Most read stories

Helen O., Grand Central, 1959

19291929 views1919 comments1111 favs

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

Disorienteering

19291929 views00 comments00 favs

At night, on these New England roads, there is no light, no pink sodium-vapor glow, no guideposts.

Improbable Bodies

19291929 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.

Estranged

19291929 views1010 comments66 favs

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

ALL THE BASTARDS AND ME

19291929 views55 comments44 favs

The apartment was a second-level place, so I went down the steps and looked through the stained glass window of the door. “Ah hell,” I said to myself. Raymond Carver and John Fante and Charles Bukowski were outside. I opened the door.

Snuggie your Life Away

19291929 views77 comments00 favs

Who is the moron that invented the Snuggie?

The Beat of Sorrow

19281928 views00 comments00 favs

See a girl like Lily sitting offstage in a wooden chair in a fourth-rate club somewhere, crying, holding on so hard to so little, and as it breaks your heart to watch; forgive me. Understand me. You can’t rescue us. We all deserve more.

That Crazy-Ass Willy Wonka Boat

19281928 views33 comments00 favs

I was crouched under a bruise-purple sky on a field of battle. I held a World War I-era weapon, an ancient black-iron spear with a spring, and I was told to load balloons onto it without popping them, and then I was to fire the balloons at some unnamed ta

Love and Destruction In A '67 El Dorado

19281928 views1313 comments1111 favs

He had her pinned to the back seat, expressing his love. Do you love me? she whispered in his ear. Do you, do you, Jimmy Dale, do you love me? His only response…

Smashed Idol

19281928 views99 comments66 favs

He was the kind of man that I would rather have declawed than date, and then leave him on a gurney, helpless and anaesthetized. Cliff Eames had made me feel that way since we were teenagers. He would never be helpless. …

a microcosm

19271927 views1212 comments55 favs

The right is empty, waiting to receive the load like a catcher behind home plate.

Non-Stop Service

19271927 views55 comments00 favs

Please direct your attention to the flight attendants as they demonstrate the safety features of this aircraft.

Statistics (or: Walking to Work through Lexington Market)

19271927 views2626 comments1010 favs

I avert my gaze to the crab grass pushing through broken concrete, the spent condoms, the empty vodka nips rolling at her stockinged feet...

Across the street.

19261926 views44 comments00 favs

When the talking's done, they get in their cars to go wherever they go, and just as soon as that last car clears the path, the yellow-cabbed trucks are back and the men get out.

Hangover

19261926 views22 comments22 favs

“You wouldn't believe it.” Peter leaned in to whisper. “Don’t let the Kodak moment with the wife and kids fool you. That guy is totally gay.”

The Invisible Corpse Candle

19261926 views1616 comments55 favs

Her eyes stared wide with panic, her teeth chattered intermittently with impressive intensity, and with her ineffectual stabs at the air she completed the portrait of distracted mania.

Flirting With Immortality

19261926 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

A life in books

19261926 views77 comments33 favs

Forget Ulysses, life itself is a stream of consciousness if you ever have time to get out of the stream and take a look at it. And there’s nothing that gets you out of the stream like a short sharp shock.

"Fancy Me"

19261926 views1515 comments33 favs

He stopped the shower and recounted his life, now Kin-less and plain.

Birthday Buddy

19251925 views22 comments22 favs

His birthday buddy was like a wife to him: they were born a day apart. This was coordinated, he believe, in the womb. Well, to be more accurate, wombs. She was due two weeks earlier but waited; he two weeks later but cut his womb-time (as the kids call i

Pirate

19251925 views1111 comments77 favs

When I got out I didn't buy a new suit of clothes, step into a bar, or bargain for an hour with a whore.

Heart Line

19251925 views2424 comments1010 favs

One sunny morning, a big-bellied ball of yellow fur surveyed a yard full of prospective adopters and ran straight to one. She’d been chosen.

chet baker

19251925 views1515 comments1010 favs

chet baker shades my eyes rippling through the cool water sometimes we feed the fish

Fallen Women 1010

19251925 views77 comments33 favs

Like all professors, I'm required to maintain office hours to help my students so I'm at my desk every fourth Tuesday of months without an "r" in them from 10:30 to 11:00 p.m.

Blinding Light

19251925 views1616 comments1414 favs

Snow sheeted on the river...

September Morning

19241924 views1414 comments1010 favs

They were carried out / over shoulders of running soldiers / naked bodies pass

That's Grace Too

19241924 views1212 comments33 favs

I read the ending to her and it was clear to her--clear as it could only be to a woman, to a woman you're in love with--that I had been describing her.

From Time To Infinity

19241924 views55 comments22 favs

On some evenings, when I would sneak out of my room, I'd sit on the verandah and count the streetlights. I'd count the stars in the sky and trace the moon with the tip of my finger and consider how anyone could make it through the night when there were so

The beautiful young girls from high school

19241924 views44 comments22 favs

A Hole In The Bucket

19241924 views77 comments11 fav

In 1978, a computer program became privy to my grandmother's most secret thoughts.