Most read stories

Harpoon

19551955 views99 comments66 favs

he’s recognizable in the earliest images of misery: a hand shoving a young gladiator before the lion; the fire devouring a witch in Salem. And here he is. Again.

Beards

19551955 views33 comments22 favs

One day my mother's lover shaved his beard and legs. Said he couldn’t fit into his tight jeans anymore.

Dear Envelope Said the Stamp

19551955 views1212 comments77 favs

I have no more use for the beautiful words you used to like so much for me tosend you alone. See my feathers donot so much hide me now as giveme away; I tend to feel farfrom home. Forgive me this. Theend jumped by me quicker than anorange flower cricket on its…

Kitchen Knife (n.)

19541954 views66 comments22 favs

Kitchen Knife (n.)1. A standard kitchen tool consisting of a sharp blade attached to a handle intended for cutting, peeling, chopping, slicing, and dicing.2. Used primarily for food preparation (see also BUTCHERING; BACKSTABBING; JACK THE RIPPER; DEATH BY A THOUSAND…

We Invented Stillness Just to Keep Ourselves from Following the Fall of Everything

19541954 views2929 comments1515 favs

Even solid seeming concrete creeps/ in time to form the faint smile of deflection./ A marble rolls along the catenary grin.

You, Cliché

19541954 views1616 comments1515 favs

You might as well be the man on the moon. Once touching your face was quotidian. When I tallied each day's pleasures, you, in this room or that, counted too much for me, I think. I stopped record keeping. I'm …

Mabel Constructed the Quintessential Boundary.

19541954 views2222 comments1010 favs

Mabel constructed the quintessential boundary. She carefully boiled down her pots and pans, her jewelry, her copper kettle, and the foils from forty six bottles of white pear cider into a silky metallic stew. Mable smeared the mixture onto a burlap…

In Machu Picchu

19541954 views55 comments11 fav

"I wonder what happened to Murder Man and Lust Girl?" wondered The Black Toadstool. The Anti-Justice League were in Machu Picchu, on a short vacation after taking over most of South America and the South Pole. The South Pole had been so easy. …

Crows and the Gunshot

19541954 views1111 comments99 favs

We'll Thelma-and-Louise it, I urged, Bonnie-and-Clyde it, she bettered, Sundance-and-Butch it, I proffered but she was already leaning in for a kiss.

Boom

19531953 views66 comments22 favs

It was as if a car bomb went off in Beaver Cleaverville.

Lemony snickers on Route 66

19531953 views2020 comments1010 favs

Went back to his cab and returned with a whip...

Their Nipples

19531953 views00 comments11 fav

The soft twin winds of peace and harmony flow through your nipples It is not milk that gives such flow but the whiff of life’s spirit, the wind of poetry the renewal and the silence of the love you give me I suck like a new

Frostproof Suite: Saint John’s Eve

19531953 views1111 comments88 favs

Everyone at the Bermudez Brothers Combined Shows and Circus held one low opinion or another about Jimmy Dubcek.

The Little Things

19531953 views00 comments00 favs

Incredibly he began to picture in his mind a scene not related at all to his frenzied search but of a huge plate of apple pie a la mode with the vanilla ice cream melting in streams like cool lava down the side of the pie and off of the plate.

Far Star Girl

19531953 views88 comments33 favs

She thought maybe an angel had called out her name. She wasn't sure. She was waiting for her older sister to return with Jujy Fruits and bonbons. The theater, neither light nor dark, was to Cassie's ten-year-old mind, an appropriate-enough setting for a v

Eyes Off the Road

19521952 views1616 comments1515 favs

One by one I lost my desires.

Reaction

19521952 views77 comments22 favs

Fingers of angry red welts crossed his face and neck.

All The Right Steps

19521952 views00 comments00 favs

"I didn’t take my mother’s denial of my dream lightly. I wanted it desperately. I cried and pleaded, nagged and begged. On several occasions, I temperamentally got out of the car at a stop sign and walked. Once, my mother said that I was nagging her so mu

The Future and Why We are Afraid

19521952 views11 comment11 fav

Once, when I had not talked to you in a long time, I woke with your name in my mouth.

Cold Feet

19521952 views99 comments55 favs

“…And his smell. That Brett smell. It might become my smell…”

A House Made of Stars

19521952 views66 comments44 favs

My cousin had put them up last year, showed me when we stood on her bed as her fingers pointed, traced over the outlines, then turned out the lights, so that I could see them glow.

My Tongue

19521952 views1111 comments55 favs

A nun once told me to watch my tongue. This is not an easy thing to do.

Clearing

19521952 views22 comments22 favs

Forty years is a very long time to live with someone.Ellen stood motionless at the curtainless kitchen window, staring at the autumnal woods, looking for signs of the various animals that frequented her property. She had done this every morning and every evening since Jim…

This, About The Man I Met Out Here In Nearly Nowhere

19521952 views33 comments22 favs

Out here in nearly nowhere I met this man. About him I know something something, and no one can tell me otherwise.

Down on the Pharm

19521952 views00 comments00 favs

I found my patch by accident whilst out picking medicinals ta cover a load o' dead constrictors. I tested the patch in the traditional way an' got a bit stoned on jes' a nibble o' a fresh sprout. Course, everyone knows the sprouts 're more concentrated t

The Dooleys

19511951 views22 comments22 favs

Mama told me never to play with the Dooley boys. They play too rough, they’re not to be trusted, and no one has seen Mrs. Dooley since she tried to clean out their tree house. Mama would always say, “You play with the Dooley Boys, you play with Satan.”

THE MOON, THE SUN, AND RYAN W. BRADLEY (not quite a fortune-telling)

19511951 views33 comments11 fav

“That’s just Ryan W. Bradley—son of a bitch knows better by now.”

John & Jackie

19511951 views00 comments00 favs

By the time I learned how much I loved my family, I was 3 years and eight-hundred miles away from them

||||||||||| (Munun)

19511951 views1111 comments77 favs

Winter melts to ashes and now we walk where hillocks dip like pillows, where a warm pocket of air keeps the scent of spring beauties for itself. Sensitive vetch so easily shocked folds under a feather yet the earth trembles where trout lilies shove. Buds stall on lilacs…

The Gospel According to Teeny

19511951 views1414 comments1212 favs

Then I heard it -- a sound like an oboe being strangled. Teeny was farting onto the cement stoop through her jeans, a tripple flutter blast.