Most read stories

Confessions of a Liturgical Voyeur

19611961 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.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Manet

19611961 views11 comment00 favs

The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale and Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl Two roses in a small clear glass of water A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway up from

Three Network News Ledes on the Death of Jimmy Buffet

19611961 views44 comments11 fav

“He spent four lonely days in a brown L.A. haze, and now Jimmy Buffet is dead.” —Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News “Jimmy Buffet—beloved parrot-head singer-songwriter—has given up his search for that lost shaker of salt. He…

AA For the Suicidal - alt.punk extract

19601960 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.”

Antigone Détente

19601960 views1717 comments1414 favs

Tan my hide. Feed me to rabid / macaques.

Letters from the Asylum (3)

19601960 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.

Worms Shouldn't Drink Whiskey

19601960 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…

A Girl / An Elderly Woman / A Bear

19601960 views88 comments44 favs

A girl waiting at the door, heart in a Ziploc. An elderly woman stopping at the bank. A bear in a screaming contest with a troop of girl scouts.

haircut month

19601960 views55 comments44 favs

The same night your best friend of two years called you up to tell you they don't want to think about you anymore was the same night you had stood silently, leaning, head against the mustard wall in your mom's boyfriend's house, stuck listening to Randy…

The Big Game

19601960 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.

The Last Bailout

19591959 views00 comments00 favs

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

We Don't Need a Guitar Man

19591959 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

The Road Trip Trilogy

19591959 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...

Twister

19591959 views1515 comments1414 favs

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

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

19591959 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…

Rebekah Just When the Drought Was Ending

19581958 views66 comments66 favs

But the best thing about Rebekah was the way she floated always beneath the scent of woodburn and dusty Middle America,

A D O N I S

19581958 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…

Elsewhere

19581958 views1111 comments77 favs

when the surface of a photograph gets like this that it has gone blind

Welcome to the Dark Walls

19581958 views99 comments88 favs

“No one ever notices everything: but sometimes it happens, when no one is noticing everything, everyone misses the same thing in the same moment . . ."

Laughing, Crying

19581958 views55 comments44 favs

It was Brad, for short; or so he would say. But really his name was Bradford, and he was a writer. He had almost always lived in New York. He was only half-white. His mother had run away with a black man in the sixties. Her father had told her to never come back to…

Don't Be Difficult

19581958 views77 comments77 favs

maybe eventually time / will erase our time together

March Madness

19571957 views1010 comments33 favs

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

just like James Taylor

19571957 views1313 comments44 favs

tell me about the time you lived in Carolina, and what my smile does for you.

The Quiet Room by Doug Holder

19571957 views11 comment11 fav

I keep my life very ordered. Order for me is security. I am sure of some things. Like the fact I work five nights a week, and sleep during the day.

The Unpublished Writer and His Love Interest (The Painter)

19571957 views22 comments00 favs

When the writer expressed with subtle alacrity that he adored the painter, she was flattered and didn't raise objection. The writer-in his aloof manner, with experienced caution-pointedly wrote a poem directly for his muse. She never spoke of it, and hi

How I Left Onandaga County

19571957 views1010 comments44 favs

So, like I said. Da. I have dealt with the men, when I was a lap dancer. The men they need the….manipulations. I have good hands. They want me to see them naked, their power. Here it is only the women. The massage, the facial, the waxing...

Our Time as Men

19571957 views44 comments44 favs

Rhonda looks guilty as it is, don’t you think? That hair! And the unhappiness smeared across her face like war paint after a war.

Permission to Go

19561956 views1010 comments66 favs

Now that I no longer sleep to see you, propelled by this motion that is not magic

The Day You Told Me You Fucked Her

19561956 views11 comment33 favs

I imagined you going at her in ferocious fucking-- / O, O, O, O, O, O, O Immortal Glistening Cock,

toupee

19561956 views11 comment00 favs

It wasn't until about 2:30 that my hairpiece began mauling small children.