Recommended stories

Ashtray Blues

292292 views22 comments22 favs

O most disconsolate ashtray, you are not politically correct, it's a conspiracy I suspect. O most disconsolate ashtray, how I long to see your smoke arise, suspended in my eyes, now you have nothing left to do but sit there in a smokeless …

Peggy Guggenheim Visits an Operation

13311331 views22 comments22 favs

To pay the bill.

Loose End

624624 views33 comments11 fav

With the crash of a hard drive his world / was destroyed

(little miracles)

604604 views33 comments11 fav

The little miracle of leaking milk from our skin The miracle of two mouths attached at the lips The miracle of inhaling another human’s essence at the onset of remembrance and the extensive and naturally occurring miracle of seeing someo

This Story Has No Title

11171117 views22 comments22 favs

They watch her, scald her skin with hot eyes whose stares run up and down her body like lice.

How to Cheer Up a Sad Song

11291129 views22 comments22 favs

It's one of the most difficult problems of aesthetic philosophy: What do we mean when we say that a song is sad? None of the big names--Aristotle, Kant, Croce–Benedetto, not Jim–come close to answering it.

"Dial Back the Snark" Speakers Scramble for Limited Gigs

936936 views33 comments11 fav

“‘Dial Back the Snark’ is an attempt to fight the cynicism that’s corroding America’s social fabric,” Myers says, mixing his metaphors. “It’s spreading like wildfire."

Icarus

10741074 views22 comments22 favs

Rob slogged down First as November winds tore right on through him that Tuesday at four o'clock in the morning, letting him know that he was the only man left on the face of the whole fucking planet. Except for an old, broke,…

The Happy Bunny Family and the Enormous Publisher’s Clearing House Check

16531653 views33 comments11 fav

The Happy Bunny Family had a secret: They weren't very happy.Everyone in town knew it, but of course no one said anything. Mr. Happy Bunny would stroll through the center of town on his way to work and people would smile and nod and wish him a good day and he would return…

Conversation in a Dark Corner of Cafe Breton

988988 views22 comments22 favs

I loved you with the heaviness of crushed knives

Summer XVI

10431043 views55 comments11 fav

It was the truth, you'd say. Then someone else would step in, someone who knew the situation. It wasn't long before the entire population of our sleepy little town became accustomed to your routine. It was even welcome in some circles. Those circles were made up…

Thick Air

864864 views33 comments11 fav

The only thoughts that come are old ones that are so needy they keep circling through for attention

I'm Just Not Interested

922922 views44 comments11 fav

in making your sad blown apart hearts rise up and squeeze out the kindness juices ever so sweetly anymore. Tried that. Didn't work out too well, not for me, wasn't a BIG time of waste, but did eat up some important wee…

1

981981 views22 comments22 favs

That evening, my friend and I were at a McDonalds'. It was late in the evening, and we got together after she sent me a text message she meant to send to someone else. I got a burger. She got fries.

Beyond Penderecki

13311331 views11 comment22 favs

From a window, the young Pole Krzysztof Penderecki saw resistance fighters hanged by Nazis...

The Book

935935 views22 comments11 fav

“Are you comparing the communists with Hitler?” “Are you telling me there is no comparison?"

gravelortian part 18

970970 views22 comments22 favs

A poor boy scribbling

The Girls of Spring

12711271 views33 comments22 favs

The girls of spring, they’ll stop your heart When they forsake cosmetic art They practiced back when skies were grey and clouds obscured the light of day.

South 55

14691469 views22 comments22 favs

This is a wife pregnant with spiders

The Case for Mashed Potatoes

16111611 views44 comments11 fav

Steam rolls out of the bathroom as Mr. Larson opens the door with a white towel around his waist. Pepper strolls up to him and purrs as she rubs her long, gray tail against his tanned legs."Hey, girl.” He runs his coarse, scarred fingers through the cat's soft coat.…

Your Mystery

14181418 views33 comments11 fav

I took it in my hands and used it on my lips. The taste was just hers: her touch, her smell, her breath in the winter nights. She was in this. Everything we had was in this tube.

When I Became a White Girl

17461746 views66 comments00 favs

“Actually, children, none of us will be having birthdays this year,” my father sighed. “Not even me? Why?” asked Charlie. "Son, this is what's known as a ‘one-party democracy."

two dudes talking

14341434 views22 comments11 fav

“What about this shirt?” “I didn't know Gap had an ‘approaching middle age pimp' department.” “So… no?” “Yeah. No.” “Approaching middle age?” “So…” “So?” “Soooooo…”…

Facsimile in Boots

13201320 views22 comments22 favs

There she is. A paper doll of me. The dress, the lilt, the self-hatred. The crowd thins and swells in want of a scene. Conversations begin, pretend, then halt. My gin and tonic sweats into my hand and I lick at the…

Roza

950950 views22 comments22 favs

Very upsetting morning. I've fallen madly in love with the cat upstairs named Roza. She's one of the sweetest cats I've ever met. Her owner is a retired Romanian woman about my own age named Ingrid. Roza has one bad eye and one good eye. The bad eye looks like a…

Flight

10171017 views44 comments11 fav

I know what to expect because this has happened before. The darkness, the stench of an unlit match, The leathery sound of old wings flapping and finally that voice made up of feces and dust, ancient and terrible suggesting depravity and painful deaths t

hands

10921092 views22 comments22 favs

He cleaned off the pump with a steel brush. Then he took it out to the pressure washer. Out there was where a lady that looked like a witch used to move around and sit on the fences like a crow. The air was humid, and the men were dressed in heavy blue coveralls.…

The Ache of Logic

11191119 views33 comments11 fav

There is a the reason for the theft of people and the melting of gold

Me and Lord Byron at Last Call

12801280 views44 comments11 fav

Byron's achievement, certainly quite remarkable, is to have raised the drunken monologue to a literary form. Edmund Wilson

The Wolves of Night Time Wrinkle Their Noses at the Thought of Running Towards the Sun, But Do it Any Ways

14851485 views33 comments22 favs

Jesus was a cancer survivor and possibly a super nova.He ran with the Wolves of night time, with the women of the paleolithic era and hunted for meat when the blood didn't drip to their feet and create veritable red shoes like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.I am no longer in…