Most read stories

The Ritz

14801480 views88 comments33 favs

After oh so many hours the eyes could only close only to view a Ritz cracker marching on a nose

Maggie

14801480 views00 comments00 favs

But she didn't. It would have been no historical anomaly if she had, by the way. She played with the world like it was a toy. Sometimes I wondered if I'd wake up in a box, a victim of live internment, and scream only to be humiliated later by her laughter

Water, Not Fire

14801480 views66 comments66 favs

I'll still want the blinds open and the lights on, to see the papier-mache of our flesh fighting death away to the century mark, even if you only want to live until a ripe eighty-two.

Sleepwalker

14801480 views22 comments22 favs

I may as well have been sleepwalking. Either way, I had no opportunity to admire the moonlight flooding into the long corridors, illuminating the stag heads and painted cheeks of long-dead ancestors.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

14801480 views00 comments00 favs

It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Urgencies

14801480 views1212 comments99 favs

...it was moving toward me from an oblique angle somewhere behind, steadily, relentlessly.

Trip the Rime

14801480 views1717 comments1010 favs

politics only add to assault and distract

Dream Boats

14801480 views22 comments22 favs

The Inauguration Day Windstorm had blown out half the downtown lights to celebrate its twenty-first birthday. Two old friends flecked with gray snow and white hair sat on the boulders that kept the Sound from sweeping away Myrtle Edwards Park. Look at all the…

Figures in Disquieting Landscapes

14801480 views1313 comments1010 favs

Tentacles hold fast to the small/ thrashing thing they believe is true// which, devoured, once crushed/ completely still, turns into shit,

Wonderland

14801480 views44 comments44 favs

The bartender kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. “Everyone in Hollywood is an actor,” Doc said.

Who Do You Want To Live With?

14801480 views33 comments22 favs

“Guys, who would you rather live with.... Mom... or Dad.” His younger siblings giggled in shock, not that they hadn’t thought about it... apparently. "You know I'm right here..." I joked, waving at them. “I’d rather live with mom.” the question-a

Washing the dishes...

14801480 views55 comments55 favs

There are certain items in the sink that are giving me an anxious feeling in my stomach.

The Birthday Jump

14801480 views77 comments77 favs

I remember the first & only time I parachuted it was 1964 my 16th birthday a rite of passage if you will from the old man an aerospace engineer & former WWII B24 bomber pilot I practice-jumped from oil barrels taught how to fall back then when the time came…

Story Story

14791479 views44 comments11 fav

It was one of those sweltering afternoons that San Diego endures only several times a summer. I'm riding on El Cajon Boulevard, with my friend John in his old Chevy pickup. John is a lifelong San Diego resident and fanatical Charger backer. He's talking up some…

Packing

14791479 views44 comments22 favs

I left Iowa in august when the air was thick and sticky. I had been there three years minus a few days when the boy I'd been sleeping with packed almost everything I owned into my car and waved goodbye. In Baltimore I had few friends and a job teaching English at a…

the PC birds have come home to roost

14791479 views22 comments11 fav

I want the luxury of hearing other people who disagree with me tell me why I’m an asshole!

Leaping Through Flames

14791479 views00 comments00 favs

I should have never gotten involved in such a huge lie. I was a poet, for God's sake, not a novelist. I wasn't used to lying.

An Orb for a Better World

14791479 views11 comment11 fav

Max sighed. Solving for x was boring, so mind numbingly boring that he didn't notice the flickering blue light hovering in his room. It crackled and popped, growing until a shimmering rectangle stretched from floor to ceiling.A hand pushed out from the rectangle, and a…

Not So Thoughtful After All

14791479 views33 comments44 favs

She put the Necco wafer on Sally's tongue."You can't be the priest, Emma" Sally said nearly choking on the hard, chalky disk."Then why you on yaw knees stupid?""You said to be prayin' and like in church, but you can't be doin' priest stuff. That's for…

Examination of Faith (And the Big Bang)

14791479 views77 comments44 favs

The marble, it's just there. I can't explain how it got there (or when), all I know is that everything is in that marble. By "everything," I mean every thing. Your breakfast? It's there.

Waves of Memory

14791479 views33 comments22 favs

"Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. It doesn’t mean anyone is to blame - It just is."

Digging

14791479 views22 comments11 fav

I came to a field where, scattered around, were quite a few men digging holes

A Poem for Chris Toll

14791479 views11 comment11 fav

we all die from the bottom up

Scar

14791479 views22 comments11 fav

I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

Contained

14791479 views11 comment11 fav

You’re listening to Smooth FM, taking you from the darkest hours to the start of a brand new day.

Snarket

14791479 views77 comments33 favs

Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

In the Parking Lot

14791479 views66 comments55 favs

Maybe they considered themselves beyond redemption, or maybe they couldn't sit for that long.

We of the Paper-doll Brigade Are Not Hiding Our True Selves Anymore, A FaceBook Flash

14791479 views1010 comments33 favs

I am confused by your new paper-doll look, btw. Could you please look regular again by Thursday?

Ranger

14791479 views44 comments44 favs

“What. Is. That?” Sid asked, staring at the shaggy ball of fur sitting in the living room. Its tongue hung out of its mouth and its tail beat against the carpet.“This is Ranger,” his mom said. “I don't know what breed he is, but he's a sweetie…

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

14791479 views11 comment00 favs

There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows.