Most read stories

Goodbyes

13241324 views77 comments44 favs

.

"you: the size of"

13241324 views44 comments44 favs

The face is made of cracks that move with and from what it witnesses. When I let a thought out, your face cracks too, kind of dramatically. I didn't mean to share it, you press about it though. I think of everyone else who has cracked or cracked someone else and it doesn't…

The End.

13241324 views11 comment11 fav

Liz lies in bed next to a stranger. He is snoring softly, and she turns her head toward him, looking at his eyelids flutter as he enters REM sleep. He stirs and rolls over on his side away from her. As he does so, he pulls part of the comforter with him, exposing her…

She’s Dead

13241324 views00 comments00 favs

Hank: Yeah, the way her head was bashed in, it looks like someone really had it in for her. Did you call the coroner? Bill: Yeah. Boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to do the stuff those coroner and medical examiner guys do. It seems like

skull of a sheep

13241324 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

My Yogurt Jones

13241324 views33 comments22 favs

And so began my love affair with a thick, semisold substance. Sort of like Mary Van de Velde, the chubby girl who was my partner in my 6th grade polka troupe.

A Small Piece of the Night Life

13231323 views22 comments11 fav

It made him feel better to imagine she was someone else, someone he didn't know. This comfort bothered him

Assiduity Thirteen

13231323 views99 comments55 favs

My relationship with Uzma exists on several levels, from basic to abstract, from animal magnetism to spiritual journey.

(Withheld) 1970

13231323 views00 comments00 favs

The Moon The hatch of the lunar module hissed as it opened, a few puffs of leftover water vapor escaped toward them in a sparkling white cloud that rapidly dissolved…

(Younger Driest)

13231323 views22 comments00 favs

He did not seek a place on a cabinet, nor to impress stockholders with placards of wealth and return; he did not enumerate the downtrodden and asocial with advertised miracle treatments, or write a best seller on the markings of success. All he did, all h

Let Me Tell You A Story

13231323 views00 comments00 favs

I can hear the gardeners blowing leaves. They carry engines with long tubes that blow air in a great rush and send the leaves whirling forward as they advance. Fairies dance in a ring as the gardeners approach, oblivious to the whirr of their engines. The

Quitting Smack

13231323 views66 comments33 favs

I figured he knew what he was doing–he was the crazy one, after all, not me–so we took turns snorting lines of equal volume.

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

13231323 views33 comments22 favs

I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. / We were never happy. I realize that now.

Assiduity Twenty Five

13231323 views33 comments33 favs

" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "

Honey Nut Cheerios and Chocolate Milk

13231323 views22 comments00 favs

Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …

Pura Vida

13231323 views22 comments11 fav

The girl lifts my head, and I sit up straight once again. She hands me a pair of old work gloves, helps put them on my swollen hands. She wipes my face with a wet, warm towel. Her thin arms tremble. She cries. I cry.

Life After Les Miz

13231323 views77 comments55 favs

There are many ways to cope effectively with your life after a Les Miserables run, and everyone is different, but here are some things that have helped others work through the process.

Upstream

13231323 views11 comment11 fav

Rain pours down in a world transformedthrough thunder. The storm rages, night takes on a weight, and everyone hides, most from habit, some from fear. She stands there, soaked and beautiful, responding to the…

HVAC is so sexy. What?

13231323 views00 comments00 favs

We had imagined making babies with ease, as if they were simply fruit- ripening on the trees around us- and all we had to do is stretch out our limbs and pluck. We never imagined that skill is involved, that heartbreak is required, and that the one simpl

Autumn

13231323 views22 comments11 fav

I have never known how gold this time of year, With its palladium arcade, was, of the trees That do not sense the pleasure of their silence; Trees are egalitarian, they do not speak But concourse among themselves, consent to join us At this moment breathing…

Smooth and Crunchy

13221322 views44 comments22 favs

No freebies. You want to read it, you have to read all of it.

Halitosis

13221322 views11 comment11 fav

I laughed hysterically at Austin Powers.

Walking with the Moon

13221322 views1111 comments88 favs

I heard a voice. It was calling me as from a far-off cloud. I listened, holding my breath, and heard it again, though fading away, barely audible. If I hadn't known my name I wouldn't have decrypted it. Three hazy syllables clearly detached with a sigh between each of them.…

Not Quite There Yet

13221322 views33 comments33 favs

You're not late yet, but if you don't move now, you will be. You close the cover of your mac book, don't even finish the sentence you were working on or close down the file. What had been of the utmost importance, clutching at your…

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 14

13221322 views22 comments22 favs

“Gentlemen, how could I go about attracting the KGB?” Now that got the attention of Boris and Vladimir. Their eyes bulged right out of their heads. They both started huffing and puffing. “What are you, crazyman or something?” said Boris. Vla

RONDO ROND WE GO

13221322 views22 comments00 favs

When he got to the office, he opened the drawer with the new can of fish food and realized he’d forgotten to buy a fish tank. He hated fish, hated the thought of a “hobby” but his girlfriend’s therapist had suggested it. Hobbied, hobbled, whatever

Exhumation

13221322 views1010 comments55 favs

the poems/ we never got to will remain,

Neat

13221322 views77 comments33 favs

His audio archive of Bay Area musicians extends along two walls, twenty-five by fifteen feet, in drawers of C.D.s hundreds deep. Where will it go, I asked, permanently.

the dreamer of eggs

13221322 views22 comments11 fav

How much sucking, faithlessly, can there be? The body being a night thing off which steam rises, that attracts like a magnet or loadstone, whose curls attract, whose ringlets or tufts of touched hair between the legs glory up the nightly watched miracle,

My First Horror Show

13221322 views00 comments00 favs

I remember screaming and wanting to run from the living room that time you came home drunk.