Most read stories

From Below

15671567 views44 comments33 favs

I can hear the echoes clearly. They are distinct and crisp, almost as though they're all on exact trajectories to me from their final bounce, without any interference. Each sound, while unintelligible, seems to fit perfectly and expectantly into my ears

Morning People

15671567 views00 comments00 favs

she thinks she looks good in her short red dress, black makeup around her eyes, last night's lipstick a slap of crimson on her cheek. "like this," she says, holding the hammer above her head.

PERSUASION

15671567 views44 comments33 favs

A story about convincing people to do things they don't want to do, written entirely in dialogue; originally published by CHEAP POP.

Man, Ending

15671567 views33 comments11 fav

The man had decided that this was going to be his last day. He’d find out one final thing and he’d be done. He had spent the last few years of his life unwinding things that had been wound and untying knots that had been tied.

Epiphenomenal Glider

15671567 views55 comments22 favs

Hissing through the opening, the spirits have no place.

My 27th Great-Grandparents

15671567 views1515 comments1111 favs

Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…

Aubade Faucet

15671567 views1313 comments99 favs

I. he leans his messy head against the walland contemplates his wild mistakeshe discovers a nest of red spidersoutside his rotting basement doorhe watches television in his socksand…

By Derangement of All Our Senses

15671567 views88 comments55 favs

We will collapse in a storm of images

Nightmares from the Wanted Section

15671567 views88 comments66 favs

WANTED: a Muse. Former Special Forces solider turned poet seeking artistic inspiration. Brunettes preferred but blondes will not be turned away; gingers, however, are out of the question. Must have a voice that sounds like money, a self-destructive tem

Mob

15661566 views1111 comments44 favs

He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.

Thing To Do In Deptford When You're Dead.

15661566 views66 comments00 favs

Velvet answered the door in a red leather dress that was made with just about enough material to make a wallet, and looking like a long limbed drink of water calling out to a thirsty man.

How Veetzers Set Us Up For the Zorks

15661566 views11 comment00 favs

We're doomed as a species. The Zorks are coming to eat us. It all started when Joey Cacciatore, the dumbest crook in the history of the world, got Veetzers swarming like blowflies in 1972, and thereby ensured the upcoming…

The Eleventh Brother, After the Swan

15661566 views33 comments22 favs

I turned a maiden to a witch / and back again

Confessions of a Likeaholic

15661566 views00 comments00 favs

"Something happens in a magical, soulful part of the heart...and you see YOU. You see yourself." "I can't look at myself."

The Dead Horse on CNN

15661566 views55 comments00 favs

The dead horse on CNN was floating there in the floodwater

Wall talks to wall

15661566 views33 comments11 fav

Wall talks to wall. One has a clock, the other a window, the third a cupboard with bandages etcetera. The fourth a door that opens and closes a thousand times a day.Chair is across from chair. Occasionally the one looking for care picks the wrong one to sit in, and there is…

A Scalar Boson a Day

15661566 views44 comments33 favs

. . . the empiricism of the mechanical had wound tight into her, lessons her few calendars could never impart without aid from sundials, hourglasses, clocks.

Speeding on the Highway at 2AM

15661566 views33 comments33 favs

I am speeding on the highway at 2AM because no one is here...

Five Breaths Or Less

15661566 views33 comments22 favs

She flew through the air, linen skirt billowing around her. Below, her buckled bicycle was taking a different route. Less aerodynamic than she, its trajectory was brief, crashing into the ditch. Elspeth kept on flying. Time slowed, and expanded

Uncle Harlequin

15661566 views55 comments33 favs

My Aunt's husband liked to dress up like a clown

T.S. Eliot On His Deathbed

15661566 views99 comments66 favs

I guess at the end you’re only looking forward. Or upward actually, since you can only lie there on your back looking upward, straight ahead toward infinity, your mouth in a grimace, with the ghostly pink lips peeled back from the teeth.

SPIN

15661566 views55 comments33 favs

Rose lifted her 55-year-old legs until they were perpendicular to the bed and admired how girlish they looked. It gave her the sexy legs of a 20-year old, if the morning light was right and she squinted a bit.

Artist's Statement: Oracle

15661566 views1515 comments77 favs

Mark Reep is a faded Polaroid oracle taped to the only unbroken window of an abandoned house in Ithaca NY.

Mr. Wazzeldot

15651565 views66 comments11 fav

Mr. Wazzeldot has seven legs. He lives very comfortably. He likes to sit by the fire. There's a large cushion for a chair, and in the evenings, he sips his Bloody Marys. I know because I visit him…

The Suicidal Juggler

15651565 views44 comments44 favs

The man wore a bowler hat and stood on an open patch of grass, with a pyramid-shaped stack of baseballs at his feet.

Prophetstown

15651565 views22 comments11 fav

The elders of the town will tell you that as soon the prophet mill arrived everything went to Hell. Before the process was streamlined, prophets used to be grown organically in the community. They popped up only where the ground was tilled and a prayer was planted. They…

Ghosts

15651565 views33 comments00 favs

I see ghosts. They accost me in their sleep. Hundreds of them. When I wake up (after a long night of half-waking), I think, What wold ghosts want with me? I have nothing for them. But at night they're there again, watching, tapping my shoulder as I lay awake. Sometime…

Okay

15651565 views88 comments77 favs

I supposed reluctantly that Princeton is soft as Macalester College is soft. A person could die just for having attended U.W.-Madison or Yale.

City Streak

15651565 views22 comments11 fav

the little crummy salon that churned out little fat women with pinked curly hair

The Dock

15651565 views11 comment00 favs

Row, Caps of white, A salted escape beneath reflected light. Brother, remember those old lies? I’m off to sea to make those things right, now.