Recommended stories

You Know It!

16741674 views33 comments00 favs

"Every single thing ... " Hunk Hokum pronounced from the stage, flexing his muscles and prancing around in his red pseudo-loincloth, "has been totally scripted ... and ... every action ... has been ... preplanned-out ... in advance!"

The Shirley School of Customer Service

17841784 views77 comments11 fav

Hi. I'm Shirley. I'm not here to help you. You might think because I wear this ticky-tack name badge that I'm your servant. But I'm not. I'm here at K-mart because my grandson said I need to get out of the house. I wish he'd get out of my house. Here are some survival tips…

Retrospective with Mum

936936 views33 comments00 favs

I've brought a stack of old photo albums to the home with me. It'll be nice to go through them with Mum, I'm thinking.When I arrive she's doing her usual routine, where she sits silent for a time then bursts unprompted into laughter, lungs rattling, shouting at some…

FLY

14411441 views55 comments00 favs

The light hurts my eyes, she says.She turns her back to me on the bed, and her shoulder blades shift and jut towards me with aerodynamic lift — nubbin wings so slim, so sharp, so beautiful, they would carry her airborne.She wanted to have our children in this…

The Poe Man

869869 views33 comments00 favs

“Hey,” he said looking up from the New Yorker. “There’s a really interesting article about Edgar Allan Poe in here.”

Selling A Wedding Ring

12651265 views33 comments00 favs

I somehow ended up with my father's second wife's wedding ring. Although it could actually be his third wife's wedding ring.

Over Medium

11841184 views33 comments00 favs

He did it in front of the waiter and everything.

No Such Thing

10181018 views11 comment11 fav

People could disappear in the Pine Barrens and never be seen again. Either by their own choice or when someone didn’t want the body found. John Dance knew that was just a part of life you had to accept and couldn’t change.

Telling Maybelline Jones

14401440 views66 comments00 favs

Maybelline Jones is my sister, my friend, and I try to tell her the right way to be.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 6

10941094 views55 comments00 favs

When I got word from Mary Jo, she warned me that Mitchell Parkman was out looking for me with a butcher knife. I knew immediately what I had to do. I packed up my things and sold the Pepsi van and moved up to a room on Regent Street in Berkeley, all the w

Sailor's Visa

11691169 views33 comments00 favs

He's got a rager for Casablanca, the old Bogart and Bergman classic. I can't snap him out of it.

Raise Really High The Roofbeam, Gassbag

13531353 views44 comments00 favs

When I heard that my brother was going to get married, I was more surprised than anything, but also awed by his courage. Our sister, named Baah Baah during a particularly bad recreational substance binge by our fun-loving, aristocratic parents, Nancy and

Customer Service Circa 2017

13521352 views33 comments00 favs

Quantum transport rearranges grandma.

Probability

14491449 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…

Scene from the Clinic

12081208 views11 comment11 fav

No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.

Eden, Suburbs

15471547 views66 comments00 favs

The boy peered at the rather unusual place between the girl’s legs, which was entirely more complicated than a person might be given to believe should he see it, for example, bundled in underpants or a bathing suit.

Bob the Builder

968968 views33 comments00 favs

The concrete guy’s truck is parked in front of your house. There’s nothing for him to be doing there except your wife.

Piggy Bank

12721272 views11 comment11 fav

He shivered in his robe and pajama pants as the showdown with the piggy bank continued on this dark winter’s night. He couldn’t resist the cute dots for eyes, the stubby legs and perked up ears.

Up Front

11131113 views44 comments00 favs

He almost died, but hasn’t been this much alive ever.

Me and Coleridge Take a Spin in the Phlegethon

11801180 views11 comment11 fav

Like so many high school drugheads I warmed up to Coleridge because he was an dope fiend. If you want to get young men interested in poetry it helps if you lure them to the art through controlled substances.

Four, in the Morning

11941194 views00 comments22 favs

We’d told her that Kasey waitressed. We talked about it a lot, trying to figure something out. I wanted to be honest with her. Kasey said she was too young to understand. I said that was why honesty wouldn’t hurt anything. Kasey said what about later.

Lazarus argentatus

10631063 views33 comments00 favs

They take the blue man out on a stretcher, stiff in cyanotic repose until the paramedics shake him. He sits bolt upright, startled, confused, indignant. ‘Lazarus?' I ask. ‘Argyria. Happens every fucking time he naps on the …

Love in Miniature

970970 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

Gateway Love

15221522 views22 comments00 favs

Gateway Loves are lethal. They do not discriminate between bot or flesh, primary or clone.

Smite the hindmost of them

944944 views33 comments00 favs

“Hello, I’m Marlene, and this is April,” says the older of two women. Both Marlene and April wear ankle length dresses. The name Hester Prynne flashes through my mind.

Worry Is for the Well-Rested

12871287 views44 comments11 fav

I'm in the boardroom, downtown in San Francisco. I don't even remember showing up for work today. I hope they fire me, just like they fired Bill. Well not exactly like that, that was awful. He was caught downloading a phenomenal amount of…

Babes in the Bush

14451445 views44 comments00 favs

Holy shit, man, look at that!” Mike's pimply face melts into drooling bliss. His dad had stopped in this whacko town on the way to our campsite, muttered something about angry lesbians, and disappeared. Rick and I follow Mike's dumbstruck gaze to a shop…

Begonia {part two}

13111311 views22 comments00 favs

perhaps because they were holding hands and sharing tears; perhaps because the moon shone so brightly; perhaps for no reason at all; but both the Coriander and Isabella felt a surge of hope so strongly that both smiled a genuine smile.

And then she was gone

20612061 views33 comments00 favs

Given the nature of the events that were to follow I'm pretty sure that no one sane could have been equipped to comprehend, much less deal with, the coming weirdness any better than I was.

Match Book Covers

11061106 views44 comments00 favs

We all wish to partake in great events.