Most read stories

Prompts

19671967 views1616 comments1313 favs

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

Tortoise

19671967 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.

Black Wheat, 2

19671967 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

The Bird King in Love

19671967 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…

We Threw These At Each Other

19671967 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.

Phil's Last Stand

19671967 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)

19671967 views55 comments44 favs

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

How to Forget

19661966 views44 comments11 fav

Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an

Apology + Opportunity

19661966 views44 comments11 fav

What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.

Summer Reading

19661966 views55 comments33 favs

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

THE WEDDING

19661966 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…

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19651965 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

19651965 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.

My Wife, My Love

19651965 views2121 comments1818 favs

When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.

The Mitzvah

19641964 views1717 comments1111 favs

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

Poems Are Scary Things

19641964 views2323 comments1616 favs

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

WE NEVER

19641964 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 Burning Gulf

19641964 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Tribal Elder

19641964 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

Anchored Leaves

19641964 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

19641964 views1212 comments99 favs

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

MONSOON

19641964 views55 comments33 favs

a beautiful cool quiet day

A Marriage of Bodies

19631963 views11 comment11 fav

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

Stupid's Rising Up

19631963 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.

Anti

19631963 views99 comments55 favs

“What do you call this place?” I didn't really want to talk much in there. For some reason, talking felt too—linear. The words seemed to have a kind of reverberation into associations that seemed somewhat meaningless at the time.”

Out of Uniform

19631963 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'…

Happy Hour

19631963 views1919 comments1818 favs

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

Hoss Men (continued)

19631963 views66 comments44 favs

"Fax the Beaver" was its last, secret title. The beaver is a dirty trick, and it belongs on the index card.

George, Love, Shakespeare and Company

19631963 views88 comments66 favs

"Love, against the dying of the light." (An unusual story about George Whitman, former owner of the revered & beloved Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, France.)

Touching Jim

19621962 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.