STORY OF THE WEEK

Burials

By Shane Delaney
Jackie Conlan looked out the window and across the cemetery’s headstones. His father, Jack Conlan Sr., walked in and sat at the desk. Here’s a first, he said, some nutbag wants to dig the grave himself.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Mike Tyson Explains Middle Age to
John Keats

By Christian Teresi
A curse is also sacred, right, John? Stable-keeper’s kids know broken then healed, but healed with limits to how much anything can be set right.

OPEN TO ALL WRITERS

We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.

All entries are considered for publication. Please see the Guidelines.

WINNERS & FINALISTS

Congratulations . . .

 
to Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Noah Warren, Leila Chatti, and Korey Williams, the contest winners, and to the ten contest finalists. See the complete list here.

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

The Hotel Macabre

By Richard Bausch
Sitting here next to her husband, not touching, she thinks about how the whole day has become fraught with unbidden surges of memory from the other marriage.

FICTION

Perfume River

By Robert Olen Butler
He does not dare to ask the questions flaring in his head. Will she stay. Can they be together. She studies him closely but with her own eyes steady.

FICTION

Eminent Domain

By Cally Fiedorek
He would wear out a pair of four-thousand-dollar sneakers in three days, so rapacious was his stride. He filled it all up, broke everything’s seams.

FICTION

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

EMERGING WRITERS

FICTION

The Dynamics
of Faith

By Tom Grimes
If we all chase the life we think we deserve, who stays home? The boys wanted a mother. Did they get one? No. We made do with what we had.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

The Manzanos

By Kirstin Valdez Quade
My name is my grandmother’s: Ofelia Alma Zamora. I am eleven years old and too young to die, but I am dying nonetheless.

EMERGING WRITERS

CLASSICS

CLASSICS

NONFICTION

CLASSICS

I Want to Know Why

By Sherwood Anderson
We had climbed off a freight train at the edge of town, and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across town and to the race track and the stables at once.

CLASSICS

Old Mortality

By Katherine Anne Porter
Maria and Miranda felt they had lived a long time. Their memories began years before they were born, in the lives of the grown-ups around them.

NONFICTION

Trump: The Nature of His Game

By Bill Barich
I find myself thinking about the brief time I spent in Trump’s orbit almost thirty years ago and what it taught me about how he operates.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Superwhite and Other Poems

By Josh Bell
First, there was a fish. And then there was the consciousness of robots. What came between seemed durable enough.

POETRY

From “A Poppy
in My Hair”

By Moon Chung-hee
Does being settled deserve praise? As with livestock, breeding is needed, but must I stay with you until my dark hair grows green onion roots?

POETRY

The Way the
Light Reflects

By Richard Siken
The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects, so what’s there to be faithful to? I am faithful to you, darling I say to the paint.

FEATURES

SIX-WORD STORIES

MASTER CLASS

FEATURES

Forward Together

By the Reverend Dr.
William Barber
Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations find renewed expression in the speeches of the Reverend Dr. William Barber.

SIX-WORD STORIES

Youth

By Gabriella Deich
Regret, heartbreak, coming of age, and moving on, all in two six-word stories by this seventeen-year-old author.

MASTER CLASS

iPOEM

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

iPOEM

Argonaut

By Matt Salyer
Now what jut: my head emergent in original night, its thatched hair ablaze with constellations.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2016-09

By Various Artists
New art and humor by Pat Byrnes, Amy Kurzweil, Mary Lawton, Victoria Roberts, and Mick Stevens.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2016-08

By Various Artists
Great new toons by J. C. Duffy, Susan Camilleri Konar, Drew Panckeri, Julia Suits, and P. C. Vey.