Most read stories

Obituary for a Poet Heretic

38843884 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.

You're Gay? I'm Not Surprised. But Thanks For Telling Me!

38773877 views1010 comments66 favs

When I was young, my mother told me that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual. I don't remember exactly when or why she shared this tidbit with me. This was, after all, fifty years ago. But Mom wasn't a homophobe, so I'm guessing that what intrigued her about Hoover's…

Where's the show?

38773877 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

Charlemagne

38733873 views1616 comments1717 favs

We descended directly from Charlemagne

My Life In Five Paragraphs

38673867 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.

To See the World in a Grain of Sand

38573857 views44 comments33 favs

What’s it like, sex? I ask her. You see that picture? she asks, nodding to the large canvas covered with a film of dust propped up against her bedroom wall. That picture’s the only thing she never sold. She hocked it a few times but always got the

God Bless You, Mr. Rinsewater

38493849 views1919 comments88 favs

Once upon a time, on March 8, 2011, to be exact, there was a flash fiction writer named Rinsewater who had a novel idea – flash fiction writers whose stories were published by indie lit magazines must be paid for their work!

Flower-Gathering

38373837 views88 comments55 favs

I did not understand its meaning until college when I learned that Frost would take long walks—the inspiration for so many of his poems—and would leave his wife at home while he did. And just before he left, she would guilt-trip him just a little by walk

The Taste of Coins from Treasure Troves

38283828 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,…

My Most Humble Request

38273827 views1414 comments66 favs

Do not shake the baby. Shake the martini. That’s what martinis are for.

An Ugly Man

38263826 views2121 comments1818 favs

On her lunch break, she dumps Luis for Daniel Towens, the ugliest man in the county.

Interview

38253825 views2020 comments1414 favs

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

Why Can’t God Send Us Some New Kind of Animal?

38203820 views99 comments99 favs

I guess the ultimate, penultimate failure would be to write a love poem that turned on everybody but you.

Decorum

38143814 views3232 comments2222 favs

So, have your whiskey like a good son.

The Boy Who Knew Death

38113811 views2323 comments1010 favs

As the sun rose each morning, so did the lonely old man with it; a sad limping figure strolling across the front lawn with a cigar tucked in his mouth, lighting fresh candles here and there, perhaps on an imagined grave of some loved one long lost to the infirmity of time…

MoonEarth Collision: A Disaster Story

38053805 views22 comments11 fav

“My fellow Americans,” says his boss, leader of the free world. “The orbit of the moon has been disturbed. No longer revolving around the earth, the moon now hurtles toward the earth. Impact is expected within days.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 2

38023802 views00 comments00 favs

All of a sudden I felt a hand on my neck. I jumped up from my chair and turned to face my brother Darrell, with his surprisingly white shock of hair, the result of all the drugs he'd been experimenting with, back in his mid-twenties. He was even taller

Unpacking Sentences

37983798 views5555 comments2626 favs

This is what I do for a living: I unpack sentences.

Why I write

37813781 views1919 comments55 favs

I sprawl, I spill and I splutter

Cracking Open

37753775 views2525 comments1313 favs

Her addiction started with dry roasted nuts, and quickly jumped to peanuts. At her worst, she was consuming a large glass jar of peanuts daily. She loved while hating their salty taste and greasy feel, the repetition of tossing them into her mouth. …

Broken

37743774 views3636 comments1616 favs

We sat under the broken umbrella, its flowered fabric hanging limp on one side. The rain fell softly at the edges of our backs. I kissed his hand, the one without fingers (not a casualty of his job, only of birth). My lips pressed what I couldn't say into his…

Lady GaGa Fucked Me Accidentally

37673767 views11 comment22 favs

She stroked the piano softly with one hand and I shivered. Maybe it was the keys singing or the way her eyes were closed forcing her to feel her way to right spot or the sex in her voice. Maybe it was just in my head.

Bonnie the Baptized

37643764 views33 comments22 favs

Also, our daughter had learned to splash, causing us each time to break into spontaneous renditions of “Splish Splash (I Was Taking a Bath),” which made us not mind so much that we were getting covered in water.

Pleiku Jacket

37643764 views6262 comments5353 favs

Our flag-draped coffins float to the surface of an uncharted sea and we appear together—patriots both—on the cover of Life Magazine.

Agent 3

37623762 views11 comment11 fav

i beat myself back into the littlon fish door, the algae sealing strip connecting as it does. Eons ago, i fell, and andy and i met with hands of crab and lobster in an eleborate room benaeth here, but I know very well, i am not him

Simulacra

37613761 views2929 comments2323 favs

*** Winner of the 15th Glass Woman Prize. Thank you, Beate Sigriddaughter.

In the Hamptons

37613761 views2525 comments1010 favs

Class differences in New York (and if you believe F. Scott Fitzgerald, in America, generally) are best viewed from the beach.

On Being From the Dirty South, While not Considering Myself a Redneck

37473747 views2222 comments1818 favs

How to not be a redneck? Basically, it is a matter of volume, ancestor worship, respect for the truth and a command of the English language.

Lisa Duncan's Mom

37463746 views1111 comments88 favs

Lisa Duncan's mom was puffy, and you could always see part of her breasts.

Rwanda Suite: Slim

37423742 views2222 comments2020 favs

Paris was a better place for African Americans in those days. Josephine Baker sent a spray of roses. James Baldwin helped him find a good apartment.