Most read stories

Small Change

19491949 views1414 comments1414 favs

Life seemed okay…for the most part.

Three Thirds

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

Yakkety-Yak

19491949 views33 comments33 favs

Last night, the station played me a dream of sexual promiscuity that included -- but was not limited to -- imaginative acts involving....

Dog Days

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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.

AA For the Suicidal - alt.punk extract

19481948 views11 comment11 fav

The drive back to Sac does nothing to sober me up, either, and although Avaline and I are ready to hurl, she takes me to her afternoon support group, “Lean On Me: A Place for Manic-Depressive and Bipolar Sufferers to Come Together.”

Folded Up

19481948 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,…

Suspended

19481948 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.

Did I Tell You I Have Stripes On My Socks?

19481948 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.

Antigone Détente

19481948 views1717 comments1414 favs

Tan my hide. Feed me to rabid / macaques.

No More Tears

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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

Confessions of a Liturgical Voyeur

19481948 views1616 comments66 favs

...when she spoke, her voice still seemed to spill bourbon from a heavy crystal tumbler, and drift cigarette smoke in a dark paneled room.

Bravo, Scrittore!

19481948 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...

Life of Charlotte

19481948 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

19481948 views66 comments44 favs

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

Bon Bons

19471947 views88 comments33 favs

love notes yellowed through the years

Residual Sulking

19471947 views44 comments22 favs

I know I know how many times you want me to tell you I’m sorry, okay?

Unveiling Kirkiss Automated Amazon Reviews!!!

19471947 views2020 comments1212 favs

No! No! Nonononono!

First the Newborn Birds on High and Then the Awful Climbing Beasts

19471947 views1212 comments88 favs

"Stop watching the news!Because the news contrives to frighten youTo make you feel small and aloneTo make you feel that your mind isn't your own"--MorrisseyThe world has gone crazy, but please let me make you One of my healing songs. You can eat it now, if you…

Pterodactyls

19471947 views1111 comments88 favs

In his head he thinks oh whatever when I wake this time I shall have a very fine discussion with Someone special, oh but finding meaning in anything nowadays that's Just too much rich flattery, isn't it, filthy mirror? Inside His head's…

Where Is Daddy?

19471947 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.

Hobos: Paris vs. San Francisco

19471947 views77 comments22 favs

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

The Last Bailout

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

The Atlantic

19471947 views2020 comments88 favs

Phoebe-Lou Adams wrote this of them

Giacometti

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

Wedding Bells & Space Junk [July challenge]

19471947 views11 comment11 fav

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

From the Found Notebooks of Homer's Writing Group

19461946 views66 comments33 favs

Oh, also, had no idea what the whole visit to the Kingdom of the Dead was getting at. Interesting, but seems unrelated to the larger story. I'd cut it. Remember — this is a story about one man's attempt to get home. Stay focused on that.

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.

five discards or less

19461946 views66 comments55 favs

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

The Big Game

19461946 views33 comments55 favs

The vampire donated floodlights so the children could play ballgames at night. The lights came on but the dugouts remained vacant. The vampire sat alone in the bleachers. “Sometimes I am less than the sum of my parts,” he said to the sum of his parts.

March Madness

19451945 views1010 comments33 favs

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I never knew where that was.”