Most read stories

Ordinary People

20362036 views11 comment33 favs

While I didn’t like to see Courtney swat smokes out of his mouth and admonish him, saying “Cigarettes. Bad. Fire. Bad,” her home was such a beautiful place, with its real wood and two TV and all...

A Monologue About Skyscrapers

20362036 views66 comments66 favs

Everyday the buildings seem to be getting taller and taller.

20 Things I Learned about Norman Rockwell from "American Mirror, The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell"

20362036 views88 comments66 favs

His middle name was Perceval. He judged the first Miss America contest in 1922. He saw himself primarily as a storyteller in the Dickensian mode.He claimed to be an illustrator rather than an artist. He disliked driving but loved to walk, and preferred…

The Beginning and End of Comedy

20352035 views66 comments11 fav

Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.

Love Story

20352035 views66 comments22 favs

You longed to rip off her butterfly wings and watch her scream in agony. You ached to carve the steel from her eyes.

AFTER

20352035 views1111 comments66 favs

You haven't lived until she dances just for you ..

When a Bowl Hits a Tree

20342034 views1919 comments88 favs

You would think when a bowl hits a tree the sound would be fierce, a loud clatter as stoneware explodes on birch bark dispersing shards in daffodils and grape muscari, but the noise is gentle, a thudding clink like empty bourbon bottles rattling hollow in…

Tobacco

20342034 views1717 comments1515 favs

When you prime tobacco the old way . . .

Catalog of Disappeared Things

20342034 views1616 comments1111 favs

He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.

Suzanne

20342034 views99 comments44 favs

And I watched, from her warm bed, the curtains dancing in the window

Quiet City

20342034 views66 comments66 favs

I hope you'll have the time to read this before your attention wanders.

The Highwayman Teaches Me About Sex and Death

20342034 views1010 comments88 favs

hooves moon dark latch eyes rope / Bess the landlord's daughter, the landlord's blackeyed daughter / gun breasts dress shame shouts blood blood blood

Amiaivel

20342034 views00 comments00 favs

Once upon a time a queen was blessed with twin sons, which she named Nosch and Amiaivel.

The Zen Gunslinger

20332033 views88 comments66 favs

On top of the refrigerator is a small wooden box

She Waited for Him

20332033 views1616 comments1717 favs

what smells like love may not be love at all

Old Vibrations

20332033 views2323 comments2020 favs

There's always a sound, something triggering the fear.

a day uptown/a night on the bowery

20332033 views88 comments66 favs

in her monestary mission, with her rosary and candles, time holds me here my feet got the travelin' blues but my hands tie old women's bones to my hair

Fuck Men!

20332033 views1313 comments1010 favs

I talk wands and magic and how women aren't supposed to care, but I do, and she talks length and girth. Her fiancé has neither, she makes an illustration with her pinky and says that if they don't marry within the year, she's dumping his ass and we

Sociopathic Medicine

20332033 views11 comment11 fav

True love may last forever, but the most I've ever gotten out of a lab assistant is two years, five months, three weeks, twelve days, and fifteen hours. And he was the exception.

How To Pound Meat

20322032 views1010 comments55 favs

"She has a lot of time to think these days. What else is a woman to do with the rest of her life?"

Helen O., Grand Central, 1959

20322032 views1919 comments1111 favs

No snippet to see, here. The piece is so short a snippet would be the whole thing.

Becoming an Author

20322032 views1010 comments88 favs

"good luck, and be assured acceptance for representation or publication is based on different criteria at different agencies and we are sure you will yet find someone mentally deficient enough to give your book a shot."

Arturo + Lourdes, 2005 and 4ever

20312031 views44 comments22 favs

Here’s the story as compiled from the scantest of clues: The writing on the back of a stall door in the restroom of a twenty-four hour restaurant under the Gowanus Expressway.

Death Hitches a Ride

20312031 views22 comments22 favs

We passed a dead cat lying up against a guard rail, its fur stringing and wet and exposing its bloated skin which had a purple tint to it. Not my work, Death said, smoke trickling out of one eye socket.

Pirate Ship

20302030 views1010 comments99 favs

I was a disposable disaster at first, a thousand Light years ago. We sail the seas we're given, and Like all of you I did my best to survive , but that doesn't mean we get To survive it like you. Our course may have blown us Completely…

Flirting With Immortality

20302030 views11 comment00 favs

That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible. And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it

Neighbors

20302030 views22 comments11 fav

“Hear that?” asks my wife Amy. Books in hand, we relax on our flagstone patio. A shaft of late-day sun borrows through the maples' leafy canopy and deposits a dazzling, sunlit pool on Amy's lap. …

Tattooed Hands

20302030 views11 comment11 fav

A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.

Arborist Abridged

20302030 views55 comments00 favs

Besides, that might have been the area of his birth, and if so, Jacob was now the director, priest, pallbearer, driver, and custodian of a hometown funeral

My Relationship With Reading

20292029 views99 comments99 favs

What if I said; I never liked actually reading?