Most read stories

Aloha

20132013 views1010 comments99 favs

It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

Cleverbot conversation RSC00206460

20132013 views11 comment11 fav

maybe if I bat my lashes just right, or look prim enough to fly, you just might touch me tonight, and the dream will pop and fizz and I will wake somewhere, your hands smoothing these lines of worry away.

Mud

20132013 views33 comments33 favs

People ask me sometimes what it’s like to meet your wife when you’re six years old, and I have to admit now that I don’t really understand the question. Marla and I, we were just friends for most of that time. She made me laugh. I let her crib off my math

Preliminary

20132013 views1111 comments55 favs

After court, the three of us skipped third period, walked down to the river and huddled under the 6th Street Bridge.

Frog Kissing

20132013 views44 comments22 favs

All right, so the frog I risked my lips on (not to mention the contents of my stomach) . . . .

Strange Bird

20132013 views1616 comments1313 favs

shortest yet

Food for Thought

20132013 views1313 comments1111 favs

I could never be a chef.Preparing creations that will merely be consumed.If I were a chef,I'd have to create dishes that required chewingand chewing and chewing.I'd find it better for my dishes to be destroyed in the mouth.Remembered for their…

Something for you

20122012 views66 comments11 fav

Bearing the smell of paper on her fingertips. Ink in her hair.

Auden at Swarthmore

20122012 views1616 comments1212 favs

So I went to see the wrinkled and rumpled poet, who insisted on reading from memory, stumbling through his sheaf of poems.

Big Dipper

20122012 views55 comments55 favs

“You’re not in Saigon anymore, Mai Bi'ch,” I said, craning to read her name badge. “They’ll need to be much better than that if you want to stay in this country.”

The Widow's Morning

20122012 views11 comment11 fav

Whispers flew, like wild darts across the room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Right then, it wasn’t my job to figure things out; it was my job to cry.

The Letter

20122012 views55 comments44 favs

You know how it is, one day a good friend sends you this long note telling you how-the-hell they are or aren't getting along in the frigging world

The Sex Life of Your Mouth

20122012 views1010 comments00 favs

"What say we adjourn to the bedroom and I give you a little demonstration of sexual acrobatics?”

Visitation Hour

20122012 views55 comments11 fav

She watches too much VH1 for a five-year-old.

Departure. Arrival. Return.

20122012 views2424 comments1515 favs

Put down your bazooka, Marianne.

Fool of Me

20122012 views77 comments66 favs

This no man's island I'm perched high above isn't always so beautiful to the casual beholder of newly printed maps. Oh don't go and get your clouds all wrong. Puffed or thin, everything I say I believe in is a real feeling, until the music dies…

Imago Mundi

20112011 views1212 comments99 favs

in which creative destruction holds the heads of entire populations beneath the surface of the water in bathtubs until the bubbles stop

fire and ice

20112011 views88 comments33 favs

“Who says?” she purred in reply “They all do” he countered smiling , chewing on an ice cube “All of them, huh?” She leaned forward, raising a wicked left eyebrow and whispered, “And just who are they, anyway?”

You're A Bad Dad: The Story Of Juniper Mélange

20112011 views77 comments44 favs

Juniper Mélange was a cat person, not a dog person. Truly detested when she perceived falseness in another person. She wore glasses and drank tea. Had dark straight hair and light skin. She dressed conservatively and would watch the sky most days. She wou

The Clod and the Pebble

20112011 views1212 comments99 favs

“Lightning has more longevity than I,”

Happiness

20112011 views1717 comments99 favs

Can you find happiness in the middle of a kidney stone attack?

A Sacrifice For God And Man

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The words of prophets only serve to demonstrate that ‘unreliable narrative’ can often result in poor literature; unfortunately, poor literature can attract a very large following.

Polaris

20102010 views1010 comments77 favs

Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,

How the Body Prepares Itself

20102010 views1818 comments1414 favs

it corrupts the smells// and flavors of the world/ and plants its swollen face

Tuning Pegs

20102010 views22 comments22 favs

Her face had that strange preserved quality Maybelle saw in many aging Boomer women — like an old toy never removed from its packaging.

Under Water

20102010 views11 comment11 fav

When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.

Pink

20102010 views1818 comments1515 favs

Together / they peeled and fed each other pink fruit, / ordered expensive pink beef, went on / vacations and viewed pink sunsets / on paradise beaches.

Post-Op

20102010 views1515 comments99 favs

She tells Tuesday's lover that there's nothing wrong with cheap thrills without anesthesia,

The Woman Who Cut Down Her Husband

20102010 views1616 comments1414 favs

The woman carried a wooden log which was her husband into the house.

Kin of His

20102010 views3030 comments1818 favs

I dreamed that coffee grounds had spilled on my Buffet. There was another clarinet, a silver one, that belonged to a man not in the room, that was clean of debris.