Most recent stories

After Dinner/Ice Melts/A Sage in the Copse

23052305 views3535 comments1414 favs

AFTER DINNER Another cycle gone, wasted. She stares into her bowl of full-fat ice cream (just half a cup a day, every day, for fertility). Beside her sits her husband, building a sundae. When he's done she reaches over, picks the cherry off the top, and hurls it into the…

Boston Artists Fight Gentrification, One SUV at a Time

970970 views11 comment00 favs

"I'm dreading it," says Kati Rivers, a visual artist who has lived in the Fort Point Channel district. "A bunch of fat suburbanites driving up rents and crowding creative people out of the little cafes and bistros."

Playing for Keeps

14011401 views88 comments66 favs

I woke like an animal / breeding thoughts like flies

Monster

17041704 views11 comment11 fav

My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…

Diary of a Marriage

26552655 views2020 comments77 favs

Well, it’s a cold dance we dance this morning. You are up at the crack of dawn and the bed is empty even before you leave. I pretend to sleep so I can revel in the delicious morning ritual I know will be ending soon. I hear you brew coffee, shower, tal

The Oaten Hands

22322232 views00 comments00 favs

His hands were like that when he was born. No one really understood why. Neither of his parents had any body parts made of oats. Neither of them had even eaten any oats the morning the conception took place. But sure enough, when Edwin MacGrain was born o

Wild Dreams of Reality, 12

17941794 views00 comments00 favs

I went out behind Parker's house and saw Darrell's tent set up in the grass. The flaps of the pup tent were open. I could see him through the mosquito netting. He had a Coleman lamp burning and lay on his back in his underwear on top of his sleeping bag.

Her Dream of Ending

18761876 views11 comment11 fav

I. The girl within the sleeping woman dreams her dream of ending. To her comes the cowgirl with no kids: she's riding high atop her turquoise horse, steady by its braided mane. Silver pistols holstered. The girl in the woman in the dream she's dreaming…

Stump the Nuns!

13871387 views00 comments00 favs

“It's a combination of ‘Survivor' and ‘College Bowl' says Sister Mary Agnesita, the show's host. “We take four very strict nuns and match them up with boys who were cut-ups in their grade school classes."

Independence Day

17771777 views00 comments00 favs

Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

14901490 views00 comments00 favs

It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

But the Sun Also Sets

960960 views22 comments00 favs

I’ve lost interest in the limelight since I’ve come to understand that I’m not meant to be in it. We walk past the Porker Palace and see crowds of the rich with piles of pig in their hands, stacks of pork piled up on their plates as they swirl amo

The Old Man and the Shark

19851985 views33 comments11 fav

The shark’s voice was dark, warm and scratchy, like dying embers.

Billie Holiday Visits Her Song

19131913 views44 comments44 favs

Why you keep a razor blade in your stocking?

The Cost of Love

15661566 views66 comments22 favs

I was, so I was told, the product of much hard work and a lot of invasive procedures. Initially, I'm sure my parents were making love, but then came the slog, the repeated failed attempts at getting one of mother's millions of eggs fertilized. Those tadpoles just couldn't…

The Flame Child

12841284 views11 comment00 favs

Lupe drove. She didn't know where she was going, but still she drove. The Mustang whined because she did not shift gears. The street was wet from a night rain and if…

Quitting Is Easy

17381738 views00 comments00 favs

I took up smoking just to show the world how easy it was to quit. It’s been five months now, and my wife is wondering why I haven’t yet.

Wild Dreams ofReality, 11

17911791 views11 comment00 favs

I took my first shower away from home as if it were a ritual cleansing. It felt especially good, even exciting to be taking a shower in the bathroom of another woman. Why was that? Maybe because it didn't have marble around the bathtub, and it wasn't e

pink sizzle rizzle

14151415 views00 comments00 favs

if you have a key fob, you are fired. If you have a real set of keys, you can stay

Sock me in the stomach until I forget it. Down, down, baby. Down by the roller coaster.

27392739 views2727 comments1919 favs

She wants to be an apple on a stick, a mop and handle, a brain attached to bones.

Waiting for Wanda

14211421 views11 comment11 fav

And why rabbits? Rabbits never went to a slaughter house. Rabbits died in the road, run over by cars, shot by prepubescent boys or eaten by dogs but never slaughtered in mass. It didn’t make any sense, thought Art and he wanted to ask the small man i

If IT Were YOU

19911991 views00 comments00 favs

author's note: the borgs in this story have been programmed to think of themselves as IT and in speech refer to selves as YOU* Though IT too had ball and socket joints, the Borg could not sit down to face ITs inquisitor. While IT felt the need to clean up the fallen…

Flirting With Immortality

21692169 views11 comment00 favs

That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible. And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it

Puppet X, 16

12171217 views22 comments00 favs

When we lie down under the wind the trees swaying looking out over the fields soft cobweb of a brain exposed to hail exposed to snow trying to back away from it unable knowing the earth (the face it will take) our

Star Anise

60486048 views4141 comments2222 favs

She wonders if Minh knows fear, if it is something that forms in the womb, like fingernails.

we used to drop her off along the way

13331333 views66 comments11 fav

We do it all the time...

The Truth

14471447 views44 comments11 fav

I want you to tell me the truth, she said. The whole fucking truth.

UNFILTERED

17321732 views1515 comments55 favs

I made myself tiny as I could, imagining I was Houdini shackled underwater, holding my nose and practicing my escape...

Myra's Mind

14391439 views00 comments00 favs

She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention.

KADDISH

26902690 views2525 comments1919 favs

My mother was a child of the death camps, passed her adolescence there. Survived.