Most read stories

Rust

19681968 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

19681968 views22 comments11 fav

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

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…

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.

Apology + Opportunity

19671967 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.

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

WE NEVER

19671967 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

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…

My Wife, My Love

19671967 views2121 comments1818 favs

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

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

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

19661966 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.

Summer Reading

19661966 views55 comments33 favs

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

Anchored Leaves

19661966 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…

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…

The Mitzvah

19651965 views1717 comments1111 favs

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

Poems Are Scary Things

19651965 views2323 comments1616 favs

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

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.

Anti

19651965 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.”

The Burning Gulf

19651965 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Tribal Elder

19651965 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

Happy Hour

19651965 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)

19651965 views66 comments44 favs

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

Three short-shorts

19651965 views1212 comments99 favs

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

MONSOON

19651965 views55 comments33 favs

a beautiful cool quiet day

A Marriage of Bodies

19641964 views11 comment11 fav

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

Touching Jim

19641964 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.

Stupid's Rising Up

19641964 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.

The List

19641964 views1616 comments1616 favs

There were one hundred titles on the list. One hundred books that could neither be assigned nor put on a recommended reading list.

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

19641964 views1212 comments99 favs

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