STORY OF THE WEEK

STORY OF THE WEEK

The Third Bird By Kaitlin Roberts

The Third Bird

By Kaitlin Roberts
What they needed was to be themselves. To be among their kind. I had tried to prove myself through sacrifice, but the real test was letting go.

POEM OF THE WEEK

POEM OF THE WEEK

Tidal Motif By Henk Rossouw

Tidal Motif

By Henk Rossouw
I speak at the edge of something else—Pacific asters sinuate in the wind, the shorebirds arriving and leaving without cease, your fingers arthritic.

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER
Deadline: Fri., July 10, at 11:59 p.m., PST.

Open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts.

Please see the Guidelines.

POETRY

POETRY

What It Requires By Sharon Olds

What It Requires

By Sharon Olds
I do not know the extremes of feeling. I have been protected from them, I have protected myself. The depths of being I’ve observed but not felt—too afraid to feel.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

This Wednesday By Katie Condon

This Wednesday

By Katie Condon
Where is the door that will take us to the inner world, the one where memory lives unburdened by our ability to recall it? It’s easy to take stock of this place, this Wednesday in a library.

POETRY

POETRY

His Last Days By Dan Gerber

His Last Days

By Dan Gerber
He saw each bird as a kind of feeling he’d known, imagining its movements as his own. Thrill of cool water finding its way between feathers and let himself become feathers.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

The Murder of Louisa Suckraw By Ted Kooser

The Murder of Louisa Suckraw

By Ted Kooser
There are too many stories under these pine cones, this sod, to remember them all, but Louisa Suckraw’s is gouged in stone. It tells and tells.

POETRY

POETRY

White Birds By Maria Giesbrecht

White Birds

By Maria Giesbrecht
At three, I stepped on Dad’s liquor bottle and now there’s a robin’s nest, faint and white, on the inside of my left foot.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Sweeter By Yong-Yu Huang

Sweeter

By Yong-Yu Huang
This is what passes for dreaming in the blue house, the decay of my good days. Again, the bowl of fruit awash in the creeping light.

POETRY

POETRY

Illicit By Cate Lycurgus

Illicit

By Cate Lycurgus
touching you is a dash in the paragraph of not touching you fragment in the sentence of not seeing you seeing you is a colon amid clauses of not seeing

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Long Love—Betsy and Andrew Wyeth By Melissa McKinstry

Long Love—Betsy and Andrew Wyeth

By Melissa McKinstry
What I want to know is, will someone in the future, after stringed instruments disappear, remember the sound? Music’s evanescence, like smoke swirled and held in a jar.

POETRY

POETRY

My Daughter’s Daughter Is Sad By Luisa Muradyan

My Daughter’s Daughter Is Sad

By Luisa Muradyan
My mother’s mother had to keep her mother on the tenth floor of our Soviet apartment building. There was no elevator and no way for her to get outside during the day.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

A Posteriori By Ananya Kanai Shah

A Posteriori

By Ananya Kanai Shah
Now the years recant in a clean, even stroke. In the annex of the mind, a chair. From it I watch the city swirl into renaissance, toad-like cars chasing their own vapor.

POETRY

POETRY

The Legend of Zelda By Brian Tierney

The Legend of Zelda

By Brian Tierney
All we wanna do is play Nintendo till it’s dark out and can’t, the grid’s still down. Blackout to last another day and the heat for three and the Phils are blowing a wildcard chance, WHYY reports.

FICTION

CLASSIC

FICTION

FICTION

The Red Shoes By Lavanya Vasudevan

The Red Shoes

By Lavanya Vasudevan
At her nalangu, the girl would not sit quietly on the wooden plank and let us paint her feet with turmeric. She put on her strange red shoes.

CLASSIC

CLASSIC

The Weary Blues By Langston Hughes

The Weary Blues

By Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

STORY CONTEST WINNERS

STORY CONTEST WINNERS

STORY CONTEST WINNERS

STORY CONTEST WINNERS

Private Planet By Dina Kleiner

Private Planet

By Dina Kleiner
Picturing herself in the future was a comfort because it was a confirmation. She believed any confirmation at all, desirable or undesirable, was favorable over the unknown.

STORY CONTEST WINNERS

Regional Hospitals By Alice Ryan

Regional Hospitals

By Alice Ryan
She has no recollection of any restaurant, but she knows how important it is to her father that his old life connects to his new life, so she nods into the pitch-black of the car park of the regional hospital.

STORY CONTEST WINNERS

The Day of the Dog By Maria Giesbrecht

The Day of the Dog

By Maria Giesbrecht
Working. That has been our entire world for the two months that we and other Mennonite families have come from Mexico to work in Canada. “Good, honest, godly work,” Father says. “We’ll be blessed.”

CARTOONS

GRAPHIC STORY

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2026-06 By Various Artists

Cartoon Art Volume 2026-06

By Various Artists
Let these toons by Kyle Bravo, J.C. Duffy, Rose Anne Prevec, P. C. Vey, and Kaamran Hafeez brighten your day.

GRAPHIC STORY

GRAPHIC STORY

My Father By Shannon Wheeler

My Father

By Shannon Wheeler
In 1967 he adopted an Open Land Policy: anyone who wanted could come and live for free.

LEARN!

FEATURES

LEARN!

LEARN!

Letters to a Young Writer By Richard Bausch

Letters to a Young Writer

By Richard Bausch
You can make your own way in the world, and in your own life make sure you never utter one epithet that takes away another human being’s dignity.

FEATURES

FEATURES

Best Advice By Kirstin Valdez Quade

Best Advice

By Kirstin Valdez Quade
The fiction writer must merge with the character on the page and see things clearly though the character’s eyes.