Most read stories

Snatch (XIV)

20672067 views1616 comments99 favs

She's in charge.

Slow Train

20672067 views66 comments44 favs

In grief, I'd ride a slow train there with you, / one hand in yours and one hand on the rail,

Halloween Hangover

20662066 views1414 comments1313 favs

Did someone say BOO?

20th Century Anna

20662066 views77 comments44 favs

Why can't you mimic your mythical counterpart? Anna Karenina? Have you never considered the tall dark stranger? The boot to the face, the fangs on the neck? Vronsky is Russian Gentry, a veritable prince and he swept that Anna off her feet in two sec

Fish Boil

20662066 views1818 comments1515 favs

Put sunscreen on your / bones.

Free Space

20662066 views1010 comments99 favs

The winner was some kid from Ohio or Oklahoma -- one of those states that begins with an "O" and ends with a yawn.

Écriture de la chatte

20662066 views1919 comments88 favs

YKK is a zipper manufacturer whose initials stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha. A boy told me (and I believed as a child) that YKK was my name in code.

When you were nine

20652065 views1111 comments1010 favs

When you were nine your head fell off in the playground. Dr Mort was called. He pasted it back on with PVA glue. You'd never know now.——When you were nine your arms turned into trees. Dr Mort worked his magic with the chainsaw. You still need light pruning once…

A Documentary About Sharks

20652065 views77 comments11 fav

As I lean over the chrome rail and look at the floor on the street level of the mall, I ask myself a question. If I was to fall, I wonder if it would be better to land and lie there with my eyes open or closed. Closed, I decide, would make me look like I was at peace, open…

Macarena Lithuania

20652065 views66 comments11 fav

At dinner in Marrakech, Namid danced on the table, waving a white napkin, propelled by jetlag and poor judgment.

hide the dildos

20652065 views66 comments00 favs

her: what are you worried about? me: the dog sitter.

Personal Trenches

20652065 views99 comments33 favs

The headlines were my source of information and contact. Four Soldiers Killed in Baghdad read one. Seven Ambushed in Fallujah. I’d read them, look for his name, and maybe clip it out. It put me there; put me in touch with him.

Seed Toss

20652065 views1313 comments1111 favs

Know what you’ll become? You’ll become one of those guys who masturbates in any single occupancy restroom that locks.

Beyond the Voice

20652065 views88 comments55 favs

We might as well be honest: we’re talking about the two of us here. No one, not even the cameraman, had any idea even after all these years. For more than a decade we’d been bringing the six o’clock news into a medium-almost-major market region.

How To Train Mules

20642064 views88 comments66 favs

“Mules don’t like to dive, Esther.” “I said maybe, Hugh. Maybe.”

Butterfly, a novel by Julie O’Yang (excerpt)

20642064 views55 comments33 favs

‘So what exactly did you decide?'It was two years later that Sato-san put the question to me. The two of us had been hiding for two bloody years, moving about in the marshes along the river, living off small, skimpy meals. We couldn't turn back to our unit, because Cesaru…

Appointment

20642064 views1919 comments88 favs

He stared at the mirror, his hair looked chewed up–severed by a miniature lawnmower.

You Know Who in The Hell You Are Not Playing For (We Are All Performing At Being)

20642064 views1111 comments77 favs

I've been avoidingyour beautiful fact for years in just the past few hours it seemslike it was the scariest plague on earth. Andit worries me becauseit's something so new that Idon't know what to dowith myself.Yes I wouldn't knowwhat to…

Cream-colored Berets and Big Fish

20642064 views1313 comments1414 favs

Alone on the platform, I waited for a train.

Carlos The Impossible (Part 1)

20642064 views22 comments11 fav

And so the deal was struck. It was arranged that the empresario for the Plaza Mexico would buy the giant bull from Button for Hernando to fight. Come the Fiesta de la Fuerza Irresistible, the Great One would meet the bull that was born of a thunderclap at

That's Grace Too

20632063 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.

Finding the bog body

20632063 views1010 comments55 favs

It’s a bitch of a day, devious. It started out calm and then those monsoon showers hit. The lads legged it back to the vans for a bit of a warm sup. He was going to follow them. The rain machine-gunned the window.

Iowa Voters

20632063 views1818 comments1010 favs

I miss my fire from the first three races

Unsaid

20632063 views2424 comments1111 favs

whistling some blithering tune, trotting around the kitchen in his underwear with his ribs, a long row of meatless tragedies that screamed for something other than the meal he was making.

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

20632063 views22 comments00 favs

when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

Cure

20632063 views2323 comments1515 favs

It's as if there are little men inside her head, wielding hammers.

Falling Out of Bed

20632063 views99 comments88 favs

My wife stood in the doorway and talked to the back of my head. “You really should talk to somebody about this,” she said.

Destroy the Evidence

20632063 views55 comments44 favs

The oven door topples off of its hinges as she kicks and climbs out. She growls and quickly slaps out her still smoldering sweater shoulder. Taking a kitchen chair by the back, she swings it over her head and shatters the window. The chair breaks into splinters as she…

A Body Divided, 4

20622062 views33 comments00 favs

After surviving the first night in the hospital, I was put into a shared room to save on expenses, and to make room for the deluge of new cases that were coming in, and that was when I made friends with my roommate, Tommy. He was a boy about the sam

Fever

20622062 views99 comments33 favs

Mesmerizing, the night’s queer colors, the darkness given depth by the earth’s crystalline sheen, by a sky choked with a million fleeting prisms. In the woods surrounding the house another branch snapped, a gunshot loud crack. The echo lingered, cap