Most read stories

Fat Man in a Blizzard

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There he was. Minnesota Fats, short and pudgy, jowly and blond-haired.

Worry

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I turned on the television last night, and one of the networks had a segment about a girl with no nose.

Europe, 1960

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The painting was on loan from a gallery in Chicago. We stood there connecting the dots.

Headstone III

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My only brother. Frantic flesh clings to bone.

Epitaph N+1

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We die in order to get some rest

13 Halloweens

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1. The Walking Heart Attack Man has two outfits. In the summer he dresses in a short sleeve checkered button down shirt and high waisted Bermuda shorts with sandals. In the winter he wears dark pants and loafers with a gray corduroy coat…

Squishy

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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...

DRIP

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...you lick you ice cream, little pink tongue like a cat's, flick, flick... lick fast, girl, the heat's gonna melt it...

A Country of Husbands

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The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

The 2nd poem.

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You came to me In the self made calm Causing quite a storm You want me to rejoice and relax? Not knowing my fears Shall we ever fly?

Medusas

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I didn’t kiss Odgeir because I fancied him, I kissed him because I knew other people fancied him.

Some Kind of Change

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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 Misanthrope Confesses

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I murdered my inner child/ at 7 and neither denied/ nor confessed the act until now.

Battle at the Bodega

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Mr. Lowell knelt down and put his face in his hands, his knees quickly covered in blood. Sobs.

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

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You got a lot of people, out there

American Triptych

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It’s always fun and easy/ to punish the poor

Aerobics 6 p.m.

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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.

Cripple

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"I know," Timothy explained, "he can't use it. He's a cripple." No one else seemed to understand.

Where the ocean ends

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For my Dad Happy Father's Day!

Summer Reading

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

NAN : A Novel-In-Stories

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My novel-in-stories, NAN, is now available as an ebook for $6.99. Thanks to everyone who read the first 7 published stories here on Fictionaut.

Thick Rib of the Lamentation Animal

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This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

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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

Life Story

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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”…

Witness

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The violin hung on the wall after that, a witness.

Alice

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Alice writes three different versions of the letter. The last one is the most tempered, the most like her, but still it is such an unlike-her thing to do. The couple who lives above her has been disrupting her sleep nearly every night for the past three weeks. The woman's…

Pink

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The midsummer sky is black above us when I hear Dad say my name, quiet like I’ve never heard before. I let my hands drop away from my face and crawl towards him.

Prompts

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

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

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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.

Diptych for Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, Protectoress Against Mice, Rats, and Mental Illness

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So she set about eliminating the problem, all the time recalling some newsmagazine program she’d seen as a child: a discussion of hantavirus, nasty and deadly and spread by mice.