Most recent stories

When I Lived There.

16601660 views77 comments55 favs

When I was fifteen and we were moving to Mississippi, my boyfriend in Canada told me I was going to live in the swamp with the alligators. I didn’t understand why my father would pick such a hick place. Rob gave me his cricket bat to hang over my bed, a

Briefly, on Dive Bars

18421842 views1010 comments77 favs

Every dive bar has a Max. Max is an elderly man. He wears a dented ball cap. He sits at the end of the bar, right along where it curves and then slams into the wall. You may find it cliché, but when Max enters the room, the patrons actually announce, “

With an Emphasis on the Shine

14041404 views33 comments33 favs

How her camisole strap falls, her bare shoulder, her tattooed arm like an old, Coney Island mural. That dream she had: I bought her a fake, diamond necklace in Manhattan. She wanted to kiss me in the alley but was afraid of the rats

Relics

12241224 views33 comments00 favs

Theresa Esposito woke to the smell of pignoli cookies baking. The sweet scent made her stomach rumble. She was ten-years-old today. And she felt ten. Her hair, her ears, her eyes, her toes — everything felt ten.

At Sevens

10011001 views22 comments00 favs

Originally published on Six Sentences:He walked out of the hotel lobby into the pre-dawn night and thought about another woman, a pretty Spanish woman, not the woman he'd just kissed in a hotel, and a night he'd spent with her in Portugal, wanting each other desperately,…

Under This Cover of Quiet

11421142 views22 comments00 favs

Originally published on Six Sentences:In a family of many hushed secrets, only so many years could pass before the cracks would begin to show, and usually started with the creative girls. Though her aunt had been dead for two years, Shifra knew the cracks the family…

For The Sea of Pill

13551355 views11 comment22 favs

In his dreams, he swam in piles of pills. Sometimes the piles were infinite, other times the were contained, tonight the pills were intense shiny reds, chalky yellows, deep blues and matte purples and swirled around in a children's inflatable castle. Derek swam happily,…

The Motel

13781378 views11 comment00 favs

She dreamed of a beach.

Honeymoon du Jour

937937 views00 comments00 favs

a sequel to Love in Miniature, after the couple is married.

Love in Miniature

853853 views33 comments00 favs

Hole #1 – Loop-de-Loop A piece of metal curved into a loop like a curlicue off-ramp. Jake and I step up to the Golf-O-Rama mat like accidental twins. My ball is half blue and half orange, like a gas station freebie. The old man at the desk said I

Scuffle

19171917 views1818 comments1111 favs

Last Christmas Eve, my Nana shot my grandfather in the foot because he wouldn't stop boning the woman up the street.  So on Christmas Eve, after Nana drank a bunch of those baby-sized Miller Hi-life beers, she went upstairs, got her pistol, and said, “I'm gonna…

I Can Sing Like That

896896 views11 comment00 favs

Here lately Daddy's been talking bout' filling momma full of holes. Not like he would do it cause' he likes talkin' just to hear the words come out even if they don't mean anything to anyone but him. But just to be on the safe side I went and hid them shells cause' he's got…

Adults at Home

22002200 views2121 comments1616 favs

The afternoon my little sister won her first U.S. Open, I was also busy, having strenuous sex with David Solemn, a man I’d met earlier that morning at Dunkin Donuts. We did it on the white living room carpet in my parent’s new Connecticut house while

Phantom

864864 views22 comments00 favs

There is an obstacle, as if truth has a place of its own. This is the phantom where my roommate turns off her headlights Upstate, while we’re singing: No more, No more, stay as you are.

The Awakening

10151015 views00 comments00 favs

Aura arrives with the incense and her mysteries. Her scent of wet earth, and crushed flowers, a touch of Jasmine and Frankincense. Her dark hands passing over my body, her warmth. A whisper. A prayer.

Butterfly Kisses

10491049 views11 comment00 favs

We are driving towards New Jersey, my husband and I, to pick up our seventeen-year-old daughter who is visiting her father for the weekend. As we drive there, I am suddenly reminded of how much I used to love my ex-husband, particularly when I was sevente

WAR STORY

12711271 views99 comments44 favs

We shot out the windows of an abandoned building nearby so as to trick them into thinking we’d had snipers stationed in that building. They shot at the abandoned building.

The Chihuahua Cure

20472047 views55 comments33 favs

It came from the animal shelter, seizing and shivering, with eyes almost bigger than its head. Eyes that followed Pearl like it couldn’t stuff the whole picture of her in its tiny skull.

My Search for The First Snowman

45434543 views44 comments44 favs

This was my quest for over 6 years. It would deplete my bank account, test my marriage and get me in with a lot cool celebrities.

She Used to Have Nails

29892989 views1414 comments1212 favs

...the job was easy, just pour and deliver, pour and deliver.

Tender Mercies

10051005 views00 comments00 favs

After he was wounded in Iraq, Wilson Jenkins came home to Monroe. He had suffered two wounds. The first was a waxy-looking scar on his left leg. A twisting crevice of flesh, it started inches above the ankle and ended on his outer hip. In the field hosp

Go ahead

11281128 views99 comments00 favs

Sit right down in the chair. It's a glider, see? Smooth and easy movement without that annoying head-swing you get from a rocker. And easy to get out of, unlike a lounge chair. Relax. "Reba" reruns will be coming on in a minute.

Probability

13131313 views33 comments00 favs

1: The Zero Product Property states that if a multiplied by b equals zero, then zero must equal a or b. Thus, to prove this theory, multiply a and b divided by a. Use the broken chord theorem to crease the zero by disrupting the circular movement of the skewed line. As a…

Route 346

12461246 views11 comment11 fav

Route 346 is the way Pop drove to Troy long after everybody else took Route 2. Today Charlie and I drive in the opposite direction. Back then, Pop drove us to Troy on Route 346 on Sunday afternoons with the car windows…

Three Examples Of Male Arousal Without Desire For Intercourse

22372237 views22 comments33 favs

Suddenly it’s as though a wild creature has swung in from a tree through an open skylight. Everyone in the place recoils and looks around to see if there might be others like her. But it’s just her.

Clean

16281628 views2121 comments88 favs

I am standing in my neighbor’s back yard in my underwear, and my trash can is clean.

The Window

12091209 views44 comments11 fav

Just beyond the tree, beyond the fence, close to the grey clouds that hung almost to the earth, a boy sat on another tree's stump. Beneath his crossed legs that he moved up and down rhythmically, under his bright red, Superman shorts, inscribed in the stump, a symbol which…

Riding Off into the Sunset

17411741 views1010 comments22 favs

There's only one road out of here. It goes straight north for a while, then starts veering off toward the west. You and Horace Greeley can get all dreamy-eyed if you want, but I know which side of the river the Egyptians buried their dead on.

DIAPERS FOR HORSES: AN AUBADE TO A LOST COCKATIEL

14081408 views55 comments55 favs

And besides, since winter is coming, the dying clammy ground cherry makes a good Pilgrim hat for the fieldmouse. We found one the day after you left, at moonset, in the garage, building a nest with toilet paper in the air filter of the car.

Fall Apart Stuff

17111711 views55 comments66 favs

He is snoring inside the silo of his throat. The inside there shines golden but that’s not the truth. There is something caught below the gold.