Most read stories

Neighbors

20462046 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

Sundays

20462046 views1414 comments1010 favs

Momma’s hands smell of vanilla.

Sees, Kindness, and Made

20462046 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 Most Beautiful Truth

20452045 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…

Dealing with Sudden Melancholy

20452045 views99 comments1111 favs

Someone who I know only via Facebook and a writer site we both belong to posted a picture of a 12 week old fetus in the palm of a human hand. The message was anti-abortion. You know--how can you consider killing this baby? And the picture was of a tiny, tiny…

The Case Of The Limehouse Golem

20452045 views00 comments00 favs

Calmly I rang the bell for Mrs. Madison and sank with some relief onto the ottoman. In a crisis, a calm head and decisive action are called for. The housekeeper would surely know what to do.

A Necessary Evil

20452045 views2323 comments55 favs

But it was a necessary evil and one he’d made peace with, easy to do when he arrived home each day to the comforting touch of his wife, his home.

The Great Wall of Suburbia

20452045 views22 comments00 favs

Old man Hensley was fed up. With everything, he would say, if one was so inclined to ask (which was not advisable). It was his first morning as an official retiree and, if it was…

Undone

20442044 views2424 comments2222 favs

Last summer our marriage took a direct hit and crashed into a deep pit with little warning when Millicent met a Facebook man and simply left, taking up with him, presenting him with my space in her life to receive her touch and this thought perpetually gnaws away, making me…

Godot, Go Wait Yourself!

20442044 views99 comments33 favs

a bone-crusher handshake

i am so fucking unsold

20442044 views55 comments44 favs

i am wire i am wiredi am soaking fucking tiredi am sorry i am coldi am so fucking unsoldi am endlessi am statici am past lost time fanatici am wounded i am seethingi am bothered angry leaving.i am metal i am wateri am sister fucking daughteri am nothing i am lazyi am…

1918, 1944, 1991, and now

20442044 views1212 comments66 favs

Disability is indivisibility—all of us could be its members—unlike its affirmative action forebears who remain underrepresented, even as the groups’ selected contestants prepare to retire early, a distributed group whose specialty is American anthropology

The Thirteenth Sign

20432043 views2222 comments1414 favs

I'm twelve again and

14-B

20432043 views55 comments22 favs

It was a forgettable face, to be sure. Neither ugly nor beautiful, she looked like any one of a million American women. She could have been headed anywhere, but at that moment, she wanted to go to 14-B.

A Knobby Thing

20432043 views2222 comments1010 favs

She feels ugly but ready for anything.

Fifty-One

20422042 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

Stories from the War

20422042 views11 comment11 fav

He didn’t know how to tell his story. It wasn’t an easy story to tell. There certainly was a clear beginning, but it didn’t make much sense to start at the beginning. There was no way to end the story either; the ending seemed to last forever.

Plato's Cave

20422042 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…

The Flight

20422042 views33 comments22 favs

Of course, you're eventually struck by the thought that the house you saw on the hill was not your house and that those children and the dog are purely matter for the strange.

Bumper Repair: $129.95

20412041 views88 comments88 favs

They ask about WWII and he claims no kills...

The Untimely Death of the Old Forgotten Man

20412041 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.

Urban Renewal

20412041 views77 comments33 favs

Bike shops, vintage shops, after hour bar shops

Something About Ireland (from FATHER MUST)

20412041 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...

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

20412041 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/

Unseen (a Five-Pointed Star with Four Streaming Lights Coming Out of Its Back Like Mutable Feathers)

20402040 views1717 comments1515 favs

What you see us doing here is not so much, andall we are not being there isn't either. Our kissing mouths may not always be singing, but we are constantly praying for you, and for more rain or less rain, rivers as the situation warrants. Don't…

Sleep With The Fishes

20402040 views22 comments11 fav

Pull her from the water and check her pockets. Shouldn’t death tattoo a message on each palm it removes the pulse from.

A Certain Boy

20402040 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?

Numb And Number

20402040 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

A Letter to the Global Warming

20392039 views44 comments00 favs

I am mightily pissed. I was, like, waiting for you last night, at the Greenhouse cafe, and you stood me up. I should have listened to my mom who always advised me not to go on blind dates, but you are so popular that I just couldn't help myself. When I ca

Dakota

20392039 views00 comments00 favs

I am warming up the Hotel Hugo courtesy shuttle van when Victor the front desk manager comes striding out waving his arms asking me why I haven't backed up yet. Victor says I'm always in my own world when I should be paying attention to the work at hand,