Recommended stories

Swiss Sushi vs. Swish Suzi

13331333 views1010 comments66 favs

There being so few venues for Lapp dancing in Lausanne in those days, Swish Suzi took a job in a Swiss sushi bar.

Life Story

20542054 views99 comments77 favs

A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…

He Ages

18321832 views1111 comments66 favs

'love is when the body goes away.'

Angel's Return

25342534 views99 comments77 favs

I never looked at her face.

Cheese

14581458 views1212 comments77 favs

When exactly does cheese go bad? it simply does not, I say.

The Color

17501750 views99 comments66 favs

The artist glides through an art supply store looking for a color within. She can feel the color, but she can't name it. She can almost see it, but it's not that kind of color. It's not like, say, blue or red, a primary color that animates flags or exotic ceremonies.…

Because words are insufficient

18231823 views99 comments77 favs

The day you came to the wedding the sky was so, so brightly July./ I saw my face where I left it the last time . . . .

Laughingly rejected by The New Yorker

18931893 views99 comments44 favs

...and we laughed.

Polaris

20282028 views1010 comments77 favs

Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,

Transgressions

15211521 views1010 comments77 favs

Once you descend, the third rail/ hums its invitation

Letter

13001300 views99 comments77 favs

I'm writing you this letter played on a cherry flute. I'm sending it along through the poem's cloud of incense. The only delivery system I still hitch up for long distance pitching. I'm writing you a letter you'll probably never read. Never…

Behind the Ear

14981498 views99 comments77 favs

She grew tired of waiting for her husband to give her a flower so she picked one for herself.

I

14341434 views1111 comments44 favs

I thought of you todayand what you put me throughthe time you saidwe couldn't rest.

Stroke

14691469 views88 comments77 favs

She doesn't regret that they hadn't spoken. What did they have to say to each other, anyway?

Celebrating Difference

27602760 views1515 comments33 favs

Because they boil bananas and I fry them.

Glory

27002700 views2424 comments44 favs

A woman’s hair is her crowning glory, my grandmother always said.

Hand Grenades, or The Child in Your Eyes is Exploding the Known Universe

15581558 views88 comments77 favs

There is a war, but is it not In my heart? There is a war, but You are not the reason. There is a War, but we're all doing what we can. There is a war, but it is not just Your fight. There is a war, but I Wished you still walked…

Barbarian(s) Within the Gates

16841684 views66 comments55 favs

This writers' conference (sponsored by VQR, which had run its banner ad atop the Fictionaut home page in the summer of 2014, which begins to explain both my attendance and this essay) revealed itself as an apt subject . . .

What She Left Unsaid

21562156 views88 comments77 favs

Megan beat up on herself later over the unsaid.

Close those lips

21572157 views1010 comments44 favs

Ma tells me not to put a tampon between my legs. For fear of cotton fornication.

This is Mardi Gras

172172 views77 comments77 favs

We fly in first-class on Piggy Bank's dime, arriving at eight o'clock on Friday morning. The limousine driver with chestnut skin holds up a sign with our names on it. We drink single malt scotch from crystal glasses as New Orleans jaunts past…

Quinine Tablets

17531753 views1212 comments66 favs

a little bitter for the better

Dozen

17061706 views1212 comments77 favs

strung from her window to a tree

Animals

20072007 views44 comments44 favs

I folded my problems into pretty paper animals to keep me company. I set them on the Formica dinette set. I jammed some into cracks so they’d stand up straight: organized warfare

Scent of a Woman - 55 word story

20162016 views1313 comments55 favs

She slipped into a silky sheath dress, and stepped into black sequined heels just as the doorbell rang. Her date had arrived to take her to his much touted Art opening in town. Reaching under the bathroom sink for a final mist of hair spray she realized too late…

U R Doomed

16491649 views1111 comments77 favs

the swarthy terror network

Date Night

17231723 views77 comments77 favs

Content may contain ordinary, everyday, and all around average happenings.

In the Alley

18211821 views1212 comments77 favs

as i sink down into the shadows crawling like a worm past cold bricks centuries old in my blood

Closed Letter to Management

12981298 views1010 comments77 favs

don’t ask me to set my goals./ I have none except safe air to breathe,/ a reliable roof,/ something aromatic in the oven.

A World of Possible Flowers

17861786 views88 comments77 favs

"There are many dark places;but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."--J.R.R. Tolkien If the love never came you must have been Dragging your feet. If the hatred carved your…