Most read stories

Betrayal

14211421 views22 comments00 favs

My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

Untitled Haiku from Japanese Game Show by JANEY SMITH

14211421 views11 comment11 fav

It's a haiku. It's its own snippet.

3 Poems Of Broken Hands And Lonely Drones

14211421 views11 comment11 fav

another lonely drone holding still

Heaven On the Floor

14211421 views22 comments11 fav

In the blur she met Joseph. Joseph was the priest who lived in the attic of the church. She met him after she grew boobs and thighs that moved like dragonflies soaring above ponds.

A Song To Lose Your Shoes To

14211421 views33 comments00 favs

You’ve got me standin’ on my knees, A’searchin’ for a beggar’s alms, From folks who’re deaf to all my pleas And blind to open palms.

Jack

14211421 views44 comments00 favs

We’ve already agreed on a date when Jack posts some new pictures of himself. I have to swallow. Hard. In four days Jack’s become twenty years older! On Thursday, a boyish thirty-something was smiling at me from my PC. This Monday I find myself stari

This Old Man

14211421 views22 comments00 favs

“Have I told you this one before?” I can’t think of one he hasn’t told me, but saying so won’t stop him. I fire up the FreeCell game, put the phone on speaker, and pour a tumbler of chardonnay.

I, Betty Crocker

14211421 views22 comments11 fav

I was born at the age of 42. Some of you might regard that as a handicap, but at the time I assumed everyone was born fully grown in a corporate test kitchen. In fact, I still think of it as an advantage; like being born with a silver spoon in my hand.

Imagining the Reading as Effacement

14211421 views88 comments66 favs

What the spaces say// can be heard in the short/ and longer silences

Perilous Joy

14211421 views1717 comments77 favs

...bush tail beside him his closest comfort next to the genes...

The Shopkeeper

14201420 views1212 comments88 favs

His eyes are closed yet restless, as if too many thoughts loop beneath the lids.

Dear Friend

14201420 views44 comments11 fav

Dear Friend: As a visitor to Wonderland in the past, you are truly among our most treasured friends. It is the enthusiasm for whimsy such as yours that spurs us to continue to provide perplexing chaos for which we are so widely esteemed, the better to

The Sentence

14201420 views00 comments00 favs

Two women are escorted to the desert, where they are shackled to the ground. Who are they, what have the done, and will they survive?

Cold/Warm

14201420 views66 comments33 favs

I wear boots over bare legs feigning ignorance To the coming storms, the snow the ice the cold

Stars & Fireflies

14201420 views11 comment00 favs

For weeks I hadn’t been able to think straight, waiting to lay vision on those majestic, swooning breasts.

The After-Sex Song

14201420 views66 comments22 favs

After sex he would get on his old refurbished upright piano and always play that same song. We came to know it as the After-Sex Song. It was really quite lovely, and touching. I think it made us all feel better around that building. Yeah, I remember t

Olfactory

14201420 views22 comments11 fav

Life to her had come to resemble one of those mazes you find in a puzzle book, inscrutable except by those with exceptional IQs. Mary would run her pencil down one path in search of the passage that might penetrate to the exit, then another, but the paths

Strawberry Swirl

14201420 views22 comments11 fav

Keisha selected a strawberry swirl cupcake from the waiter's tray, so pretty, from the hottest, coolest, newest patisserie. Moist strawberrylishious cake, swirly pink frosting, sprinkles. Keisha was one lucky lady, scoring a bizdev gig at recession-proof…

Woman in a Film Running to Save Her Love

14201420 views33 comments44 favs

If she does not get to him in time, / all is lost.

Never Said

14201420 views00 comments00 favs

We're at the Park Diner. My dad Tommie is sitting across from me. He looks haggard, tired. His skin is pasty and washed-out. He's not talking, so I'm not talking either, but it doesn't matter because it's hanging there between us.Cancer.Motherfucker.“Don't look so…

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

14201420 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.

In The Place Between - Part 2

14191419 views22 comments00 favs

One day a girl with blond hair was walking along the fence on the other side. There were just a handful of us left and I was the only one to notice her. I watched her. She did not see me. The next time I saw her, I went to the fence. I thought she might y

Alice White Loves Me Because

14191419 views88 comments44 favs

She loves you when your words leave her dirty, semi-transparent, at times, overexposed.

How We Fight

14191419 views66 comments11 fav

HORDES OF MEN desolated, struck down, destroyed, sunken form of skin and skeleton, bare cloth matted to torso, bodycage and hipbone, face and neck darkened, bloating to black, rain the endless dream stuck fast in the stone-dead skull and blood a fine sheen over all,…

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 5: In Which Lymph Nodes Are Involved

14191419 views11 comment00 favs

Astrid did not smoke. Astrid did not drink. Astrid was not overweight. Astrid did not live a sedentary lifestyle; her whole life, aside from shopping, was working out. Astrid had no history of breast cancer or other female cancers in her family. Astrid di

Taking Leave

14191419 views44 comments22 favs

A walled city doesn’t let you out any more easily that it has let you in earlier.

Indentured Servitude

14191419 views33 comments22 favs

"I’m wearing a white sundress with little strings tied at the shoulders, sheer white panties, and a lace push up bra." It sounded good, sexy, likable. The kind of outfit a girl he’d fall in love with would wear- if he was prone to love, that is. "That sou

If You See Something, Say Something

14191419 views11 comment11 fav

You think there’s a chance the bag could be holding a severed head, or live or dead kittens.

Nocturnal Bypass

14191419 views22 comments22 favs

As I fall to the ground I realize that in a few moments I will be experiencing a new kind of pain. The last pain. The last pain I will ever feel.

An Uncertain Age -- Chapter One

14191419 views00 comments00 favs

Where was my real soul mate, I wanted to know, and why were there no twitchy children on my lap, and how had I been so dumb to believe that beauty's currency would never run out? So, Paris....