Most read stories

Earthquake 4.0

11071107 views11 comment11 fav

I thought the dog was up to someting.

Village Life Brochure

11071107 views77 comments77 favs

I live in a small fishing village where small people fish and others gossip or invent bizarre methods by which to irritate each other. During our weekly power cuts I go outside and cross the street, sitting on the pharmacy steps to watch myself not be at home in the…

Snowflake 632565000012

11061106 views33 comments33 favs

YES, YES, Dismiss.

The Knife Edge

11061106 views22 comments22 favs

Max understood this perfectly and could easily picture the slow-motion buckling of the spars and the accordion collapse of the fuselage as the propeller blades’ churned up the ground.

M Box

11061106 views88 comments55 favs

I do that now. And I shiver. My mom's eyes don't seem to have any expression. They look lifeless. Her eyes look... dead. Stop it, Alison, I tell myself. You're being stupid.

Second Hand

11061106 views00 comments00 favs

“Okay, here is a wild idea. Let's each choose outfits from the second hand store for the other to buy and wear to a bar for a drink..." Famous second to last words?

my future, maybe yours

11061106 views11 comment11 fav

She went for the typewriter first.

The Overfilled Silence

11061106 views33 comments33 favs

At the Rest Home for Silence We are teenagers At best I have to admit I fell asleep on the bus On the way to the Rest Home For Silence And I woke up To the noise Coming from the Overfilled silence It's the overfilled silenc

The Tall Man’s Secret

11061106 views33 comments00 favs

I turn the corner and come face to face with Ed, who's stark naked at the kitchen sink. He chugs a glass of hot tap water from a measuring cup and belches loudly. “Good morning,” he says, as he pisses in the sink. “I drink 6 cups of hot tap…

Saturday Matinee, Circa 1961

11061106 views77 comments55 favs

We are impressed and cheer them on/ in their struggle against the wild/ and unkempt ravages of nature

Mom Dream, from the Family Album

11061106 views33 comments33 favs

She was trying to hold something, gathering in … lips blue/ black, saying: “I’m all right.” I remember her telling me, over the phone one time: “It’s a baby rabbit, and he was having a picnic. He was chewing away and chewing away. I had six tomato pla

The Unseen Hand Shuffles the Deck

11061106 views1010 comments66 favs

2008Not a bubble burstbut a trust ruptured.The guilty don't survivebut, rather, thrive. 2011The monied are superior.They game the system well.As we work harder, longer,their paper fortunes swell.2017Marie and Louie were monied once.The Romanovs as well.Fast as blades and…

The Morning

11061106 views33 comments00 favs

loudly mimics

Knock Knock

11061106 views33 comments22 favs

The bad moods crash the door down like an overzealous SWAT team and wreck the furniture. The good moods arrive unannounced.

Drowning

11061106 views11 comment00 favs

I found Mathew face down, cold and ridged like a plastic doll. I had overslept because he never cried—never told me he was hungry. Rodney had to peel my arms from around my son so the paramedics could take him in a blaze of flashing red and white lights.…

Let's All Go Down to the Rising River

11061106 views11 comment00 favs

As the pastor of a small southern church, I'm often asked by our younger members about this prickly notion of global warming. They herd around me, as adolescents are prone to do, and they ask me, “Dear father, is this something that we should fear, these…

Masquerade III

11061106 views00 comments00 favs

. . . he's of mixed race. Along with European blood, he's got Mexican Indian and African blood. Here's the irony. He don't look nothing like a white European man but he thinks like one.

Jeremy's Crane

11061106 views00 comments00 favs

I saw magic for the first time when I was eight, on the day Jeremy Chendo showed me that paper cranes can fly.

man running from a bar

11061106 views22 comments11 fav

A man alone in his paid-for living room, with his hands folded behind his head. A man running from a bar, a bald man seen from behind. Someone who made a wide circle to avoid your laughter. A man undressing at the side of the road saying: “How y

Long Night, Hard Night

11061106 views11 comment11 fav

It had been a long night, a hard night. The sky had been filled with blackened clouds, patters of wind snapping and whipping like a pirate's flag hung at full mast. Rain beat…

That Was Then, Not Now

11051105 views66 comments33 favs

Memory is unreliable, of course-/ re-coloring savored scenes-/ paler here, more saturated there-

space mountain in ghost region from absent-minded continent of misshaped planet

11051105 views00 comments00 favs

Cody had a face, a still and shivering dark basement of a face, one with a negative intake that seemed like it was leaning at a downward angle, as if falling off of itself, or committing suicide, jumping off the edge of the world and leaving behind the su

Satellites

11051105 views00 comments00 favs

The end, she thought, when did we end? She knew it had to end. Ten months in and it was no different from the day they met. Then again, the day they met it seemed as if they’d known each other ten years. That was the nature of their relationship she

The Poet

11051105 views66 comments22 favs

It dawned on herthat her imagination hadswollen beyond belief

Each Planned to Kill the Other

11051105 views33 comments00 favs

What was heinous about it was how easy I assumed it would be. That was truly heinous, and it was a mistake in the end to think of it that way. But I’ve learned from what’s heinous. I’ve bought a plastic cylinder filled with nylon zip ties. They’re great f

Corporal punishment

11051105 views00 comments00 favs

We huddle behind the bedroom door and hear the swish of dad's belt as he yanks it from the pant loops, our backsides clenched.

Pets

11051105 views00 comments00 favs

But in the dust bunny there was an equally relentless and sneaky foe. A brilliant General that silently marshaled its troops under tables and chairs, in obscure, shadowy corners, and along the unsuspecting flat surface of things.

Coconut Milk

11051105 views00 comments00 favs

"The baby's head..it was so big. There were complications...I saw it all. They tried to get me out of the room but I saw it all. He split her apart like a coconut Norm! She was gone like that."

My Fuji Red Banannanana

11051105 views55 comments33 favs

She had some fascinatingif incongruoustwins of swing hips.Her eyes made me thinkof opium densof fast women without a twitch,the sweet despair of gentlemen loserswith their 19th centuryhandbooks of moralityand witchcraft. But she only wanted mefor my Fuji Red…

I fell in love with jackal face

11051105 views11 comment11 fav

As we stood there, my hair slung over his shoulder like uncooked pizza dough, I updated my wish.