Recommended stories

Killing Hope

14631463 views33 comments22 favs

Hope was beauty before I even knew what beauty was with her golden pigtails, brilliant blue eyes and an infectious smile — even after Jamie Delano flung his Frisbee, knocking out Hope’s two front teeth.

Call Me

13521352 views22 comments22 favs

I'm living where I've always lived, in Georgia.

How To Write Funny

15711571 views22 comments22 favs

I've never really been impressed with authors that write long teary-eyed novels about people dying of terrible diseases or uplifting stories about the armless boy who made the wrestling team.

New Story In PANK

996996 views55 comments11 fav

The gecko instinctively knew that if he moved, he was dead.

The Birds

17381738 views55 comments22 favs

When I left my wife, I got the birds. Two parakeets, blue and yellow, male and female. They were loud, messy and, because my ex rarely cleaned their cage, smelly. So I got them. At first, I called him Rod and her Tippy. Rod Taylor and Tippy Hedren? The Bi

Raw Sugar

15211521 views44 comments22 favs

Take shelter from the rain inside the Museum of Sex.

Ten lines inspired by a lecherous man ...

887887 views11 comment11 fav

A hymn for her when his head cocks shameless.

Chrysanthemums

9595 views33 comments22 favs

.

On a Son Turning Twenty-One

10631063 views55 comments22 favs

The rest is Scots, people for whom a taste is enough and a lyric’s as rare as a dragon or a poet named MacDuff.

Sleeplessness

11651165 views33 comments22 favs

The retina was burning, the liquid had dried up, and the veins bursting. My eyes bled. But I kept them open. The sound was like nails on glass, screeching endlessly. Coming close to me louder, harder, faster.

Keep the Change

16231623 views22 comments22 favs

Jacob could tell it was a man he had just walked past, a broken man with an olive green Vietnam era military jacket, a man who had probably served his country as honorably as anyone chosen at lottery and forced to kill for a subsistence wage…

Hoping For Bones

12521252 views33 comments22 favs

In the backyard with Joey, I make the mistake of answering him honestly when he asks what the gray brick in the dirt is for. “My parakeet is buried there,” I say. And he asks, “can we dig it up?”Joey's grandma lives down the street; he comes over…

Whip Poor Will

12281228 views33 comments22 favs

Save your delirium...

Black BoBbY BuRiED

12641264 views44 comments22 favs

Bobby turned black yesterday. Not like his ethnicity, or skin color. But his soul. Not his soul. Not black either. But a violet desecrating blue. That kind of blue that use to sit in the ocean, then dried up, and vanished into a big terrifying stupor. He looked at me with…

Mental or Medical?

22582258 views44 comments22 favs

“We wouldn't mock the recent Tornado victims, right? Why mock the mentally ill?” Jennifer Donnell, Fictionaut Member. The mentally ill are close to my heart, having helped the most severely impaired adults and…

About That Leg

11911191 views22 comments22 favs

I could have said no. I should have said no. Prudence, however, was not in the air. Fourteen minutes later I am at the door of his condo a few blocks from Pier 39. Twenty minutes later I have wriggled into his extra wetsuit and am following him on his wif

Dreams That Sorrow Owns

10411041 views33 comments22 favs

Maybe tomorrow someone dreams And maybe someone moans But beware the steam inside the dome It’s just dreams that sorrow owns If it resonates, say so Ho in a raccoon coat Slow bum ahead If it resonates, say so, say so And her man, yo

By Misadventure

12141214 views33 comments22 favs

...when they spotted each other through the glass, with he inside and she outside, she quickly began licking her fork obscenely, attempting to exhibit her sexual prowess with regard to the dexterity of her tongue and mouth...

Weaving the Way

12231223 views44 comments22 favs

Yellows and reds shed warp and weft bobbins of color spooling...

Bogart Generations

16961696 views44 comments22 favs

Great Uncle did stunts in silents and shot a man in a cowboy one-reeler, then vanished to the hills like Roy Earle in High Sierra.

Fifth of July

34623462 views33 comments22 favs

On the day my grandmother was buried, my grandfather shucked corn.

Earthquake 4.0

10981098 views11 comment11 fav

I thought the dog was up to someting.

Echoes

14441444 views33 comments22 favs

...Heroin. It helped them get through the tricks and sucked up their flesh.

Postcard from Shambhala

13781378 views33 comments22 favs

Dearest Z— There is no way to describe this place. It is a pendulum, caught at mid-swing or maybe just a millimeter on the up side. It is a sense of sweeping, a cleanness. Distant clouds remind me of the day we took the train and the mountains acted petulantly,…

Flavor of Law

10671067 views88 comments11 fav

It’s funny how white people are so reluctant to reveal their ignorance of hip-hop culture. “There are a number of robust on-line tools that can assign randomly-generated rap nicknames to members of the federal judiciary,” I told him.

Bands I Have Known

888888 views33 comments22 favs

Flu Fighters Hood Ornament Good Hydration Jacques Strappe Tar and Feathers Bad Oyster Band Mysterian and the Skid Marks Nimble Candle and the Streakers Uniball and the Supporters The Skinny Rubber Band

Edward Ogle the Fifth

10751075 views33 comments22 favs

Roaming beetles knitting needles chopstick counter attack.

I Had a Dream

10191019 views22 comments22 favs

I was born into a perpendicular world I held Vertigo in my arms once And gave her a good squeeze That she just couldn’t get out of her head Then she would follow me around the perimeter Where my breath was being held Against my will Ah,

My Voyeur Life

23662366 views22 comments22 favs

It's the way an earnest five-year-old boy pronounces every single letter as he whispers. Something about octopuses, something else about peas.

Road-trip

19701970 views88 comments11 fav

She is thinking about her baby, the one she loved for exactly one month before she lost her forever. Now, all the love for her baby is coiled in the pit of her stomach and it has fangs and venom, and it is leaking into her blood, her bones.