Most read stories

Poem: The Two Week Vacation

15001500 views55 comments33 favs

The mother, a pony-tailed beauty, thinks she looks fat in her new blue-checked pedal pushers and white blouse tied under her full breasts— in the latest style.

I Am Quantum

14991499 views22 comments00 favs

He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.

Loveless Lover

14991499 views88 comments55 favs

Love me like a crutch Love me when I'm strong

August

14991499 views1919 comments99 favs

One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.

Amanda Palmer

14991499 views33 comments33 favs

Amanda Palmer's explaining the eyebrow thing. An altercation with someone at Roadrunner, or maybe old boyfriend shit to burn— She's animated but he's losing signal, filling in the blanks himself. Whatever, it won't light at first, and then WHUMP and she…

Examination of Faith (And the Big Bang)

14991499 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.

Father's Day

14991499 views1010 comments77 favs

“What do you want for Father's Day?” she asks. “Sex,” he says, his mouth curling at the corners, “and a bottle of Shiraz.” …

Paradise

14991499 views44 comments44 favs

From the rumple of pre-dawn Queens, sure South on 95, to almost Savannah by dark; still cold, but we’re full of what’s coming:

Music That Tastes Like Blood

14991499 views11 comment00 favs

It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.

Is This Seat Taken?

14991499 views22 comments22 favs

A single woman should regard every train ride as an opportunity, I once read in one of those “How to Find A Boyfriend” books. “When boarding the train, don't take the first available seat,“ the author advised. “Walk through all the cars…

Coming From Alabama

14991499 views00 comments00 favs

In the state that the stars fell on, Love and I stumbled upon bits of God where he forgot sky and moon, too.

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

14991499 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

14991499 views1212 comments99 favs

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

Scar

14991499 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

skull of a sheep

14991499 views44 comments44 favs

You are in a car speeding through Dublin towards the West year after year the journey uncoils past the same landmarks Kilmainham Jail strapped to a chair bullet to the brain on by the Rowntree Mackintosh factory where the black and yellow and orange and r

The Birthday Jump

14991499 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…

castaway

14991499 views1818 comments1212 favs

the epiphany at the mast at midnight is not the same at dawn

The Hamsa.... an excerpt

14991499 views00 comments00 favs

It is your hamsa that protects us,” the girl whispers to me. “Then I shall give it to you,” I reply. “No,” she says in the unselfish innocence of her youth. “It is yours and you must keep it.” I smile and kiss her dirty forehead. Eternity passes whil

Ranger

14991499 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

14991499 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.

Roger's Box

14981498 views22 comments00 favs

"I see flashing bright bacteria floating in the air," he replied, not bothering to think about the words. "I see puffs of smoke issuing from inappropriate objects. Fingertips. Baby carrots. Furniture... Oh, Christ," he seethed, arching again. "Get me some

In Search of Vince’s Quinces

14981498 views88 comments00 favs

Beautiful, he thinks, as he taps the ash of his cigarette over the balcony, but this is not good enough.

children

14981498 views33 comments22 favs

today on the bus/ a man in his fifties/ smiled at a baby/

sabotage

14981498 views44 comments44 favs

people keep trying to get me/ "out of the house"./ they see fun in me, and cool in me,/ and want to spend time with me,/ and i am flattered most sincerely./

Query

14981498 views99 comments77 favs

time timed times time

Fragment from a Paper Story

14981498 views11 comment11 fav

While Leif was still very young, his emotions were very easy to read, for they appeared on his parchment coloured skin, named in his mother's writing. When he was seventeen, Leif fell in love. She was a pretty maid, one of the college servants who kept his…

When Birds Do Not Fly

14981498 views44 comments44 favs

The last chick in the nest

Lose the Baggage

14981498 views11 comment22 favs

I could be dead wrong.

Morning and Arachnophobia

14981498 views1717 comments66 favs

...Rabidosa rabida- no spinner/ of webs but a quick and cunning solitary hunter. Anxiety overwhelmed

The Light In My Arms

14981498 views33 comments22 favs

I asked him his name and here’s the kicker, Leiby. It means lion. You know what? I said mine is Levi, how do you do. That means to accompany—like in the root of the word, it’s got that meaning. As in levayah, funeral in Hebrew. Does that only