“O youth! To me the ship was not an old rattle-trap carting about the world a lot of coal for a freight—to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life.”
POEM OF THE WEEK
What Gary Snyder Said to Me, That Day, in the Doorway of the Milking Barn
By Daniel Smith
You need to teach these cows to meditate. To lose their bodies in a trance.
30 BELOW 30
As a Girl, I’ve Been Taught
By Zoe Harris
Here I am on the bus, questioning every supposed feminist cell of my being while secretly hoping to be called out by this man slurring compliments.
NONFICTION
The Teaching of Writing
By Kay Boyle
At times the young find it difficult to express their inner thoughts. It takes courage to say things differently: Caution and cowardice dictate the use of the cliché.
NONFICTION
NONFICTION
NONFICTION
Snapshots of My Brother
By Lynn Ahrens
In the middle of the night, my brother Ricky kicks a dent in the side door and goes. We later learn he has joined the army.
NONFICTION
Trump: The Nature of His Game
By Bill Barich
Now that the Republicans have convened and we must accept the reality of Donald Trump as their nominee, I find myself thinking about the brief time I spent in his orbit.
Whale Shark
By Rick Bass
Why should anything frighten the largest fish in the world? My heart is going faster than it has ever gone, being still, treading water.
FICTION
FICTION
CLASSICS
FICTION
What You Get
By Benjamin Alire Sáenz
He looked like a revolutionary who’d lost the war. There was nothing sadder than the look of defeat in a man’s eyes. Survivors carried their dead around long after the war ended.
FICTION
Fisher Cat
By Katherine Vaz
Ray hoped they would not align him with his daughter’s humiliating viral video. What he wouldn’t give as an ad man to get such an explosive, overnight response.
CLASSICS
The Story of a Scar
By James Alan McPherson
It was so grotesque a mark that one had the feeling it was the art of no human hand and could be peeled off like so much soiled putty. But the scar was real.
WINTER CONTEST WINNERS
WINTER CONTEST WINNERS
WINTER CONTEST WINNERS
WINTER CONTEST WINNERS
The Thomas Cantor
By Sara Houghteling
The music reminds him of a birch tree in early fall, its leaves fluttering gold and gold-brown. I have seen this, he thinks, somewhere in Bavaria. Before he knows it, he is asleep.
WINTER CONTEST WINNERS
Girl from the Moon
By E. K. Ota
She laughed in a way that Dai-san thought was unnatural, as if she were doing something mesmerizing but despicable, like sprinkling salt on snails.
WINTER CONTEST WINNERS
Year of the Great Voyage
By Alex R. Jones
A teenage mind is the most fertile of soils, and the beach I imagined was out of some movie, complete with virgin-white sand and palm trees.
MASTER CLASS
NARRATIVE 10
NARRATIVE 10
MASTER CLASS
NARRATIVE 10
Ten Questions
for Adam Haslett
Between one o’clock and two-thirty, I’ve exhausted the critical voices in my head, my blood sugar is running low, and I’m finally able to write.
NARRATIVE 10
A Conversation
With Peggy Orenstein
I love talking to girls. I find young women to be so thoroughly thoughtful and intellectually engaged and willing to go deep.
SIX-WORD STORIES
SIX-WORD STORIES
DRAMAS IN ONE BREATH
SIX-WORD STORIES
After War
By HC Palmer
The author reflects on the soldier’s experience and the burden of war’s trauma—in just six words.
SIX-WORD STORIES
Erudition
By Rickey Pittman
A library burns, but you won’t feel too badly, when you read this six-word story.
DRAMAS IN ONE BREATH
First sex. I came. She didn’t. Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
It Moves the Same
By Dana R. Beasley
In the shade I can still find rocks coated with frost, the same winter air that chilled your fingertip as you pointed toward the sky.
POETRY
From “The Low Passions”
By Anders Carlson-Wee
A few empty Coors rim the bathroom sink, pull tabs removed. There’s no need to check for a pulse, hold a hand mirror for breath.
POETRY
Learning Yiddish
By Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Now even my husband smells of you, or something flesh-like I remember. Memory’s a wild and fragile thing, it’s glass we shattered under the chuppah.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Oliver
By Tess Gallagher
Tell me everything, my prince. Don’t leave a chink in the air. Ripple your rill across my living heart like a balm.
POETRY
Terminal Resemblance
By Louise Glück
When I saw my father for the last time, we both did the same thing. He was standing in the doorway, waiting for me to get off the telephone.
POETRY
Field Music
By Alexandria Hall
I lied at my first confession. I never talk down. I never say shit. I know about sex. It’s not a cardinal flying into the wrong window.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
She
By Jim Harrison
Down here on the Mexican border my housekeeper, an Apache Tarahumara woman, sings me a lament of love and death.
POETRY
Unemployed
By Nora Hickey
I’m going for a midnight run. When I say run I mean fall apart. And the screen door slams. And the left aorta slams.
POETRY
Phonograph Mouth
By Rebecca Keith
Does she fancy a minuet or the call of a foreign shore? I’ve a portfolio of bird warbles, a trio of mended seams and pockets stitched.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Afternoon Happiness
By Carolyn Kizer
I spy a handsome psychiatrist, and wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free. Doctor, I’ll say, I’m supposed to be a poet.
POETRY
Meteor Shower and Other Poems
By Ted Kooser
Just before sunrise I counted nine meteors scratching the heavens, just little scratches, the kind a cat might make while playing with a ball.
POETRY
Nothing about This Is Epic
By Cat Richardson
My apartment is a series of invasions: mosquitoes, mice, boyfriends. I don’t fight them—the mice are my mind.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
If America Doesn’t Want You Dead
By Danez Smith
Being black and not dead is a radical act. If me saying that upsets you or annoys you, you may kindly excuse yourself from this poem.
POETRY
From “The Book of Clay”
By Blanca Varela
God is there because I believe in my own image. Poor woman with the sad hair. She removes evil by the handful and washes herself a thousand times but she remains indelible.
POETRY
Crispin Poems
By M. A. Vizsolyi
yes it was the motion that told me to go near her & so i did. i took my place before her & looked at her long beautiful throat. i moved my body like a wine glass shook.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
On the Aggrieved and Other Poems
By Michael Wasson
Warm up this house because it’s winter again & skin is another word for forgetting your blood is in motion. Check the closet where your brother is held.
POETRY
Boiled Noise
By Jeff Whitney
Here is where we say what matters. Here are voices from the mountain, hosannas in the shape of airplanes in the sky. Here is a bear shining her teeth on a peach pit.
From “The Obscure Lives of Poets”
By C. D. Wright
One broke faith with the word before the word could break faith with her, and built a mountain of detergent in her garage.
iPOEMS
iPOEMS
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
iPOEMS
Bonsai
By Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
A bent man with insubstantial hands wires the skin of a miniature myrtle, waiting a year to break the bark.
iPOEMS
Stones
By Ghassan Zaqtan
Three stone steps
where our fathers sit
looking as mean
as we knew them to be
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
Owl and the Nightingale
Written more than a century before Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, this poem is an example of the creativity of early poets.
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2016-07
By Various Artists
The absurd and hilarious, from J. C. Duffy, Farley Katz, Mary Lawton, Rina Piccolo, and Kim Warp.
Cartoon Art Volume 2016-06
By Various Artists
New art and humor by Felipe Galindo Gomez, Glen Le Lievre, Victoria Roberts, Mick Stevens, and Julia Suits.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2016-05
By Various Artists
New laughs from J. C. Duffy, Ken Krimstein, Glen Le Lievre, P. C. Vey, and Wen Winslow.
