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Why No One Writes Epics Anymore

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No one writes epics anymore. Why? Perhaps it's because we no longer share mythologies. Once there was a shepherd, and now there is a Google bus loaded with pricks. Yes, you say, but they are good at math. Each and every one of them. And this is true. I envy them…

Istanbul

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They are plastering on lipstick in pay-to-enter toilets around the corner from the mosques, where old men sit on back streets selling toilet seats, spices by the shovel, flashlights, and Audrey Hepburn t-shirts

Kai (excerpt)

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Kai,
 
Oh the mathematics of solitude. I wish your father there. I read your wanting subtracted between the lines. He is almost gone. Hallucinates, not awake even though eyes are open. Yesterday he saw the baby brother you never met. I light four ultramarine…

Why the World's Fireflies Are Being Counted

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We got Bob Dylan on the wall wriggling from the lack of music and light among the spheres A great doubt has been raised and can be seen from far, far away for they are even afraid now in heaven that things can’t be going right and to

The Blue Pear

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The pear is a bruise. Feels like desperation in the light, it looks soft and blue. She wants to touch it and doesn’t want to. How the blood gathers under the blue and the body grows tender. Swells. Slowly.

So Many Questions?

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“Are you my neighbor in 3D?” Was she?

Four Out of Seven

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Four nights out of sevenI will lay with youFour nights out of sevenIt's the best I can do In the day, we will bake our breadAt night, ha, we will break our bed!Four nights out of seven, I will be with you

I'm No Chickenshit

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Would a chickenshit leave her like I did yesterday?

THE SONGBIRD AND ME

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“Tell me again,” you whisper softly, “about the songbird.”

SWAMPLANDS by Paul D. Brazill

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Elvis awoke in a cold, dank sweat, hungover from bourbon and bad dreams.

Boom Boom Boom Boom

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“Man, that Fats just nothin’ but a powerhouse, nothin’ but ‘Jesus Rolled Away the Stone’ and them Cats his apostles.” La KeeSha replied, “Ya’ll a real Blues Daddy now.”

The Cry of Freedom

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"Only the gods in heaven can do such things," he shouted back, his voice hoarse and parched from no water for two days. "Wouldn't your God have saved you by now if he had the power?"

Life Experience

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Karen likes to make a big deal about life experience. Specifically how much more she has than me. What that actually means, she's never made clear. The definition changes and mutates as the years go by, always in her…

A Safe Distance

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Poems, and Zebras

Unseenly

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Over the years, his face began to alter

King of Pain

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I woke up around 6 pm today. As always, mum would wake me up. I have this special bond with my bed and parting with her during my most vulnerable is anathema to my nature. Thrice mum would pull my feet and thrice I would groan hoping she would go…

I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien

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You can’t start living in The Netherlands just like that; you need to be registered first. Once an official has confirmed you’re the person you claim to be, you can start in a job. Once an employer has confirmed you’re employed, you can apply for yo

A Butterfly For A Married Woman

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A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.

Inconstant Nature

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I think for a second that I should have called my husband out to witness this thing, but I am instantly made aware of why I have not.

Fulfillment

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And she's dying like someone who's tried living and failed.

Motley Crew

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Paul had come to Hawaii, like many young haoles from the mainland, to party. Partying proved to be lucrative for him. By early October 1982 he had done well for himself in Hawaii, living in a country house with sprawling lawns that held back the jungle foliage…

Land of Our Fathers

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He called me one Friday when I was a kid and told me he wanted to go trout fishing. He had dreamt that I was a worm or a fly -- he couldn't remember which -- but he was sure I would bring good luck to the stream. The next morning, before grandma awoke, I

Snatch 8 (the zombie flash sequence--it never dies)

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Oh, gracious mercy, oh...

Saturday Housekeeping

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but I pretend again I've kept the prairie/ out, have battled back the smoke and dirt

Big Heater

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they got some heat here in the West

In A-B-C Order

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When she was nineteen, she began to brew a baby in her belly. She named it, and sang to it, and organized the leftover hand-me-downs that hadn't been worn ragged through by the first seven sets of recipients.

Road Trip

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I threw my hand / at the gearshift/ the car glided off.

Zombie Night

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The man and the lady loved to laugh. She would tuck her hair back and lay her head on his stomach after dinner while watching old scary movies on Thursday nights. She would listen to his stomach digest the food and laugh then, he would laugh and…

Old clothes, bread, cream and butter.

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‘Just get out of bed,’ I reply. ‘It looks like the fairies have been at your head. You should turn your clothes inside out. Put out a biscuit. Ring a bell. Buy a rooster; or a recording of it crowing. It will keep the sprites at bay.

SEPARATION ANXIETY

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Julie and I had been dating for almost a year when she slipped her vagina under my door on her way to work.