Most read stories

the way you make me feel

941941 views33 comments33 favs

out in space/ platonic forms/ dazzle with/ voluptuous grace

Intake

941941 views33 comments00 favs

If I came home and she had peed, even after I walked her in the morning before I left, I would tighten up my whole face and shoulders, so I wouldn't hit her, and I would grab her by the tags collar, and I would hiss at her what she needed to know, what sh

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 49

941941 views22 comments11 fav

Francesco entered the gallery, and he immediately went to work.

Sic Transit

941941 views22 comments00 favs

He was that famous actor—now famously forgotten—most renowned for his exits. He could burst through an in or out door with the best of them. Better than the best of them; he was the best of them. With the subtlety of his often noisy art he could…

greta

941941 views55 comments33 favs

you knew the lightbent it in your favorleapt confidentlyacross heartscheeks and shouldersrouged chromaticincandescent pretendingperhaps the dark had no claimover your lonely clumsy soul© 2013 - Rene

Living on Non-Skid Row

941941 views33 comments22 favs

Here’s the local group of grumpy gray-haired men Chewing over politics as if it’s important As if their endless discussing of it, Waving their hands in the air, gesturing, Is going to change the world How do these guys stop from having heart a

on a long suburban plain

941941 views22 comments11 fav

We were stuck sweating it out on a long suburban plain when you left. Or else we’d mob the one visible hill (in Palos Hills, or Hillside) and turn the televisions on, looking behind us nervously, hopelessly, until every evening became a Wednesday evenin

Family Leave

941941 views00 comments00 favs

I look at her really look we both know her time is fading "I'm just sad that you won't be there."

The Painter Tourist

941941 views00 comments00 favs

demanded he give up muscatel art

Nascent Talk with the Gypsy

940940 views55 comments22 favs

She was having a laugh, but I didn't know what about. We were sitting in a big house that was on the top of a large incline. All these books were scattered around, and the walls and the kitchen, the doors and the quarter round and every other thing, was old and…

A Pair of Allowances

940940 views44 comments00 favs

“Your mother enjoyed apples and made you wear unfashionable pants; she was a bitch. From now on we eat only candy bars and we wear only shorts. But first, four hours of video games!”

Interlude: Beauty

940940 views33 comments00 favs

Musing on female beauty I came up with this: it makes my dick hard. And if that's a bit crude, well, hell, I'm dead. Want to sue me? Back when the clans were at one with the earth, circa goo-gobs of long years B.C., female beauty meant…

Kids in Commercials

940940 views22 comments00 favs

Hanna was so close to being one of those commercial kids. I mean, the commercial kids all kind of look like her anyway. They’re homecoming queen pretty, and have these dumb smiles like they know they’ll never be sad or poor.

War Story: Alternate Duty II - crash landing

940940 views00 comments00 favs

I was only allowed ten hours in the tower a month so the Army in its infinite wisdom gave me lots of alternate duty which in the I-Corp area mostly meant loaning me to the Marines. That worked out because the alternate duty the Army came up with tended to

An Exquisite Fall From Grace

940940 views00 comments00 favs

He lay on a wooden pallet, which he had placed inside a cardboard box that might have once held a refrigerator. Except the box was labeled “Robotic Endoscopic Surgery System.” His head was propped on a gym bag that contained all his possessions. Outside, it…

In the Life

940940 views66 comments66 favs

You had autumn in your hair I liked the way you sat at a table And drank champagne My past years have carried me To sixteen countries Christ, we have so much to share Listen, I know how the other half lives And we can’t live like that an

That Old-Time Religion

940940 views00 comments00 favs

The road to heaven is littered for miles with dead sinners, or more precisely, the sides of the roads are lined with crosses on which the sinners are nailed. It has always been so, since time started ticking for Civilized…

Resonate

940940 views11 comment11 fav

In September of that year, our neighbor Wayne had this idea that he could get rich by selling groceries Amway-style, and he booted his 12-year-old boy out of his own bedroom and put up shelves loaded with packages of spaghetti, cans of roast beef, soda po

Love in Miniature

940940 views33 comments00 favs

Hole #1 – Loop-de-Loop A piece of metal curved into a loop like a curlicue off-ramp. Jake and I step up to the Golf-O-Rama mat like accidental twins. My ball is half blue and half orange, like a gas station freebie. The old man at the desk said I

The Passing of Odd Fellows ---- Tales From the IV

940940 views22 comments11 fav

The appointed day came without much fanfare. The day was gloomy, but it would do. They climbed to the roof of the house to a small landing where Smiley placed the tiny piano stool smack dab in the middle. As soon as Ethan sat down Smiley rotated the chair

Four More Haikus

940940 views55 comments00 favs

Death is like a warmcup of hot cocoa, steamingup into nothing. The sun rise will bringprison bars of light through thebedroom blinds again. Sorry about thefirst three hours of your deathI thought you were drunk. Across the park thestrange dog looks…

karmic youth

940940 views22 comments00 favs

We were so easy, so willing to be drained, that to start making those puffed-up stories about us now, our courage, etc. would be purely misleading. Put a bottle, or glass of wine in our hand, and our panties flew off, and gladly we would have followed y

Sugar Cookie Season

939939 views88 comments55 favs

take out the yellowed recipes/ left by mothers and grandmothers—// perhaps the great aunt who never married—

Chewy

939939 views33 comments22 favs

Chewy is an old dog. His face is mostly white.

Puke

939939 views22 comments11 fav

What the fuck is that smell? Puke? Pine-Sol? Oh shit!Back seat of a cop car.Again?What is it this time?“Excuse me, officer? Where the fuck are my clothes?”

Under New Management

939939 views44 comments33 favs

You always liked the color of your nose, raspberry red. It matched the glittery dazzle of your rainbow hair when the neon lights hit it just right, and man did they always hit it just right, the vibrant honey-yellow big-bird frizz and feathers, swaying to and fro as…

The Prom Queen and the Quarterback

939939 views44 comments22 favs

Friday night, a bar downtown, beneath the swirling dots of disco lights, seated at a table by the door, I come across a Cheerleader from my high school days, having a Martini with the Quarterback she married. Even in forgiving light, …

s'mores

939939 views22 comments33 favs

hot, full focused, hypnotic

Dangling Participles

939939 views00 comments00 favs

Flies as big as raisins sucked spit off his lip as he slept. Not sleep in the strictest sense of the word because guys like him don't sleep, they merely avoid life between rampages. And this guy, well, he's gonna wish he'd avoided life a bit longer because when he…

Firecracker to the Dome

939939 views11 comment22 favs

pulling my bones apart, fingers are supernatural beings