Most read stories

Junctions / Decisions

17611761 views22 comments22 favs

Next to you, the mother tightens her grip on her stroller. The young teenager tears her gaze from her mobile phone for an instant.

On Being Bald....

17611761 views33 comments22 favs

Hair today...gone tomorrow The sun beats down on my balding crown.

With My Eye

17611761 views1212 comments77 favs

my space heater throws a pale orange light my white candles flicker in the middle of the night

The Room Below

17611761 views11 comment11 fav

The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

The Nest

17611761 views00 comments11 fav

I am reaching out at you, to you from the nest. From the nest, please come to the nest, to see me and to hear my life story. From the nest I go, and then I arrive at the nest, suddenly, just in time to be…

Tuscaloosa

17611761 views1313 comments77 favs

a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

now

17601760 views2727 comments1111 favs

koalas burning

Heart of Gold

17601760 views1212 comments44 favs

"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."

Phantom

17601760 views11 comment11 fav

I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.

The Arks What Weren't

17601760 views22 comments11 fav

Mrs. Noah eyed the thickening clouds from the front stoop. Noah was still out in the yard kicking up sand in disgust, arguing with himself the whole time. Piles of cedar timber lay strewn all about. Maybe if they’d lived even three days’ journey clos

Willy Takes the Night Train to Heaven

17601760 views22 comments00 favs

a store called ROCKING FROCKS. In its window was a black tee shirt that said in big white letters, I'M NOT A SLUT, I'M WITH THE BAND.

Lockdown

17601760 views1212 comments33 favs

I'm explicating Emily Dickinson when the alarm starts: three long, two short. Lockdown mode. Only there was nothing in the staff bulletin about a drill. So I tell the students to get down on the floor, away from the window. I open the classroom door and lock it from…

The Rare Air on Planet Teeny

17601760 views1010 comments88 favs

Half-pint Ball canning jars, each labeled in earnest capital letters, took up a whole wall of Teeny’s bedroom. Inside each jar was air she had collected from some place important to her life.

-And Lurking Behind Quasar 3C295 . . .

17601760 views22 comments22 favs

“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.

Famous Female Artist

17601760 views22 comments00 favs

I remember being sent a picture once from one of my old roommates, Louise, back in Chicago where I came from. The photo was taken when she’d come out for a visit to California. In the picture I am sitting on the front stairs of my house in the Rockridge

The Serious Writer Tracks His Stats

17601760 views77 comments44 favs

The officers carried him away in cuffs as he yelled "I NEED STATS! PLEASE! JUST GIVE ME THE STATS!"

Lessons from a Pine

17601760 views88 comments44 favs

I awake one morning to find that still, the leaves continue to fall.

Sports day at the School for Clowns

17601760 views1313 comments55 favs

The javelin was cancelled after the unfortunate incident with Mrs Parker last year, but no one could have predicted this year’s sack race tragedy.

Novembering

17601760 views2929 comments1313 favs

Cinnamon and smoke infuse the days that shorten, chill, accelerate.

If we thought that love was gone

17601760 views66 comments22 favs

If we thought that love was gone that out of sweetness none remained

Rose Gold

17591759 views77 comments66 favs

He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…

Albatross Antics

17591759 views00 comments00 favs

Track One Johnny Burkemeister, lead vocals and flutist of the band Albatross Antics, sits on his bed thinking in silence. His elbow rests on his knee, and his palm on his forehead with his fingers running through his dirty-blonde hair. He is staring at a copy of Paste…

Toothbrush

17591759 views1111 comments22 favs

...and he would stumble from bed in a panic and fling the toothbrush at the mirror cursing all the while "fuck fuck why can't I forget her".

Meander

17591759 views33 comments33 favs

Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don't like mazes — too much like…

Graduation (For My Mother)

17591759 views33 comments33 favs

I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

RT @dadaism #amwriting

17591759 views77 comments77 favs

How much do book editors earn? Peacock Love. (aww…)

When the Muse Abandons You

17591759 views2323 comments1313 favs

I am abandoned to the mundane/ calculations of a small mind/ trapped by small considerations

A Gardener in February Thinks About June

17591759 views77 comments77 favs

I want to be that daring gardener who ploughs up her front yard -- to the horror of the Neighborhood Association.

Frozen Shells

17591759 views1010 comments1010 favs

I had some words, but the truth is they don't mean a thing because whatever it is I was trying to say to you always crumbles to the ground in front of you. I had some words, but the bullying wind was stronger than me and ripped them…

Constable Pulce and the Sunny Dystopia

17591759 views55 comments55 favs

Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.