Most read stories

Pieces of Lou, pt. 2

34803480 views44 comments11 fav

Serbs and Croats? Hutus and Tutsis? The east coast/west coast thing in hip hop? Lou Lou and more Lou.

The Lives of Felix Gunderson

34783478 views22 comments00 favs

The lights turn on, the audience cheers. He raises his guitar, steps up to the microphone and sings. The rock star. He is a god.

The Judge's Wife

34753475 views1515 comments44 favs

Her pheromones were working overtime.

our lips are barely touching

34723472 views00 comments11 fav

Our lips can touch, just touch. Our lips can touch, but they can't really touch.

Gasp and Dash

34723472 views4848 comments2626 favs

I took a deep breath and turned the key. I pushed the door open just far enough to see. I backed out, closed the door and turned the key again. I walked to my car, knelt down and placed in front of the right front tire the little box with the holes in it that held the…

We Need to Breathe

34663466 views3232 comments1414 favs

She turned and looked at me as if she had just discovered me. A weak smile looped around the edges of her mouth but she didn't mean it. It was as if her brain had relayed a signal to her mouth to smile but the mouth didn't really want to, not really.

A Boy Who Looks Like Horses, or A Horse Who Looks Like Boys

34653465 views44 comments33 favs

He nuzzled the breasts with his face for a moment, his leathery skin and tangles of hair tickling her in the process.

InfiniDate

34633463 views99 comments44 favs

He envisioned sinking his hands through his fat and pulling out the young, sinewy, long-haired Brendan Yin, the man Evelyn fell in love with. The blubbery shell would fall away to the floor, like a greasy banana peel, and the real Brendan Yin would be lo

The Long Fuse

34523452 views11 comment11 fav

I have heard the very people who make me talk as if explosiveness is something to flee. And I agree. If you are not designed to destroy, you should stay far away with me. I was packed with the desire to fall apart with force and take whatever stands near me with me. It is…

Fusebrain

34473447 views55 comments44 favs

I am an icon of drunken ruin, sunken cheeks and shaggy face Breath like molded barley and eyes like old oysters placid and grey, devoid of illuminating thought

Welcome To Bedpan Alley! Honest Names For Nursing Homes

34463446 views44 comments22 favs

A senior living facility called “Symphony Square ” recently opened up in my neighborhood. It doesn't have a symphony. Nor is it square. So what's with the name? I'm guessing that a consultant was paid big bucks to come up with that enticing moniker.…

Coming Back To Earth As A Dog

34393439 views3535 comments1414 favs

Even after he shot me, I still loved him and even after I was dead I wanted to be with him. So I forgave him once more and made the crucial decision to come back to earth as a dog. …

War

34393439 views5454 comments1313 favs

Once, an elephant contracted a sudden bolt of insanity in the streets of Ernakulam and trampled three children under her feet before she was shot to death. It took them seven bullets to bring her down.

Brief Requiem for the Twentieth Century

34383438 views1010 comments99 favs

The crumbling meccas/ gnaw/ Each fiscal year’s quota of blood and bone,

Stalling

34383438 views2525 comments1313 favs

My son, six, is practicing dying.

In My War Novel

34373437 views77 comments55 favs

If I wrote a war novel my wife would be killed off before our relationship figured out our differences. Like her being really Asian and me being just so-so Asian.

Rain

34373437 views88 comments33 favs

I am under the rain. Under. The. Rain.The rain comes after me. Beats me. I wait for the boom of thunder, fork of lightning. In the rain, I am afraid. In the rain, I don't know where I am going. In the rain, I am fucking ridiculous.I try to outrun the rain. My shoes sink…

Family Emergency

34353435 views33 comments11 fav

The phone screamed again, nearly rattling off the hook, and I winced. Only in the dead of night, silence all around it and with the ring so unexpected, did it register as an alarm like this.

Fragment of an Early Novel of the 21st Century

34323432 views00 comments00 favs

But, as his mind twisted like a square peg beating a hole into a round mallet, he sensed it had something to do with penguins. Not that he knew anything about penguins, at that point in time. That would come later, in his days, after this history, where h

When the Translator Disappears, the Translation Withers and Dies

34313431 views3333 comments2626 favs

She pined for the return of the trans­la­tor who / became mes­sianic in her eyes.

Things to Do in Prague

34303430 views77 comments11 fav

We are not doing a good job of ignoring Pink Floyd.

Credentials

34233423 views1212 comments1212 favs

He was starting fresh, starting legal.

Playboy Bunny

34223422 views1313 comments1010 favs

"Hannah," I say, "stay off the road, let me do the hitchhiking. Ok? Guys see your tits and it's over. I don't want to be here when the sun goes down."

The Birds

34223422 views3232 comments1919 favs

My wife goes away for a few days to the little town where Hitchcock filmed The Birds. Her sister goes along. When she comes back, I ask her if she had a good time, and she says no.

Methaphor

34163416 views1717 comments66 favs

Red is a boy...

I'm Feeling the Monkey Around your Neck Isn't Quite Listening

34133413 views2828 comments2121 favs

The sky's hand's so big andso vast that it takes ourhuge sun at the end of day and squeezes it downto a perfect diamond--just like Supermanwith a lump of coal-- poof!--obliterates it. And it's gone.Next day it's seen floatingaround everywhere again,like an…

(3) Country House

34103410 views11 comment11 fav

At one point he’d said: Don’t you have work to do? And she’d said: I’m doing it now.

The Literary Savant

34083408 views4343 comments2727 favs

"I would date a dog," she says.

Pink

34033403 views1919 comments1313 favs

In China I remembered you only once:the restaurant's speciality, chosenfrom a braid of live varieties,spiraled to the floor while the waiterflayed it with a knife flickedfrom his wrist. The snake made your initialover and over the black tile.What pain? Love's all…

The Abandoned Shoe Project

33923392 views77 comments88 favs

It’s the unfinished sentences Of the children on our refrigerators That worry me the most It’s the Fake News It’s all the people Living in their shopping carts Without shoes It’s the abandoned shoe On the street And the Abandoned S