Most read stories

SNAFU (March Paddy Whacker Challenge)

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The unpublished writer remembered the carnage that surrounded his Foxhole in France and decided he was done praying. All around lay the evidence that no one was listening. The drunken pastor stumbled away.

The Chords are Clean, the Growl is Real

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"Good, it's Link Wray again,"

Strawberries

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The strawberries remind me of you,Fat and fleshy,Pimple-dimpled.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Castor and Pollux

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Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.

The Need To Tell Somebody

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He just had to tell somebody. Anybody. So he called up his publisher, L., who agreed to meet him at Oliveira’s for a drink. It only took about ten minutes to walk there from his big duplex in the Elmwood, where he was still living with his wife among

To Hit a Woman (Lightly)

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Tension slipped from my grip on the dagger as my legs and faith fell apart.

Smoke

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She wanted handcuffs.

Three Wives

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The heart attack felt like the time Alison stabbed me with knitting needles. It made me want to see her. She was the fun wife, the first of three. I was morbid and full of regret — my drinking had driven them away, no kids in the wake. I decided to visit all of…

This Is the End

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I guess you’re gone now That’s okay I guess I can live with my own ghosts I had no idea What it meant But now I do It meant I was standing At the end of everything And did not know it

Tiger-eyed

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The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known?

Why I Write

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Creep up behind me one day and prick my skin. I promise you won’t draw blood – for it is ink that will spurt from my veins.

Mausoleum

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you might as well be blind

Hard Times

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None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…

sunday morning lie-in

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i'm staying down here

Babes in the Bush

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Holy shit, man, look at that!” Mike's pimply face melts into drooling bliss. His dad had stopped in this whacko town on the way to our campsite, muttered something about angry lesbians, and disappeared. Rick and I follow Mike's dumbstruck gaze to a shop…

Give Tongue

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"Penning a slight of tongue well versed or worse, a salacious lie..."

How Would Jesus Drive?

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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

Blood Orange, A Novella

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In the grip of a bad dream, she bolted awake, thinking she had heard the nightsounds of a tomcat crawling around her property. It was some dreaded hour before dawn; she had no idea when. Her small, frail body was stiff, her breasts swollen and sore to

{Fog}

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Sometimes it waited after dark, when everyone was asleep, and moved in slowly like a thief, working its way into all the ruwas, up everyone's nostrils, seemingly intent on making the people's mountain existence a troublesome one

Moon Talk

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moonbeams unrecognized language steadies my course

Honesty

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Bill decided he hated his neighbors on a Sunday morning in June.

not all scars are the same

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All I wanted to know was: Am I coming close? You could have given me a clue. How was I to know how deep the scar ran? I always thought scars were superficial, but I was young, and willing – what did I know? What would they have done if they had come

Quicksand

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God damn you women get me all / twisted up thinking oohrahrah and lala

Reversal

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For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.

Sin

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Sin by Nonnie Augustine After my mother died, I met Aunt Shirley. I found her in dozens of snapshots piled in falling apart cardboard boxes we hauled down from the attic. Small girls, with huge bows bobby-pinned right on top of…

Make Music, Not Love

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We are/no more than heartbeats on repeat.

The Concord of This Discord

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-Love is a rushing of blood

Song: Got a Sixth of a Cow In the Freezer

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I got a sixth of a cow in the freezer That’s not meant to be just a teaser I guess all I’m sayin’ Come on home and you’ll be stayin’ Cause I got a sixth of a cow in the freezer Got a rack and a half of ribs I ain’t tellin’ you no fibs

Stretching to Understand

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You looked like someone I didn't want to know. I guess that's why I got in the car that night. My penchant for self-destruction was aroused by your black nail polish and the lavender circles under your eyes. You looked like someone that could hurt me, yeah, that's why I got…

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 10: In Which A Vital Fact Is Recalled

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Late spring, summer before cancer. Frank drove Max and his pal Jason to Cincinnati for their first rock show. Less Than Jake at Bogart's. A two-hour drive for ska-punk.