Most read stories

O Where Did Our Funny Go?

16031603 views66 comments55 favs

What a nation! First we lost our money Now we’ve lost our funny

Morning People

16031603 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.

The Code of Hammurabi

16031603 views55 comments55 favs

We pull up chairs. I breathe in her Bath and Body Works vanilla, read her paper slowly and aloud because the ears catch what the eyes miss. Her sentences are awkward, stilted.

Greener Than Thou: Saving the Earth, One Smackdown At A Time

16031603 views22 comments11 fav

Are you a hostile person who gets into trouble when you express your anger? Would you like to annoy the hell out of people and get away with it?

The Old Dog (in response to Brian Warfield)

16031603 views33 comments00 favs

Blend the dog a drink and sit down beside him and draw straws for regrets.

needs

16031603 views1010 comments55 favs

addict for validation and cat tongues

Rent a DNA

16021602 views00 comments00 favs

“Yo, Paciorek. Lend me your DNA, cuz I left mine on the farm, and I have a test tomorrow,” Feller ordered in a commanding voice, because he had gumption.

TRAUMA

16021602 views77 comments44 favs

Everybody breaks. Everything splinters.

On the Roof

16021602 views77 comments66 favs

Marie was on the roof. The deck, with its cool concrete pavers and faded cedar Adirondack chairs, was one of the reasons she and Harold had bought their condo in this building. The only ugly part of the roof was the chain-link fence along its edge; soon after they moved…

The Ice Cream Mantra

16021602 views66 comments33 favs

Chant the ice cream mantra. Prance the do dah day ballet. Trot the t-bone tango two-step. Dance the livelong day away.

Party w/Your Parents' Siblings

16021602 views11 comment11 fav

Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .

Off Island

16021602 views1010 comments66 favs

There were only six passengers aboard the small ferry...

Uncle Harlequin

16021602 views55 comments33 favs

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

Rising

16021602 views55 comments44 favs

The coin, so little, the watch chain, the youth, the fading softening speech, each hand and finger, the panic modeled on your own eyes, the ashtray, certain stumps along the way, the long distance, the odd feather, the jazz rope gone,…

Pete Jones' Canadian Bacon Pizza

16021602 views44 comments00 favs

What the hell is seeded?

Full Frame

16021602 views00 comments00 favs

A month before the real flowers came, amputated trees for 31 miles were festooned with pink blossoms. The petals were tufts of Fiberglass insulation shorn from houses incapable of withstanding 260-mph winds -- more than twice the punch Katrina delivered t

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 21

16021602 views77 comments44 favs

Francesco needed a magnifying glass to read her little missives.

to a gregarious stranger

16021602 views33 comments00 favs

Three lines.

Cornelius van Linjpleel's Contributions to the Study of Etruscan Tombs

16011601 views55 comments44 favs

Cornelius van Linjpleel discovered and excavated for himself a lone Etruscan tomb not far from Populonia in 1898.

Mr. Wazzeldot

16011601 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 Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 31

16011601 views55 comments44 favs

I was always bi-polar. I didn’t realize it was a mental illness until my divorce lawyer had the court order a psychiatric analysis.

fish gut buckets

16011601 views22 comments00 favs

The pier stretched out by where sharks came and men waited with beautiful dirty buckets that held strange and dangerous things, buckets with fish guts, buckets with blood, with character, buckets like prophets or a gritty desert walking saviour like Chris

Goebbels in the Underworld with All His Pretty Ones

16011601 views1111 comments99 favs

The universe extracts no retribution./ It annihilates without a thought/ of evil/good, sin/virtue.

A Turkey, A Flea, A Milkshake Fiend

16011601 views55 comments44 favs

Outside it’s still raining. We’ve gone through three cans of Guinness each. I’m waiting for drunkenness to germinate so that I can take him home and fondle what I imagine will be a very slim dick. A Slim Jim. When I chuckle to myself, he thinks I’m still

Lovely

16011601 views11 comment11 fav

I would open an eye, waiting for it to absorb the scant light in the room, and I would see her on the far edge of the bed, the topography of her hips now a battlement to keep me at bay.

Infamy

16011601 views11 comment11 fav

These were the kind of days children dreamed of. A warm sun shone over Coronado, California. December weather on the island did not prevent outside play. The wind off the bay remained soft, even if chilled. Church let out early. There was time to pla

maybe just a little too sensitive

16011601 views33 comments11 fav

"do you know what your problem is when it comes to girls?" she must mean other than the fact that they're all completely insane. or at least all the ones i've dated.

Conversations

16011601 views1111 comments1010 favs

That won’t kill me, will it? I asked. Maybe, the doctor said.

Speaking to the Dead

16011601 views1515 comments1010 favs

I didn't hear your last words or see your lasteyes. I didn't reach you in time, so I sat by your corpse,silently saying goodbye. I am in that process,not sour, not sweet, that yoked speaking which can't(because the heart won't let it) utter its whisperedlast word, but…

Morphine

16011601 views44 comments33 favs

Until the ivy hides me in