Most read stories

We Threw These At Each Other

19731973 views55 comments22 favs

Jimmy wore a tie to top that torn green tee he toted every day, every other. He smelled of dirt, said he had a feeling we had watermelon somewhere since he caught a whiff from his room inside his house across the street.

Traveling Lightheaded

19731973 views44 comments11 fav

He lit my cigarette even though he didn't want me to smoke. Buying me drinks all night, he didn't complain, but he thought I drank too much.

Buoyancy

19721972 views22 comments11 fav

When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo

Better Days

19721972 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.

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19721972 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.

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

19721972 views1212 comments99 favs

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

Life Story

19721972 views99 comments77 favs

A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…

The not so great Popsicle caper

19721972 views2222 comments88 favs

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

Summer Reading

19721972 views55 comments33 favs

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

Night Swim

19721972 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.

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

19721972 views1414 comments66 favs

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…

Exasperation Management

19711971 views1313 comments1313 favs

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

Squishy

19711971 views44 comments22 favs

Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...

Prompts

19711971 views1616 comments1313 favs

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

Rust

19711971 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

The Crescent Caretaker

19711971 views22 comments11 fav

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

MONSOON

19711971 views55 comments33 favs

a beautiful cool quiet day

Phantom head syndrome

19701970 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…

The Mitzvah

19701970 views1717 comments1111 favs

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

Black Wheat, 2

19701970 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

Eighty-eight

19701970 views77 comments66 favs

She realised that things you can't prove can be more intimate than the things you know to be true.

Berthier Door

19701970 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.

The Burning Gulf

19701970 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Coffee Shop

19701970 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…

Phil's Last Stand

19701970 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.

His Laugh is My Yellow (or explaining skin color to a six-year-old boy)

19701970 views55 comments44 favs

Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.

What's It To You

19701970 views77 comments33 favs

Oh I'm melting all right, into a foul vapor rising from a dead volcano, not even able to spit fire, but only cold old frozen rock like dribbles of putrid plasma.

To Kill a Deer

19701970 views33 comments33 favs

On September 12th, 2011, the ban on deer hunting became official. Apparently, the hunting and killing of deer had become too cruel. The ban had been a long time in the making. Ever since man began hunting deer way back in the day—somewhere between a fe

THE WEDDING

19701970 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…

A Marriage of Bodies

19691969 views11 comment11 fav

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