Most read stories

Kindness

15671567 views55 comments44 favs

Two days ago, a friend of mine and I met at my house. She was a nurse, and could only visit my house very late at night when her shift ended. We don’t meet often because she is very busy saving lives and generally being a more useful human being in societ

The Caselvetrano Olive

15671567 views88 comments44 favs

He spotted her in Sarasota Whole Foods surveying the artichokes

I'm Dreaming of a Nihilistic Christmas

15671567 views66 comments44 favs

The mind sparkles with Shakespeare. It's like hearing the rain fall. The world becomes silent and dark and the rain becomes snow and falls like snow and rests on the ground like snow and informs the mind with the values of heaven. A distant oboe pins its sympathies…

A Serial Killer’s First Day in Medical School

15671567 views44 comments11 fav

To rival the professor in his knowledge of various body parts is impossible ...

Everything I Need To Know About Aging I Learned From Lilikoi

15661566 views11 comment11 fav

Behold! Passion fruit!Aureolin sun condensedRolls off palm and tongue.Spurn taut rounded skinWait for wrinklesRipeness revealed, resplendent —The pinnacle of worth.

Solitary Lunatics Up On The Roof

15661566 views22 comments11 fav

Up top, the sky is like a fist fight- fat lip purple and bitchslap pinks get wilder as the tabs kick in. Those hovering lights are aliens! we assert with insistent like-mindedness from where we sit directly beneath the airport flight path.

How to Stop Doing and Be

15661566 views1212 comments55 favs

Monday will come soon enough to get/ what needs to be done, done.

Dumpster

15661566 views11 comment11 fav

When flash and bang merge you are, according to the manual, in deep do-do.

The Fact of the Matter

15661566 views99 comments77 favs

Jeanne and I were married for eight years. I never knew her.

The Monday Wednesday Friday War

15661566 views77 comments33 favs

Ginny, the mother, was a lark in every respect of the word. Born and raised in central California farm country, to a family of lower middle class means, educated in public schools in whose bathroom stalls she was deflowered as unceremoniously as a pig ta

Harv & Julianne

15661566 views00 comments00 favs

Harv and Julianne He has woken here now, on this bed, and on this particular day, many times. His fifth year in the cabin, his fifth December in Helen, his fifth, he is sure, of many…

One Sick, Two Sick, Red Sick, Blue Sick

15661566 views66 comments55 favs

I found a diseased fish / wedged between some boulders near the pier

Monday Lunch

15661566 views99 comments66 favs

Earlier that morning a tree in the yard had filled with starlings, and on the way home after lunch, the sky held planes that looked like starlings, floating together.

Dignity Village, Portland

15661566 views1111 comments99 favs

A cheap pocket knife was the only sharp I carried in my backpack and they allowed me that. The man with the pot tattoo on his neck said, “All of us here needs some type of knife. You gotta cut up your food. We don't…

Speak

15661566 views00 comments00 favs

She can still be normal, says Momma, knowing my sister can’t hear, forgetting I can.

The Real Story Behind The Lipstick On Obama's Shirt

15661566 views66 comments11 fav

The lipstick on your collar walked up the steps and through the front door, without a key. Her smile was hypnotically red and bountiful. The guards standing around didn't dare frisk her for weapons, her lips were weapon enough.

Accident Assurance

15651565 views44 comments33 favs

They found your athymic neck/clipped like a bag of Skittles/and your lifeblood left a Rorschach test on the dash/in which they saw the future/and their own exits/(straight ahead and to the right).

Nothing

15651565 views11 comment11 fav

I dream about the boy in The Neverending Story, the gate of mirrors, and the Nothing, a dark cloud that floats in the sky, takes away everything.

The Silicon Chamber

15651565 views00 comments00 favs

Why did he seek punishment, if he felt no guilt? Why this empty conscious, though he had done such evil?

What's that on your glasses?

15651565 views33 comments33 favs

The shit just doesn't want to come off.

Question

15651565 views99 comments1010 favs

When the dark shadows of his limp eyes told us life was slowly seeping away, stolen by his stroke, his wife signed the “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order and, tearfully leaving the room, she turns, asking a final question, “Think a needy family could use his…

Ritual

15651565 views11 comment11 fav

The dance draws deeper whirling witches weaving rhymes The fire spits fierce in the falling rain soon the spell will spill from secret times

The Hunger of the Waxing Moon

15651565 views11 comment11 fav

I took advantage of a free period this afternoon to nap. When I awoke, I tasted blood. My tongue was swollen. I checked myself in the mirror and saw twin punctures on my lower lip with pinpricks of blood on each. I winked at my reflection and lifted my li

Water Hitting Water.

15651565 views44 comments44 favs

Jenny was certain nobody saw her when she took the slinky shirt from her father's store. It was blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light as air. She balled it up in her hand. Her father owned a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks were…

The Eyes of the Inmate

15651565 views1818 comments1717 favs

The courts had scheduled the date long ago but the time, an hour always left to the warden, had yet to be decided.

The Big LARP

15651565 views44 comments22 favs

The ambient sound wheezes on.

Loose Ends

15651565 views33 comments33 favs

He looked peaceful.

Lucky Strike

15651565 views1717 comments1111 favs

...when they entered eager lungs hungry from deep and sweaty love

What He Lost Round the Mountain

15651565 views44 comments33 favs

The plane passes the runway, dips sharply, its shadow straight down below, too cold in the cabin, the sun hitting your arm like a machete below, it is 94, the humidity too, it has just rained for 3 days, it never rains this time of year......

Chapter 27: Prosperity Meteor Showers and the Human Ingenuity Tenders Lasting Economic Recovery Act

15651565 views77 comments55 favs

... the CBO issued a concise and brilliant report demonstrating that the most cost-effective and permanent solution to the multiple problems presented by persistent poverty in the United States was the elimination of all those with prorated household or i