Most read stories

Nurse Cratchett

42394239 views11 comment11 fav

She would occasionally grant a surgical intern sexual congress.

How To Rescue A Drowning Man

42384238 views2020 comments1111 favs

Maybe you should consider a few more things before embarking upon actual rescue, like: Is the victim hot? Not stove hot, idiot. Beauty hot. Will this be a triumph to save this person (like perhaps they are some Nobel laureate), or are you risking you

Watermelon

42324232 views5757 comments2828 favs

It was like the time we broke icicles dripping from the low eaves and brandished them like swords...

Letter to a Distant Friend

42274227 views2424 comments1515 favs

My life is life in shape alone./ The substance leaks away like blood/ removed by the embalmer’s art.

I’m Waiting

42204220 views3636 comments2626 favs

All carcinoma/ would be hors d’oeuvres/ for its dark appetite.

Queen Isabella Eats a Pineapple and Misses the Jews

42094209 views2929 comments99 favs

It was Christopher who got her thinking about the Jews again. He had left the same day they did, and so all were connected in her mind, as if together somehow. She read his letters half-wondering if he would mention them, wanting to know if the Jews were

Due to the volume of submissions

42074207 views1919 comments1313 favs

Somebody pushed the automatic fuck-you button today, not the due-to-the-volume-of-submissions-we-receive button, nor the it-does-not-fit-our-editorial-needs button;

For Carol Novack

42044204 views4141 comments4040 favs

Touching one of these special stones will bring out your own unique song.

Coping Stones

41954195 views1616 comments3030 favs

Cahill—Dr. Cahill to those who knew him in his small town in Maine—had decided that his screened porch should be relocated. Wouldn't it be better to winterize the current porch, adding a door at the far end which would lead to a new, smaller porch,…

Son of Goya

41944194 views3535 comments3131 favs

I am not against the darkness / I can learn to live with restraint

The Tightrope Walker's Demonstration: Coming Out

41864186 views3939 comments2626 favs

"Oh, abracadabra," she muttered.

The Boy who killed Christ

41844184 views2020 comments1111 favs

He was on his way home from school on a dank winter afternoon when the attack came from nowhere, launched like a missile across the Gaza Strip. Suddenly he lay on his back with Jonathan Love pounding him in the face.

Broken Symmetry

41794179 views55 comments11 fav

It was not until my twelfth birthday that I realised the face I saw in the mirror was not mine.

So You Want to Write a Screenplay for a Children's Movie

41774177 views88 comments55 favs

For starters, someone must be dead. That’s the golden rule to remember here. And if that someone is mom, you’ve got a hit on your hands.

Red Can't Even Grab a Starbucks

41764176 views2525 comments2424 favs

I see his look, his impatient look.

Obituary for a Poet Heretic

41744174 views4545 comments2929 favs

He sat on a leather couch in the nude, blew smoke rings shaped like wild animals and picked verses out of the thick air.

Big English

41714171 views3939 comments2424 favs

I hit the pole near Whited Avenue a year to the day.

Shluha Vokzal'naja (Train Station Whore)

41664166 views77 comments33 favs

In my room is my младенец, I mean my little one. She is hungry, Sucking dry air. My молоко, that Says milk, is not good. I can’t make.

Proust's Moustache

41624162 views1010 comments66 favs

My brother and I had often debated whether we could get our father to shave his moustache off, just to see if his sophistication remained intact without it.

miranda

41584158 views2828 comments1515 favs

When I was miranda and my mother Rose, ours was a skinless intimacy. miranda in Rose's womb, captured in an essence of love, anger, frustration, fear, the overwhelming stress of Rose's life heavy syrup that kept the bond between spirit and body weak and

Where's the show?

41574157 views00 comments00 favs

Henry noted the live hips rubbing against his and thought it cool. It was not often that parts of the female anatomy made contact with his own, still mutating, parts and so there was a brief thrill of the unknown spiking along his vertebrate, small explos

The Love Story of Me (non-fiction and should be disqualified)

41554155 views88 comments77 favs

To find myself in a straight relationship which challenges my communications skills and tries my patience while improving my status among my peers and family.

My Life In Five Paragraphs

41484148 views1616 comments99 favs

The first punch sent me flying into a Christmas tree. The second put me on the floor on my hands and knees, blood dripping from my nose.

Monet Clouds

41404140 views1616 comments1010 favs

the slow stretches across the horizon

Done.

41364136 views1212 comments88 favs

you dug a hole inside my heart and asked me if it hurt

The Gunman and the Ape

41334133 views5555 comments5353 favs

You marched in step from 9 to 5, kept perfect pace, pledged allegiance to enforced mediocrity, until the day they let you go—the day you knew that you were never Buddy Holly on their plane; just another passenger, brilliant but doomed.

End of the World

41324132 views2222 comments1515 favs

Dear End of the World. We're having a party. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood.

Wild Dreams of Reality, Chapter 1

41284128 views33 comments11 fav

I became a fool for Adrienne Parker the first moment I set eyes on her. Whenever Parker walked into Oliveira's Cafe my breath would stop. I'd try turning away, then find my gaze locked on her face. Maybe it was her bare arms that I found so appealing

The Taste of Coins from Treasure Troves

41174117 views1010 comments55 favs

I hold a key to feel its pull, and follow where it leads. Once, because the moment, key, and direction felt so right, I ended up on the streets naked. A police officer threatened me with handcuffs. I laughed, mesmerized by the cuff's clink, their never-ending circles,…

Interview

41064106 views2020 comments1414 favs

The ethnographer turns on a recorder. The story began before but that is lost, like it never happened.