Most read stories

Momo and Me

20982098 views00 comments00 favs

Momo told me not to mind her, but I did. At night, after he'd tucked me in, I could hear him on the phone in the living room, talking for a long time. Early this morning he woke me up and gave me my backpack. ‘Put some clothes in here', he said. ‘We're going on a trip.'

Cast Off Thy Suffering

20982098 views1616 comments44 favs

Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

To Live It Again

20972097 views77 comments44 favs

She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.

forever

20972097 views2020 comments1515 favs

over tea & saltineshe read melike an obituary

hair

20972097 views55 comments33 favs

A strange and unexpected shift has occurred.

The Dead in Paris, Complete

20972097 views2525 comments1414 favs

Did we get Jihadi John?/ And the highway to Mosul?// What’s the score?

Mama's Boys

20972097 views22 comments11 fav

A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?” “Do I know you?” “It's Bill.” The side of his little brother's thin face

Flying Tiger

20972097 views1919 comments99 favs

I screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked him if he had shot down any Japanese airplanes. He grinned at me. “One,” he said.

Cupcake Footprint

20972097 views55 comments00 favs

once wedding cake under pillows. now fluffy frosting on squashed defeat

Those (Beckoning) Lights

20962096 views99 comments1111 favs

The understanding we made was neatly wrapped up in its own blue tissue cocoon like a neatly rolled joint and dumped unceremoniously into the forgotten past like a plate of leftover digitized lies. The lid was slammed shut. Time passes too tightly. And you …

The Loss of a Child

20962096 views2424 comments77 favs

I watched as the light fled from your eyes, No slowly dimming lamp,

Martyr

20962096 views00 comments11 fav

The everlasting shone through when skirting the tenuous threshold of the two worlds.

Bitterness: Poem

20962096 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…

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

20962096 views1010 comments44 favs

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

Here be Dragons

20962096 views22 comments22 favs

Most nights while in his sleep, with his one good eye deeply shut, the old man can hear the whispers of the specter in the remote wanderings, holding the surrounding woodlands in its snare. The sound of it closing in, with the bones of the universe crushing in…

Hat Shop Girls

20952095 views77 comments33 favs

My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

Something Strange There Is

20952095 views55 comments33 favs

Maybe God couldn’t find His bifocals, and that’s why my check for ten million hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe a stray dog in heaven ate my check. Maybe God went bankrupt like everyone else. Okay, so maybe at the end of life I’ll balance my checkbook. I do

Poetry: Bizarro

20952095 views44 comments11 fav

I think theorems and hypotheses but all that comes out is punching and smashing frustrated hate flows where I'd prefer to know love.

The Field Guide: Olivetti

20952095 views88 comments33 favs

When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...

Tattooed Hands

20942094 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.

Half a Lotus

20942094 views2323 comments1010 favs

An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?

Woman

20942094 views1717 comments1414 favs

When you move to the music of a woman

How to Make an Atom Bomb While Your Wife's Away

20942094 views11 comment11 fav

I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle. The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?

Hand and Thumb

20932093 views55 comments44 favs

Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.4

20932093 views00 comments00 favs

Azure walked through the fog as though she were walking to class. Her hands swayed through the mist and felt the thickness of the cloud through her fingers

Wings

20932093 views88 comments88 favs

The trouble began in October, when Ava, an embittered receptionist who worked at a small museum housed in a five-story Westside brownstone, discovered that the floors were littered with enormous grey feathers

Arborist Abridged

20932093 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

The Way Back Home

20922092 views99 comments77 favs

500 miles all the way from Omaha nine hours on the back of a flatbed truck

Etude, Prelude, Nocturne, Polonaise

20922092 views2323 comments1515 favs

proving little more/ than the player’s keyboard dexterity.

Why'd You Come Back?

20922092 views00 comments00 favs

But there, up the street, just coming into the corner of the window, someone was in the middle of the road. Walking literally down the middle, dragging one leg like it was heavy or broken, carving a fat line next to the skinny one the good one made.