Recommended stories

Fast

11681168 views22 comments11 fav

Everything seems still, but it's not.

The Letter

13021302 views22 comments11 fav

I knew nothing about the letter at first. When I came in that morning and smiled and said good morning, it was a genuine smile and a heartfelt good morning. But the letter, which had arrived the previous afternoon, was already doing its corrosive work of

The Kid With the Hair

11241124 views44 comments11 fav

threads of Cocoa Krispies

another love letter

11401140 views44 comments00 favs

Buoyancy

14821482 views22 comments11 fav

When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo

NOVEL EXCERPT: Jimmy Gollihue

15821582 views00 comments11 fav

Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound, a long voice from up the mountain, and the baying of the dog pulled a keening lament from his dream of the highway.

Ring, Ring, Ring

11781178 views33 comments11 fav

If this is trouble, please call someone else.

Kickstand

10141014 views22 comments22 favs

Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.

Gothic Clockwork Apparatus Man

12951295 views22 comments22 favs

an awkward stage between glued popsicle stick marsupial, and mechanical tin foil mammal.

Pictures of an Inhibition

915915 views44 comments11 fav

Fun times. Deep breath.

Egypt.

12801280 views22 comments22 favs

When the sky was thinner and water faster, we would chase the falling stars.

A Bum and his Shopping Cart, Giving Up his Ways

10641064 views44 comments11 fav

A bum leaves his shopping cart in the middle of the intersection at 7th Ave and Perry St and walks away leaving everything behind Shopping cart gets hit by an onslaught of yellow taxis whizzing by The contents flying out into the hum

Centipede

12761276 views22 comments11 fav

Five o’clock, and Madame choosing her evening legs. Elizabeth assisting. Elizabeth will continue to assist until midnight, despite the chaos, at which point the authorities will tell her such assistance is no longer necessary.

Octopus

12831283 views44 comments11 fav

My ride, my good friend Morning was due any minute, but of course, he/she was always late. My costume was a dog. I was stuck to another dog, in the act of passion. A stuffed one. A basset hound. I said my name was Lightning.

The Game

14111411 views22 comments11 fav

Cammie Richard's house was just like all the others in Wilchester. The exterior was vaguely reminiscent of the Dutch style; gray stone with cross beams of dark wood, with two stories and a bay window. Her yard was fertilizer green, with a giant STRATFORD FOOTBALL…

The Grief Counselor

17421742 views22 comments00 favs

At first she kept repeating "I don’t know why he's doing this" as if the cops thought she was mixed up in it somehow. When they convinced her that all she needed to do was talk to her brother and tell him to give himself up, she looked hopeless.

His Nightmares

11701170 views44 comments11 fav

Motionless seconds turned

Blonde Woman with Sunglasses

331331 views22 comments11 fav

Sometimes everything becomes as meaningless as a blonde woman with sunglasses. Still, there is something reassuring about the blonde woman with sunglasses, as she sits there alien to any regime, while I build my new empire of vanilla ice cream, so…

Shirts and Skins

14031403 views44 comments11 fav

The boys finished their laps and returned to the center of the gym, Hamid shuffling up last, as usual. Amid the T-shirts and shorts, he wore faded blue slacks and a grubby, long sleeved dress shirt. He always dressed that way, even in gym class, as though

Acapella

280280 views33 comments11 fav

What time is it exactly? A time no one should know? A time of unrequited beauty? A time when gods must go to some level of subsidence? A parabola long unseen? Some point bereft of distance? A cosmic mezzanine? A…

I Wonder

10071007 views22 comments22 favs

I wonder what it would be like to dog-paddle in the middle of the ocean. I wonder how Jean Auguste Ingres got the flesh tones for “Odalisque.” I wonder if bees have dreams.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 4

11761176 views33 comments11 fav

There was no one there, but the smell of cooked bacon permeated the hall, triggering borborygmus in his stomach. He loved that word, but not his empty stomach.

Terminal Velocity

10361036 views22 comments22 favs

...she did wish she lived somewhere in Ancient Rome, and from one of those seven hills, perhaps during sunset, she would resolve to roll down and meet the flaming orb just as it descended so she would dissolve into embers and ash...

The Diaphragm

13361336 views22 comments11 fav

They had a deal, she reminded him. If he didn’t want to wear a condom all the time, he’d have to help with her birth control.

Drunk and Driving the Family Home

963963 views22 comments22 favs

I felt like-

The Four Despairs of Lumpy

770770 views11 comment11 fav

children love to push the gas up and down my limbs

Swallowed Gulped Engulfed

720720 views44 comments11 fav

Last night the thesaurus exploded. Don’t ask how. It just did. Exploded. Burst. Blew up. Flew into pieces. Discharged.

Blackouts

11351135 views11 comment11 fav

The Bird King is trapped behind the mirrors. Sometimes you'll see a hand, a wing, fluttering in a dark space. You may even see his breath, a pulse of mist in a corner of the glass. But don't ever smash his silvered prison. Don't ever let him out and into the world.*****O…

Terry, the virgin

10991099 views33 comments22 favs

Terry had an apartment not far from Lake Michigan, where we could stroll to one of the beaches. It was close to Lincoln Park. This was in the summer of 1966. We had to walk up to the fourth floor, and on those steamy hot Chicago summer nights in August,

The Roses Ask For You

948948 views55 comments11 fav

The roses ask for you when I smell them They seem to remember your touch more than others. They can’t bear it when you’re gone and wonder when you’ll be returning I am beginning to do the same I no longer go outdoors to be with them