Most read stories

Quiet City

20722072 views66 comments66 favs

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

Love Story

20722072 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.

You Were This Close

20722072 views1313 comments1414 favs

I don't know if we'll meet again in the sea of light. Circumstances aren't only up to human beings. After all maybe it's all drunk circumstance, but that doesn't answer the blinding question, it only poses some more. This is…

Sociopathic Medicine

20722072 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.

forever

20712071 views2020 comments1515 favs

over tea & saltineshe read melike an obituary

Bitterness: Poem

20712071 views22 comments11 fav

Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…

Improbable Bodies

20712071 views2020 comments66 favs

The book has known many women’s hands, something erotic and frequently checked out from our local library. Its cover depicts a man and a woman, both with improbable if not impossible bodies. I believe the term is bodice-ripper.

Comes After Cato

20712071 views77 comments44 favs

When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and…

Twedes

20712071 views2121 comments1515 favs

“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."

Acceptance is to her a phenomenon

20712071 views1414 comments77 favs

You were given blame for action as experience by cause and effect now. If you take apart blame and even forgiveness is too rigid. She thinks of that purpose as to give men sexual destiny.

Arturo + Lourdes, 2005 and 4ever

20702070 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.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Jimmy Gollihue

20702070 views00 comments11 fav

Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound, a long voice from up the mountain, and the baying of the dog pulled a keening lament from his dream of the highway.

Helen O., Grand Central, 1959

20702070 views1919 comments1111 favs

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

Estranged

20702070 views1010 comments66 favs

He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.

Cremains

20702070 views1313 comments1010 favs

I need a different storage solution

The bridge

20692069 views1919 comments1515 favs

as long as you have some snacks up there I can be brave

The Nielsens (part two)

20692069 views00 comments00 favs

[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…

Suzanne

20692069 views99 comments44 favs

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

Rude Awakening

20692069 views11 comment00 favs

Vito suddenly found himself wide awake. He was unable to recall having fallen asleep or dreaming or awakening. It seemed he'd just entered bed, yet a glance at the windows told him it was already the middle of the night.

Years After

20692069 views88 comments66 favs

Years After she can go home.

the last thing

20682068 views33 comments33 favs

salmon maple syrup horseradish smoke detector the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.

Lens

20682068 views2929 comments1212 favs

Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

20682068 views1010 comments44 favs

"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."

Bison

20682068 views1717 comments77 favs

To make extra money, my father wrote music reviews for the Calgary Herald, and on Saturday nights, he went to hear the Symphony, or into recital halls to listen to the chamber music that was being performed around the city. He took me, once, to a performa

Hail Mary Pass

20682068 views99 comments55 favs

so for penance, the priest gave me the full twelve Stations of the Cross

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

20682068 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…

Arborist Abridged

20682068 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

Swimming Lessons

20672067 views88 comments00 favs

The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

Just a Joke

20672067 views22 comments00 favs

The pizza was perfect, ingredients genuine, not artificial: crust charred slightly; cheese gooey; sauce steaming, requiring careful eating lest the mouth suffer burns. Such quality was becoming rare around town. The product in Manhattan, by and large,

Woman

20672067 views1717 comments1414 favs

When you move to the music of a woman