Most read stories

The Creature, to an Empty Chair

20662066 views1515 comments88 favs

It is pain taking a form, Plato’s dream, born from your hands father that rejected me, giving me the color of abandonment, eyes dulled by isolation, a body deceased without life-giving touch.

Fifty-One

20652065 views1010 comments33 favs

Several friends—hers and his—hung around the edges of their marriage, and it would be naive to rule out the possibility of a few stray affairs. The thought didn’t anger him; on the contrary it amused him as if it were some trivia question, the answe

Godot, Go Wait Yourself!

20652065 views99 comments33 favs

a bone-crusher handshake

Out of That Bed 1963

20652065 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.

And Her Eyes Said Something I Did Not Understand

20652065 views22 comments11 fav

A herd of garbage trucks groaned down dark streets filling their black hydraulic hearts with rotten trashcans and glass, and a smile ate her whole face. I showed her a text from a friend: "T-minus 10 seconds till meltdown."She laughed and I wrote back.A small,…

Ecce viator : Behold the Traveler

20652065 views22 comments00 favs

The snake glides unhurriedly through the garden one warm July afternoon looking for a schmoose. Or barring such pleasant daytime passage, a shady snoozing spot. He twines himself about the gravid apple tree’s trunk caduceus-like, slithering his handsom

"You Go"

20652065 views44 comments22 favs

You like your life. Ducks march in a row. You've reached a certain age but you're strong. Healthy. You've got food, clothing, shelter. You have insurance and important papers. You don't have a man in your life, and you admit— Admit nothing. The…

Empty Space

20642064 views33 comments22 favs

The house was empty now - silent. Each room was filled with air too thin to sustain memory. She stood, absorbing the emptiness, addding it to her own. Her footsteps were hesitant, reluctant to disturb the silence. She walked into her old bedroom - so…

Dear England, Please Send Me A Redheaded Boy

20642064 views44 comments11 fav

Dear England, Please send me a redheaded boy, fire-red, please. We have one girl aflame but the others are stone yellow or dark as the sea. The flames are so easy to spot from afar.

Parking Garage

20642064 views1717 comments1818 favs

It's that quiet comfortable darkness. One should feel it often and necessarily.

The Inkblot Test

20642064 views00 comments00 favs

“Regard this inkblot,” the Psych says to Worker 168. “What do you see?” Worker 168, a thin young women wearing overalls, peers at the inkblot. “I see a beautiful summer day,” she says. “A young woman, wearing a flowing dress, sits…

I Draw a Map

20632063 views1212 comments77 favs

I draw your location on my thighs. It takes up both legs; it’s far. I think about showing you but something comes up. The phone rings. I tell her I don’t want to donate to the PBA.

Neighbors

20632063 views55 comments22 favs

She sees the little girls in the yard through her front window. They’re as naked as the day they were born, not far from the event itself. They dip backward and forward like pitchers, laughing, balling up their little white fists and shaking them like t

William

20632063 views11 comment00 favs

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

Suspended Heart

20622062 views77 comments77 favs

The suspended heart became an oracle of sorts. Hung from a string, immersed in the kind of glass container in which tulips grow, it was located between Bath and Body Works and Kleinfelter's Jewelers at the north entrance of the mall. Someone had lost it,

I Happen To Think I Have A Great Face, Actually

20622062 views1313 comments1111 favs

For those of you with a position cemented firmly to the contrary, I happen to think I have a great face, actually. My face, maybe I talk about my body a lot, but my face is pretty great, really it is.

Four Days before Thanksgiving, Boston to Colorado

20622062 views55 comments44 favs

The daughter's trip, a travail, cross country; the painkillers were not the finisher mom needed—and the white sheets of the institution were too thin to provide her any comfort as she dreamt of swimming; a backstroke suspended over a waterless pool.Her father…

Arcana Magi - c.11: Feelings

20622062 views00 comments00 favs

The warmth flowed around her, and her heart beat at a calming pace. She felt as though the heat bathed her like water and felt her body cleansing within it.

Close to Ireland (for the Paddy Group Challenge)

20622062 views88 comments22 favs

The closest I've been to Ireland is Conwy castle on the coast of Wales. It was summer, mid-way through college. I was naive and dreamy then. I wandered historic and literary monuments throughout England and weighed my future options.

Numb And Number

20622062 views55 comments33 favs

He looked up as he reached the intersection, and crossed as it cleared. His head was down again as he walked toward his car, which was parked beside a schoolyard, where junior high students were involved in an after-school game of touch football. He smi

Plato's Cave

20622062 views1212 comments1111 favs

Mick Jagger and I strolled rue Gabrielle in Montmartre. Our conversation spread from apples to shellfish. We stopped for some oysters. Do you remember a time when books were venerated, I asked? I remember a time, he said, when rock and roll was a fetus in the tank of…

Oklahoma, 1944: Howard Hughes Spends the Night in Jail

20622062 views88 comments55 favs

There's a drain in the floor.

Boys of Summer in Yonkers (Memoir Excerpt # 2)

20622062 views66 comments11 fav

I am coming to understand how many memories of my father involve him, driving

Animus and Vitriol

20612061 views2828 comments1212 favs

At some point, we will have to shoot them/ through the eyes and skull and heart

The Most Beautiful Truth

20612061 views1313 comments88 favs

I still believe in the very slim chanceI might say something luckyenough to reach your truest insides, your at homespirit, that you will hearand understand ascare on my part, evenif you can never quiteidentify me asits secret sender, that warm…

Zurich, 1989

20612061 views1010 comments55 favs

I do not yet really understand the power I seem to have at this moment. And I am certainly too young to recognize that it will end up being weakness, too.

A Certain Boy

20612061 views66 comments66 favs

Every single girl, from junior to senior (and a few counselors too, I suspected), wanted to make out with Marty Miller. Did he know how drunk with attraction I was?

Don't Touch

20612061 views77 comments22 favs

Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day

A Conversation Between Bacon and Eggs

20612061 views55 comments00 favs

In a hot splattering we were born

The Untimely Death of the Old Forgotten Man

20602060 views44 comments22 favs

I watched haunted as my pearl tooth circled the rotten porcelain sink. I could feel my hair thinning and my pale skin suddenly felt too loose.