Most read stories

As Pleat

19461946 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.

Of Mugs and Men

19461946 views44 comments22 favs

I want to break that mug. (Break him.)

The Last Bailout

19461946 views00 comments00 favs

In desperation, the city council imported a shaman to exorcise whatever demons had possessed the house.

Dog Days

19461946 views1818 comments1717 favs

The air is dry and smoky from a fire some miles away. The air is cool. A pair of vultures is soaring in a circle high above the rising land.

Colonoscopy Serenade

19461946 views55 comments33 favs

Retired cantor Janice Woltag Cohen just turned 50. We Boomers all know what that means. It's Colonoscopy Time!Colonoscopy! That fabulous 50th birthday present you give to yourself. Yes, it's yucky. But it's absolutely necessary. (It could save your life.)As kids…

Wedding Bells & Space Junk [July challenge]

19461946 views11 comment11 fav

Right away, like toadstools, there were crackpot theories. The first: that kids out on the lake dock, against fire department warnings...

The Sky-What Limit?

19461946 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,…

Suspended

19451945 views99 comments88 favs

In the beginning the revolution was all motion and energy. When the President for Life resigned motion and energy disappeared with the sounds of clapping hands.

Small Change

19451945 views1414 comments1414 favs

Life seemed okay…for the most part.

Hobos: Paris vs. San Francisco

19451945 views77 comments22 favs

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

The Atlantic

19451945 views2020 comments88 favs

Phoebe-Lou Adams wrote this of them

Bravo, Scrittore!

19451945 views44 comments00 favs

I hadn't yet assembled enough pieces of Italian to explain any of this, but it was hardly necessary. The fact that I was a scrittore in a language foreign to her seemed to make me especially fascinating...

Not Again!

19451945 views11 comment00 favs

"People just weren't getting it," he continued, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and hiccuping mildly. "It looks like it's time to UP the ANTE!"

Folded Up

19441944 views1010 comments88 favs

Time to pull in the shining teeth, but it makes me so sad, you know I'd rather be holding hands. The others have told me, don't hold back, hit them with every white knuckle, and let them bleed out, I'd rather be kissing your face. It hurts,…

Where Is Daddy?

19441944 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.

Three Thirds

19441944 views44 comments22 favs

"I was hit by an Amtrak train and dragged a hundred feet, and I'm going to die from smoking cigarettes."

The Whippy Guy

19441944 views11 comment00 favs

He was the tall, whippy type. Dangerous.

FAMILY VALUES

19441944 views00 comments00 favs

that is a fair description of our family if I add the disclaimer that the girls are whores and we don’t have much in common.

The Road Trip Trilogy

19441944 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...

Life of Charlotte

19441944 views1111 comments44 favs

A wall of icons can be beautiful if you don’t look closely at the hands. The hands tell stories of too short lives and unrequited love.

A Natural Consequence of Things

19441944 views66 comments44 favs

Belief is a hammer, like saying the mind is a piece of iron.

Twister

19441944 views1515 comments1414 favs

The rain pelted down, it got dark, and they couldn't see a thing. The wind roared like a thousand locomotives.

Did I Tell You I Have Stripes On My Socks?

19431943 views88 comments55 favs

Kids are fascinated by me. Adults look the other way. Maybe it's my size. Or maybe it's the stories in the newspapers.

Unveiling Kirkiss Automated Amazon Reviews!!!

19431943 views2020 comments1212 favs

No! No! Nonononono!

No More Tears

19431943 views55 comments11 fav

When Bill was in the hospital, one month bleeding into the next, his mother visited exactly twice, both times complaining of the things she needed or couldn’t get rid of: mop heads, bleach, dustpans, detergents, grease, turgid water in the basement. And

Letters from the Asylum (3)

19431943 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.

Encasement

19431943 views22 comments00 favs

A universe, all of it, was encased in glass.

Giacometti

19431943 views2020 comments55 favs

He tells me that only a few things had happened in his life but some of them he had felt deeply.

Thursday

19431943 views1717 comments1010 favs

Every Thursday, around 11 am, right after the cemetery where I work receives the daily shipment of cremated remains to be interred, a frail nonagenarian steps out of the driver's seat of his Lincoln Continental and walks, unassisted, up a flight of twenty granite steps,…

Gazpacho

19431943 views55 comments33 favs

It's a pretty strange feeling when you think you're about to bite into some ice cream and instead it's gazpacho.