860 views1313 comments99 favs

with cool confidence and believable body language