Most read stories

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19711971 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.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst

19711971 views77 comments44 favs

The things we do for books, she thought.

Dr. Wong

19711971 views1111 comments55 favs

Hippy health food. It all began with Hannah’s homemade granola.

WE NEVER

19711971 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 Crescent Caretaker

19711971 views22 comments11 fav

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

Exasperation Management

19701970 views1313 comments1313 favs

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

Rust

19701970 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

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19701970 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.

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

19701970 views1212 comments99 favs

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

Summer Reading

19701970 views55 comments33 favs

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

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.

MONSOON

19701970 views55 comments33 favs

a beautiful cool quiet day

The Art of Madness

19691969 views77 comments33 favs

He had an addiction to elevating himself to higher levels of potential: some would call this ambition.

Life Story

19691969 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”…

Apology + Opportunity

19691969 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.

Happy Hour

19691969 views1919 comments1818 favs

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

My Wife, My Love

19691969 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

To Kill a Deer

19691969 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

Phantom head syndrome

19681968 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

19681968 views1717 comments1111 favs

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

Better Days

19681968 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.

Tortoise

19681968 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

19681968 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 Burning Gulf

19681968 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Coffee Shop

19681968 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

19681968 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.

RETIREMENT

19681968 views2222 comments77 favs

Men have a way of doing that, Lord, why? I always thought retirement means you get to sleep longer. Nope He must arise early, make breakfast, after 40 years of eating mine. Next, he insists on coming with me to the market. When I try to…

THE WEDDING

19681968 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…

Three short-shorts

19681968 views1212 comments99 favs

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

A Marriage of Bodies

19671967 views11 comment11 fav

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