Most read stories

The Clairvoyant Dwarf, The Jester, and the Tame Elk of Prague

17681768 views99 comments88 favs

All were part of the household of Court Astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who lost his nose in a duel as a student and went through life thereafter wearing a gold prosthetic one instead and who met and fell in love with a commoner who bore him eigh

Sacred

17671767 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…

One Last Hurrah, #1

17671767 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

Sex Tape

17671767 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.

Zombie Night

17671767 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…

Late Night Learning

17671767 views1414 comments1414 favs

A wrinkled man lie atop an ivory-clad mattress, matched sheets covered his body, matched hair covered his head.

The serious writer and her bush

17671767 views88 comments00 favs

The serious writer looks back on a long and distinguished career as an herbologist.

Bookends of a Life: II

17671767 views1313 comments66 favs

The clacking ventilator reminds me of ice cubes rattling in your highball...

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 13

17661766 views33 comments33 favs

The next thing we knew, the KGB started tailing us everywhere we went. They must have heard about Lenin’s Paintings, was all we could figure. Because, what if they were real? That night we went out to a pizza place where we saw the worst graffiti in t

Sweden 1958, I-IV

17661766 views77 comments66 favs

didn't know how to do it just tried to squeeze on the teats didn't know I had to grab up on the udder and pull Unca Ole laughed

The poet. Pt. 3

17661766 views99 comments88 favs

I think I remember now why people write poetry.

Air On The G String

17661766 views1616 comments99 favs

If love could only by heat be bound

You deserve to be choked around your lying throat and this how it happens, slowly.

17661766 views1313 comments99 favs

Writing as a form of imaginative hatred

Final Score: Reality – 1; Desire – 0

17661766 views22 comments00 favs

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

Song of the Needle

17661766 views55 comments33 favs

The Black Thing spread over the room, eating away his mother's face as well as the doctors and nurses who dashed in a frenzy around him until they too were swallowed in the black singing cloud.

When the Time Has Passed to Do Good

17661766 views44 comments44 favs

Both his parents saved their pent up Puritan pasts to fill his ears with brimstone clichés. "Idle time is the devil's playground", he would tell me, scrunching up his face, stuffing it full of meat lovers pizza.

Not If, But When

17661766 views77 comments66 favs

She tells me I have to face the fact that I have the heart of the Tin Man. I know the story. He had none. She is very sensitive and I have to measure my remarks because words bruise her so easily. So, I…

To Do List

17661766 views88 comments99 favs

Throw them up there but try to make it look tidy. Try to become a little bit paranoid, just enough that you slightly overestimate how much they think of you at all.

Too Fast to be Fat

17661766 views22 comments00 favs

As it turns out, hypertravel is surprisingly slimming.

The Pennsylvania Kaufmann House

17661766 views2020 comments1515 favs

Falling Water almost fell./ 12 million dollars later// it will splay itself a little longer

The Underwater Afterlife of Memory

17661766 views66 comments33 favs

My fingers are shining in the underwater afterlife of memory searching for the nipple-sized mollusks searching for the solid nature of things left over from having lived a life at all That new rain smell, specifically I remember that,

The 11th Arrondissement

17661766 views11 comment11 fav

I concluded that Parisian sexuality must be partially indebted to the cricket or grasshopper. The entrance to their flat was a wood door scarred by scriptures common to places frequented by people who have not yet made their mark on the world.

Take Out

17661766 views11 comment00 favs

You're stupid drunk. And not feeling so good. You know you should stop doing this. But what else is there to do, especially since your brother went in? And now Roberto's gone to pick up his lady and left you alone, empty. Couldn't even drive you home. You don't…

What's in a Name?

17651765 views00 comments00 favs

[CAUTION: THIS CAN CONTAINS THE CAFFEINE EQUIVALENT OF THREE CUPS OF COFFEE. PEOPLE WHO ARE ELDERLY, PREGNANT, OR SENSITIVE TO CAFFEINE SHOULD NOT CONSUME THIS BEVERAGE!]

Salt Water

17651765 views99 comments66 favs

A horizon shrinks a burden until it’s a seagull getting fat off vinegar fries. I’m in love with the way your mouth moves when you aren’t talking. When it fills with salt.

The Last Campfire

17651765 views22 comments00 favs

The bearded old man, raised his weary body from the bedroll he had slept on last night and slowly stood up. Bones creaked as he worked the stiffness out of his joints, the pain and memory of endless days and nights riding the…

Feets You Fail Me

17651765 views1515 comments1313 favs

San Bruno avenue, six shops in eight blocks. Those Vietnamese ladies thrive on the pedicure trade.

Independence Day

17651765 views00 comments00 favs

Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.

Listening to Neil Young on a Gray Day and Understanding Clearly What My Grandfather Told Me Long Ago

17651765 views1717 comments1515 favs

I'm a lot wiser now but so what?

The Letter

17651765 views22 comments11 fav

I knew nothing about the letter at first. When I came in that morning and smiled and said good morning, it was a genuine smile and a heartfelt good morning. But the letter, which had arrived the previous afternoon, was already doing its corrosive work of