Most read stories

Old Joke

13841384 views99 comments99 favs

How many exceptional people/ does it take to change a light bulb?

Toothed and Thorny

13841384 views44 comments33 favs

Cliffs are not all I've known, but I've seen them every day since I came to light. When I first broke out of the shell that protected me from feet and poisons, I pushed my way into darkness. It was soil. I could not have survived if it was light, and when I surfaced there…

washing in the dawn

13841384 views22 comments11 fav

Here and there a few bits of beauty, with the highest respect, reverence, erect with pride. Almost twice a thousand dawns, ten thousand in intimacy, the breasts, the nipples, means of the world to nourish itself, by the intimate bay. It's almost pun

Joe and the Spiderman

13841384 views44 comments44 favs

Once upon a time I sat in summer chairs beside cool vine walls. This was in a borough east of the major city, where families gathered in seasonal joy, by blooms fragrant, to worship the summer and its might. There is nothing diminutive about the world when one is…

Puffer Fish in the Infinite Laboratory

13841384 views22 comments11 fav

They put me in charge of developing a drug that stifles fear.

My Alice

13841384 views44 comments44 favs

My story begins where so many have ended, strapped fast to a cold table, just moments from a lobotomy needle and anything resembling the man that I am.

Empty Pockets

13841384 views11 comment11 fav

We dance on rooftop, then I fall off.You're like, "oh shit."Pale blue lobster finds me. Says, "hello." Taps me with claw, "wake up." Looks around, concerned. Shakes me with two claws on collar.Scuttles away for a second.Comes back with warm, perfect, round glazed doughnut.…

Upper East

13841384 views11 comment00 favs

As the 5 train gained momentum away from Fulton Street, Helen took her seat with the alertness and suspicion of someone who had spent the day negotiating prices with dirty fishmongers.

Natchez Shrapnel

13841384 views44 comments11 fav

I was like a bullet shot from a university tower

Basement Concert

13841384 views22 comments00 favs

You don't just hear the sound, you are the sound, you and everyone else in the room.

Eulogy

13841384 views22 comments11 fav

In one hand she cradles a cigarette, in the other a glass of red wine. Typically neither of these things would be allowed in here, and on this occasion it was thought that it would be better to let her do what she wanted.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 54

13841384 views22 comments11 fav

Ben was cheered to see Monique in good spirits again.

egg

13841384 views22 comments11 fav

...

In the Air Tonight

13841384 views44 comments00 favs

But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru

The Number Nine and The One After That

13841384 views55 comments44 favs

Johnny K. didn't much like taking his exotic drugs any more. He now thought that the common reality was already an intense enough trip without wrapping it all up in enough gauze to cause permanent daydreams to the head. He liked his cheap hamburgers…

Fire In The Heart

13841384 views22 comments11 fav

The woman leapt from the top of the burning building. The flames reddened the faces of the watching crowd. The heat pushed them back. The woman hit the ground. The crowd oooooed. If only I'd been a firewoman, I thought, with a ladder as tall as a building and a…

There Is No Glass

13841384 views33 comments33 favs

I'm a heathen in the church of the absolute.

BLUE

13841384 views00 comments00 favs

A subway train rumbled through the underground and she actually felt it slither under her feet. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the desiccated leaves and the small rectangle of blue cardboard the blustery wind had wedged between the gargoyle's talons.

The Wedding

13841384 views66 comments55 favs

Anneliese inserted one of her crystal drops in Hymen's left ear and kept her left earring in. For a quarter, she bought a handful of cashews and plopped them on a red napkin.

At the Jr. Algonquin Roundtable

13831383 views22 comments11 fav

“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

Pavane

13831383 views33 comments22 favs

The shadows hang fast on the downs this day: And I hang like the darkness, over heath and down; Since the air there is clearer than the clouds, men say, And I'm lost in the country, I shall turn to town. If the heather is restless, then the fete is …

The Legend of Knifemouth’s Legendary Mouth Grows

13831383 views22 comments22 favs

In the small towns of central and southern Illinois there lives a very indecent sort of man.

Rule of exchange

13831383 views33 comments11 fav

She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.

The Gift Garden (Extract)

13831383 views33 comments33 favs

Now I hear a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, like I know her, but in my daze it is slightly distorted, like I am underwater and she is calling to me beneath the waves. She tells me not to be afraid. Her words are calming; they soothe away the panic and confusion. I…

BLT

13831383 views1818 comments88 favs

I had a sister-in-law who was a licensed nutritionist. Not sure what “licensed” means, but she had some certificate and worked in a hospital. Hospitals! Places not known for their cuisine, much less their nutrition. —So, what do you…

1

13831383 views88 comments44 favs

Years ago when the smart of it was as nippy as this one.

The Magic Trumpet

13831383 views22 comments22 favs

I gave my trumpet case to a girl named Sophie; she liked the velvet inside.She still played with dolls;they would live there,in the dark away from the world.Safe. I was a terrible trumpeter;i missed the high notes in band, squawked like a chicken.I strapped the trumpeton my…

Passing by Pallanteum

13831383 views66 comments22 favs

Passing by PallanteumOr ‘Dido's Song' Form: Double Sestina, iambic pentameter, rhymed Who knows of hell, knows less of paradise? I've known them both, when vanquished in your eyes, When draws the kelp where lost men had their graves Below…

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 15: In Which The Damage Is Contained

13831383 views00 comments00 favs

He stood sopping in front of the mirror, dripping onto the limp puddle of clothing on the floor. He needed a haircut. He needed a shave. He needed to get rid of the two-fucking-inch white hair inside the helix of his right ear. He plucked it—and all the h

I Go Cold Keyboard at End of Day

13821382 views11 comment00 favs

Excuse me, can I now ask to change my favorite childhood color from green to yellow?