Most read stories

Fortunately the Future Is Behind Us

11981198 views44 comments33 favs

When you finally arrive, when you are bounced from Bingo for calling out too many false Bingos, may the mothers be there to lift the children off your soul. May you see the fiery red word Psychic above the doorway underneath the green

Confessions of an Impersonal Spectator

11981198 views33 comments22 favs

This is why I’ve decided to assign myself a position in life similar to that of Stuart Sutcliffe with the Beatles.

Can't Sleep But Very Tired

11981198 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.

Will There Be Cliff Notes?

11981198 views22 comments22 favs

The new members were asked to stand up and say their names. One obnoxious, pushy woman from L.A. stood up and said, "Ama Torrent, and I'm an alcoholic." The roomful of people started murmuring. Suddenly a man in his late fifties shot out of his chai

HEARTTHROB SERIES

11981198 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.

Owen's Song

11981198 views1111 comments66 favs

"I hate people"

Fiery Passions

11971197 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.

“What Is Poetry Anyway?” He Said While Looking at the Sink Holding a French Fry Aloft

11971197 views22 comments11 fav

—mashed potatoes / with emeralds in it—

Self-Mutilation on Rise Among Motivational Speakers

11971197 views22 comments11 fav

Doreen takes Butchie’s hand, steadies it in the can opener, counts “One-two-three”–and slams the chrome handle down.

Rash Reading

11971197 views00 comments00 favs

I got a rash under my wedding ring. I took the ring off and filed for divorce the next day. Mike begged me to stay. But when you can't trust your judgement, you have to trust the signs. Mommy had a rash like that. I used to see it in the shower. People think it's…

Just a Kiss

11971197 views11 comment11 fav

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

Bums of the Bird World

11971197 views44 comments44 favs

Yeah, okay, so pigeons are the bums of the bird world So what are a flock of crows working over a wheat field while the artist Vincent is desperately trying to live with his bleeding ear or to sell at least one painting during

A Dear, Sweet Girl

11971197 views00 comments00 favs

He was pretty much packed, one large suitcase full, two crates of albums, one duffel bag. He had to leave room for the three riders he would pick up on his way, one in St. Louis, two in Columbia.

happy hour

11971197 views55 comments00 favs

I remember seeing five young losers standing outside this bar, smoking cigarettes in their baggy shorts and flip-flops, giving the occasional high-fives. They weren’t even eating their calzone, and I was getting upset about it. (I hadn’t eaten the whole

Still Photographs

11971197 views22 comments11 fav

one will become a tobacco king; another will steal copper plumbing on moonlessnights.

You Can Push Things

11971197 views66 comments55 favs

to the back of your mind like a box of unpacked yet beloved books if you want, but that's no life I want to explore any further with you. We don't have as much time as we once thought, to believe in something other than empty bottles lost in the…

for the queen of lapis lazuli

11971197 views00 comments00 favs

you kissed me, once,/ kindergarten, recall--/ behind my ear./ called/ 'bee sting'

The Perfect Crime

11961196 views00 comments00 favs

I had committed the perfect crime, and I had left nothing to chance; my best strategy was chancing nothing. Prudence and planning were my only allies, and these are the best allies of success. Usually.

The Colony of Voluntary Exiles

11961196 views22 comments22 favs

Voluntary exiles spread fears and feces, diseases and monstrosities, all the suffering and suffocation, ruthlessness and rootlessness of the world, just like a horsefly that cheekily spreads its filthy eggs in the most paradisiacal corners of the earth. Hence the…

Edward Ogle the Fifth

11961196 views33 comments22 favs

Roaming beetles knitting needles chopstick counter attack.

Plastic Cars, Plastic People

11961196 views00 comments00 favs

The man at the table was surrounded by an empty kitchen.Dishes were in the sink from the dinner before andEveryone had gone about their days early in the morning. They had left a board game out, scattered across the table,Life, plastic cars and plastic people, and a…

On a Son Turning Twenty-One

11961196 views55 comments22 favs

The rest is Scots, people for whom a taste is enough and a lyric’s as rare as a dragon or a poet named MacDuff.

Practice Questions: Grade 7

11961196 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

Could Be

11961196 views11 comment11 fav

Years later, the couple is different in some terribly profound way. Maybe they have grown old and begun to look like one another. Or maybe they have been divorced and haven't spoken in months or years except through the kids, who they spoil and use against their…

Ideal Man

11961196 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…

Frederick and Sarah

11961196 views00 comments00 favs

They'd driven the car there but had lost the keys so that it simply sat out in the yard, the yard of the house they couldn't leave because they'd lost the keys to the house as well as to the car, so they were kind of stuck. Their neighbors…

The Case of the Incinerated Spinster

11961196 views44 comments44 favs

There by the opposite doorway opening onto the thinly carpeted kitchen lay—well, what seemed to be all that was left of Miriam Flagellporte . . .

There.

11961196 views22 comments11 fav

There: you see a woman who has laid hands on the man she walks with. Tomorrow she will kill herself. Let me speak her life. Born alone, without event. Moon, gibbous. Month, Julius, the tail end. A Leo. Many other signs and wonders seen to have been…

The portrait

11961196 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…

The Man Who Memorized Kubla Khan

11961196 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.