Most read stories

The Sugar-Free Scent of Today

23122312 views99 comments77 favs

Should have washed our hands, we thought after, licking sugar-spit and dirt.

With Ann Coulter on the Jewish Conversion Tour

23122312 views22 comments22 favs

A little bony for my tastes–I wonder if she’s on the Lady Di diet. I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers, but it would be like sleeping with Eva Braun.

Another Big Dumb Object

23122312 views22 comments00 favs

"James, can you take a peek at problem://7ac5e46f today?" "It's just another big dumb object. Seems low priority." "Escalated by the directorate."

Frank Meets Francine

23122312 views1414 comments1212 favs

I interviewed in an hour and didn’t have an umbrella, so I ducked inside the next door I passed. It didn’t matter what they sold, I wasn’t there to make a purchase.

Rejection

23112311 views1212 comments1010 favs

I hate math. I hate everything about it.

A June Defection

23102310 views2525 comments1515 favs

I came from the only flat region in the kingdom of mountains and fjords, and called the city “Down in the Dumps”. The beleaguering mountains smelled a flatlander when they saw one, and hated me right back.

Samuel Stoltzfus’ Divining Plate

23102310 views55 comments22 favs

It’s true that there are many accounts of fascinating Amish dinnerware, but none is more interesting than Samuel Stoltzfus’ Divining Plate, forged in 1881.

Veld fire

23102310 views33 comments11 fav

The crackling inferno sweeps across the ground Devouring all in its scorching path

Something About Ireland (from FATHER MUST)

23102310 views44 comments33 favs

That’s the way it went all day with me—didn’t get far, didn’t see much, just, with Mary, drank tea here and there. A fine day it was, too; not cloudy, not raining...

Lingering Over Language

23102310 views2121 comments1212 favs

The mornings he comes in

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 4

23082308 views44 comments00 favs

That night we slept on the floor of Kirk and Maggie’s apartment and listened to them arguing all night about art and life and love. Ah, me, I sighed, the sad soul of America! I thought of Walt Whitman. I thought of Allen Ginsberg.

Telling Maybelline Jones

23082308 views66 comments00 favs

Maybelline Jones is my sister, my friend, and I try to tell her the right way to be.

A Night Ride With the Girl Scout Legbreakers

23082308 views66 comments22 favs

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake, drenched in sweat. I know what I need–a Thin Mint cookie–but I don’t know where I’m gonna find one.

Proper Grammar

23082308 views1212 comments77 favs

Another thing about Dysthymia is how I get locked into a thought, a needle in a record of a song I can’t get out of my head, a song that drives me crazy until I hear it again, until I play it just the amount of times to where my brain is satisfied.

Joseph Campbell by the Aloe Vera Plants

23082308 views88 comments66 favs

There was man from antiquity that sat next to me. His belief in the healing qualities of Aloe Vera so pronounced, that the house brimmed with such. He had no use for modernity in any of its forms but was fond of supermarkets. When in one he was overwhelmed with an…

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served On Tiny Plates Along With Matching Pretty Teacups

23082308 views1717 comments1212 favs

The Gothic-filigreed gate creaks as a guard closes it behind the little girl in the ruffled dress. Standing there in the morning fog, on the sidewalk outside the reform school, she looks remarkably like Shirley Temple. Dimpled, chubby face. Pretty, party dress. Her…

Sees, Kindness, and Made

23072307 views1212 comments1010 favs

SeesWe fell into this lake together and traced the clean soft lines straight back to ourselves, with a carefree laugh, ha ha ha-- an embarrassing ease. This small miracle does tend to put in orbit something high flying besides clouds into the sky inside of…

The Thrill of Sky Diving

23072307 views99 comments22 favs

It's not that you want to be silkworm all your life. That's what I'm telling my on-again-off-again girlfriend aboard the plane. Her name is Phoebe as in that song about a girl who lived in her own world within the shell of another. Phoebe, I'm saying, to bridge distances…

Out of That Bed 1963

23072307 views22 comments33 favs

My father's hands were huge. His left knuckles gashed as a kid when he rode his bike too close to a moving train. When his fingers fisted around a glass, the scarred joints bulged from his grip like blind eyes.

What He Knows What She Knows What You Know

23072307 views88 comments77 favs

next time i come around i want to be a redwood.

Winter Kills

23072307 views1414 comments55 favs

And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.

William

23062306 views11 comment00 favs

The sun browbeat me relentlessly, like a one-eyed judge with an unforgiving heart.

writer’s block

23062306 views22 comments11 fav

round & round this empty block again & again i go

Blue Jeans and Black Leather

23062306 views44 comments22 favs

I lock the last of the beer and wine doors and head back to the cash register. Our clocks are not on bar time so I only have a few minutes. I check the till. A stack of ones and three fives. Enough to break a twenty, but looking bare. The parking lot's empty. The air…

Gunplay

23052305 views1111 comments1010 favs

It was when the party hit a lull and a woman wearing too much rouge was going on about her parakeets that Tom decided to set down his bourbon glass and pull out his gun.

Alfalfa

23052305 views99 comments33 favs

The year I lick so much windowpane off stamps I have to use Elmer's glue to back the twenty-center for a postcard cash request to my mother, that I am alive note at the end of term, is the year of all the "wine" parties. "Wine" is what we put down

My Boogie Man

23052305 views99 comments55 favs

We'd both done well to avoid crying before today and I couldn't stand to see him like this. I crawled on my hands and knees to the closet. “David, come out of there. I…I don't like this any more than you do. But you can't come to college with me.

Story

23052305 views99 comments55 favs

For two days, I bashed out words with grimacing fingers, wrenching images from my whining consciousness – a weak, lumbering, uninspired piece – and now for what?

The Thirteenth Sign

23042304 views2222 comments1414 favs

I'm twelve again and

Confess another sin

23042304 views1616 comments1313 favs

.