Most read stories

Senior Center

20172017 views1414 comments66 favs

"Are you all right?" I ask. He blinks. He sits up. I help him stand. He looks sorrowfully at his coffee cup, which is on the floor.

Tonight

20172017 views1010 comments44 favs

Let's fuck like 20-year-olds, darlingwrap ourselves around each otherand fuck our way to the starsLet's cross that line between you and meand the stuff people pay to seeI know pleasure and it is thisall over me, you, covering,…

Faggot

20162016 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…

Unwanted Stories: A Public Service Advisory

20162016 views1717 comments1414 favs

Unfinished, deeply flawed stories require the kind of handling you see in movies where a Virus That Will Doom Mankind is disposed of by scientists in hazmat suits.

The Shop Girl

20162016 views1414 comments1010 favs

Just a little shop girl in for the summer. Working on a typewriter. Barely knowing where the keys were. That was her. She was terrible at it. He was in a suit. He looked short, and thin, but something about him was captivating. He was in his own way hands

A Journey Within A Journey

20162016 views1212 comments88 favs

Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod / out of season / we were rigged for haddock, / it was dressed for the weather

Social Aid & Pleasure novel scrap

20152015 views1818 comments77 favs

the heat and energy it takes

Blind Spot

20152015 views22 comments11 fav

If the photographs made sounds, they would rumble like static from an impending thunderstorm, pressed between the pages of a yellowing dictionary. Compressed sound, searching for the proper words.

Juanita

20152015 views00 comments00 favs

She did not know what it would feel like, how it would happen … but she knew it would be done. She knew that it would be magical, like nothing she could see or hear through the cornfields or around the markets.

Winter Kills

20152015 views1414 comments55 favs

And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.

Solzhenitsyn Jukebox

20142014 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.

21

20142014 views2323 comments1818 favs

Five girls wobble into the train car. Their blistered feet protrude from the bedazzled straps of their sandals. Conductor: “Girls in the back with the open containers, you can't have those on the train.” A heavy-set girl in a belted yellow mini-dress…

The Thrill of Sky Diving

20142014 views99 comments22 favs

It's not that you want to be silkworm all your life. That's what I'm telling my on-again-off-again girlfriend aboard the plane. Her name is Phoebe as in that song about a girl who lived in her own world within the shell of another. Phoebe, I'm saying, to bridge distances…

A Manual for Readers

20142014 views55 comments55 favs

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

Overboard

20142014 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.

The Ballad Of Sideshow Sam & The Heckler

20142014 views77 comments66 favs

"You know what a hobo is, my young friend? Or a tramp? Or a bum? Well, I'll tell ya, 'cuz you'll meet all of 'em in yer life and it's a good thing to know since they are each one of 'em different and the difference is this. Bums sit around and loaf. T

Pinus Timbre

20132013 views77 comments33 favs

Ancient erections loom aloft ringed by decades centuries for some in gnarled scabs of pine.

The Poet. Pt. 2

20132013 views1414 comments99 favs

for the rush of longing and brush with flight that is her imagination will surely lift her above the traffic

Road-trip

20132013 views88 comments11 fav

She is thinking about her baby, the one she loved for exactly one month before she lost her forever. Now, all the love for her baby is coiled in the pit of her stomach and it has fangs and venom, and it is leaking into her blood, her bones.

Old men, old dogs

20132013 views1919 comments1313 favs

old men with crispy sunburnt ears

America From The Outside

20132013 views1111 comments55 favs

You aren’t easy to explain, you Americans.

REJECTED

20132013 views1111 comments77 favs

Your specific request that I never submit to you again; ever, is cause for puzzlement, yet strangely motivating.

The Mouse and the Cat: A Beast Fable

20132013 views00 comments00 favs

Pussy’s eyes narrowed, her dark, luxurious fur quivering on her back. “How can you say such a thing! It’s not true.”

Tracks

20132013 views1414 comments66 favs

The winter following their son's death, Mr. Kelly's wife became absorbed by the tracks that ran in back of their house. At any given hour in the night, he'd hear her in the next room, their son's old room where she now slept, shuffling through dresser drawers. He…

E-Harmony Connection #54421

20122012 views3535 comments1414 favs

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

Latte Art

20122012 views22 comments11 fav

The barista with the fake rainbow nails and amazing cleft. . . .

Trouble

20122012 views1717 comments1515 favs

Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.

What the Trees Were Expecting

20122012 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…

Model T Ford

20122012 views1919 comments88 favs

It lies in rusting riot of shadowed days. Flying high its emblem wings, forever stalled.

Against the V(2.0)(revised)

20122012 views1616 comments1414 favs

There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…