Most read stories

Phil's Last Stand

19591959 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.

Anchored Leaves

19591959 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…

Three short-shorts

19591959 views1212 comments99 favs

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

Biography

19581958 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.

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19581958 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.

Kepler On The Bus

19581958 views2727 comments1919 favs

On the bus I sat like an ounce.

The Night

19581958 views77 comments44 favs

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

The Bird King in Love

19581958 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…

Ibambe

19581958 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.

Prompts

19571957 views1616 comments1313 favs

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

Wounded Knee

19571957 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.

The Crescent Caretaker

19571957 views22 comments11 fav

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

Turbidity

19571957 views3939 comments1414 favs

Where seldom is heard an encouraging word

Tribal Elder

19571957 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

Happy Hour

19571957 views1919 comments1818 favs

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

Tradition and the Individual Talent

19571957 views22 comments22 favs

Wee-wee-sweet-pea me? I live, I weep, a third of me passed in sleep, start a scene or two, play and dance the fool, …

Our Time as Men

19571957 views44 comments44 favs

Rhonda looks guilty as it is, don’t you think? That hair! And the unhappiness smeared across her face like war paint after a war.

MONSOON

19571957 views55 comments33 favs

a beautiful cool quiet day

Touching Jim

19561956 views1313 comments1212 favs

He introduced me to key lime pie, and for this alone I would have loved him forever. It was an innocent time for me, and I was easy to please.

A Marriage of Bodies

19551955 views11 comment11 fav

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

Stupid's Rising Up

19551955 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.

The Mitzvah

19551955 views1717 comments1111 favs

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

Relativity

19551955 views00 comments00 favs

It seems every time we get together, Seiko is there. She just started working in Keiko's department and now they're always together. I think Keiko feels responsible for Seiko. Like if Seiko's not getting any, it's bad manners for Keiko to do it.

Tortoise

19551955 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

19551955 views2323 comments1616 favs

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

My Love For You Is Real

19551955 views00 comments00 favs

Caroline smiles before reaching out to touch a shapeless shadow dancing on the wall, closing her eyes as the bumps in the primer serve brail to oncoming dreams.

Please Come to Boston? (Memoir)

19551955 views11 comment00 favs

I've been invited to speak at Emerson College in Boston—it will be the summer of 2012, and I'll be speaking on running an online literary magazine; in this case, my own, Anderbo.com.

Out of Uniform

19551955 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'…

The Burning Gulf

19551955 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Summer Reading

19551955 views55 comments33 favs

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