Most read stories

The Hostage

13951395 views1212 comments88 favs

My mother should have been a minister or a peace officer. Instead, she was a homemaker who ran the home like an agency. There were certain hard and fast rules.

Are You A Handywoman? Take This (Not Entirely Serious) Test and Find Out!

13951395 views22 comments33 favs

As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…

Graven Images

13951395 views66 comments55 favs

Mother hated a crucifix. Graven, she said. Evidence that Catholics weren't saved, just stuck in ceremony. Jesus had risen and anyone who had to pray in Latin, count beads or confess to robed men who took orders from a monarch didn't know…

Post-apocalyptic Fable # 8

13941394 views1212 comments66 favs

Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old house, slowly

Mo Band Names

13941394 views66 comments33 favs

Her Majesty’s Glasses Umbilical Chord Linger Finger Okay Inkjet The Dragon Flies Horny Free Spirit Good Footnote Buttery Clams You’reUp Empty Bladder Star Butter Karmic Impulse Mr. On-the-Ve

Mother's Day

13941394 views44 comments22 favs

By lunch: The dryer is an F-5 dervish of mismatched socks, blue jeans and your yellowing college T's, lovingly held onto. For a moment there is a comforting warmth and softness to their smell. In the debris strewn landscape of the living room a carcass

'Is This a Problem?'

13941394 views00 comments00 favs

London, England. 1999.

Hold on

13941394 views11 comment22 favs

I slept and it was pleasant. Then there was the kiss, and it was hot. Later you turned away, and all was November chill. Now there are touches, caresses and shouts, Marvelous nights flavored with favors bestowed, and blackened days,…

Yamoussoukro, 2012

13941394 views11 comment00 favs

He is underneath them. His head is like the head of a worm.

With Eyes Closed

13941394 views1515 comments88 favs

I believe I will become a bear, snuggle up in a deep cave, coil myself inside my fur, close my eyes on hurting images, turn a deaf ear to the uproar of the world. Bolt my door to the deceiving voices outside. Sleep. Forget. Wait, as we wait for spring, for the violet and…

Rubber Chains

13941394 views22 comments11 fav

He turned metal chains to rubber with the force of his mind. He prepared tacos for the paperboy.

Fear

13941394 views99 comments44 favs

Fear I’ll be stuck here without a ladder

A Dutiful Daughter

13941394 views33 comments00 favs

The first indication I had of what I look like came when a man put me back on the rack, remarking that I was too pink. Over the weeks that followed, I gained a few more ideas about my appearance from the comments of people in the shop. My photographic side had been…

Feb 1

13941394 views44 comments44 favs

On our wedding day he carried all of the furniture out of our small bedroom, created a sanctuary.

My Plastic Dreams

13941394 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

Moving Out

13941394 views33 comments22 favs

Lying in the blissful glow of young television. Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.

Nevermore

13941394 views00 comments00 favs

One said 'Yes, I remember.' He was dark and tall and slender A masterful pretender who laid roses on the floor Appearing on the eve of morrow, so slow and full of sorrow With a costume he did borrow, borrowed from the poet's lore From the rare and rad

All Wet

13941394 views22 comments22 favs

the small break of consciousness that is my dreamswaterso much wateri can never forgive the watertoo many tears

Dreams Bright White Smash

13931393 views00 comments00 favs

She was there then gone then there again. We were naked and wet and touching, she let me touch her, but she didn't want to be there. But she was, despite herself. It was my dream. You can go if you want. …

A Tale

13931393 views44 comments22 favs

But you don’t know how to fly, Bunny! How ever will we survive?

I want to hear the man talk

13931393 views77 comments44 favs

I remember going out to a restaurant with some guy and a friend of mine who brought her little boy along. And suddenly her boy said, “I want to hear the man talk.” Well, that stopped us. Smart kid, I thought. He was fed up hearing her women friends talk

Quitting Smack

13931393 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.

Sailor's Visa

13931393 views33 comments00 favs

He's got a rager for Casablanca, the old Bogart and Bergman classic. I can't snap him out of it.

Bear Weather

13931393 views44 comments33 favs

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

A Slick Story

13931393 views1717 comments1414 favs

After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…

Alfamadog

13931393 views44 comments44 favs

It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…

Chalky goes to night school and studies the Classics

13931393 views55 comments44 favs

I don’t even want to think about Aethra shtupping Posiden and Aegeus

Pieces of the poet

13931393 views88 comments22 favs

This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 14

13931393 views00 comments00 favs

We both looked toward the house. We could just make out a light that was barely visible coming from the side where their bedroom window was. Slowly an evil grin appeared on Darrell's face. He looked at the knife in his hand. "This will do it!" he sa

Termite ‘Grace’: #769

13931393 views00 comments00 favs

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