Most read stories

Quiet (from Grand Street literary journal)

19801980 views22 comments22 favs

I know it’s nobody’s fault, and that one thing had nothing to do with the other, because it was this way for me since I was born; they just didn’t figure it out for a while that with one of my ears I could hardly hear, and with the other, I couldn

Backwards

19791979 views55 comments11 fav

One of her favorites was of an old axe asleep on a desert floor. She told people the axe had the western lips of September. That it held the song of the ocean and the dreams of a scarecrow. Some thought she was mad to talk in such a way. Others believed h

Avatar Of Chaos

19791979 views55 comments55 favs

He has one good eye and is missing the other. The socket of his missing eye squints with a disturbing and unfathomable insight.

Redacted.

19791979 views11 comment00 favs

Almost on cue, Xavier emerges and is in the vendor’s face. “X,” as he is known around here, is indoctrinating the obvious newbie on the merits of showing up earlier and the logistics of placeholders and markers.

Castanets '84

19791979 views22 comments11 fav

At 1 a.m. Route 205 is empty. Del drives. Carla sits in the darkness with the directions to the Nassau County Jail on her lap...

When the Songbirds Went Silent in Cheerytown

19791979 views1010 comments44 favs

What happens to a town when all of its songbirds go on strike?

Beyond the Wire

19791979 views1212 comments55 favs

Thistle and cracked corn were thrown to us each morning and the occasional live chicken...

Gastronomy

19791979 views33 comments22 favs

your olive-pitting thumbs

A Silent Scream

19791979 views22 comments22 favs

She hated the noiseless dying sound they made as he stuck the hook through their eyes. She always wanted for them to scream, but they never did. They didn’t even blink.

Imago Mundi

19781978 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

The Clod and the Pebble

19781978 views1212 comments99 favs

“Lightning has more longevity than I,”

Existential

19781978 views3333 comments1515 favs

To envy faith, to envy love --// is there a fate more hateful? Choices/ scatter like stars. Too many.

Kin of His

19781978 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.

The Bicycle Mechanic

19781978 views1414 comments1212 favs

The hour reflected those pleasant moments when evening hunger can be satiated by anticipation alone, before the pangs become demanding.

Preliminary

19781978 views1111 comments55 favs

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

Digging Up Bones

19781978 views33 comments22 favs

So I'm digging, clawing the black earth, disappearing in its ore and shadow.

Strange Bird

19781978 views1616 comments1313 favs

shortest yet

Zhou Yu’s Train

19771977 views1010 comments55 favs

Are we like a poem, a short hand of words curtained together, evoking a mood, but in the end, impenetrable? We follow the clues to our lover's heart and what we find isn't him at all but ourselves. We fill every part of his life, every part of his past and even become…

Not Tired

19771977 views99 comments44 favs

Three hours isn't that long.

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

19771977 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

Wild Dreams of Reality, 10

19771977 views11 comment11 fav

I spent the whole day at Oliveira's, writing furiously in my notebooks. The words came pouring out. Just before seven, Darrell picked me up. I grew anxious driving down to Parker's studio because it was in a bad area on the border between Oakland

Mutants

19771977 views11 comment00 favs

Elin and I had religious differences about the garage. To her the garage required regular sweeping and organization--it was an extension of our house. Elin believed dust and mold to be manifestations of inner sin. I insisted that they were agents of evolu

Napomo 17: April 7-12

19771977 views2222 comments1212 favs

The drinking will continue/ until morale improves

Disparity

19771977 views1313 comments1010 favs

sacred ground bleached with the salt of bitter tears

Polaris

19761976 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,

Prairie Rose

19761976 views77 comments44 favs

Every Friday night she gets liberated at The Haymarket Square doing a bunny hop or a do si do with ex-members of The Saint Augustine Women's Choir. She remembers how as kids, shy or awkward in dresses, their voices formed the harmony, the flight of something V-shaped…

Tuesday Night

19761976 views44 comments11 fav

She comes in with her white bag with its floral patterns scattered, almost accidentally, all around it

Tuning Pegs

19761976 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.

The Widow's Morning

19761976 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.

Ghostriders and rainbows

19761976 views44 comments22 favs

Ghostriders in the syand rainbows in my mindor was itrainbow in the skyghostriders in my mind?I can't remember ...And apparently this body is not 200 characters long, so I add some text so this pearl too can be read (ahum) My body is only 170 characters long, snif,…