STORY OF THE WEEK

Denial

By Meg Serino
It would be difficult, the hardest thing, perhaps, she had ever done. Because she does love Aaron, even now. Even after Ted; even after this one week.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Acceptance

By Ha Jin
You can’t go home anymore and will drift on the wind of chance—wherever you land you will be an outsider. Accept the role of a wanderer.

FOR WRITERS 30 AND UNDER


A contest for writers, poets, artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers between eighteen and thirty years old.

Please see the Guidelines.

POETRY

No One Knows the Way to Heaven

By Ocean Vuong
You will look & look—& see only the world. Well here’s the world, sweetheart. One little word as small & large as a father.

FEATURES

FEATURES

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

FEATURES

Allegiance

By Peter Taylor
The first one, two, three steps I take across the room are taken with trepidation. And, so to speak, in midair.

FEATURES

Secret and
Suggestion in
Peter Taylor’s “Allegiance”

By Ann Beattie
Peter Taylor’s stories are jigsaw puzzles of nuance.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

When Enough Is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse

By Lynn Freed
Some writers persist into old age; others, many others, run out of heat.

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

A Vacuum Is a Space Entirely Devoid of Matter

By Sherman Alexie
In jail, or on my reservation, you’d get your teeth loosened for lying like that.

FICTION

She’s the Bomb

By T. Coraghessan Boyle
The words she can’t say are looping over and over like a short circuit in her brain: There’s a bomb in the Bank Center quad. A bomb, you hear me?

FICTION

Warrior Jesus

By T. Coraghessan Boyle
What you see, right off, is that this isn’t the sort of hero who’ll turn the other cheek or out of some misguided notion of fairness or love.

FICTION

FICTION

NONFICTION

FICTION

The Storm of
the Century

By Mary Morris
He wants Rebecca to tell him as if she holds the piece of the puzzle, the key to the secret. And, of course, she does.

FICTION

The Catch

By Tina Nettesheim
We’d like to talk to you about her relationship with this kid, Gage, a policeman said on the phone, as if Ms. Bell and Gage had a connection that wasn’t sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.

NONFICTION

180 Sumac

By Julia Scheeres
My adopted brother died in a car crash not six miles from this room when we were twenty, and my life was ripped in two: before and after.

CLASSICS

CLASSICS

CLASSICS

Alturas

By Pablo Neruda
Almighty death invited me many times: it was like the hidden salt in waves, and its invisible flavors tasted like collapsing shipwrecks.

CLASSICS

Bleecker Street, Summer

By Derek Walcott
It is a month of street accordions and sprinklers laying the dust, small shadows running from me.

Adam’s Curse

By William Butler Yeats
We sat together at summer’s end, that beautiful woman, your close friend, and you and I, and talked of poetry.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

All My Pretty Ones

By Laura Kasischke
A man lets loose his hounds, or he ties up his hounds loosely. He lives in a nice house, for a few years, blamelessly. Or he lives in a white house.

POETRY

Pardoning

By Sarah Mandl
Is my body blameless? Imagine drowning in yellow lilies or being born twice mallow-soft like a drying kiss of dew. Hades, I am your mother too.

POETRY

At the Sunoco in West Virginia

By Catherine Pond
My father is dreamy, forgetful, aloof. But I’ve never actually been left behind before.

POETRY

iPOEMS

GRAPHIC STORIES

POETRY

Summer, Rhode Island and
Other Poems

By Sarah Ruhl
It wasn’t until you saw blood in the toilet and saw the red unfurl, you let the sadness in.

iPOEMS

Marriage as
Light Socket

By Nicole Cooley
Loss: as if you could lock your teeth against it. Or slam the front door to keep it out.

GRAPHIC STORIES

Adventures of a Would-Be Filmmaker

By Huguette Martel
I am a painter, but I’ve always dreamed of making movies. Since I am in my seventies, it is now or never, and I know it.

SHORT SHORTS

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

CARTOONS

SHORT SHORTS

Thompson’s Boots

By HC Palmer
Five klicks south of Phuoc Vinh, Val at my side and my first visit since the war, I’m searching the old firebase—grown back to jungle after thirty years.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

Reading Three Poems

By Donald Hall
Great blue mountain! Ghost. I look at you from the porch of the farmhouse where I watched you all summer as a boy.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2017-09

By Various Artists
Great new toons by Pat Byrnes, Nathan Gray, David Sipress, Rich Sparks, and Julia Suits.