Most read stories

Woman in a Film Running to Save Her Love

13851385 views33 comments44 favs

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

Five Million Yen: Chapter 74: Coda

13851385 views33 comments11 fav

It was the first warm day of a late-arriving spring. Ben was sitting in his divorce lawyer’s office on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

The Humanists

13851385 views00 comments00 favs

“She’s very sick. She’s dying,” and he smoothed my hair along my neck. “It’s leukemia. A very rare type,” his hand reached my shoulder and stopped there. “She only has a few months.”

There is a Certain Long Armed Bird I See

13851385 views66 comments44 favs

from here with its brightly polished fingers spread easily amongst the cresting winds off the choppysky, circling the sun and sea splattered cliffs like a lone marble rolling down a smoothed out incline only to be turned invisibly over again as if…

Then You May Have Complicated Grief...

13851385 views22 comments11 fav

......Based on an ad I heard on the radio from Mass. General Hospital in BostonHave you ever experienced death?Have you been in grief,past the cut off periodof six months?Has it affected your life?Has it strained relations with your wife?It is our beliefthat you…

Aluminum Canoe

13851385 views22 comments00 favs

"Don't stab me with that," says John.

15 Restatements

13841384 views55 comments33 favs

I arrange 15 restatements of how lovely you are forward then backward, horizontally then vertically then along the diagonals.

Sold 2 Books Though

13841384 views88 comments77 favs

Reading at Menlo Park Senior Center, old people falling asleep leaning to the left in their chairs, all in the same direction.

1940 What I Wanted

13841384 views1212 comments33 favs

But this ache wouldn't leave me.

Alice White Loves Me Because

13841384 views88 comments44 favs

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

Dear Friend

13841384 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 Ache of Logic

13841384 views33 comments11 fav

There is a the reason for the theft of people and the melting of gold

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 32

13841384 views55 comments44 favs

—You know, Angelique, said Elaine Aster, dabbing her lips with a napkin, I’ve opened a new gallery in Paris.

The Other Side of the Wall

13841384 views33 comments22 favs

I’m glad they put the wall up. When it gets a little humid around here, I can smell those damn people.

Maggie

13841384 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

Waves of Memory

13841384 views33 comments22 favs

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

Not Enough Sin To Go Around

13841384 views1313 comments1010 favs

Inevitability: it's what's for dinner.

Stones

13841384 views55 comments22 favs

The manicured lawn rolls down either side of the knoll, punctuated with flat granite plaques, the occasional bouquet of cut flowers, a smattering of faded eight-inch American flags.

The Dog's Familiar

13841384 views00 comments00 favs

The county sent two crews, one to get Mr. Meyers, the old shut-in, tall and affable, but quiet and bent, like a crooked coat rack with a porkpie atop, the other for his dog, an english setter whom he shadowed like a familiar. I say he was the familiar and

Exquisite Now

13841384 views44 comments22 favs

In the exquisite now, I feel everything around me, in me, before and after, I think, I should call you, say goodnight, but I do not, choose instead to write this poem, as though I can capture the magic of what is happening between us in words, A…

“Yo Donnie, Hawyadoon?”

13841384 views33 comments44 favs

“Fine, Tony, fine. I'm brilliant . How many times have I got to tell you my name is Donald now. All the time you're with that disgusting, “Donnie,” a grammar school name. Get some class. You own the matzo factory now. You're not just another…

The Young Woman Swimming

13841384 views1111 comments55 favs

She stepped inlike ice alonecould save hershe dived,slicing the wavewith her body her fresh pony tailsubmergedlike a silk scarfthen swam moving thewater awaylike whirlpoolscould hold her buoyantly save her from the headachewhispering wordsThey had been there all…

Je Suis Vincent

13841384 views99 comments66 favs

I saw Vincent one day, sitting at a café table that was situated right next to the quays of the Seine, with another artist by the name of Bernard. Vincent had his back to me, and he was leaning forward in his usual hyper-excitement, gesturing wildly

Ranger

13841384 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…

Tabula Rasa

13841384 views44 comments11 fav

When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

Packing

13831383 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 Sentence

13831383 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?

Indentured Servitude

13831383 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

Helen Says (from FATHER MUST)

13831383 views11 comment11 fav

Masking. Helen says not to think of it as covering or disguising or concealing. Helen says to understand it is not to take it as something put up front and over like a mask. Helen says it’s not like that...

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 43

13831383 views66 comments33 favs

—Have you ever fired a gun?