Most read stories

Killing with kindness

21262126 views1111 comments88 favs

I have a few medical issues.

Re: “oo===D---o-}-<,” Fiction Submission

21262126 views11 comment11 fav

Fake letter, 55 words.

Session

21262126 views77 comments44 favs

I looked at her greying face and wrinkling hair and tried to fathom why my counsellor was suddenly being such a bitch.

The '08 Campaign And the Crash

21262126 views77 comments77 favs

Here's the '08 presidential campaign in a nutshell: The Dems couldn't dredge up a white guy that even the dead in Chicago would vote for, so they went with Obama. Meanwhile, the GOP couldn't dig Reagan up try as they might,…

Lord of Autumn

21262126 views00 comments11 fav

Gordon He pressed the side of his face to the pillow and waited for the sound of birds. The room was black, the window open; when a breeze came the curtains billowed out against a lighter sky. He heard the clock. He heard the dry sound of Helen breathing;…

Dear Joe,

21242124 views88 comments77 favs

Walk alone at night, quietly. Pause for eye contact with raccoons and night cats, your drunk self, and lights in the graveyard. Don't apologize for it in the morning. Instead of the shame you feel for one time acting selfishly and chasing a future, say…

History Channel

21242124 views1010 comments77 favs

Some of the notes allude to how the ineluctable modalities of the visible and audible are transformed by the experience of hanging in a transparent egg half out of a B-17 at 10 thousand feet waiting to be spattered like paint.

Leave Off Doves

21242124 views99 comments33 favs

Midway through the fall semester, an unremarkable girl in Professor Woody's Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words.

Their Next

21232123 views77 comments55 favs

The base of the monastery before him, he let her go into a warm updraft and she cascaded out and up, never falling as she rode the tiger into her next.

My Hairy Thumbnail

21222122 views99 comments44 favs

I was a gangly 11 years old, a year before the Watergate hearings pre-empted the afternoon cartoons on television, when I discovered an uncle's girlie magazine during routine reconnaissance of my grandmother's hall closet.

A Sunday Afternoon in Paris

21222122 views2424 comments1616 favs

He would lean on his window sill in the evening and watch the whores. They wore gaudy clothes and too much makeup.

One Poem, Eight Rejections

21212121 views2525 comments1515 favs

Do you suppose you could make your female protagonist a salamander rather than a human?

17 Days

21212121 views3939 comments1818 favs

Sometimes, under the gauze and yellow salves, I glimpse you...

Hundred Dollar Hit

21212121 views66 comments11 fav

"My god," Toni said, bending over and tapping her head gently against the counter in fake anguish. "His ass in those jeans. Jesus. I should be young and lucky like you." Toni tapped her cigarette ash into the coin tray.

For Carol: Life Bursts Out

21202120 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.

When Your Poem Becomes Self Aware

21202120 views1515 comments1313 favs

Where will you hide? Because you know it Will seek you out for answers you might Only be asking for yourself. It Will send many students to stand outside Your apartment and chant your name. It will beg you to perform its birth Again to the…

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

21202120 views1414 comments44 favs

One of the women is a brassy blond, and when she takes off her coat, I almost choke on a French fry.

Why They Cried: Ted

21182118 views88 comments11 fav

Ted did not understand turn-of-the-century costume dramas, and because he didn’t understand them, he often referred to them as "chick flicks" or "English crap." Even when the principals were not British. Even when the principals were Winona Ryder.

Moses Reborn

21182118 views22 comments11 fav

Influenza Jones knew she was Moses. Reborn, of course, because the real Moses had been dead for longer than Influenza could remember. It didn’t matter that she was a woman and Moses was a man, she knew what her body say and her body say she be Moses. Sh

fork

21172117 views1414 comments77 favs

xxxxxx

Like Jeremy Irons

21152115 views33 comments22 favs

Usually, you shop around carefully before condescending to see a new doctor, but this time you go to the first gynecologist who would have you, who has time available. Usually, you refuse to see a male doctor (you hate having male doctors!) but this time,

The Wonders of Wonder

21152115 views77 comments77 favs

There it was, square in the middle of someone’s lawn: a slice of white bread, like a shirtless Englishman stretched out in the sun.

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.6 - c.5

21142114 views33 comments11 fav

Polo could sense the tension with his group. He was unsure what the creatures would do to them.

Oh, Danny Boy

21142114 views22 comments00 favs

I wore a padded bra. Proud of my tits. D. ordered a Bloody May, I had a vodka tonic. After the second drink I slipped out into the fog, and smoked a little weed. I could see Long Island College Hospital across the street. To my right, the BQE rose up

Through the Looking Glass: Humpty Dumpty 2011

21142114 views2121 comments1111 favs

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

i can't have

21142114 views55 comments33 favs

Hey there little hippie girl, smilin’ to the ears and dripping with scarves, I cherish our friendship. However, every time you take off your shoes to dance at a rock show, hair swingin’ like silk vines in the paradise that is your shaking ass...

Three Ways of the Saw

21142114 views11 comment33 favs

I’m at the kitchen sink washing down pills when they bump up my driveway in a blue Toyota pick up, its bed eaten through with rust so bad I can see past the holes in the body to the frame.

A Midsummer's Nightmare

21132113 views33 comments22 favs

"So, is this the datgum exit?" "Grumphfr exit fregerrock." (This response means either yes, it is, I told you that ten miles ago, or, no it's not, I told you that ten miles ago, depending if it’s the right exit or not.)

Tremor

21132113 views1515 comments1313 favs

I ask because she's the animal person, not me. She understands animal behavior.

Three Poems, One for Each Eye

21132113 views1818 comments1010 favs

1. a bone to pick"It seems to be accepted nowadays more than ever that killing,individual and mass killing,is the order of the day;it is accepted."--Henry MillerWhy can't you leave well enough alone just long enough for it to make its own miraculous escape…