Most read stories

Eden, Suburbs

21842184 views66 comments00 favs

The boy peered at the rather unusual place between the girl’s legs, which was entirely more complicated than a person might be given to believe should he see it, for example, bundled in underpants or a bathing suit.

From the Kitchen of my Childhood

21832183 views5656 comments1919 favs

An ice block heart rushed home to the beat of its melt.

Poem for the Poet

21822182 views1515 comments1515 favs

for Bill YarrowPoetry is a way of breathingagainst the enemy's chest withoutlosing consciousness again. Itis a ghost dance. Poetry is tobe determined by the plight of bees.Poetry is a waterfall ona mailing list. I've never tasteda finer whiskey than poetry.Poetry is half…

Margaret’s Mermaid

21822182 views55 comments44 favs

When she was eleven, Margaret still believed in mermaids. She would fasten the neon diving rings that her mother gave her to her ankles and swim around in the pool for hours. By the end of the afternoon, with chlorine-swollen skin she would wince as she…

The Tricycle

21822182 views44 comments00 favs

The large black pedals on the red/Tricycle rotate, push along the cracked,/Weedy surface.

le Misérable

21812181 views88 comments55 favs

I read the last line and close the book with a smack. “That ends that section,” I tell him. “Coming up is the chapter titled ‘The Ancient History of the Sewers of Paris.'

Let Us Pretend

21812181 views44 comments33 favs

"Perhaps a divorce?" she continues, thinking of his thin, long hands and how they almost, not quite, but almost, made their usual pattern on her body, remembering having queried many men on what their most erotic sexual encounter was and found that the an

Water for Old Bet

21812181 views00 comments00 favs

Why, I tell you, one run through that song, I’m always about to find my way out. But if this happens just two more times now, I tell you, I am going to go out and start something. You can’t treat a man like this. Even if he is smaller, like me. Why, I

How Poets Die

21802180 views2121 comments1616 favs

Mark Strandover decadesa steady diet of dictionenlarged his heartone day it just burstRobert Frosta crazy ideathat he couldbuild a wallwithout mortar tookpossession of his mindhe piled stoneon stone higherand higher untilthey toppled overcrushing him beneath Wilfred…

Glass Handcuffs

21802180 views44 comments22 favs

Maybe it's a suicide clock, counting the drops of blood on the bathroom tile. A cancer clock counting the number of good cells still willing to fight. Maybe it's a justice clock, counting the remaining days of freedom you have left.

Scuffle

21802180 views1818 comments1111 favs

Last Christmas Eve, my Nana shot my grandfather in the foot because he wouldn't stop boning the woman up the street.  So on Christmas Eve, after Nana drank a bunch of those baby-sized Miller Hi-life beers, she went upstairs, got her pistol, and said, “I'm gonna…

The Thing on the Stair

21792179 views66 comments44 favs

Autumn brings It

Ten Minutes in the Life of Franziska Kafka

21792179 views99 comments88 favs

bullet points about her soul

Glass

21792179 views1919 comments1111 favs

Her bulldozer of a husband died five years ago.

Heels.

21792179 views44 comments00 favs

Why am I attracted to this girl? She’s beautiful. Only five foot four, but still looks skyscraper tall thanks to those skinny greyhound legs of hers. She told me she used to dance, then giggled and said she hadn’t since she was five years old.

When Alone

21782178 views1818 comments99 favs

She'd sit out on the back deck and dig into the skin around her toenails with a paring knife until it bled. He'd listen to a single aria of Opera's Greatest Hits, number 10, until the cusp of some feeling, either despair or rage, would build and fade. Then he'd start…

Gang Bangs, and My First Time, Almost

21772177 views66 comments33 favs

Glen always had to be the first to fuck his sister, especially before that big galoot from down the street, whom Cheryl really liked to fuck, otherwise Glen would get violent. She had just started having her periods then, I remember. We were all there one

Vigil

21772177 views4040 comments2222 favs

You have arrived at the river, numb with the murmur of the city and the sleeplessness of anger, boredom, and too many people loving too many people too much. The heat in this night, not the moon as in ancient poems, is blazing; the moon is pink like the…

XAM: Paragraph Series

21772177 views1010 comments66 favs

Grief is to have given freely too unfreely. Grief is to have given one year too many. Wicked is to have wanted it to be given away that way. Wicked is to Sam as duty is to Mother. Sam’s wife is to his friend’s wife as one Mercedes to another.

Why do I put up with this woman?

21772177 views1414 comments99 favs

She doesn't even know who wears the Adam's apple in this house.

Breathing

21772177 views33 comments11 fav

It was the end of a New York City summer, the heat and humidity thick all around. But in her body it was an unforgiving winter, the memory of pain always leaving her cold

Six Feet Over

21762176 views44 comments33 favs

I’ve paid my dues in this dimension/ so show me where the rest of them are

Hotel Khadijah

21762176 views2727 comments1616 favs

"A prostitute of the Hotel Khadijah in Rahab fell in love with my father...."

Peace-keeping (Valentine's Day Massacre Theme)

21762176 views2626 comments99 favs

So they told him he better get ready to join the army because that’s where it was at, for him. After all, not everybody could split coconuts with their hands.

One Dead in Violent Crash

21752175 views2323 comments1717 favs

Death came to my street, but I did not invite him.

Disassembly

21752175 views3232 comments1515 favs

Maybe the thing is over by now. They have gathered up all the pictures and mementos of our dad’s life and hauled them away.

Drinking an Orange Julius While Listening to Pink Floyd

21752175 views2525 comments1212 favs

I was strapped for cache

Animals in Reverse

21732173 views2424 comments1313 favs

She was still alive when I started to write the story of her life, called Lucy's Story, about her recovery from catnip, but it was not the real story. In the fake story, she took the subway to A.A.

Rodney & Chelsea

21732173 views3333 comments1818 favs

Chelsea's breasts are more the size of tangerines, but he likes them. He likes that she smells like Fruit Loops and that her front teeth overlap slightly. Her mouth is glossed. He slips his tongue inside.

Strobe Genre, Utah!

21702170 views1919 comments1414 favs

Co-polar order spectrum; strobe genre (the disco light of the 70s illumining and eclipsing fiction-non-fiction-non in one "article"); UTAH! a jump from forehead-down to standing fast, a cheer, for genre studies.