Most read stories

Night Swim

19981998 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.

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19981998 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

Me And My Liberal Friends

19971997 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

Light Shot Water

19971997 views99 comments44 favs

Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.

Mystery by the Bay

19971997 views00 comments00 favs

The water was like glass except for a ripple here and there where Spearing were jumping. Joe didn’t know whether they were playing or avoiding being lunch for larger fish. He set up shop above the point where, light years ago, his father, a fisherman, had

The Night

19971997 views77 comments44 favs

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

Some Kind of Change

19971997 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.

Berthier Door

19971997 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.

February Fifth

19971997 views44 comments22 favs

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

Awaken Sleepy Star

19971997 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…

A Time for Peace

19971997 views1313 comments1111 favs

When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.

Welcome to our community

19961996 views00 comments00 favs

“Yeah, she's a real slut,” many contestants' mothers say. “If he could only keep it in his pants, he'd probably be able to stay in the country,” others say about their sons

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19961996 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.

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19961996 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.

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

19961996 views44 comments33 favs

I. When my lips mouth yours where they are…

tears, et cetera

19961996 views66 comments66 favs

ghosts are local plagues/of unexpended grief—tears/can't be bodiless.

Summer Reading

19961996 views55 comments33 favs

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

Middle Age

19961996 views1818 comments1414 favs

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

Better Days

19951995 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.

Last Poem

19951995 views2020 comments1818 favs

or the voice that wants/ to be inscribed/ forgets the sounds

Arcana Magi - c.21: The World Stage

19951995 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.

How I Made My Fortune

19951995 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

Leox

19951995 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..

Phil's Last Stand

19951995 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.

Death Masking Love

19951995 views44 comments33 favs

She brought the ends of her fingers to her mouth and moistened them in her warm saliva. The whorls of her prints glistened in the harsh light of the room, but it wasn't her own outlines she was interested in raising. His hand lay outstretched in his…

What's It To You

19951995 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.

Life Story

19941994 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”…

Tatters

19941994 views99 comments88 favs

They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.

WE NEVER

19941994 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 Bird King in Love

19941994 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…