Most read stories

The Duck, the Clock, and the Condom

20082008 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…

Science Homework

20082008 views22 comments22 favs

The difficulty of disabled parenting was predictable, but nothing could prepare me for having to say goodbye to my wife again on problem #7.

Three Sentences, Adding up to One Spectacular Disease-Ridden Bed of the Broken Hearted

20082008 views1212 comments99 favs

1.Oh yes, I'm just kicking around in the leftover moon dust you could say I'm certainly not waiting around for your satellite feed anymore certainly never ever hoping to see if your free falling hair strands still look…

The Arms of the Forest

20072007 views88 comments55 favs

Watch me sleep. Say I'm lovely, marbled-white. Pretend my forest is other to me. Pretend I am what you have made me. The sugar-almond starlet. Your virgin. Your treasure to break into. Believe me unconscious. It is you who are the dreamer. Look how those thorny…

Being Old is No Place for Sissies

20072007 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.

Monsieur Editor and Madame Malaprop

20072007 views1010 comments33 favs

They slept in the same bed but that was all they had in common. He, an editor, had shelves filled with literary works and she, his wife of many years and never much of a reader, had strewn their penthouse apartment with Madeline children’s books.

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

20072007 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/

Corporal Punishment

20062006 views1414 comments1313 favs

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

Flash Fiction With Instructions

20062006 views77 comments66 favs

The protagonist’s story goes like this: 1.) You are young. You’ll get over it.

You, the Correct Other, the One I am Looking For

20062006 views2323 comments1212 favs

You, the correct Other, the one I am looking for, you have exacting standards concerning where things must go.

Berto and Cosi

20052005 views22 comments00 favs

Berto had come to live with me a month earlier. He’d been cursed by being the favored child of our parents. Their indulgence resulted in a 40 year old man and heroin addict from age 17 and all that accompanies such an existence such as thievery, larcen

Self Portrait as a Drowned Man

20042004 views66 comments66 favs

The light, oblique and waning, filters through butcher’s paper to reveal a body suspended in death but never decomposing.

Stevie Wonder

20042004 views33 comments22 favs

Like Prince said one time, parties aren't meant to last. Guys who don't get the message are guys who die by the inch.

Hey Jude

20042004 views99 comments33 favs

I laugh too loud cause the world looks good that way and for a minute we both make funny sounds just to exercise our vocal cords and see how close we can come to the line without crossing.

Invasion

20032003 views1111 comments33 favs

That summer crawled with them, insects of every denomination: cicadas caught by the cat, wingless, came to rest in the roots of the garden we planted; sudden swarms of dragonflies...

The Paprika Ewer

20032003 views55 comments44 favs

Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. One thing she had learned in her sixty-seven years was that people who whistled were crass. Butchers whistled. So did peasants.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 4

20022002 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.

Faggot

20022002 views66 comments77 favs

In study hall Brandon sat like a little faggot so I said “Hey faggot.”“That's right, faggot. Don't look at me. I don't like faggots looking at me. I don't want their faggot eyes on me, faggot.”Bell rang and he walked like a faggot and held his books…

Round the World Now

20022002 views22 comments22 favs

It's true that he had always been more pure than her, looking for the authentic experience, authentic food. And more adventurous. Blogging their way around the world, yes, that had been his idea . . .

Rosaleen In Mourning

20022002 views1818 comments1111 favs

She hardly twitches. Her face regards the stars. If her body is an object, it is the isthmus before global warming. They want to find the source of the glacier in her eyes that is always melting. Maybe they like a woman who cries.

thing

20022002 views55 comments33 favs

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Before and After

20022002 views3535 comments1616 favs

My heart beat someone up the stairwell.

The Artist's Conk

20022002 views88 comments77 favs

Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.

Arcana Magi - c.22: Moving Forward

20012001 views22 comments00 favs

Alysia never said a word as she rested her body on Suzaku’s feathers. She felt the wings cover her like a blanket. It brought memories of her mother doing the same as they watched a movie together on the couch.

The Sally-Anne Test

20012001 views33 comments55 favs

Sally-Anne is in a graveyard. A girl about her age and height died two years before. Sally-Anne is digging up the bones. Her parents Aaron and Rebecca think she is at her piano…

Pieces

20012001 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.

Take-Home Quiz

20012001 views44 comments22 favs

1.) Please discuss any real-life problems you may have encountered having to do with the concept of “the look” or “the male gaze” as propounded in some of the feminist criticism readings we've done thus far this semester.

Countdown

20012001 views00 comments00 favs

I’m twenty eight years old, and I am dying.

Overboard

20012001 views33 comments22 favs

Six months ago, Gary hired a goateed designer to "defoliate" the office, trucking out all the ficus trees and spanish moss to make room for curved sheets of fiberglass and, as he called it, "negative space." Now, her voice echoes off the concrete floors.

E-Harmony Connection #54421

20002000 views3535 comments1414 favs

We were destined by chemistry and plastic figurines to give it a go.