Most read stories

You are beautiful just the way you are

19751975 views66 comments66 favs

There were avocados splayed across menus like 1950′s pinup girls–all thigh and curve. Avocados in California omelets. Avocados split and diced, sprayed with lime, slapped on bagels, served with tomato.

Golgotha

19751975 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 Road Trip Trilogy

19751975 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...

Animals, Animals, Animals

19751975 views11 comment22 favs

  Crea grew up above a pet store and now she dreams of cats. There are too many of them to name, a slinking mess of calico, tabby, tortoise-shell, black and white. There are more each night. They whisper to her, words made of hissing mewls. During the…

The Celebrity

19751975 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."

Traum

19741974 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

19741974 views00 comments00 favs

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

Why They Cried: Deano

19741974 views33 comments11 fav

When it came time to sell the agency—when the papers came for him to sign—it was a very bad deal. But he did not cry. This was business. He had gambled and he had lost. He signed the papers without a hint of regret and even pried open a case of champa

Letting Go

19741974 views55 comments44 favs

Jerrod's lips and tongue were like slabs of bologna someone shook in Kirsten’s face as she hit the turn signal. Kirsten was proud of herself. She'd been taking it well and she was pretty sure her real feelings weren’t poking through.

Stumptown Mary

19741974 views22 comments11 fav

so one time the Holy Ghost come down to Stumptown

Wrong Number

19741974 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…

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water (the update)

19741974 views33 comments11 fav

tough noogies

The Tree

19741974 views1212 comments88 favs

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

The Paris American

19731973 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…

As Pleat

19731973 views1010 comments66 favs

I turn up the music and slip into drone, rock it like a tunnel in canary. When that does not erase his face, I cup my breast with one hand and let my hair fall.

The Measure Of A Man

19731973 views44 comments11 fav

Cos I play hard that’s why. Everyday hard. You want someone who ain’t an everyday player ? Try our Closer. But ain’t his fault he’s always sat there in the pen, like he’s taken root. His number lines rely on the rest of the team. So he’s flatl

Purple IV

19731973 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—

I've Got a Secret

19731973 views1818 comments1212 favs

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

Goodnight, Travel Well

19731973 views44 comments33 favs

An excerpt.

Borden, Dream on Lord of the Pies.

19721972 views22 comments11 fav

A plague of dykes mattered not. This spider-girl had driven the world of thought from Borden’s mind.

Magnum Opus

19721972 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...

Small Change

19721972 views1414 comments1414 favs

Life seemed okay…for the most part.

Hobos: Paris vs. San Francisco

19721972 views77 comments22 favs

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

Monster Truck

19721972 views33 comments33 favs

In another lifetime the loft had been a shoe factory and I joked how in the dark of night I could hear the ghosts of lost soles speaking in tongues. There was the rolling of eyes, and when I repeated the joke to my therapist, who was actually sitting acr

Christmas Morning

19721972 views1313 comments55 favs

Dad woke us up and said it was time to go.

I Like it This Way

19721972 views1717 comments77 favs

Through its branches we saw a couple. Teenagers, narrow and pale, two young birch trees, their roots twisted, submerged in the water.

Cut

19711971 views1515 comments88 favs

Effluvium is such a lovely word, so hey surprise it covers rancid butter, vomit, fertile gingko fruit trekked in from the pavement.

Weary

19711971 views11 comment00 favs

At this time of night, the fluorescence makes his eyes bleed. The muscles in his legs are tight; walking's more of a necessity than anything else. Alexander pushes the shopping cart down the endless gray tile floors of the Grand Union on 35.

Where Is Daddy?

19711971 views66 comments55 favs

He checks the bedrooms first, then the hallway, followed by the living room and the bathrooms. When he can't find you he takes to calling out, daddy, I'm sure the neighbors hear.

True Vocation

19711971 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