Most read stories

A Knobby Thing

22202220 views2222 comments1010 favs

She feels ugly but ready for anything.

How We Send to Anderbo

22202220 views1515 comments99 favs

She's always sitting in a soft chair watching television with little stars dotting her elbows and lightning bolts on her wrists.

Corporal Punishment

22192219 views1414 comments1313 favs

When I was a little boy, I had a thing about women’s behinds.

Third Time's the Charm

22192219 views3535 comments1515 favs

No jobs except drinking...

The Duck, the Clock, and the Condom

22192219 views99 comments77 favs

Every night famous authors read not only to us, but to a duck. A wild female who emerged from the lake just as we were gathering, settled her gray-brown feathers down not three feet from the podium, tucked her head inside her wing, and remained there. If the duck liked…

The End of the World

22192219 views88 comments1010 favs

I find driftwood, long, smooth logs washed up on the beach, drag them to dunes still wet from the sea...

Ditching the Universe for Katy

22182218 views88 comments22 favs

I am running for only one thing now. For Katy.

Erase Her

22182218 views3030 comments2222 favs

I wake up in the morning and write her name on the white paper napkin I always place in front of me at the kitchen table as I have my first cup of coffee. I write it throughout the day. Twelve or fifteen times. I've done this for exactly twenty-three days. I always…

Beautiful Plague

22182218 views77 comments11 fav

Jacob Obrecht, you are beautiful. Everything inside your head and everything you’ve ever made is beautiful and singing.

We Don't Need No Education

22182218 views2727 comments1919 favs

“There’s an ill energy that emanates from your precise heart that I find attractive”

The Epidemic of Weariness

22182218 views66 comments33 favs

“Life cannot continue at a breakneck pace, because it is breaking too many necks,” the Health Czar told the President.

Sees, Kindness, and Made

22162216 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…

Confess another sin

22152215 views1616 comments1313 favs

.

I Beat Myself at Chess (revised)

22152215 views77 comments00 favs

There we sat, myself and I, at a small folding table in the middle of the lab beside the main, l-shaped workbench. The lab was empty - always was - except for the two of us.

The Boy in the Sandwich (novel excerpt - children's)

22152215 views11 comment00 favs

I was getting ready to eat a thick peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich when a blue spider pushed up a corner of the bread from the inside and said, "Don't chomp, don't chew! We're in here, we're having a good time, and we don't feel like being eaten.

A Fate Worse than Death

22152215 views44 comments33 favs

The abandoned body got up and left the room. It was just in time to greet his wife and daughter, who were just coming in the front door.

Tainted Love

22152215 views1515 comments1010 favs

...skinny love, skinned and thinned weak broth love...

Threesome

22152215 views99 comments66 favs

Six kinds of crazy, he said. That told me everything. It told me enough.

Love

22142214 views00 comments00 favs

Her letter ends with her best words: No one will ever love you like I do. Beneath, she draws a heart, sad eyes, two jewel tears. Yours forever, Dawn. Hole by hole, not to wake her sister, she pulls the paper free, creases, folds again, then cuts…

Swicks Rule!

22142214 views1818 comments99 favs

She waves her hand around, says, “Pah!” and starts digging invisible things out of the potato salad with her bare hands.

Elephant in the City

22142214 views1414 comments66 favs

No beeping of horns, just complete silence. No panic, just calmness. There’s this one word: serendipity.

Snapshots

22132213 views1919 comments1717 favs

Jake remembers that Amy told him once that she thought that somehow he would always be a part of her life. That was before she went to Spain and married an American bull fighter.

How to travel with your Demons (3)

22132213 views66 comments66 favs

Watch her now as she tries to not smoke. Considers, reconsiders. Checks her nylon bag for her phone charger, and lights a cigarette anyway, which she immediately extinguishes in the kitchen sink.

My Boogie Man

22132213 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.

1918, 1944, 1991, and now

22132213 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

Pieces

22122212 views66 comments44 favs

I find my mother’s pink Pyrex mixing bowl at the antique store on Fairview Avenue. It’s in the hands of a fat woman in a blue down parka, and she’s holding it upside down, squinting at the sticker on the bottom.

The Inkblot Test

22122212 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…

Around a Sun Named Inferno

22122212 views00 comments00 favs

The stupid suit made me look like an angel, which I hated. I wasn't here to save anyone's soul, not that any of the native animal life HAD a soul. If I have a soul myself, it is most likely in need of salvation, and in no way should I be cast in the rol

The Meaning of Lines

22112211 views77 comments77 favs

Hold your breathThe smoke here is thick, I knowIce underfoot, let it burn, let it go, but don't ask me to take your handYou have never been so patient as to sit and waiteven for the sun to riseWatch, now, here it comescresting over the hill as one large eyeboiling the…

Forgetfulness

22112211 views00 comments00 favs

But the urge now is to unknow the urgency with which I forgot my self-description.