Most read stories

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

20102010 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

Phantom head syndrome

20092009 views33 comments22 favs

The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…

Better Days

20092009 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.

Some Kind of Change

20092009 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.

The Catcher in the Rye -What Happens Next-

20092009 views11 comment11 fav

I bet if I went back, Old Stradlater would still be combing his gorgeous locks in front of the same goddam mirror.

Berthier Door

20092009 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.

Night Swim

20092009 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.

Prompts

20082008 views1616 comments1313 favs

Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.

Aerobics 6 p.m.

20082008 views33 comments11 fav

Dizzy but still alive Inside this conversation I ask if you have a sister And if she'll know me If I'm with you.

An Open Letter to my Fictionaut Family

20082008 views1313 comments99 favs

Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…

Why the Woodpecker Laughs

20082008 views88 comments77 favs

Once upon a time, before there was Prairie, there was Swamp. Therein lived Salamander and Snake. High above them, in the tops of Cypresses lived Woodpecker.

Impromptu Retranscriptions from the 'Song of Songs' (erotic poetry - explicit language)

20082008 views44 comments33 favs

I. When my lips mouth yours where they are…

Leox

20082008 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..

Resolutions

20082008 views33 comments33 favs

Portions of my heart and bones

Awaken Sleepy Star

20082008 views88 comments77 favs

Don't sleep. Tiny orange Balloons like seahorses are bobbing This way and that trying To get your hair to lift Off its marvelously mud- Swamped and pillowy support beams, blue sea strand by green. Don't you want to see…

Scents

20082008 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…

Like An Endless Rain

20082008 views22 comments11 fav

Fate could have sent me any number of Sergeant-Detectives, but fate sent me one of Boston’s finest, Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson. Aside from being a little undernourished Sheila Magnuson is possibly the world’s most beautiful Sergeant-Detective.

Ibambe

20082008 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.

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

20082008 views2121 comments55 favs

You got a lot of people, out there

Me And My Liberal Friends

20072007 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

WE NEVER

20072007 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…

How I Made My Fortune

20072007 views00 comments00 favs

At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f

February Fifth

20072007 views44 comments22 favs

We've worked silence over / Like pros, our best work together.

Stupid's Rising Up

20062006 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.

Before the Fall (Pt. 2)

20062006 views33 comments11 fav

Newsome glared at the sleeping woman, slumped over the edge of the hard, metal table, her head settled comfortably into the crook of her arm. Over an hour she's been in that position, he thought. Despite the harshness of the room, the fluorescent lights,…

Whale Lessons

20062006 views1717 comments1010 favs

Even if your heart is as large as a small car, your tongue as heavy as two grown men—even then—you will have to carry it with you wherever you go.

Just like I read the news

20062006 views66 comments66 favs

She sang will you still need me

Arcana Magi - c.21: The World Stage

20062006 views00 comments00 favs

The old mage said nothing. She did not even return the complement. All she had was disgust in her eyes as she looked at the grown men and women. To her they had no hearts.

The not so great Popsicle caper

20062006 views2222 comments88 favs

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

Middle Age

20062006 views1818 comments1414 favs

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