Most read stories

Staying With Mattie

12581258 views88 comments88 favs

I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

An Uneventful Night in an Italian Hospital

12581258 views66 comments44 favs

The voice is back! That voice, like milk and honey, like mother, like the school nurse who bandaged my scraped knee.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Coda

12581258 views44 comments22 favs

—Man, what a tearjerker way to end an interview, said Ben.

Termite ‘Grace’: #769

12581258 views00 comments00 favs

‘Grace’ was eliminated sometime in year b.s. (Before Seat) 12, for bottlenecking Productivity and holding back Progress.

getting there

12581258 views11 comment00 favs

Seems hot for a Thursday, doesn’t it?

That Day

12581258 views11 comment00 favs

Freedom brings its own fears.

Good Old Days

12581258 views44 comments44 favs

That night, when Nostalgia knocked on my door just before dawn, I had just enough time to catch her coat as she slipped it off and staggered into my apartment.

Lost Among the Consonants

12581258 views44 comments33 favs

I'm writing our initials in black sharpie on the tunnel wall. There's already people who have come before me, hundreds of pairs of Qs and As and hearts in the middle, through a small hole in the brick I can hear the French accents, spinning through, a reminder that I am…

Kilkenny

12581258 views44 comments00 favs

Green hands wave in freezing water.

A Ship of Bones

12581258 views00 comments00 favs

Make paddles of his hands Use his skull to bail Rig his thigh bones for a mast And his skin to make a sail

Sticking My Head Out of the Car Window

12571257 views66 comments22 favs

Standing on the beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, before the storm. It is easy to understand why dogs like sticking their head out of the car window. Standing on my favorite part of the beach, merely feet from the beach house. The house you weren't…

Changes

12571257 views00 comments00 favs

She was sitting in her swivel chair talking to a girl who was her younger image, ... “Well, there you go, I’m a fire sign and you’re an earth. That’s just the way it is.”

Uncanny Valley, Goodbye

12571257 views00 comments00 favs

When not enough is left to utterThe syllables it takes to say,Goodbye--Disassembled and developed,Laid upon the ground,Like the girded gridlockOn your smog befitted brow...Goodbye.And what if I said, hello?What if I said, good day?Would it change your sunken bodyAnd repair…

My Back Hurts

12571257 views11 comment11 fav

There’s a room Full of white And it smells Like bleach and Iron

The Devil’s Troubadour

12571257 views00 comments11 fav

The Devil’s laugh was the screech of wind. Ignacio Carillo heard Him as he dug the grave that would hold the body of his beloved wife.

Dear Earth, On the Occasion of Your 40th Earth Day Birthday

12571257 views22 comments11 fav

Everyone is tromping around in work boots like an army of happy gardeners. The park is smiling from all this attention, from the sound of kids who think work is play. It's not even sunny but we don't mind. I know you don't. Grey days are just as good. They've…

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

12571257 views33 comments22 favs

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

Bear Weather

12571257 views44 comments33 favs

Man, this bearskin rug was a big, awkward sonofabitch on his back....

Tumultuous Cracker

12571257 views33 comments11 fav

The whole scene smells like paranoia.

Open Face

12571257 views33 comments22 favs

All the time I'm eating I can't help but think of the many different tuna melts I have ordered in diners and coffee shops and how each of them disappointed me...

Origin Story

12571257 views1515 comments1111 favs

My father taught me how to solder and that's when I first started to write. Now, when you hold the soldering iron in your hand and depress the trigger, the tip of the gun heats up. Novices uncoil the solder and place it on the hot tip, but that just results in it…

Missing Her

12571257 views77 comments66 favs

When the teacher was out of the room Myron pretended to play with himself, saying, “down boy” and smiling to the nervous gasping and fake coughs from the other classmates and, since he's my close friend, I think he does silly stuff like this to contend with…

What He Delivered

12571257 views55 comments44 favs

Trying to remember something else, I recall supreme and utter solitude in a far off time and place

12571257 views1111 comments1010 favs

Before the war...

My Plastic Dreams

12571257 views55 comments33 favs

Once, in the past or future, but definitely not in the present, I worked as a transportation minister for a friendly dictator, whose name was neither Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Kim Jong-Un, but whose mustache was toothbrush, whose smile was sardonic to the p

Famus Peepul

12571257 views00 comments00 favs

Famus Peepul Ellen and her boy, Larson, were on the second floor of The Monsters restaurant, searching for the fortuneteller. Larson had decided her signature was a necessary addition to his autograph book. He hadn't asked for her autograph…

Prairie Flowers

12571257 views55 comments11 fav

As a kid he had run away from the family farm and shoveled coal back East to put himself through college. Now he was just another old man in a nursing home, desperate for a drink, his blue eyes bleary, a sticky goo filming at the corners of his lips.

The Roses Ask For You

12571257 views55 comments11 fav

The roses ask for you when I smell them They seem to remember your touch more than others. They can’t bear it when you’re gone and wonder when you’ll be returning I am beginning to do the same I no longer go outdoors to be with them

Him

12571257 views00 comments11 fav

He is poised erect before me. I take pleasure in soft skin that does not betray the strength of his cock, firm and yet vulnerable beneath my fingertips. With my hands, I coax him to his full length, girth. Tonight I ignore the heat of my Delta and bow my head in worship…

Ave Maria: Part 6

12561256 views00 comments00 favs

“I swear that man is a force of nature.” This was her mother's way of describing her father whenever her mother came too close to the precipice. While growing up, she could never allow herself to fully acknowledge the meaning behind her mother's…