Most read stories

Migration

20562056 views2020 comments1313 favs

She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?

Muslin

20562056 views1515 comments99 favs

Outside I see the daytime moon, and it is faint as a fingerprint. My cousins have up-turned the biggest rocks and removed all the Sow bugs. The land is damp and red, and the trees feel wet to the center.

Bride and Groom

20562056 views1616 comments77 favs

He wears an old black tux, shiny at the elbows, and his gray hair has been styled and sprayed into a fragile tornado. On his lap sits a Chihuahua wearing a bridal outfit—veil and all.

How to Remember Important Things

20552055 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…

Backstory

20552055 views1515 comments77 favs

My editor even said so: “Ralph, the Karmann Ghia is the only car for Henry. The only one he could have possibly driven.”

You Never Knew

20552055 views33 comments11 fav

You never knew How to express What you didn't know You felt With your words You picked on You taunted You destroyed Did it help To feel yourself Did it work To disparage Those who were Innocent and young Blameless For living …

Goodbye, Brother

20552055 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

Act of Creation

20552055 views22 comments11 fav

Mary ran her cake business in a way she could never have run her marriage. It was by appointment only, full deposit, partial refund (and this purely at her own discretion). Business was terrific and she had to turn down job after job. She only made…

Destroy the Evidence

20552055 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…

Phenomenology

20552055 views1818 comments99 favs

The universe is churn-

Bucolic

20542054 views44 comments22 favs

He could smell the vestiges of alcohol on his folks. They’d let him stay up till midnight to mark the new year, and his mother had sneaked him a taste of her whisky. He remembered now what she’d last said before sending him off to bed, how strange it soun

Finding the bog body

20542054 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

20542054 views1818 comments1010 favs

I miss my fire from the first three races

Fever

20542054 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

Three Sundays at The Grove

20542054 views55 comments33 favs

Now, gazing into Greg’s expectant eyes, the only Chinese word Deepti could summon was kuei. Ghost. Before that summer, her mother flipped through the pages of Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir every day, as if she could glean magic from the touch of her finge

Ornamental Onion

20542054 views77 comments33 favs

i imagined myself & i was phlox saxifrage pompom ranunculus poppy anemone ornamental onion rattlesnake red ribbon nerine & i loved the painted tongue & i wore the rattlesnake

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

20532053 views66 comments33 favs

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

Ishpeming

20532053 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

Roper RTW4640YQ1

20532053 views1111 comments1010 favs

locking the door against dangerous// human curiosity and forgetfulness.

Taxi

20532053 views1616 comments1515 favs

lost in a taxi cab, 4:30 am

Lilith: The Unforgiven

20532053 views22 comments22 favs

I saw life and beauty choking

Fear

20532053 views00 comments00 favs

Vito sat alone on a bench, hunched over, staring at his running shoes. He wasn't having fun. The club wasn't nearly as crowded as usual. There were no outlandishly-dressed or made-up people present. Most in attendance were huddled directly before the band

Hemera Rises

20532053 views33 comments22 favs

The woods. They say don’t wander too far into the woods, where those ghosts can’t hear you and the moonlight won’t trace you a path. In the black crowd of trees there’s something waiting. Don’t go to the where the siren is singing...

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 1

20532053 views22 comments22 favs

In those days everyone ate poetry for lunch. It was considered essential for your good up-bringing and mental health. We would skip a meal in order to satisfy our hunger for words. To hell with a meal. To hell with dirty politics and meaningless wars on o

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Update)

20532053 views00 comments00 favs

A group of scientists in San Francisco struggle to stay alive in the aftermath of a plague that is wiping out humanity, while Caesar tries to maintain dominance over his community of intelligent apes.(IMDB synopsis) That's the idea swimming so far as it is in…

Blueberries

20532053 views66 comments11 fav

Cold water shocked Ernest's face. The evening with Gracie had his nerves hot and popping. She was his fifth date and the closest to his memory of Sadie in college so far. He looked up at himself in the bathroom mirror with his mouth agape. Redness flooded…

Carlos The Impossible (Part 1)

20532053 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

My House In The Middle Of The Ocean

20522052 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.

Deep Inside The Light There Are No Dreams

20522052 views2323 comments1919 favs

Mack’s mind held a chandelier.

Hag Masses

20522052 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