Most read stories

Antigone Détente

19831983 views1717 comments1414 favs

Tan my hide. Feed me to rabid / macaques.

The Tombwatcher's Tale

19831983 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.

Stumptown Mary

19831983 views22 comments11 fav

so one time the Holy Ghost come down to Stumptown

Wrong Number

19831983 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…

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

19831983 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

19831983 views1212 comments88 favs

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

Golgotha

19831983 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.

Thumbs Up Jesus

19831983 views2323 comments1212 favs

Good buddy Jesus./ Life coach Jesus. Enthusiastic// and optimistic Jesus, no cross/ or crown of thorns in sight.

Cut

19821982 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.

Magnum Opus

19821982 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

19821982 views1414 comments1414 favs

Life seemed okay…for the most part.

True Vocation

19821982 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

The Little Dog from Outer Space

19821982 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.

The Ouija Board Guide to True Facts about Cremation

19821982 views00 comments00 favs

Oh, and take off all your jewelry unless you want your relatives sifting you through a window screen looking for your diamond.

Modulus of Elasticity

19821982 views1919 comments1515 favs

The limbs lift again,

The Madness of the Gods

19821982 views00 comments00 favs

“Have you heard about Lucius?” The lawyer turned to the carpenter. “They say he's gone mad. Just gone; the madness of the gods.” Sitting in the barbershop were the former two, one in his forties and the other of his fifties; a gray-haired…

Animals, Animals, Animals

19821982 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

19821982 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."

The Chicken In A Can Incident: A Cautionary Christmas Tale

19821982 views33 comments33 favs

Don't feed it to the dog, it has bones, it is a whole goddamn chicken in a can, and I can't stress that enough. Besides one year you gave me a toilet seat for Christmas. I couldn't even eat that Ky

The Violinist

19821982 views1313 comments1111 favs

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

I Like it This Way

19821982 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.

A Night Ride With the Conservative Poetry Enforcers

19811981 views00 comments00 favs

We've got our gang colors on because we're out for retribution. T.S. Eliot made an appearance at a writer's conference on De-Privileging the Dead White Male last night, and the head of a low-residency poetry program tossed hot green tea on him.

Purple IV

19811981 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—

Redeye Rabbit

19811981 views1414 comments77 favs

I knew it was just a matter of time...

The Whippy Guy

19811981 views11 comment00 favs

He was the tall, whippy type. Dangerous.

We Don't Need a Guitar Man

19811981 views55 comments22 favs

The courtroom smelled a lot like mold and it was hot as you could imagine. I sweated through my shirt and wondered if he wasn’t dying under his robe. He looked down at me from his bench and I just knew he was going to call me a commie and sentence me to l

Gazpacho

19801980 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.

Conversation on Thanksgiving

19791979 views88 comments00 favs

“You always use that as a crutch. You, a sixteen year old girl. The way you were…” She looked at me, shaking her head, looking at my body as if remembering some wrong, some thing that should not have been.

A D O N I S

19791979 views33 comments00 favs

They sprinkled me in the holes of Auburn Maine. They covered me in grain, and salmon colored sand. My shell had swirls of chartreuse, and chocolate painted on it. I was made from glass and Gods left eye. Picked and sorted through, we all landed into a tiny paper bag…

Worms Shouldn't Drink Whiskey

19791979 views66 comments55 favs

I have two memories of my dad. The first is a story he liked to tell: So my old woman came home one day with a worm. She sets the worm on the counter and goes into…