Most read stories

Wilma

17231723 views1212 comments66 favs

Every morning, Wilma's husband Richard would cross the street and visit with a neighbor, always after the neighbor's husband left for work. Wilma was a loner, never bothered with neighbors. She enjoyed sitting on her patio in her lounge chair,…

What Happens In A Bed

17231723 views1010 comments66 favs

Eight days before her 50th birthday they were married in their soft new pajamas, holding hands on his bed in the hospital. The pastor and witnesses wore protective hospital gowns and gloves; the patient was in isolation once again. A special dispensation from the head…

Chip's Bar

17231723 views00 comments00 favs

Bill texted me at 3:44, invited me to join him at Chip's, where he was having a drink. Chip's Bar is a great dive, and I accepted without hesitation. Ten minutes later I was on a crowded bus filled mostly with fat people, and twenty minutes after that I was…

Effort

17231723 views00 comments00 favs

For you – because you deserve more effort

Fa La La La La

17221722 views1111 comments66 favs

A pinprick breaks the black/ and pins the spin of constellations/ around its still point.

Prisoners (edited)

17221722 views1515 comments44 favs

This cell the sole certainty, all else steeped in mystery. Why should we be here?

Caster Knox

17221722 views00 comments00 favs

Caster had always imagined the Consensus as a big room, as big as the world, filled with white space and people with quantum wings, flitting about, creating information. There were tinted bubbles for people to share for privacy, and the lights never went

Untitled

17221722 views11 comment00 favs

What else, H, is there to say about heartbreak? What else could it be but our hands, cupped as if holding water against our chests, then broken into halves. Or the picture of this one, pretending to load a gun. Or this one, soaked in smoke—asking for

Glass

17221722 views44 comments44 favs

Momma takes us to the candle store next door where everything smells sweet as she opens, closes glass lids, lets us lean our faces close, smell pumpkin, lavender, trees...

13 machines from the Bird King's private collection

17221722 views11 comment11 fav

1. The sparrows' heads revolve slowly when you press the red button, but the boxing glove attachments don't work.2. A weird weaving of voices, unmusical harmony. One phrase punctures the texture: “The empty slot.”3. Poems are processed into more useful verbal…

sunday morning lie-in

17221722 views22 comments22 favs

i'm staying down here

The Widow and a Portrait of Jesus in Grayson's Nursing Home

17221722 views1616 comments1313 favs

He'd hung above her head for months.

Blood Orange, A Novella

17221722 views00 comments00 favs

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

Pretty New Landscape

17211721 views77 comments77 favs

It's important to make a sure sound. It's not impossible you know. It's just funny I suppose, like being in a dream of another dream. All these things could be mashed and tumbled together to make us one big clay hero, someone…

Final Phases of a Secret Love

17211721 views55 comments55 favs

I keep my love for you in me, / like the egg of a worm,

Reversal

17211721 views55 comments33 favs

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.

Over The Moon

17211721 views1616 comments1212 favs

She was as beautiful as flowers in a dream

Arcana Magi Zero - c.3

17211721 views00 comments00 favs

Alysia tried to focus on what was important, but it was too much to bear. She was ready to dive down when a shot of wind blew past her, causing her and Megumi to lose control over their gliders.

Sin

17211721 views1313 comments1010 favs

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…

Crazy Eyes

17211721 views1212 comments1010 favs

The kid with a testosterone chip Instead of a brain

When To Wear Mascara

17211721 views99 comments1010 favs

it's time for the cold, antiseptic cloth to briskly remove the evidence.

Small Snow Haiku.

17211721 views1818 comments99 favs

A small snow.

flash poem

17211721 views77 comments55 favs

Why flash?because the moments, the moments, they pass in flashes of brilliancethat shudder, death glow alightand nothing makes sense beyond nowand nothing will help me but meand I am not even enoughnot my thoughts or your nod of assentor even the deep sigh of…

Mom forgot her phone!

17211721 views22 comments11 fav

.

Texas Weather Triptych

17211721 views1313 comments88 favs

I worry for the daffodils/ and there optimistic yellow bursts./ I worry for the over-eager clover,// prodigious green on crepe myrtles,/ even for the early green of nut grass.

Text Adventure

17211721 views55 comments33 favs

Twenty-two tornadoes tore through Toronto, spiraling steel and stone to the streets where she stood, texting her best friend.

Flush

17211721 views1010 comments44 favs

"Nice one, sir," the toilet said.

Parts

17211721 views1212 comments88 favs

Trigger warning: casualties of war.

recipe

17211721 views1313 comments66 favs

secret recipe

4 Chapters

17211721 views55 comments44 favs

But I don't see the cabinets, or know how to put the 4 chapters he's talking about today into the drawers that are invisible, floating, above his bed he's been in for a year, me sitting next to him, becoming a spinster.