Most read stories

The Road Trip Trilogy

19811981 views00 comments00 favs

...It's my advice that this Fourth of July the Office of Homeland Security post the following instructions on your web site www.Ready.gov — people should act like my dog Lucy and just stay inside under the bed and tremble...

Kazooed

19811981 views88 comments77 favs

"I've been on eight blind dates in three days," she tells me. I can't quite work the math out, but somehow the combination of her wildly undulating eyebrows and harsh vocal tone manage to convince me."I can play the kazoo," I tell her. It's my one saving grace--the thing…

Riddle 44 from the Exeter Book: The Key

19811981 views11 comment22 favs

Curiously made thing

Quiet

19801980 views1414 comments1212 favs

He says, You think too much and he grins a grin that has all of the attic keys on a wrought iron ring, on a chain.

The Urine Pearls

19801980 views55 comments00 favs

“No, dad, I've never seen urine colored pearls.”

When I'm Not Here

19801980 views22 comments00 favs

She’ll get a dog a Weimaraner I know She’ll call him Alfie after her first two dogs He’ll try to get up on the bed She’ll say, Alfie, no, no But in the night she will let him so as not to be lonely

A Broken Ankle, Canasta, and a Weirdly Sexy Jesus Sighting

19801980 views1010 comments88 favs

nothing can stop a group of genteel Southern women from a card game, and divine intervention makes one's participation in such an event quite worthwhile

The Tree

19801980 views1212 comments88 favs

No fuckin' way, Maude. Excuse me, but you know I can't stand that bag of wind. No way.

Hobos: Paris vs. San Francisco

19801980 views77 comments22 favs

French pee runs stronger, less minty. In France the world' a pissoir.

Golgotha

19801980 views22 comments00 favs

They were starting to get winded. The boy, his father and his little brother were hiking up a hill, cutting a diagonal path through hay-colored grass towards an outcrop of craggy boulders below the hill's summit.

The Violinist

19801980 views1313 comments1111 favs

Max leads the parade up the hill. He is sawing on his violin, wearing nothing but a raincoat.

Traum

19791979 views1010 comments55 favs

Over our short, yet enduring relationship, I found that he was desperately trying to reconcile his ambitions with his situation. I left and he continued to be unhappy, trying to "fix" what he now realized had been broken all along. In the end, a span of a

A Chaos Theory

19791979 views00 comments00 favs

—with spinster goddesses in the middle of things / circling looms.

The Paris American

19791979 views44 comments22 favs

He returned to America on the Fourth of July. Twisting in his cramped window seat miles above the Atlantic, he buckled up before the descent. “You can handle this,” he muttered. Hungover, still reeling from the dreamy head-turning experience of…

lament of Liu Ch'e . . . while elsewhere--

19791979 views77 comments66 favs

in her silk sleeves is silence sheathed.

The Tombwatcher's Tale

19791979 views22 comments11 fav

My name is Lu-chen Wyatt, and I have watched this tomb for seven years with undying loyalty. Tomorrow I am going away, and I wish to set down the story of my leaving and to say goodbye to Set-Yi, whose burial place has been my home for so long.

True Vocation

19791979 views11 comment11 fav

After lunch it's vocal coaching: shrieking, screaming, crying Oh-my-God!-Oh-my-God!-Oh-my-God!, panting and face fanning. Next it's ‘situational training', where we pretend to be audience members on real talk shows and practice everything we've learned th

I've Got a Secret

19791979 views1818 comments1212 favs

There's a man sitting in my room holding a jar of my ashes. That's what he claims.

The Little Dog from Outer Space

19791979 views1111 comments88 favs

I looked at her, shook my head and tried to smile. She smiled back, beaming a radiance that pushed away the chill.

five discards or less

19791979 views66 comments55 favs

weep or go stark mad your amanuensic fool will bury your words

Migratory Mistakes

19791979 views00 comments00 favs

Unadorned tragedies pinpoint the worst angles of the road; simple crosses or bouquets line boulders painted with car crash smoke or skid marks that tiptoe to the edge of cliffs and then, apparently, leap.

soft soap

19791979 views1212 comments1212 favs

you were very very small, you were everso small, you were like – the tiniest creature, hopping about on one leg

Dick Be Gone

19791979 views33 comments22 favs

One thing about being a musician—more specifically a drummer—struggling against the cost of living—more specifically the cost of living in the Bay Area—is that I will do just about anything to earn money.

The Celebrity

19791979 views99 comments66 favs

"He doesn't have a parish," I said. "He works in a hospital in the East Bay. He told me that if I were in that hospital and I woke up and saw him, I was in big trouble."

Wrong Number

19781978 views77 comments33 favs

The package arrived, delivered to her work as was her preference. She took it to the ladies room and sat on the lounge, carefully opening the box, removing the new black patent leather FMQs, pulling out the tissue paper stuffed into the toes and placing her well-worn…

I'm Dying! And I Didn't Make The Bed!

19781978 views1111 comments99 favs

Five years ago, on January 15, 2009, Flight 1549 took off for Charlotte, North Carolina and, 3 minutes later, made an emergency landing in the Hudson River, with no serious harm to anyone but the geese who caused the problem. (They were liquefied into something…

The Sky-What Limit?

19781978 views00 comments00 favs

Lighter-than-air flight was back. The skies of the coast were alight with colorful balloons, dirigibles, and zeppelins tethered to their docking towers along the beach, the huge aircraft bobbing in the breeze up and down the coast for miles,…

Magnum Opus

19771977 views44 comments33 favs

The scaffolding had been difficult to construct. The rock floor of the bluff offered no purchase, so he'd been forced to anchor braces to the trees behind, then span some thirty feet. A cantilevered gallows reached another fifteen feet past the stage...

Letters from the Asylum (3)

19771977 views22 comments11 fav

She stepped into a pair of high heeled slippers and began to dance. She was Salome, a witch, dancing like the most beautiful, the most skilled whores of Paris.

Purple IV

19771977 views1313 comments77 favs

Purple not rain! I guess Prince left. It is said that Prince owned the aquifer under Jordan, Minnesota, and that he sold it but to whom? And moved to Canada—