Most read stories

I Am

15701570 views99 comments44 favs

When I was a boy, I always wondered if Dad were black. No one in our small town looked like Dad. He had the thick features of an Arab. If he let his hair grow, it piled up in messy loafs on his head. Of course, I never asked Dad about any of this. I wasn'

Mitzvah (wc:55)

15701570 views2222 comments1212 favs

So, how did they meet? After years and years of starvation and gruesomeness and lack of human contact because there were no humans left, only walking corpses, a woman gently lifted the sixty-pound dead man's penis with a cool washrag and wiped him clean. The dead…

One Last Word

15701570 views11 comment11 fav

Almost 24 hours ago in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden was sleeping just as he had slept every night for the hundreds of days prior; comfortable in a million dollar compound with his son and advisors around him...

Sounds from the Sun

15691569 views1515 comments77 favs

It was a lovely day all the horrors in deep hiding leaving me, leaving all of us, a chance to wonder why

Margaret’s Mermaid

15691569 views55 comments44 favs

When she was eleven, Margaret still believed in mermaids. She would fasten the neon diving rings that her mother gave her to her ankles and swim around in the pool for hours. By the end of the afternoon, with chlorine-swollen skin she would wince as she…

-And Lurking Behind Quasar 3C295 . . .

15691569 views22 comments22 favs

“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.

Anti

15691569 views99 comments55 favs

“What do you call this place?” I didn't really want to talk much in there. For some reason, talking felt too—linear. The words seemed to have a kind of reverberation into associations that seemed somewhat meaningless at the time.”

Graeme King and the Creature

15691569 views11 comment11 fav

Graeme King was disturbed. He sat at his desk feeling his bloodshot eyes rolling backwards, impatient, leaden in their sockets. Could he believe what he had just seen? Surely not. Surely the late nights spent absorbing the relentless pulse of his computer screen…

The barbarian at the gate, a work in progress

15691569 views44 comments22 favs

I may even invite the little man, who lives in the closet, to come out and visit me: Come over here, pleasure me, let me sit on your pink latex face.

Duck Sauce

15691569 views22 comments22 favs

In principle, Sergeant Brock Lumley resisted superstition, but if you were to stop him on any given day he was patrolling Baghdad streets with his rifle squad and ask him to open the front left ammo pouch on his flak vest, he’d get this look on his face..

Folded Up

15681568 views1010 comments88 favs

Time to pull in the shining teeth, but it makes me so sad, you know I'd rather be holding hands. The others have told me, don't hold back, hit them with every white knuckle, and let them bleed out, I'd rather be kissing your face. It hurts,…

Snapshots

15681568 views1919 comments1717 favs

Jake remembers that Amy told him once that she thought that somehow he would always be a part of her life. That was before she went to Spain and married an American bull fighter.

How To Train Mules

15681568 views88 comments66 favs

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

The Death of Narrative

15681568 views2323 comments1515 favs

“Why, you tell a story,” one young fellow said. The expression on his face said “How gauche, how passé!”

Unveiling Kirkiss Automated Amazon Reviews!!!

15681568 views2020 comments1212 favs

No! No! Nonononono!

Voronezh. Samara. Tyumen.

15681568 views88 comments55 favs

They have a saying in Russia: Live in Voronezh, work in Samara, die in Tyumen. In honour of Saint Rose, born on the banks of the Voronezh, fed the hungry and the poor of Samara, torn apart by wolves in Tyumen on the exact date that she had herself predict

Death Masking Love

15681568 views44 comments33 favs

She brought the ends of her fingers to her mouth and moistened them in her warm saliva. The whorls of her prints glistened in the harsh light of the room, but it wasn't her own outlines she was interested in raising. His hand lay outstretched in his…

Mule

15671567 views2222 comments1717 favs

Sometimes cats had to die or dogs

The Rainbow Clockwerkz

15671567 views00 comments00 favs

Mama Blinkey Lights yells at Papa Blinkey Lights and tells him to quit playing the fool, and when we turn our attention back to removing the shafts, we are chagrined to find that not only have they multiplied once again, but that they have gone yet farthe

Men Are Beasts

15671567 views2424 comments1919 favs

Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"

Time

15671567 views2121 comments1616 favs

Tell Bono I want my seventy bucks back.

C O N F L A T E

15671567 views55 comments22 favs

She jumped into the hole the other day. The hole that sucks little girls into the universe, and doesn't return them. I had to watch it. I had to watch her sitting on the dock. Lean over, and fall in. I couldn't have saved her. Nor God. Or Jesus. Not the bridge. …

The Night

15671567 views77 comments44 favs

her parents were gone they sat on the love seat side by side saying nothing the longest time

Drunk Sonnet (for Meg Tuite)

15671567 views1919 comments1313 favs

perjured like a fickle impulse

Strip (Her)

15671567 views77 comments66 favs

There’s not enough cigarette cloud to conceal her, malnourished and pale beneath blue and pink lights that summon 80s-era skate rinks. She saunters towards the center of the stage, asking her bored expression to convey detachment, while a DJ that fits the

Rock On

15671567 views2525 comments1212 favs

...fancy the idea of tapas, Spain an' all.

Myra's Lesson

15671567 views33 comments11 fav

There’s no training course available for kids in love. You can watch your parents, you can watch other kids, but for the most part it’s all trial and error, and I'm still pretty shaky at almost all of it.

Tiny Dancer

15661566 views1616 comments88 favs

This latest married man who lives at a great distance has leeched her energy in that very particular way such men do. Next to him, I am as interesting as long division.

Beard of Bees

15661566 views22 comments11 fav

Beard of Bees My father always used to say to me, he said "Son" (he called me son) "Son. Falling in love is easy. Getting into the Guinness Book of World Records is hard".

Agencypiece

15661566 views55 comments11 fav

The gun sits quietly in the woman's handbag.