Most read stories

Salt

17551755 views44 comments22 favs

I imagined the crystals in my mouth. Salt flowers blooming on my tongue.

Vienna

17541754 views22 comments22 favs

I remember thinking the seasons are arriving later every year, as if the world has been slowed by the weight of graves.

Absence

17541754 views00 comments00 favs

Her mouth was sour; her forehead was still damp with perspiration. She leaned against the bathroom wall and noted her complexion had gone pale. She wanted to slide down the wall and rest until she felt steadier, but…

der Morgenmuffel

17541754 views55 comments11 fav

I sat on the corner of her desk ... Angela Merkel can be a sweetie when she wants to be.

What Memory Holds

17541754 views22 comments00 favs

There's this sepia-toned photograph, which my mother gave me, of my brother and me when we were still both youngsters. In the picture my brother's dressed in a skimpy checked suit whose sleeves were already too short for him — on its way to becoming my

A Delicate and Ancient Art

17541754 views33 comments33 favs

He was a sushi chef, and he would spend hours in their kitchen practicing his knife skills, and the speed with which he can put that there and this in that and so on; and she would see him on the floor most mornings, still wearing that dirty, tattered ban

Archaeological Treasures Yet to Come

17541754 views00 comments00 favs

The museum’s catalog description changed much less than the painting over those years. He wasn’t curator-in-chief of catalog descriptions, however, that task went to a curator arriving by another door.

FLY AWAY

17541754 views1818 comments44 favs

Why is the sky grey he asked meI don't know, I saysudden flashes of light snowbloat the cloudssea gulls are squawkingexpect them to peck at my headI have nothing to feed them

Zombie Night

17541754 views77 comments55 favs

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…

the difference between child-dread and grown-up-dread is the paycheck keeps the tears away

17541754 views66 comments44 favs

the first day of preschool/ my mother walked me down the street/ to a tall building that cut/ like a knife made of bricks/ right into the street,/ an american flag/ sticking straight out/ just above the door.

Dr. Norm O. Pathy, M.D.

17541754 views22 comments00 favs

He slumped forward, drooling into his lap.

Darkroom Tech

17531753 views88 comments22 favs

Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.

Final Score: Reality – 1; Desire – 0

17531753 views22 comments00 favs

His velvet mouth, shaped perfectly to intertwine with hers, teases the space between them until its caress finds her.

A Safe Distance

17531753 views77 comments44 favs

Poems, and Zebras

The Good Boy

17531753 views00 comments00 favs

I blinked the darkness out of my eyes and saw the man again; I could smell his breath. Just like dad’s. I must have fallen asleep. My eyes felt so heavy. I was cold. Why was I cold?

Sacred

17531753 views66 comments22 favs

"What the fuck are you looking at, Carl?" She snaps, turning her head toward me as the truck edges off the road and into a field of tobacco, into those broad green leaves of ancient sacristy and modern ablution. This is not a blissful kind of field. It is not full…

Do I hear Ten Thousand?

17531753 views99 comments66 favs

I cannot begin to list all the ways this conversation can go downhill from here, so I hang up the phone quietly.

Dishwasher

17531753 views22 comments00 favs

Last night aliens invaded our dishwasher.

Disappearing Dirt

17531753 views1212 comments1313 favs

The mulch vendor is a crook but we have no choice, not with the shortage of soil. Have to guard the stuff, put alarm wires around the garden, leave a friend in charge to spot the thieves if you go away overnight. If you…

Billionaire* Consternation - a play in three acts

17521752 views55 comments55 favs

Is it you with that fucking gold and platinum yacht?!?

Forging

17521752 views1818 comments1313 favs

Taken by agents of the United States of America, Felix Six-Killer grows up at the Carlisle Indian School near Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. His hair is cut and oiled. His shirts are starched and creased. For months he is startled to find himself seated for…

Now

17521752 views22 comments11 fav

‘Miguel! A pint of Guinness, please!' I might as well have asked for his mother's immortal soul. A smile as benign as a stiletto. But he served a clean and tidy pint.

Still Strangers.

17521752 views88 comments55 favs

I didn’t question any of it and instead sat motionless as she dropped my wrists and walked away seconds later.

Superlative Land

17521752 views33 comments22 favs

You are walking through a canyon made of shelving units lined with colorful masterpieces of three-dimensional minimalist design

Leda and the Swan: Paul Gauguin

17521752 views11 comment00 favs

Leda looks back over her shoulder at us as the swan grips her from behind while at the same time nipping at the nape of her neck. She's a freckled child and a little frightened. There's a dark smudge beneath her eye where the shadow runs. The swan

One Last Hurrah, #1

17521752 views1010 comments22 favs

She was about 35 or so and noticeably pregnant. She was near hysteria when she knocked on our apartment door, right across the street in L.A. from a convent. But she took one last desperate wild look at me, standing at the door. I saw the animal in her ey

Power Ballad (Revised)

17521752 views00 comments00 favs

Everyone else in the bar was looking everywhere else: it was as though they were alone while Journey played loudly all around. “Streetlights, people,” she sang. Time didn't move. What she must be like while driving, singing to herself with the windows fog

Sex Tape

17521752 views00 comments00 favs

When he suggested to her that they make a sex tape, because that’s what everyone was doing, she wasn’t really surprised. And there was a truly repugnant part of it that fit in with her desire for moral self-flagellation.

New Year's Eve

17521752 views55 comments44 favs

Quail looked up at her. Unsmiling, challenging. Lemme just go wash my hands, he said. She closed the door, bolted it. You won’t need your hands.

Sea Shell

17521752 views33 comments11 fav

Useless.