Most read stories

Power Ballad

18401840 views55 comments22 favs

Her eyes were brown. But he wasn’t sure. He looked again: her eyes were blue. Her eyes were blue, and looking straight at him.

Love at First Sight

18391839 views22 comments11 fav

Life ascends gradually—just like they always said. I stop counting on immediate transformations—the overnight best-seller, instant enlightenment—and instead focus on what I can do: Writing a little each day and making it to Mass on the weekend. I even giv

To My First Crush

18391839 views2424 comments2222 favs

But I came back around, after Robert Kennedy got shot, with one hand up your skirt and the other on the gear shift...

What Ever Happened to Old Tom Joad

18391839 views1111 comments99 favs

Someone hollers Okie.

The Sitzer

18391839 views2323 comments99 favs

Fred, who by that point had already wanted to call Jimmy "Jim," talked a river. Jimmy, who had already called her Freddy, took a mojo bag from his back pants pocket and asked her to write something that he could put inside.

Arcana Magi - c.4: Reflection

18391839 views00 comments00 favs

Those without magic, tried to figure out what their fellow co-workers were looking at as they watched Alysia fly. Oryn lifted her head up and her mouth gaped open, her eyes twitched as the reflection of a bright light glared across her eyes.

How To Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)

18381838 views33 comments00 favs

While I had believed that the subject had been exhausted, that the bottomless pit of the individual navel gazer had been done to death, now here arrives How To Find Yourself to show that previous literature had only scratched the surface of the belly butt

For Carol: Life Bursts Out

18381838 views1515 comments1010 favs

Life was small. It was tiny even, so tiny it was hard to see it sometimes. Life curled up to make itself even smaller, to fit into the kinds of holes that insects crawl into to get away from bigger insects. Life was sad. Life didn't want to be an insect.

I’m tired of being timid.

18371837 views1111 comments77 favs

“Later,” I say to the frisky crickets, verbal cash of the eggnog spa, spot of gum…

2002 or 3

18361836 views1414 comments1111 favs

She was petite, pear-shaped, white, the girlfriend of a friend who'd done his degree in Russian Literature, but that's not the only reason I liked him. The husband I had for a while traveled whether he needed to or not and so I'd go with Julie and Phillip to movies,…

Clean Out Your Desk, Naps. You're Being Replaced.

18361836 views22 comments11 fav

Sunday mornings my mother got up early—and dragged me kicking and screaming out of bed and into my nicest jeans and sweater. I have still never thanked her. (I’m borrowing, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less true.)

You Should Change at Jamaica

18361836 views99 comments77 favs

"...across from me staring at my bare knees."

Tweeting "War and Peace" by Bobbie Ann Mason and Meg Pokrass

18361836 views1212 comments55 favs

by Bobbie Ann Mason and Meg Pokrass at The Nervous Breakdown website: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/mpokrass/2012/10/tweeting-war-and-peace-with-bobbie-ann-mason/

The Cool Report

18361836 views1616 comments88 favs

I didn't go to China, however. I would have gone there in debt wearing their clothing. I was afraid to owe even $4,000 (what I still owe) living overseas.

I Am In Frequent Contact With You-Know-Who

18351835 views88 comments44 favs

"I am in frequent contact with you know who, and am able, most of the time, to surreptitiously send messages all day long every day, whenever I am inspired."

Confess another sin

18341834 views1616 comments1313 favs

.

Dancers: Summer '69

18341834 views2828 comments2424 favs

The locals cut stone in quarries, built elevators at the Cummins plant in Columbus, or brewed shine back in the hills between Bean Blossom and Gnaw Bone.

George

18341834 views2222 comments1818 favs

he makes his way back / to the ocean, back to the popcorn, back / to the pinball machines

Sloth

18331833 views1717 comments1111 favs

(Insert poignant line here)

In the Woods

18321832 views1212 comments22 favs

...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.

Against the V(2.0)(revised)

18311831 views1616 comments1414 favs

There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…

The Weak Force

18291829 views44 comments22 favs

So I walk behind Sandra’s desk and I put my radioactive tum-tum right up to her beaded dreadlocks and I tell her about the nuclear energy that is flowing through her right now. She laughs and screams at me the way I am sure her daughter does when someone

WHAT WE REMEMBER MAY NOT REMEMBER US

18291829 views1212 comments1010 favs

1. The clouds and the shadows of the clouds. The early light, like the night undressing herself revealing pink beneath, underneath the glory and the intimacy like early love made of arms only arms fingers and…

The Making of Mermaids

18291829 views77 comments55 favs

You ran so quickly for a while no one could find you. Finally, you sent us a report. You had retreated to the sea, you had your legs stitched together, you became a mermaid and were applying to join the school.

A Body Divided, 2

18291829 views33 comments00 favs

I came down with polio on September 15, 1953, a mild, smoky day drawing close to autumn outside of Chicago — which also happened to be the exact date of my parents' twenty-first wedding anniversary. Only six months later the Salk vaccine was already b

Breach of Faith

18291829 views33 comments11 fav

You love your wife and would never do anything to hurt her. In thirteen years of marriage you’ve never been unfaithful, never done more than glance at another woman. Until tonight. Tonight you got lucky. Oh God, how you got lucky!

We're All Guys Here

18271827 views66 comments77 favs

The doorbell rang while Ron was masturbating.He closed his eyes tight. Tried to hold the image of Lori bent over the arm of the couch. No use. It was gone. Ron sighed, then levered the recliner down. Tied on the terry-cloth robe Lori had given him. He kicked aside an empty…

The Sally-Anne Test

18271827 views33 comments55 favs

Sally-Anne is in a graveyard. A girl about her age and height died two years before. Sally-Anne is digging up the bones. Her parents Aaron and Rebecca think she is at her piano…

Letters from the Asylum (1)

18271827 views66 comments11 fav

I'll be honest, and tell you that I am in a bad way. The weather is very hot up here, extremely so, almost hellish.

A Journey Within A Journey

18271827 views1212 comments88 favs

Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod / out of season / we were rigged for haddock, / it was dressed for the weather