Most read stories

Want

16601660 views55 comments11 fav

I want you closeI want to feel youinside me,softening me untilmy borders are blurredand I'm hardly breathing,my heart swellingso big itbrings me to my knees,I want to know thepain of losing youeach time youclose your eyes andgo to sleep anddream of someone else,I want to…

Farm

16601660 views00 comments00 favs

Still as the knife on the counter there still. Like mothballs in a chest. One with clear bags and newspaper clippings and your scarf inside it. The baby girl could put a mothball in her mouth and suck it like a penny. The way too close to a light bulb bur

Someone for Everyone Parts 1-10: A work in progress

16601660 views44 comments00 favs

“Well, aren’t you the cutest thing?” Shelly looked around for the source of the line and one of the better looking bar flies met her gaze. He wore a faded t-shirt with a swoosh graphic that read ‘Just Do Me‘. True to its mystical nature, her indefatigabl

Funhouse

16601660 views99 comments88 favs

beatings and tear gas

For Refrigerator Poets, Verse Builds Bodies and Minds

16591659 views66 comments33 favs

"Thanks for the wild sex--let me know if you have any problems with the lint trap."

What Old Tamber Had to Say

16591659 views22 comments11 fav

“They say she lives alone out there.” “What, like out in the woods?” “Not like way back in a cabin or anything, but in a little house out there off the road. I'm not even sure she has a car.” “What, does she…

My Poetic Nemesis

16591659 views44 comments33 favs

Except for the bathroom stalls—you know the one that goes “Here I sit all broken-hearted”—the only poetry in the house is composed by Hazel, recited to her fawning sycophants.

Dream State

16591659 views1212 comments66 favs

forced to submit/ to reasonableness// and universal healthcare.

Small Snow Haiku.

16591659 views1818 comments99 favs

A small snow.

A Flam

16591659 views77 comments66 favs

In the blacklight of the storm, mother would tremble, spit and sway as the shutters would clatter and she would give away her balance. It was more than my heart could bear. She would always center her accusation with, “your boyfriend is a rake and a flam.” That…

Spy vs. Park

16591659 views33 comments33 favs

Things looked way too normal to be normal. The cold, gliding black eyed swans never once straying far from each other's wake, the cute blue jeaned lovers everyone secretly watched carefully picking their trickling way over small odd rocks and…

Ajloun Castle

16591659 views1414 comments99 favs

the wind mistook your arms for wings

The Unicorns, Part One

16591659 views11 comment11 fav

Later, your father stared, confused, at the empty spot where the wall paint layers ended in the shape of the old machines. He stopped coming in.

Application for Position as Failure

16591659 views99 comments22 favs

Dear Sir/ Madam I wish to apply for the position you advertised in the Daily Sun. Although my expertise is in self-obliteration and self-worth (or lack of), and my work mainly in disappointment, I do have much experience in failure, which this letter will…

The Artist

16591659 views22 comments11 fav

The story itself is not much longer than a snippet. What is a snippet anyway?

What Happens In A Bed

16591659 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…

Mumbles

16591659 views66 comments44 favs

We bobbed and weaved using our words like the sniffs of two unfamiliar dogs in a Wal-mart parking lot. Wary, but sensing we could be more than just polite neighbors, once we got past the normal darkness of strangers. There was no plot to our story yet, but we both seemed to…

Tumbleweed Suite

16591659 views88 comments66 favs

in late fall, Rome, sans wind, sans rancor, sans sand or rain, sans hate ...

My Own Skin

16591659 views66 comments22 favs

Chubby. Plump. Pudgy. Portly. Bulky. Buxom. Rotund. Ample. Hefty. Corpulent. Zaftig.

Girl With a Typewriter Mouth

16581658 views99 comments77 favs

The Girl with a typewriter mouthhas a body like a single sheet of blank white paper. I wasobsessed with the Beatles, she tellsme. Well, there are worse things to beobsessed with, I tell her. No, shesays, I mean REALLY obsessed. Oh,is all I can think to reply to…

Just Who Does Miller Think He Is?

16581658 views11 comment11 fav

This new kid on the block, named Miller, showed up out of the blue one day, while we were throwing rocks and boulders down on this flimsy gray sheet of construction plywood that was covering an open trench in front of a new house on our block. One of the

A Coin, Two Coins

16581658 views99 comments66 favs

It hangs unspoken in the sadness he pushes through his harmonica, while his hands work the old, beat-up guitar that tries to be a Gibson for his fingertips.

Ring, Ring, Ring

16581658 views33 comments11 fav

If this is trouble, please call someone else.

Barbarian(s) Within the Gates

16581658 views66 comments55 favs

This writers' conference (sponsored by VQR, which had run its banner ad atop the Fictionaut home page in the summer of 2014, which begins to explain both my attendance and this essay) revealed itself as an apt subject . . .

Cleveland Clinic

16581658 views22 comments11 fav

Allie didn't share that moment with Jim. That moment he spoke about whenever they made new friends as a couple— that moment he planned to recount at their engagement party.

Quitting

16581658 views1313 comments33 favs

—It’s difficult to say, he said. I have mood swings. Women don’t like that. They become upset.

Safe

16581658 views1010 comments1111 favs

She left knives and hot pots with handles akimbo. Like a guardian angel, he turned them in. Like an ungrateful Eve, she turned them back out.

This Story

16581658 views55 comments55 favs

This story is falling head-first into a mud-puddle.

Where They Have to Take You In

16581658 views1010 comments88 favs

Sunday morning beginning with a bang. Accused, found wanting, sentenced.

Static

16581658 views1111 comments66 favs

The days cut off by damp chill with every thought a different variety of protection.