Most read stories

High Jinks

16671667 views00 comments00 favs

“Gorgonzolla!” The remnant croaked, his eyes wild as he thrust an open hand in Jaffron's direction. A burst of energy tilted Jaffron's pod on its axis and sent it hurtling backwards...

The Raisin Effect

16671667 views44 comments44 favs

I imagine diving into a vat of dried fruit, enjoying the unmistakable sweetness in each shriveled morsel, until I find myself biting into an undetected metal shard.

Free

16661666 views44 comments33 favs

The print is not ideal, it's true.

My Poetic Nemesis

16661666 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.

Three Lullabies (after 'Ooh La La' by the Ditty Bops)

16661666 views11 comment11 fav

she knows that's the natural place of a man, above everything, closest to god, eyes slowly filling with rain.

It Seems You've Stumbled Upon My Bildungsroman

16661666 views22 comments22 favs

Why yes I began writing this, my bildungsroman, Who is Mitsy Jackson, in spring, 1974 or thereabouts, and thank you so much for asking.

As Many Will Fall

16661666 views88 comments77 favs

tumbling for you from afar as close-up. They will rewrite your dancing form like a proper magical spell on all their maddest days, using the branches of cherished trees dipped into the trapped wells of certain hosts of …

Thank God It's Friday!

16661666 views66 comments33 favs

It was only a dream. No one died, nor were they even harmed. So horrifying!

Arcana Magi Pure Vol.4 - c.3

16661666 views00 comments00 favs

Jumping from roof to roof, Keiko and Rumiko remained quiet after hearing Mayumi’s story. They saw the shrine ahead but they knew they were going to run out of buildings to stay above.

Egypt is Wisconsin is...

16661666 views77 comments66 favs

Regime is elected officials ignoring constituents, ignoring protestors, ignoring history

Animal Shadows

16661666 views22 comments00 favs

One day when they were sitting on the curb together at 4th Street and Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa and Joe was calling out to passers by in a singsong voice, “Spare change for cigs,” she had persuaded them that they should try to join the circus.

Cousin

16661666 views1111 comments88 favs

“The beginning was good. That’s what he likes. The moment when you’re driving in the open air and your hair is flying and your skirt is whipping up around your knees, and he’s smoking, of all things, and happy and looking at you."

Rwanda Suite: Gasoline

16661666 views1414 comments1414 favs

I realize the kid is still smoking. Shocked, I tear the cigarette from his mouth, throw it to the earth, and grind it to death with the heel of my boot.

Promises

16661666 views00 comments00 favs

THE LAST THING I WANTED, expected, or needed was to be standing in the doorway of Carly Ray's room, watching her clutch a picture of her father, my old friend Beryl, up to her face. She is so tiny, but at the same time there is something very adult about the way she looks.…

Time Travel Telephone

16661666 views22 comments00 favs

And now, the weather. The Cloud Wranglers have roped three solid clouds this morning, preventing the clouds from raining iron bars onto Human Brain Storage Center #17.

Mumbles

16661666 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…

Summer Is An Itch

16661666 views77 comments22 favs

Underwater your eyes collapseand your feet touch decayed leavesand soft sand at the lake's bottom, the texture of tenderized flesh,maybe an intestineYou spring to the surface tofind your skull met by waterflies, and their limbstweak your peaceOn the shore your…

Abecedarian inspired by Bill Yarrow

16661666 views77 comments66 favs

Despite what the bible says, Shadrach and Meshach had no third brother named Abednego. To pay for his cello lessons, Yo-Yo Ma worked the subways of New York as a busker. Just chill. After Sal went into witness protection, he yearned for a job at the art…

End of Shift

16661666 views1616 comments1212 favs

He was losing his fight with malaria, but you would never know it from his dreams

Meaning

16651665 views66 comments44 favs

His face was creased with sadness the first time in the room and he danced his tai chi like a young man half his age, and laughed, like headtrippers do, from the neck up.

Voices From a Playground

16651665 views66 comments33 favs

"Eye contact is essential as it shows confidence. I walk with purpose and hope that my skirt isn’t too short. "

Walking on Water

16651665 views1010 comments88 favs

After his chemotherapy failed, he went water skiing.

Who Loves the Sun?

16651665 views55 comments55 favs

beat them with fists and purses.

Luz Maria

16651665 views44 comments22 favs

Although badly educated, and although the Michoacána fought to deny it, she held the complex notion that borders are not abrupt lines, simple artifacts of geography and cartography.

You Don’t Know Jack.

16651665 views1515 comments88 favs

Susan said since her divorce three years ago there have been too many Jacks in her life. Seven, if she counted that older guy. She knew that now. Too many. It was the name and little else that drew her to men. She told me the name alone was like Pavlov's bell. It…

Tourists

16651665 views66 comments33 favs

someone left graffiti on the billboard over: "God's a hard act to follow"; the one that made the news

A Breviary

16651665 views99 comments77 favs

Whistle for silence.

A Dream Lay In Wait

16651665 views11 comment11 fav

Roanne hungered. Memory had ruled her forever. Shards really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows. Inside the church, those pairs of short…

Still Life (55 words)

16651665 views1313 comments66 favs

It wasn't so much the softness of the bed that kept her from sleep, or the pungent bleach-scent of the unfamiliar sheets, but the lack of her clock's familiar tick, tick, tick. Or was it a missing heartbeat? Awake, she watched his chest. On the table, an empty pill …

Madd About Tadd

16651665 views00 comments00 favs

Tadd Dameron once described himself as “the most misplaced musician in the business,” and one needn’t call the missing persons bureau to determine that he may have been right.