Most read stories

A Borrowed Barrow

12301230 views44 comments44 favs

It was a battered, creaky, rickety old thing, this wheelbarrow. It had two wooden handles with cracks running through the wood, a fat rubber wheel and a deep tray encrusted with the mud and plaster and grout that it had transported through decades of heavy use. Based on…

The portrait

12301230 views1111 comments88 favs

Gestures we would like to make in the solitude of a café terrace ... Early in the morning ... She's sitting there, seems shivering. Grey dress, red scarf. Her eyes move. I try to meet them - small, vague black clouds which pass, without resting, by mine. She drinks her…

After Work

12301230 views11 comment00 favs

“I was thinking about the other night.” He said from the living room.      She could hear his work boots scrape and creak across the old wood floors, and the sound of his weight landing on the couch, then the snap of the lighter as he lit the pipe and…

Spliced from the scraps on the cutting room floor by a young intern from UC Berkeley while Brando studied her profile in 1959

12301230 views1212 comments88 favs

Bogart frowned, said, "How do you do that?"

Youngstown

12291229 views22 comments22 favs

Last night I met a man from the same littleshithole townthat you are fromand I kissed him in the mouth to find out if he tasted like coallike you do.While he slept, I tried to pinpoint on a map I drew on his back exactly how far apart you might have been:how many years…

Mrs. Smedley's Art Class

12291229 views22 comments11 fav

THERE ARE TWO PARTS. FROM PART ONE: (Later the police escort the students out, directing them to keep their hands in the air, as they file out into the parking lot. They wrap Mrs. Smedley in a blanket as she stares out blankly in shock. "How is Linda? Is

Fiery Passions

12291229 views00 comments00 favs

Isaac Beauregard Lyons woke with a start as he heard the slamming of a pickup truck door then a curse from someone down on his front lawn. “Damn it Mike, be quiet!” someone shouted.

Honeymoon du Jour

12291229 views00 comments00 favs

a sequel to Love in Miniature, after the couple is married.

Can't Sleep But Very Tired

12291229 views22 comments11 fav

I repeated your name like a mantra / and vomited black bile in the sink. / Some Buddhist monk told me / if I recite it ten thousand times / you will be mine.

Silent Now, Against the Wash of Time

12291229 views77 comments22 favs

Let us both stand steep, alone, this night; the tide Lies, hastening to us: and, far away, I hear the sea gulls sweep, through the divide That shapes drear skies, between dead lights of day. What worth was love? Man severs all he is, To make one…

HEARTTHROB SERIES

12291229 views44 comments22 favs

And when you come back, you work minimum wage and have water cooler sex and your face is no more than archives.

Loop

12291229 views33 comments33 favs

At night, I watch TV shows with fictional characters who lead my life.

The Old Man (The End)

12281228 views00 comments00 favs

The dark staircase creaked as he crept down to the basement. The even whoosh-whoosh of the washing machine was comforting to him. He reached for the light as he entered the room. A dim bulb blinked on above him. There was a small table across the room f

Bonsai

12281228 views00 comments00 favs

Adam, now Eve-less, stood before his most exquisite Bonsai, wallowing in the miseries of youth.Seth Gall has had work published in China, Canada, and the U.S. His work has appeared in Word Riot, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Nanoism. He is S.H. Gall in decomP…

Practice Questions: Grade 7

12281228 views33 comments00 favs

When the deer did come, I couldn't shoot straight. I didn't feel scared, but I didn't want to miss and my hand was shaking. I hurried. I held my gun pointing out at the path and fired. But it went a little wild and instead of taking the deer down, I shot

Ideal Man

12281228 views33 comments33 favs

“Mirela,” I said. “Mirela, Mirela, Mirela.” I must have told him a hundred times, no exaggeration. “What the hell kind of name is that?” I ignored him, lit a smoke and watched a group of teenage girls as they laughed their way…

Letter to Garrison Keillor

12281228 views99 comments44 favs

Hilda Raz lost a daughter. Her son gained a persona, backed by biological components. I was impressed by his male-pattern baldness. A biological genius. And yet, I was reduced and in the elevator mentioned crying about it.

"It's Just Breakfast" Fills Dating Service Niche

12281228 views00 comments00 favs

"Too many people were presenting themselves in a false light on lunch dates,” she says. “The power ties on the men, the come-you-know-what-me pumps on the women–that’s not what married life is about.”

Book of Mountains

12281228 views00 comments11 fav

Headsets screaming with suburban boredom

Summer's smack

12281228 views1010 comments77 favs

clouds clot the horizon all day

The Cooler

12281228 views44 comments33 favs

We stop laughing when the doctors come in. Don't want to scare them.Ben (car accident, Christmas, gifts all over the road), tries to freak them out though. He'll make a low soundsometimes. One nurse ran so fast she almost wentout the window. Sheryl her name…

Watching the End of the World from the Beginning of a New Revolution

12271227 views55 comments55 favs

We were always going to be here. This isn't thebig reveal. It's not even the best last joke. That's to come. Like the apocalypse that it always wants tobe, like playing with the big planet gods. Nothing says we're all doomed like another cold beer. Wave the…

Mounds of Flesh

12271227 views00 comments00 favs

Rains came again and wore away at their flesh, revealing bone as white and sharp as sharks’ teeth.

Metro Blues.

12271227 views00 comments00 favs

She had no eyes that I could see. Just a pair of lips; they looked soft

Love and How It Gets That Way

12271227 views1111 comments99 favs

and we spun you, / spun you!

Crisp and New

12271227 views33 comments11 fav

He told me it isn’t my fault. That my brain isn’t slowly and deliberately killing itself, not barbarically stripping away its own wiring to expose razor bursts of electricity.

Resistance

12271227 views99 comments11 fav

I can no longer conjure the sweetness of a plum

The Man Who Memorized Kubla Khan

12271227 views00 comments00 favs

Weave a circle round him thrice And with bemusement shake your head, For he on cod and beans hath fed And drunk the beer of Paradise.

UNFINISHED

12261226 views11 comment11 fav

In his dreams he was building a house. He wasn't sure if it was in the city or in the country. He wasn't sure. He thought, perhaps, it looked like the city but there seemed to be too many trees.

Just a Kiss

12261226 views11 comment11 fav

We are diminished by our desire for innocence, and we debase those who possess it.