Most read stories

Earworm

22632263 views44 comments22 favs

It scraped at Paul’s brain like a cat’s claw at the door. He hadn’t heard the song in years. Was that the Searchers? The Seekers?

Accidental Faith

22632263 views22 comments00 favs

Until millennia have passed and the world is dug up For future historians to ponder And through their meticulous disassembling of dirt They will find my book.

Frank Meets Francine

22632263 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.

Ditching the Universe for Katy

22622262 views88 comments22 favs

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

The Five Stages of Editing

22622262 views11 comment00 favs

The recent release of my debut novel alt.punk was extraordinarily exciting; however, maturing the novel from first draft to publication was not without editing pains. Similar to the Kübler-Ross theory, I progressed through what I refer to as the “five sta

writer’s block

22622262 views22 comments11 fav

round & round this empty block again & again i go

Old Wounds

22622262 views2121 comments77 favs

We got married in a hospital. My bride had her appendix out the day before our wedding, so we decided to tie the knot in her room at Hoover Memorial.

Being Old is No Place for Sissies

22612261 views88 comments66 favs

My natural blonde hair is no longer sultry. Instead of a Dietrich look, I now assume a dead on impression of Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" some mornings.

Beautiful Plague

22612261 views77 comments11 fav

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

Alfalfa

22612261 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

22612261 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.

The End of the World

22612261 views88 comments1010 favs

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

The Thirteenth Sign

22602260 views2222 comments1414 favs

I'm twelve again and

Why I am Afraid of Spiders

22602260 views1515 comments1111 favs

SPIDERS

Rittenhouse Square: excert from Ari Figue's Cat

22602260 views00 comments00 favs

Trunks of plane trees with parchment bark, their shaggy pillars bear a canopy of green like a great tent spread over the square of the park. Cool misting lawn sprinklers, their umbral spay--brick walks glisten in the mottled light. Fading blooms of rhodo

We Don't Need No Education

22582258 views2727 comments1919 favs

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

nudes

22582258 views77 comments88 favs

for a handful of weeks/ my father took me to/ the college of art and design/ downtown/ where i took drawing lessons./

To the prostitutes on Boracay

22582258 views22 comments00 favs

. . . not if I have anything to do with it.

Pieces

22572257 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.

A Manual for Readers

22562256 views55 comments55 favs

The story will starve. It will crawl up your throat to get the cracker.

Story

22562256 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?

Velcro Shoes, a Cardboard Computer, and Other Signs of Brilliance

22562256 views66 comments33 favs

It wasn't until later that I realized that any time a teacher complimented you on your use of imagination, it was because they didn't know what else to make of whatever you'd created. My homemade narrative video in lieu of the assigned “getting to know y

No More Dogs

22552255 views2121 comments1616 favs

Highway 45N cost me four dogs when I was growing up. Actually, having our backyard abut the highway was the real problem. It got to be where I was afraid to get too attached. We lost Nicky,…

How We Send to Anderbo

22552255 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.

Confess another sin

22542254 views1616 comments1313 favs

.

Ten Minutes, That's It

22542254 views00 comments00 favs

They tell me I’m crazy. I say I’m just keeping up.

Carmen (from The New Yorker+ a Jimmy Breslin "afterword" from Newsday)

22532253 views00 comments00 favs

Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.”

Swimming Pool

22532253 views2020 comments1717 favs

My glasses fog up every time I go to collect her from the pool. I'll never get used to glasses. When my sight got suddenly worse the day she was born, I didn't tell anyone. As she turned from baby to child, my love for her grew, and my world got smaller,

Kitty Love

22522252 views1111 comments88 favs

Our next door neighbor is in love with his cat. His wife sits in our kitchen crying her eyes out.

Lunch at Lefty's

22522252 views1515 comments1313 favs

Sixteen years married, and now she wants a wedding ring. He brings her a box of Cracker Jack. She doesn’t think it is funny.