Most read stories

Ants

19381938 views1212 comments44 favs

The fettuccine is a disaster. Mini-ants have invaded the container. Barry spots them in the boiling water after pouring in the pasta, not much more than floating black specks, but too many to ignore. He dumps out the pasta and returns to the closet to…

WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKER

19381938 views1616 comments1616 favs

WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKERWhen his fingers sped along the keys, I'd need to sit. I'd such weak knees. I thought him charming, tall, and able, then he overturned the table. Chili, crackers, cheddar cheese crashed on me-he'd been displeased. I…

SantaBot, Can You Hear Me?

19381938 views88 comments44 favs

Mimi: Santa, I am so down with taking a number, but I really can't have you reading that particular story. Santa: Let me be the judge of that. I am Santa. I give presents to kids.

First Chapter of Rain (novel)

19371937 views22 comments00 favs

Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love. At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.

Hag Masses

19371937 views88 comments66 favs

Five poets were beheaded that day, their heads rolled off the scaffold to the dirt and faced skywards; the heads were smiling

A Woman Who Watches

19371937 views1212 comments88 favs

She was a beautiful woman. I don't argue with that. I welcome it.

Postcard

19371937 views33 comments11 fav

"Special delivery for a friend?" he asked. "Postcards are a wonderful thing. All people want to do nowadays is send e-mails. But what's better than putting a postcard on the fridge?"

Significant Things

19361936 views00 comments00 favs

“This is a Kneeling Bus.” They’re all kneeling buses, why do they even have to say that? Almost every person gets off in the front now when it says it even says right on the bus to please move to the back and exit from the rear side doors. I hate having t

Just Another Hero

19361936 views44 comments44 favs

Alma Tucker settled into middle age with the comfort that escapes most women. Her festival queen days gone. Along with her wispy waist and cherry blond hair, replaced by broader curves and graying tresses. She was content with the way age had changed her

Slow Train

19361936 views66 comments44 favs

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

I Made You . . . (April Fool's Day Challenge)

19361936 views77 comments44 favs

You cheat with a stripper--joke I told to your wife. I didn't know that she couldn't take a goof.

The Boy from Thuringia

19361936 views22 comments11 fav

“The Boy from Thuringia” is part of a series of stories collectively called The History of Adoption. In it, a middle-aged man sets out rather obsessively to write a comprehensive history of the adopted child. In his attempts to finally begin this im

On Writing

19351935 views1616 comments77 favs

it's the very words that are the problem

Just a Joke

19351935 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,

Rude Awakening

19351935 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.

Art & Me

19341934 views00 comments00 favs

A human cop and a cyborg detective team up to solve a case. A sci-fi-pulp-noir-detective story.

You'll Have To Come Out Because I Won't Let You In

19341934 views66 comments33 favs

the pollen of your kisses and the shouts of your love shaking the sky

My House In The Middle Of The Ocean

19341934 views22 comments11 fav

I built a house in the middle of the ocean. I used sunlight for nails. Wind for wood. Stars for chandeliers, the moon for a doorknob.

Splinter Off

19341934 views1010 comments44 favs

When we lived in the attic we were make-believe.

Loose

19341934 views2121 comments1313 favs

pretty music

Clouds to the Makers

19341934 views1313 comments1111 favs

You'll be gone. I'll be gone. I'd hate to think how it was all for nothing, that all we did was stumble into a pretty big hole of our own making. The best place for a broken heart after all is in your own sweet chest. No one else…

Five Bucks.

19331933 views00 comments00 favs

“For Chrissake! Just get me one of fucking Tony's half-assed, made in China bullshit, getaway cars. My plate is hot!” I had never hated cars so much before. Not so much the cars, but the sound the cheap ones made when they drove past my house. The…

3 Good Hubcaps - song

19331933 views1212 comments88 favs

I got 3 good hubcaps That oughta be enough You can take away my house You can take away my stuff Just leave it on the curbside With my beat-up Cadillac Got my 3 good hubcaps I ain’t never coming back

The Pixie

19331933 views1111 comments77 favs

On the bank of the stream, we take off our clothes and dash into the water.

Destroy the Evidence

19331933 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…

Valentine's Day: Say it with Chickens

19331933 views33 comments22 favs

Love at first sight? Not for me.

A Dispatch from an Enivironmental Lawyer Who is Trying to Grow a Mustache

19321932 views11 comment11 fav

Angelina Jolie, seducer of Brad Pitt, tattooed mother of rescued orphans, and the unlikely daughter of Jon Voight who broke Billy Bob Thornton's heart, is only two blocks from me, in a travel trailer on Seventh Street, gently rousing herself from sleep.

Breathless

19321932 views1616 comments1111 favs

I sit down next to a youngster on the couch. “Would you like to see?” she asks. “See what?” I reply....

My First Post-9/11 Dream: In Which I Discover Life After Death

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January 3rd EST/January 2nd PST 2002 It's 1:45 am or 10:45 pm depending on your philosophy about changing your watch when you fly. My plane is scheduled to land in San Francisco soon, but I'm completely disoriented because I've just had my first post-9/11 dream. …

Cherry Stem

19321932 views55 comments55 favs

He moved his rotten breath closer to my mouth, like he wanted to twirl his tongue around just to see how it felt.