Most read stories

The Days of Man

18031803 views00 comments11 fav

They drifted for months, locked between the vast merciless blue and the withering sun. Their faces blistered and their minds bleached and weary. They conspired in the shadows, drew plans in the sawdust, they grew confident and…

Moon Stone

18031803 views55 comments44 favs

It is late at night and you lean / over me to make sure your alarm is set.

Yesterday That Monday's Sun

18031803 views1212 comments77 favs

wrenched its lower back trying so hard to lift too many stacked November clouds off the newly shaved prickly heads of the slowly freezing trees,like ring weights,and had to spend the last of its hours setting in a small square box in…

Something Short

18031803 views88 comments77 favs

It went like this: We were at the river. It had been a long day. The sun set over the hill tops, now. Me and Danny sat by the edge with buckets of water full of small fish and some dead crab that we'd got from the market, earlier and looked out over the small waves the…

GOING NOWHERE

18031803 views1414 comments88 favs

you may meet the man of your dreams.

destiny

18031803 views1313 comments1212 favs

destiny

ANYTHING FOR JOHNNY

18031803 views11 comment00 favs

After nine months, I was granted early parole...

soft soap

18031803 views1212 comments1212 favs

you were very very small, you were everso small, you were like – the tiniest creature, hopping about on one leg

SHE HAS HER REASONS

18031803 views2121 comments1212 favs

It is a well-known fact that my wife sleeps around. There. I said it and now everyone knows that I too know about my wife. Let me just tell you this one thing; she has her reasons. You ask me how I know that she has her reasons, but who would know better than…

The Energy of Girls

18021802 views1212 comments77 favs

Emma and I were in a shabby part of town with vacant lots and overgrown yards, and I wondered if something would happen as we loped beside Tom, who was slow-witted and 21. We were 13 . . .

Lost In Space

18021802 views00 comments00 favs

He was jolted awake from his light slumber by his pod crash landing. Landing? That means he found a planet. He opened the pod and got out to stretch his legs. He looked around. "Wow, and I thought Aleria was advanced. This is amazing."

THE BIRTH OF THE BLUES

18021802 views88 comments77 favs

The blues were born on the ghost train that rolled through the Delta and gave Memphis breath back in 1902. It's low moaning sound brought young black men running, dogs hot in pursuit, toward glory that danced in a moonlight…

Highway Robbery

18021802 views11 comment00 favs

I knew her face but not her hair, at least not the right way up.

The Hunt

18021802 views66 comments22 favs

I bought the goldfish at different pet shops out of town, a few at a time, until I had two hundred or more in the freezer.

Taking a Job

18021802 views33 comments22 favs

Teaching never occurred to me in college. I took workshops and wrote often. Friends and classmates, meanwhile, switched from studio majors to Art Education, or from English to Certification. Not me. Teaching high-schoolers would be all wrong. Briefly, I…

The Distance of Advice

18021802 views44 comments44 favs

She has a mercenary way of doing business and she's pretty shrewd. I make her stand outside to smoke her cigarette. I stay inside watching her stance as she violently tugs at the barrel, tearing every ounce of smoke out of it, then stamping it out as I wo

COSMOGONY

18021802 views1212 comments1111 favs

I am sitting on our porch in the middle of the night. I can't sleep. The stars look like runway lights. Out of boredom, I reach out my hand to connect the distant dots. The tip of my finger hits…

Lines Written in a Honda Civic

18021802 views66 comments44 favs

Raymond Carver used to write poetry in his car. / Tonight, I tried it too. / I have a car like Raymond Carver / but cannot write poetry like Raymond Carver. / The car isn’t enough.

Scar

18021802 views1010 comments1010 favs

If he doesn't bite, I'm out of here.

The She-Wolf of Leningrad

18021802 views1212 comments55 favs

The heavyset blind woman came into the art opening without a dog or a cane.

Duck Sauce

18021802 views22 comments22 favs

In principle, Sergeant Brock Lumley resisted superstition, but if you were to stop him on any given day he was patrolling Baghdad streets with his rifle squad and ask him to open the front left ammo pouch on his flak vest, he’d get this look on his face..

Bed Bugs are Jumpin' in Thunder Bay

18011801 views44 comments22 favs

The little Hannibal Lectors had run like bandits away from the flames and had latched on to their equipment and gear. They screamed as the bugs crawled all over them. When they got back to the station they had to quarantine all their stuff so the bugs w

11 Bang-Bang

18011801 views33 comments22 favs

The smell of candy and burn... /A patriotic prose poem for the fourth of July.

Good Luck Sailor

18011801 views77 comments00 favs

On a ship twice run aground a sailor cranked a rope round a spool bigger than his head. He could see overboard and also the strip of deck on which he walked down to get to the crank. What he noticed most, as always, were the green echoes in the sea foam against…

The Get-Up

18011801 views1212 comments44 favs

There was a children’s lit theme running through the party. Aside from Annemarie’s costume, there was a Harry Potter, a Pinocchio, and a Grinch.

The New World

18011801 views00 comments00 favs

And so we conquered.

Chaos Unveiled

18011801 views1212 comments1313 favs

The moonlight news is brutal

Wired

18011801 views1010 comments44 favs

He got up to the pulpit and said that he thought he might have made a mistake. I will never forget the desperate look on his face. He recalled being at his Ivy League school and wondering just what he was interested in upon his graduation and what would b

She Could Have Given Him Strawberries

18011801 views44 comments44 favs

She lets go and it slides back too slowly.

Island Music

18011801 views11 comment11 fav

Of all the things Shelly hated about her job, the music was the worst.