Most read stories

Rwanda Suite: The Congo in Me

16611661 views88 comments88 favs

I scratch a red welt onto the inside of my white knee. The knee itches like crazy. Pain too, down to my bones. The Congo calls.

Sunrises and Borrowed Pages

16611661 views66 comments55 favs

I'm sitting on the B-line toward Park, and there is a woman with the same black bob as Mad TV's Miss Swan, and she is leaning the whole front of her body against the whole pole in front of me, and even though there is plenty of space around her, she is pressed up…

chicken little considers the sky again

16611661 views00 comments00 favs

oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available/a-Babel towers of post &toastmodern doom/daze

They Come To Me At Night

16611661 views1111 comments44 favs

I have an appointment set for the day after next; you said you thought you might be firing blanks and then I feel a kick into my chest—two kicks, three, seven at least—my cat is going crazy at the stinky tom outside the window and the birds are waking, sc

Footnote

16611661 views1515 comments1010 favs

Weddings, engagements etc.

The Missing Years

16611661 views44 comments11 fav

Andrew smiled at her while he pulled out his penis. He then held it between his fingers and tugged at it, stretching it much like a rubber band

Don't Mangle the Mongol

16611661 views00 comments00 favs

Back in the Dark Ages, the Mongols invented the first hamburger pattie. They put slabs of beef under their horses' saddles and after a few miles of rough riding -- voila! a flattened piece of cow meat. They then proceeded t

When Not Laughing, Fortuna Only Smiles

16611661 views44 comments55 favs

. . . a visitor from the preceding century would have been aghast to the point of vomiting to behold the regard with which pandas were now held almost universally.

New Year's Eve

16611661 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.

To Build a Fire

16611661 views99 comments66 favs

One frozen hand protruded from the snow.

The Troupe

16611661 views77 comments55 favs

A performance is a series of situations. Each situation defines the characters that are in it.

Do I hear Ten Thousand?

16611661 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.

Christmas

16601660 views1010 comments66 favs

My first girlfriend had blue Christmas lights strung on trees in front of her stone house. My family had all gone to bed. When midnight came, it was snowing.

Latté plus

16601660 views1010 comments77 favs

Hurried, hassling suit in front of me is being awful to the barista. So she refuses to serve him, turning away.

Commitment

16601660 views33 comments22 favs

I have committed to nothing. Therefore I have committed to something. The first sentence is now moot, and this story will eat itself.

Arcana Magi Bolt

16601660 views00 comments00 favs

Sofia looked around and found herself at a boulevard. She could see the town exit ahead of her. The bike still lied on the ground.

The Yellow Room

16601660 views66 comments44 favs

...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

Song of the Needle

16601660 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.

Dog

16601660 views44 comments00 favs

I’m not the creative type like my friend Bosely, an Irish Setter. I’m a traditionalist. I like to eat exactly at 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. I take my bone with me everywhere I go. I will not carry the poop-bag.

Every Day Away From You Is A Gift

16601660 views99 comments66 favs

People suck. They suck you down, and if you're not careful, they'll ruin you.

The Letter

16601660 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

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

16601660 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.

Reverse Order

16601660 views55 comments22 favs

Robert wants so badly after reading a book where a man wakes up as a bug to wake up as a bug. He researches the avenues of metamorphosis where science has been where it is going. He is disappointed that of all things science has turned into other things, none…

Out of the Question

16601660 views00 comments00 favs

"Then why? Why?" she choked. "Why are you so... so mean to me?"

Workingman

16601660 views88 comments77 favs

He died in the ditch he dug.

gravelortian part 23

16601660 views66 comments55 favs

Can't believe I was able to drive this far

Portrait of a Sunday Afternoon

16601660 views33 comments22 favs

Your grandmother has gotten old, in that way where one day you wake up, and you realize that someone you've been looking at your whole life suddenly looks different. That hands which used to gently place band-aids on scraped knees are…

3 short poems (2)

16591659 views77 comments66 favs

Clear as my conscience may be, you still haunt me as the brown settles to black sit there and recommence as if nothing had ever happened, your hands conducting the orchestra of your purity.

Motel

16591659 views77 comments66 favs

Brody was standing against the wall with one hand in his hip pocket, as if he was holding a gun. The motel was set in the undergrowth of several weedy small towns, but a flashing neon sign made it impossible to miss from the road. We used it as a safe hou

Justice

16591659 views88 comments88 favs

“Too dumb to live,” my wife said when cretins on a motorbike blasted around us nearly taking a side mirror with them.