Most read stories

Old Photo, 1948 or so

20152015 views99 comments66 favs

I’m maybe only four. Not smoking cigarettes found in street gutters yet. That will come the next year, when I’m five. Maybe when I’m six, and Andy’s five, my pal from across the street. That’s my tricycle parked behind this pack of kids that look to be ne

Note from the wilderness

20152015 views2727 comments77 favs

It's a business, after all, all are quick to remind us. True dat, and the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, and death and taxes...yup yup, we know. We get it.

Waylaid (1999)

20152015 views2020 comments99 favs

In that mix of sports and religion, TV was what there was of virtue. I thought bars were nicer.

The Gospel According to Teeny

20152015 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.

Robert Penn Warren and Orange County Blue

20152015 views88 comments55 favs

We were old. Wind came in with small threats and played games with drapes. A print of orchids and some other green affair that looked to me like kiwis. Sadie was arranging some items on a desk and I noticed there was a cricket on the window. I was thinking…

Little Green Rednecks

20152015 views00 comments00 favs

“I was listenin' ta one o' them Terran religious broadcasts 'bout Mother Earth when they up an' says that global warmin' was all the fault o' mankind, an' they had ta make the non-believers see that all the drivin' they did, an' all the stuff they bought

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

20152015 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.

Lines with Billie Holiday

20152015 views1212 comments1111 favs

It is almost as if there isn’t a wedge of wood between us – I can feel him inches away from me. I can’t control the sigh or the tears that escape my body.

Ant Farm

20142014 views77 comments55 favs

Every time I squished an ant with my finger, I felt a piece of me loosen and chisel off.

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

20142014 views33 comments11 fav

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

Forgive Me Mamma

20142014 views00 comments00 favs

His footing unsure and his clothes covered in vomit, he grabs the railing and stumbles up the three steps. He pulls off his shirt, finds a cleaner area on the puke-covered garment, wipes sweat off his forehead, dripping wet from the humid, stormy night, a

Inventing Games

20142014 views00 comments00 favs

As children we invent games and we're really creative. We concoct ridiculous rules and enjoy making adaptations to them. And everything makes sense. Then you grow up, lose creativity. You don't invent games anymore. Recess is replaced with a second…

Dos Equis

20142014 views1616 comments88 favs

dos equis ambar sits cool and dark by my side

A Little Piece of Humanity

20142014 views33 comments22 favs

It wasn't meant to happen like this— the shutter, the feeling of breathlessness when he touched her shoulder, even after he had pointed out all of the things she had done incorrectly throughout the day. They had been married for five years in February, and as…

The Killer

20142014 views88 comments44 favs

It don't knock you down to the goddamned ground and push your face into the mat and dare you to get back up. Just so it can knock you down again. They don't have real dreams. Dreams that make them wake up in the middle of the night. Hurting. Wanting.

Mother

20142014 views00 comments00 favs

I carefully placed the knife back to its original position and, with poorly contained excitement, retrieved a palm from the fridge. It was slightly wrinkled, but it was just as fair as the rest of the pristine white in the fridge. It felt warm to my hands

Early (Valentine's Day Challenge)

20142014 views1111 comments55 favs

Beside her door there was a black squirrel in the dogwood she saw scratched his armpit.

Cold Feet

20142014 views99 comments55 favs

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

En Pointe

20142014 views22 comments00 favs

Her gaunt arms softly rose, sweeping in front of her with movements that were hesitant at first but, as the music that only she could hear took her in its grip, became graceful and assured.

Obituary

20142014 views99 comments22 favs

I won't fail at this like trying to fix a leaking sink without mud grease or washers tinier than Cheerios.

Animals

20142014 views44 comments44 favs

I folded my problems into pretty paper animals to keep me company. I set them on the Formica dinette set. I jammed some into cracks so they’d stand up straight: organized warfare

love letter

20142014 views1818 comments44 favs

At night, I fold your name in origami doves and blow, hard, and you are disassembled come morning.

Doorface

20132013 views88 comments88 favs

Doorface has a door for a face. Thus his name. He was born with it. The door in his face, not his name. No one is born with a name. The naming comes later.Doorface finds his unusual physiognomy mildly inconvenient. People keep trying to enter his head. No one likes it when…

Melancholy Happiness

20132013 views99 comments44 favs

It's only 4 lines.

The Great Bank Run of 1912

20132013 views1212 comments66 favs

She bought her first gerbil at the age of nine. She wondered if he would die from endless logrolling. When he died from natural causes, she refused to bury him and kept a distance from the first boy who kissed her--Thomas J. Hobbit. The next year a twister swept…

some precursors of Mantegna

20132013 views66 comments44 favs

Light. And shade. Line and shape. Colour, form and perspective. Wall, wood, ceiling or canvas. Pigment in eggyolk or linseed oil. Stroked by brush or spread by knife. On small panels or plastered on vast spaces. All these problems to be worked over and solved. Then …

Hummingbird hearts in a breadbox

20132013 views99 comments66 favs

We married in the ruins of a pachinko hall, the tiny bones in the pocket of your tracksuit luring a pack of wild dogs out from the underpass.

Trapeze Artist

20122012 views1515 comments1313 favs

Solitude is such an excellent alternative to suicide.

Bunny Ears

20122012 views00 comments11 fav

Word traveled fast at school on Monday. Emma Jakowski had actually captured him. He was being held in her dad's tool shed. Anyone who wanted to see him had to be in the Jakowski's backyard by 3:15 that afternoon, chocolate bunny ears in hand. It was no…

The Jewish Goodbye

20122012 views00 comments00 favs

"And secondly, it’s never bing bing bing with you. It’s like, bing bang bongity bumbity bum yadda yadda bla bla bla.” Sam stopped short and glanced down at his shoes. He knew he’d gone too far.