Most read stories

Cure

20312031 views2323 comments1515 favs

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

The Boy from Thuringia

20312031 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

Phenomenology

20312031 views1818 comments99 favs

The universe is churn-

Fragile Things

20312031 views1010 comments99 favs

She asks me what she should do, and I say I don't know because I'm no good at handling fragile things. She says, let's talk about you. I say I can't - phone signal, you know. She calls me anyway, twice, then leaves a message saying that she just wanted to

How to Remember Important Things

20302030 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…

How To Train Mules

20302030 views88 comments66 favs

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

Relativity

20302030 views00 comments00 favs

It seems every time we get together, Seiko is there. She just started working in Keiko's department and now they're always together. I think Keiko feels responsible for Seiko. Like if Seiko's not getting any, it's bad manners for Keiko to do it.

A New Notion about an Old Story

20302030 views1010 comments88 favs

A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…

Clotting

20302030 views88 comments66 favs

Train travel is listed as a possible cause for deep vein thrombosis, a condition that causes blood to clot in the legs. Ray did not tell me this, but I looked it up later, remembered the disability status on his Charlie Card.Baclofen is not used for the treatment of…

Locations

20302030 views1313 comments1212 favs

They confess love for Karaoke and metal rock. They have purchased expensive Stratocasters and Zildjians.

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

20302030 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. …

Cry Wolf

20302030 views2222 comments1010 favs

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

My House In The Middle Of The Ocean

20292029 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.

N62

20292029 views00 comments00 favs

Welcome aboard the N62.

Iowa Voters

20292029 views1818 comments1010 favs

I miss my fire from the first three races

Five Bucks.

20292029 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…

Physicist in love

20292029 views1313 comments99 favs

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

Ishpeming

20282028 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

A Boy Named Suicide

20282028 views77 comments55 favs

Came to admire Kiyoko Matsumoto. Japanese. Aged 19. Lesbian. 1933. Jumped into a volcano.

4Beers

20282028 views44 comments11 fav

I would ask for your name/if your tongue wasn’t in my mouth.

Beyond the Voice

20282028 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.

Test Results

20272027 views22 comments11 fav

Six weeks, four thousand dollars, and twelve hundred miles later, I figured I was done with the cleansing process.

Golden

20272027 views66 comments33 favs

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

Three Sundays at The Grove

20272027 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

Destroy the Evidence

20272027 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…

Cream-colored Berets and Big Fish

20272027 views1313 comments1414 favs

Alone on the platform, I waited for a train.

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

20262026 views66 comments33 favs

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

When you were nine

20262026 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…

Tiger Milk-a play in 3 acts

20262026 views1414 comments66 favs

Imagine the poem written with a pistol at your head.

Appointment

20262026 views1919 comments88 favs

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