Most read stories

Addicts

20142014 views55 comments11 fav

He didn't think there would be girlish confidences, hopes, dreams but he is shocked, appalled, by the little boys aging at ten-speed, already wizened old men ready for cancer and heart attacks with toy trucks in their hands, skeletal women beloved by men

Staring at Waves

20132013 views2828 comments2323 favs

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

Last Night On Oil Street

20122012 views1212 comments1313 favs

Tomorrow the authority smashes. Tonight we march, splash, carve letters in wet paint from room to room until steel blades bend. The letters will tilt in shadows gliding over the walls to mask our tales born of fractured wrists and the ghosts, our keepers.

Life Without a Heart

20112011 views1515 comments1515 favs

isn't so hard to imagine if you can just squint through the minutes like a good McGoo, slog through the headline happy seasons and sleep at it most of the day. It only hurts real bad whenever you try to carry off a roaring laughter…

55 Words #1

20102010 views33 comments33 favs

I would roll my eyes, give one word replies or a smiley face.

Lullaby

20102010 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.

Three Short Fictions

20102010 views1717 comments1313 favs

We were to eat just meat and to become discombobulated over vegetables and bread and not to indulge in sex with strange men—men were all strange once you got used to their distance—were Lincoln logs, poles, boulders and scrub trees.

This Story Isn't About You

20092009 views99 comments1010 favs

"This story isn’t about you, even if it seems as though it is."

Teacher

20092009 views3030 comments66 favs

Professor William Purcell, dean of the university's shrinking drama department. Fifty, tall and thin, always well dressed . . .

Slices of Matisse

20082008 views00 comments00 favs

still the water's insurrection continues, transforming the room into a silent crucible whose pure liquid melts our voices and surges above our heads.

My Life as a Part-Time Rapist, Full- Time Comedian

20072007 views44 comments33 favs

The rapist was caught on December 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve. Everyone in town was surprised to learn he had a wife and two children; a son and a daughter, the same age, and a yellow Labrador retriever.

While We Fuck

20052005 views1717 comments33 favs

When you push my bra down, so it rests uncomfortably beneath my breasts—your teeth dragging pink trails across my throat and shoulders, pushing your thumb and forefinger into my panties—you don't say that you love me. You say, “Jesus shit. Relax, baby,…

Heartbreak Waiting To Happen

20042004 views3737 comments1414 favs

I should have created a first-date questionnaire heartaches ago.

Lost and Found

20042004 views3737 comments1818 favs

list: almond message oil almond sunset tea dark chocolate 80% dry rhubarb soda lavender bath oil musk candles red light bulb

Romper Room with Beer

20042004 views22 comments11 fav

Romper Room with Beer We go out for a thin New York Pizza at Lanesplitter’s over on Telegraph and watch the drunks staggering out of the bar across the street to have a smoke on the sidewalk, since you can’t smoke inside bars anymore. They ga

Lip

20032003 views4444 comments2121 favs

He watches his paralyzed left arm arc across his body, then swivel around and disappear behind his back. He does this over and over again. He's very high and it makes him laugh.

Summer Girl

20032003 views2222 comments1919 favs

You’re bro­ken. Your eyes don’t see quite right, and your hands don’t feel quick enough. I love you any­way.

Artist Statement

20032003 views22 comments77 favs

which consisted of me being shoved down a flight of stairs. Thanks to a PELL grant in 1996, I was triumphantly run-over by a family Winnebago in the critically acclaimed, Run-Over. This lead to a series of “happenings” I conducted in alternative space

Magritte

20022002 views2020 comments1515 favs

Arriving at the pier I see a sailboat in dead wind. "That is pathos," Magritte says, pointing to a barnacle.

Why We Came to Target at 9:58 on a Monday Night

20022002 views1818 comments1313 favs

Donnie remembers just in time. So we run practically every stop sign and red light in town, and get there just before they close.

Take-Home Quiz

20012001 views44 comments22 favs

1.) Please discuss any real-life problems you may have encountered having to do with the concept of “the look” or “the male gaze” as propounded in some of the feminist criticism readings we've done thus far this semester.

Peeg and Brie (opening of a teen novel)

20012001 views33 comments11 fav

TEXT TO VICKY This sucks! Sorry for the teen-speak Vicky, but it does. You saw me in the hospital. It's just as bad at home. They still don't know what to do for my smashed voice box. I probably won't ever speak again. (Maybe with a mechanical thing lik

Skyscrapers

20002000 views2020 comments1313 favs

I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. Peo

Automatic Typewriter

19991999 views55 comments22 favs

Rowan’s arm burned and throbbed like the center of a neutron star as it went critical for minutes turned inside-out like hours. Standing in a wall, then huddled underneath the couch, she danced around the rim of consciousness, ripping at the seams of her

The Taste of Coins from Treasure Troves

19991999 views1010 comments55 favs

I hold a key to feel its pull, and follow where it leads. Once, because the moment, key, and direction felt so right, I ended up on the streets naked. A police officer threatened me with handcuffs. I laughed, mesmerized by the cuff's clink, their never-ending circles,…

Conceived in the New Liberty

19971997 views66 comments22 favs

Each mobile unit carried an Alsetex grenade launcher for dispersing tear gas. Any group of five or more people was deemed suspicious and immediately dispersed by roving patrols.

OCD Man: a love story

19961996 views2222 comments2222 favs

The mouth is peculiar and so are the shoes.

Red Can't Even Grab a Starbucks

19951995 views2525 comments2424 favs

I see his look, his impatient look.

Aphrodite in Ruins

19941994 views1515 comments77 favs

He needed an editor for his Yale dissertation, the shifting borders between criminal justice and the internet. But the sex was inevitable. He was six two. I was blonde. I don’t think we liked each other very much, but that wasn’t important.

Charlemagne

19921992 views1616 comments1717 favs

We descended directly from Charlemagne