Most read stories

Tuesday, Before Noon

20172017 views1515 comments1111 favs

It came up heads so he is going first. He puts on a condom and gets in

Searching for Samuel Beckett

20172017 views4242 comments1818 favs

At the Cimitiere Montparnasse he offers the girl his raincoat. I'm searching for Samuel Beckett, he says, and holds an umbrella over her as she consults her map. We're close, she says, pointing. I'll go with you. Then we can visit Simone de Beauvoir. My name is Scarlet.…

Actor-Activist

20172017 views00 comments00 favs

A dark-haired, handsome man adjusted the headset he was wearing, leaned toward a microphone, and eyed his host, a curly-haired man with a toothy grin, who sat up straight as he received a cue from his producer.

Girl

20172017 views1212 comments66 favs

The tadpoles flipped on the brown mud bottom. She dipped one out and held it near, seeing it in her belly, shaping arms and feet and a small, blond head. She set it back and stood, breasts out, arms up. The ducks in the weed, eyes hard like hungry boys, waited for bread.…

The Boy from Thuringia

20162016 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

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

20162016 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…

Cry Wolf

20162016 views2222 comments1010 favs

"You are wolves circling, eyes burning in the dark...."

All Art Is Betrayal

20162016 views2929 comments1616 favs

a world of probability against plague

A Documentary About Sharks

20152015 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…

3 Good Hubcaps - song

20152015 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

Unsaid

20152015 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.

Golden

20152015 views66 comments33 favs

No flinch, no stretch, no letting the cook get all golden about the chopping block.

Get Me Gone

20152015 views33 comments33 favs

On a corkboard in the entryway of the Leetonia Shurfine Market a curling handwritten sign said Room for Rent. Kitchen Living Room Laundry Privlages. $65 Weekly.

Écriture de la chatte

20152015 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.

Slow Train

20142014 views66 comments44 favs

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

What She Left Unsaid

20142014 views88 comments77 favs

Megan beat up on herself later over the unsaid.

Hag Masses

20142014 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 List of Ways I Have Failed to Express My Love for You

20142014 views44 comments44 favs

The gaudy belt buckle I got you, which would have been well-received except that you hate gaudy belt buckles.The custom t-shirt I made for you using iron-on felt letters that generously enhanced the shape of your breasts in a way unfit for public display.The wedding…

Postcard

20142014 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?"

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

20142014 views00 comments00 favs

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. …

The Coming of the Apocalypse

20142014 views66 comments33 favs

The Operations Management Guru was visiting the twenty-fourth floor on Tuesday, and everyone at the company was wicked with fear.

How to Remember Important Things

20132013 views1212 comments1111 favs

Save the whales. Save the dolphins. Save the bored housewives. Save my hands, so often cupped over the sorrow in being alive. Save the beautiful made-up cherries of delight I feel everywhere in your presence. Save the sprawling…

Ishpeming

20132013 views55 comments55 favs

Ishpeming straddles Lake Superior to Marathon, reaches into the water, pulls out a clump of frozen hotdogs, breaks them apart one by one, rolls them between its fingers, heats them on the thigh of its corduroy pants, and throws them into the sky. Comets t

Babies

20132013 views22 comments11 fav

“Your brain, your brain tries to make sense of things like this, specially life-threatening weird shit, so in my mind the grass was on fire and driving out swarms of invisible bees that were stinging us to death. Invisible killer bees. You don’t shoot be

A Body Divided, 4

20132013 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

Iowa Voters

20132013 views1818 comments1010 favs

I miss my fire from the first three races

Halloween Hangover

20122012 views1414 comments1313 favs

Did someone say BOO?

The Death of Narrative

20122012 views2323 comments1515 favs

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

Goodbye, Brother

20122012 views99 comments88 favs

My brother died in his sleep almost two months ago. He was 25. He was addicted to pharmaceuticals. Two days before he died, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his truck into a highway sign. It was the last thing he owned. He had been living with m

Physicist in love

20122012 views1313 comments99 favs

He saw symmetry, exquisite geometry, body and built world in harmony.