Most read stories

He Brings Things Closer

18041804 views33 comments33 favs

Behind the plastic kitchen, where the special children sometimes sit, a large boy in tight dungarees had grabbed Stephanie's hair in one fist.

Three Degrees of Separation from the Same Thing We Were Still Supposed to be Thinking About

18041804 views33 comments22 favs

It was hard to believe that, even very recently, there had been first days of school where nothing happened.

Fin

18041804 views77 comments11 fav

She doesn’t answer. Ten minutes slide by unmolested in the anesthesia of cheap wine and resignation, the bouncers blurring and unblurring, the room dimming, quieting, the kaleidoscope of sundown giving way to the gentle sadness of candlelight.

-And Lurking Behind Quasar 3C295 . . .

18041804 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.

When I'm Sixty-Four (Semantic Satiation)

18041804 views66 comments33 favs

Every day is exactly the same.

Writing Coach Helps Blocked Women Tap Inner Meanness

18041804 views88 comments77 favs

“Susan,” he says menacingly, as if he’s a husband who’s caught a cheating wife in a discreet liaison with another man. “I thought I made myself clear about this sort of thing.”

Faith, Hope, and Charity

18041804 views1515 comments1212 favs

She wears three or four tattered sweaters on cool days. She pushes a basket borrowed from a grocery store. There is a plastic lawn bag in the basket with God knows what inside.

Young Turks

18041804 views00 comments00 favs

There was a whole group of us Young Turk poets who hung out at the Savoy Tivoli in North Beach. Most of them drove cabs, (whereas I was now working in a damned gas station for Angel, my publisher’s man, who got me a job there.) They would double-park thei

SoliTaire

18041804 views44 comments44 favs

She couldn’t help but wonder what 93 year-old Sohrabjee looked for in the torn, dusty lithograph of Marilyn in Persia one of the orderlies had stuck to the wall of the corridor outside Jasmine Wing decades ago.

The Room Below

18041804 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 Signal

18041804 views44 comments33 favs

I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

Verboten

18041804 views77 comments11 fav

Scales were installed on station platforms. Those who were overweight were turned away

Marjan’s Tooth

18041804 views00 comments00 favs

When my feet touched the ground on the tarmac at Bagram I cannot begin to describe the feeling I had. It was as if God had spoken to me directly, whispering in the cold mountain air: “Son of Marjan, I welcome you.” The feeling took hold and overcame m

Sky Without a Song

18041804 views66 comments66 favs

He hung up and I sang some whiney lyric about wanting him back. You know the songs that say the same shit: I’m an idiot. Love me anyway. I’m Velcro with nothing to stick to and you’re a nappy surface that gives me a reason to exist.

The Death of Childhood Heroes (or "Roadkill")

18031803 views44 comments00 favs

We were pushing ninety down the highway through a stretch of what rightfully should have been called the Badlands. We were both absorbed and coping with the rapidly escalating stages of desperation and so neither of us noticed when the yellow figure stepped…

Halfway Out The Door

18031803 views55 comments33 favs

She asks if I only write about men, which I tell her is redundant. I also answer, “Yes, but sometimes I write about them as race cars, hyenas, vaginas, or God.” She smirks like she wants to smile, but it’s stuck halfway out her door. Her happiness has

Driving Old

18031803 views1212 comments1111 favs

I drive old now

I used to think the sun was the moon

18031803 views55 comments22 favs

I imagined the sun to be the moon and discovered it was not on a road trip in California where I noticed the sun on one side and the moon on the other.

Reflections Over Jalpeños

18031803 views00 comments00 favs

It seemed like only yesterday that she was making sure to remember bottles for Hunter and now he was eating regular adult food, and they were looking into tutors for next year, and Hunter was nearly four. Her runty Hunty umpkins was going to be four.

Baking Bread

18031803 views22 comments11 fav

the champagne foam cascades like cherry blossom ensnared in the first gales of spring

Scene from the Clinic

18031803 views11 comment11 fav

No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.

Dear Helen

18031803 views1111 comments22 favs

I watched you knee deep in water with a little boy you were hitting.

Paris in the the Spring

18031803 views1616 comments1111 favs

he thought of her / longingly

Security

18031803 views1010 comments11 fav

Her preferred post-coital activity is to pant, to suck in air with urgent greed.

Clockwork

18031803 views44 comments44 favs

At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.

Extra Ticket

18031803 views11 comment11 fav

My best friend died yesterday. His name was Franklin Seever, but we all called him Lin. It started when we were in Little League. There were two Franklins on the team so Coach, who was my dad, called the fat one Frank and my best friend Lin.

Pharaoh

18031803 views1111 comments66 favs

Altodog was dressed in filthy chef’s trousers and a long-sleeved purple dress shirt, somewhat dignified by a tattered black vest.

Amy-Loyd Plax

18031803 views1212 comments1111 favs

When I no longer know you, what signal will you give to remind me that you and I once loved?

The Eagle and Her Chicks

18021802 views11 comment00 favs

On the day they were born, the old mother eagle named her chicks Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Gregory Dates a Witch

18021802 views99 comments44 favs

None of us took it too seriously when Gregory from underwriting said he was dating a real-life witch. Being an underwriter is not as interesting as say being a writer. That's why the greatest underwriter in America, Ajit Jain, gets paid per hour what Jame