Most read stories

The $64,000 Question

14491449 views11 comment00 favs

One day over a hardscrabble dinner of gristly beef and lumpy mashed potatoes, his uncle looked up at him and said, “Kee-rist, boy, school’s gonna start any day now. And winter ain’t far behind. I can’t keep you here. We gotta figure out something for you.

To The Little Mouse Who Started Feeling Slightly Nauseous

14491449 views66 comments55 favs

I heard them praying to some god none of us had ever heard of. I'm glad I went to the funeral and still have the yellow rose that I did not throw into his grave. At some point you have to stop nibbling from the moldy cake.

Mom at Night

14491449 views66 comments22 favs

Mom stayed up all night again Tending to her papers Pushing them around Trying to make order of the debts, the dreams and the obligations She couldn't get the columns to add up, So she shuffled them around some more and Rearranged the piles …

Crumpled

14491449 views77 comments66 favs

We wanted so much to find ourselves in a beautiful world. It was, and is, but every inviting leaf has got another hidden dangerous precedent that must be surrendered to in order to survive to see another sunset with the ones you actually…

Be Afraid

14491449 views77 comments55 favs

Everything conspires to kill you:

My Single Mother

14481448 views22 comments11 fav

Like the willow she stands alone, swaying.

Do Not Spank the Truth

14481448 views55 comments66 favs

Do not spank the truth Whatever else you do You do not ever Spank the truth If you let the truth be spanked You will be diminished And it will never let you Be finished, instead When you are dead You will dangle in the land Between

What's Done, What's Left to Do

14481448 views22 comments00 favs

When she was just a little bit younger, Dana wanted to be known around town as something other than the girl who used up all the machines at the laundromat with her little brothers' Spiderman underwear and her grandpa's pants soiled with God-knows-what. Something…

Migration

14481448 views1212 comments88 favs

A friend's remark about androgyny, "it's overrated," she said.

Found Out

14481448 views44 comments44 favs

The other day my friend, Donald, said Shirley always tells him she loves him and she probably does in her way, but it didn't comport with what he walked in and found her doing again last night. She was back at it, hunched over her computer, having chat sex with the…

Grandma's Fingers

14481448 views55 comments66 favs

her hands twined up, as carved from stone, each to fit the other.

Metamorphosis

14481448 views66 comments55 favs

One morning as Georgia Samantha was waking up from her girlish dreams, she found that she had been changed during the night into a stiff-spined book.

Again, the Spring

14481448 views11 comment22 favs

In the Faraway Places

14481448 views44 comments44 favs

It was far away and I don't know how we arrived. There were people about that were involved in getting boats into the water or else playing sports games atop green hills. They told me I should go out in a boat with this guy and that he would take me around the island. I…

this isn't what i was trying to write, you ass

14481448 views33 comments22 favs

sometimes it's hard/ to leave the house in the morning/ when bed is so comfortable/ and you're so far away.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 33

14481448 views44 comments22 favs

She’s a gourmet cook who can fake a great orgasm.

An ode to ill-used apostrophe’s

14481448 views33 comments33 favs

Fragment’s of ignorance strewn by a haphazard hand

From The Plague Year 2020

14481448 views1313 comments1010 favs

I went to Costco

Big Pig News

14481448 views77 comments33 favs

A pig weighing nearly 300 pounds was discovered in the back of a wrecked car in Youngstown, Ohio. The car, a Nissan Cube, was totaled, but Penelope the pig was unscathed. The car, which belongs to Wendy Thrasher, Penelope's owner, was apparently stolen

Them, Not Us

14481448 views1212 comments66 favs

We hold fast to the bed’s corners, afraid our bodies, these new old bodies, have forgotten how to love in its center.

Head Over Feet.

14481448 views44 comments44 favs

And if I lived a thousand lives...

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 9

14481448 views22 comments22 favs

The Third Defenestration happened during the Soviet era, by the apparatchiks. The only thing that saved the people from certain death after being thrown out of the window of the Prague Castle, was an enormous pile of horse shit below, or haufen mist, as t

Members of the Story

14481448 views99 comments88 favs

Pinesatz is standing again. He and Marie seem unaware of time, unaware that Louane is watching them, unaware of waiting for Wendy with the car. Every glance is a hook. Every gleam is a glance. Every stanza is a room. She vies for it.

Stuffed Shirt

14481448 views66 comments33 favs

It was the losers’ bar in my neighborhood.

Icehouse

14481448 views55 comments44 favs

It was noon and cloudless when I pulled over next to the icehouse, wedged in the X formed by two dirt roads.

A Broken Frame

14481448 views44 comments33 favs

The photograph has no date,but these are my long-ago kin,ancestors just before the boat,six stone-faced on the English shore,sepia on cardstock under glassstill clear in severe, dark clothesexcept one who has been markedout, maybe with black wax,which runs to the bottom…

Well Enough Away

14481448 views22 comments22 favs

Everybody knew the buildings were trying to kill us.

For Irony

14471447 views11 comment00 favs

They all knew he had cancer before the doctors gave the final verdict. His wife wept and his parents held him tightly. It was a dreadful time for all. Out in the hall his children looked on with fearful faces and shook their heads as he begged them inside with a…

A Life of My Own - 7

14471447 views22 comments11 fav

The park is filled with tents, tarps, and supporting structures, along with hundreds of diverse individuals seeking a common focus, wanting to make a difference, expressing an abundance of opinion, verbally and with signs.

Queens and Kings

14471447 views22 comments33 favs

I underline the passages Momma does in her Bible and circle the same words she does, of the oil Samuel uses to anoint David...