Most read stories

Staring at Waves

29232923 views2828 comments2323 favs

the waves all green and gooey, all / pommes frites, ruinous, insolent, half / fractal

Who In This Room Shared a Drink with Johnny Cash? (Memoir)

29222922 views1111 comments55 favs

...where I grew up the only celebrity one could count on seeing was Santa Claus...

Mixtape

29192919 views2121 comments1111 favs

12. Paper Wings (Gillian Welch) This one's really depressing. Maybe you shouldn't listen to it so much.

Lullaby

29122912 views99 comments99 favs

One morning, she used a few prim phrases to break up with me. She had her suitcases packed by lunch. She was gone by dinner. Two weeks later, she emailed me a picture of herself sitting on a small brown couch.

The Light at the End of You

29112911 views1717 comments1414 favs

I'm reading your remains.

An Admirer Visits Paul Bowles

29102910 views3333 comments3030 favs

I dropped out of college and flipped a coin, a 1929 half-dollar, and decided if heads, suicide. If tails, a life of perpetual travel.

Johnny Mercer's Pier

29092909 views1313 comments1212 favs

I’m a black and white figure--out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Snow Bird

29082908 views00 comments00 favs

Snow Bird Then Bess was officially a Snow Bird. She was on the waiting list to become a permanent resident at the camp as soon as the expansion they were planning was completed. But it was being held up by some county people who were doing every

4P28

29062906 views6464 comments2525 favs

He’d kept the parking space open. She used it most often, whenever she and her husband, an old drinking buddy, came to visit.

Getting There

29052905 views2525 comments1414 favs

The monarchs that migrate to Mexico and California in the autumn every year live for only a month.

Jail Bait

29042904 views1111 comments88 favs

Jessie and Hannah drop mescaline together, and screw in an abandoned storefront crash pad. We call it the Rock Shop.

Frankie and Alice, 2013. Brooklyn, New York

29032903 views99 comments1010 favs

1.)At the corner deli, sweat dripping down my face, I ask for black, but Frankie adds milk. Just to spite me. Because I won't sleep with him. As if. Wonder what his wife would say? Punch me in the jaw, right? Like maybe the rules about holy wedlock vary…

Speak

28982898 views1717 comments44 favs

I was not the first to hear the dog speak, though I was, I think, the first who thought to listen.

The bamboo stick

28972897 views1515 comments1010 favs

I no longer go for walks without my bamboo stick. Tightly held in my hand, thin and light, it beats the invisible particles which try to land on me and bite. My face is hidden as in shame under a rough gag, my hands are getting rusty, missing the touch of other hands. My…

Waste

28972897 views22 comments00 favs

Roger's assigned route had him picking up medical waste at most of the plastic surgery offices in town. He smelled it on his skin by the end of the day. The plastic surgery places were less of a hassle than the hospital and worlds away from the free c

The Night Before the Last Day of Summer

28952895 views22 comments22 favs

Tonight is our last night to dream.

Along Came Doreen

28952895 views6060 comments1616 favs

I didn't really know her. Yet, to me, she and her friends epitomized the local hip scene.

Soliloquoy on Ma

28932893 views2525 comments2121 favs

“Your sister is a slut,” said Ma to me over supper.

Jesus, Borges, Jelly Roll

28912891 views1010 comments66 favs

It was Judge Fogarty who said “Thirty days in the market—take him away. Give him a good broom to sweep with—take him away.”

Carver Country

28902890 views2222 comments2121 favs

My first love was a woman of principle. Never deny your man was her motto.

Mr. Seale Goes to Antioch

28842884 views44 comments11 fav

Black Panther Founder Bobby Seale has come to Yellow Springs, Ohio—a leafy village east of Dayton-- to carry his message of "the continuing human liberation struggle" to the 2002 graduating class of Antioch College.

Dirty Mother For Ya, a response to Memphis Minnie, with a little help from Roosevelt Sykes and Blind Boy Fuller on Mothers Day

28832883 views1414 comments88 favs

Just stay at home woman, and do your job / wash those dishes, mama, its what I pays you for

The Lonely Snake

28832883 views22 comments22 favs

A solitary snake, his belly full, stretched out in the sun. His uncoiling swept sand and small rocks to the left and right. Ah, he thought, I have the power to move mountains from my path. See how the lowly earth makes way for my comfort.

Black Lace (a revenge fantasy) 1

28822882 views66 comments22 favs

The stainless steel tiles are cool upon the soles of her feet. Attendants have arranged all of her equipment, both digital and mechanical, including ink and needles. An overhead screen snaps into view, and his young muscled body is revealed.

Seal Skin

28812881 views1515 comments66 favs

I had told myself that I would not cry. That I would hold on to my anger so tightly, there would be no space for pity.

Whose Barney's Version is This, Anyway?

28812881 views00 comments00 favs

Early reviews of Barney’s Version (the film) had prepared me for finding the book’s most amusing attributes – particularly its skewering of Quebec nationalist politics and Canadian cultural nationalism – left out. After all, turning a 417-page account of

Responsible

28812881 views3939 comments2020 favs

This morning, she woke to the banshee: “Individuals must get up early and put in a full day’s work in this economy!”

Rome Ants In The Sky

28802880 views3939 comments1616 favs

~!~

Midnight Riders

28802880 views3838 comments2020 favs

One dinner party, two couples, three bottles of wine. A moonbeam shone on the balcony. They felt a slight shifting under their chairs and heard a quiet scraping sound, then the apartment slid out from the building and lifted away.

Things I Should Have Done - #3

28782878 views6262 comments1919 favs

Should I have shooed the cats from my bed? Shaken awake the silky tangle of feline true love curled at my feet? Shut their bedroom door against them? Perhaps, maybe, I don’t know.