Most read stories

To Build a Fire

17821782 views99 comments66 favs

One frozen hand protruded from the snow.

That's all, folks...

17821782 views77 comments66 favs

I’m supposed to be writing poems but it’s Saturday morning and I’m watching cartoons.

The Troupe

17821782 views77 comments55 favs

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

Biodegradability

17821782 views1010 comments55 favs

As a boy I fished under the Tappan Zee bridge which spans the Hudson River above New York City.

Neactains, Quay St.

17821782 views1010 comments66 favs

Rarely is Quay Street so clean, Monday in rain, Neactain’s ticking over with Slow jazz and crosswords, Stout and steaming anoraks.

Leaky Pipes

17811781 views22 comments00 favs

I was thinking everything was OK, until one day I woke up and realized that I was living on an entirely different planet, and you seemed like a complete stranger to me. I was feeling so ashamed of these feelings, that I couldn't even tell you about them. I couldn't…

Blue Line Southbound

17811781 views1010 comments55 favs

Brazilian girls yammer with their book bags up against my leg.

The Piano Player’s Dead Rejoice

17811781 views99 comments99 favs

Requires one of those leaps.

Take the 40 Million Years Without Sex Challenge!

17811781 views33 comments22 favs

Scientists have determined that a tiny freshwater organism known as the "bdelloid rotifer" gave up sex 40 million years ago. And you thought the spark had gone out of your marriage.

The thing is

17811781 views1515 comments66 favs

It was not that he was boring – it’s just that he needed a lot of encouragement. When he came, he whispered to himself, ‘ohgodohgodohgod’ - like it was something to be ashamed of, to be sorry for. I wanted to hold him close against me but I also n

Old Haunts

17811781 views11 comment22 favs

“Why do you write filth?” they howl

Measures

17811781 views1010 comments66 favs

Blending in at a rock concert in ballet flats was harder than I thought it would be. The heavy eye makeup and lit cigarette I never brought to my lips put me somewhere between “Trying Too Hard” and “Bless Her Heart.”

Don't Mangle the Mongol

17811781 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

Last Visit to the Toy Store

17811781 views66 comments00 favs

The two walked around, taking in all the classics: the imported Russian matryoshka dolls of varying styles and bright colors; spinning tops, red Radio Flyer wagons, kaleidoscopes, and wooden yo-yo's invoked memories of Christmases past. The hand-stitched

Small Budget Poems

17811781 views1010 comments88 favs

Toxins make a body happy/ as if acceleration toward// an end of consciousness/ is its own reward.

Cow

17801780 views33 comments00 favs

“He looks funny again,” the twins would say. “Cow looks funny, Mummy.”

Ten Dreams That Raised Some Of the Dead

17801780 views00 comments00 favs

Dreams will show you a life that might or might not be yours, but you better believe that they've got to serve when you're asked to come up with a story."--Frank Baron, the night he made bail and left town1. First Blood in Dreams Long Ago The…

Just leave it and get out.

17801780 views00 comments00 favs

The money stank on the table. Money is dirty she said, one of the dirtiest things. So many people touch it. This pile of brine would not explain its reek, only demanded that we accepted its stench as requisite. It had to have been the cash that stank, prior to its arrival…

Predator

17801780 views1313 comments1010 favs

Uncounted hens and piglets/ die at my demand. The killing floor// runs red for me. I am/ monstrous to creatures small and great,

Zeus Takes a Day Job

17801780 views1010 comments88 favs

That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall

55 words #2

17801780 views99 comments66 favs

I have always admired flat-chested women.

A Small Life in Slices

17801780 views1818 comments1010 favs

It’s Sunday- no need to shave-/ but shave, I do. A little act// of discipline in the discipline/ of routine.

12 Dreams

17801780 views88 comments00 favs

That dog again; enduring love.

Confession

17801780 views22 comments22 favs

stole

Missing

17801780 views1111 comments77 favs

... he led what might be called a quiet life

Victor Krowchuck Gets Dressed

17801780 views44 comments33 favs

He puts on a choir of prepositions, 142 adjectives, 317 ramifications of cotton... and 177 semicolons engorged with cabbage.

Cogito Zero Sum

17801780 views77 comments55 favs

When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it.

Merry-Go-Round

17791779 views88 comments99 favs

I thought the Ferris wheel was dumb. All it did was give you a high altitude view of the little Minnesota town where I had grown up.

Not by Choice but Circumstance

17791779 views88 comments66 favs

With small and fleshy hands/ I scratch at enigmatic stones,

Haze

17791779 views55 comments66 favs

Just like D-Ray White’s tapping still bounces off the mountains if the right person is listening, Hasil’s hoots and howls are trapped in record wax like a blood-drunk mosquito in amber.