Most read stories

The Sum Above

20702070 views1515 comments1414 favs

The mandatory is not / your friend

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

20702070 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?

The Undertaker's Son

20702070 views00 comments00 favs

You would never see me the same again. You'd always be peaking at me from behind your mother's apron.

Peripheral Anthropomorphism and the Fall of Troy

20692069 views11 comment00 favs

For Hector it was animals. Rats, dogs, fish, and quite often horses – sometimes even lions. But for Achilles, it was always dead bodies.

Curtains

20692069 views55 comments33 favs

She wants her mother back and all I can give her is this—over and over. She doesn't want my mouth, wants no kissing anywhere even. Just this. Like this—quiet and rough. Quiet because her stepfather is napping in the bedroom next to…

Zig Zag

20692069 views88 comments22 favs

Jerry tries to be funny saying, I think Charlie Brown should kick Lucy in the head when she pulls the ball away; either that or they start making out. Ewww, but they're both eight years old, Sandra says biting her lip, tying off her smile. Jerry won't focus on her…

How I Spent My Summer Vacation... When I Wasn't Drinking

20692069 views33 comments22 favs

This is what my summer has come to: me, out of a job, aimlessly driving around the city looking for places to write, places to read, places to occupy my time.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

20692069 views2626 comments1818 favs

Rothko explored horizons,/ blurring figure and ground/ by omitting the figure.

Regarding Bill Yarrow’s Assertion that Herrick Was a Voyeur (Poor Julia: Violated, but Immortal)

20692069 views99 comments77 favs

the observation, at the end, more/ important than the being there—

Gabrielle in Arrears

20682068 views1515 comments1616 favs

You should be calling 911

Time

20682068 views2121 comments1616 favs

Tell Bono I want my seventy bucks back.

The Invisible Corpse Candle

20682068 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.

Neighbors

20682068 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. …

Bring Me His Head

20682068 views2020 comments1616 favs

Just bring me his head, that cerebral kiln of hot, ruddy verbiage and cadence.

CONFUSION

20682068 views1414 comments55 favs

She asks if I would like to join them.

Out of the Loop

20682068 views1717 comments1616 favs

Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.

Good For The Ducks

20672067 views11 comment00 favs

It's dawn. It's quiet on the pond in the Public Garden. The light is calm, the pollution is mild, and everything is still,except for the occasional cruising taxi. It's the beginning of spring-- tulips out, leaves…

Squirrel Boy, You Are My Toy

20672067 views55 comments11 fav

unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.

My Affair With Tiger

20672067 views00 comments00 favs

Face it girls, you want to claw my eyes out, don’t you? Or whack me across my 36 DD’s with a golf club, am I right? Well don’t blame me if I’m young, gorgeous, full-breasted and obviously the cat’s meow.

The Yellow Butterfly

20672067 views44 comments00 favs

Let whoever may read this know: I am an evil man, and I have done evil things.

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.5

20672067 views11 comment00 favs

Azure became silent. She never thought of her death before, nor thought about actually fighting creatures and saving people’s lives.

What the Father Said

20662066 views66 comments33 favs

At night, instead of sleep, there were new and secret pleasures. Half-awake lessons in dexterity, in the limber material of human life.

Don't Wash, Don't Tell

20662066 views77 comments66 favs

Butch the Labradoodle sets some necessary boundaries.

The Death App

20662066 views99 comments66 favs

The phone owner pre-writes his or her dying words! The app stores them and releases them at the moment of his death!

Picking

20662066 views2424 comments1313 favs

You hear the thrum of blowflies first...

Heart

20652065 views1717 comments1111 favs

She drew her hands out of the chest cavity and looked at the clock. ‘Time of death,’ she said.

The Spider and the Corpse, Or, The Corpse and the Spider

20652065 views00 comments00 favs

The corpse lay silently in his open casket. Dressed in the finest silken suit. Italian. Rubber skin pulled over his bones. Arms folded in eternal prayer.

Only losers reminisce about their show & tell days

20642064 views55 comments33 favs

Somehow I always had to sit behind him. I remember because he had a constellation of skin tags on his neck. I thought about drawing stars on him; I thought about creating a new galaxy I would rule. I should have been learning math instead. I still can’t

Rook

20642064 views88 comments00 favs

What can I say about my brother, Stroman. We are twins and we hate each other. He is an honest, brave man with scruples. He is full of bullshit. He thinks I am morally twisted. He probably has a point there, but I don’t see what that has got to do with

Found Poem

20642064 views1010 comments55 favs

The waters rose / on the earth