Most read stories

Don't Touch

19971997 views77 comments22 favs

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

Crown-of-thorns

19961996 views2020 comments44 favs

It's supposed to resemble the sea bed. These fish have never seen the outside of an aquarium and even if they had, they are reef fish, they'd probably get the bends and die if they went to the bottom of the ocean where the chances of them finding a cerami

Countdown

19961996 views00 comments00 favs

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

Suspended Heart

19951995 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,

Arcana Magi - c.18: Me?

19951995 views00 comments00 favs

Alysia slowed down for a moment. She clutched her head again. She looked up and found herself at a playground. There was a familiarity in the air.

The Tracing Game

19951995 views1212 comments44 favs

Shadows skipped across the bedroom wall at 80 km/hour. It wouldn't be so bad if people wouldn't use their high beams but it's the price you pay for living on a dark highway with low property taxes. “How do you sleep in here?”…

The Artist's Conk

19951995 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.

Faggot

19941994 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…

Arcana Magi - c.22: Moving Forward

19931993 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.

A Letter to Saint Francis de Sales – Patron Saint for Writers

19931993 views11 comment00 favs

I've been struck with a bout of writer's block, struggling to get pen to page or finger to keyboard....So I make paper airplanes.

Ode to a Crow

19931993 views77 comments33 favs

We walk in silence. We water our plants. We don’t eat as well as we should. We try to love. We try to forget.

The Paprika Ewer

19931993 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.

Stevie Wonder

19921992 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.

Overboard

19921992 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.

Solzhenitsyn Jukebox

19911991 views1515 comments77 favs

A retired feminist literary agent named Jackie and her boyfriend, Jock, were on board. Jock was kind as one might expect of a man traveling with a feminist, and Jackie was happy yet stern. She mentored me one day over lunch.

Fall Of The Twin Towers

19911991 views44 comments00 favs

Sitting at an outside table at the Bassett Café on West Broadway, I remember, in the background always the Twin Towers behind me in the photographs from that time And the sparrows in New York, bolder than anywhere working over the scrap

Self Portrait as a Drowned Man

19901990 views66 comments66 favs

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

The Sally-Anne Test

19901990 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…

Rosaleen In Mourning

19901990 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.

Like Trial and (Also) like Error

19901990 views1717 comments1010 favs

We sat all in a muffledlittle line up, on theconcrete lips of tomorrow'ssleepy chin, like all the world's good little children should, as the paradelimped itself slowly by, slapping itself against the young day'sexcitement like a damaged flattire, trying its…

William

19891989 views11 comment00 favs

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

Wild Dreams of Reality, 6

19891989 views22 comments11 fav

The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe

Clean

19881988 views1010 comments77 favs

He shows me how lift the windshield wipers up, clean under them, put them down and I follow him around, watch him slap the sham over the van, pull it away, slap again. I do the same, stop every few minutes like Daddy does, hold it out, twist, wring the sh

E-Harmony Connection #54421

19881988 views3535 comments1414 favs

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

What the Trees Were Expecting

19881988 views1919 comments99 favs

that day is my barking up and leaves falling down story, but in their elephant slowness it seemed no more than the regular run of the sun slightly disappearing here, and then maybe reappearing there, like a lost color, way over the horizon, or the…

Samosely

19881988 views2424 comments1818 favs

If you’re not dead yet, you’ll die of something.

A Knobby Thing

19881988 views2222 comments1010 favs

She feels ugly but ready for anything.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 4

19871987 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.

Animus and Vitriol

19871987 views2828 comments1212 favs

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

"Changes" Isn't Just A David Bowie Song

19871987 views1111 comments88 favs

Erin Hoffmeyer Zulkoski. I was at work today, doodling on a piece of scrap paper. I often find myself writing my name, practicing my signature, for when I become famous. I have always written "Erin Zulkoski." Today, I wrote "Erin Hoffmeyer." This…