She got the house, he got the dog. Fine. Fair. Not forever—just until the papers were filed. The whole thing settled.
POEM OF THE WEEK
The Traveling Onion
By Naomi Shihab Nye
I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
Forgettable Life and Other Poems
By Kwame Dawes
I do think of how we live out these complete lives unseen by those who should know, and how at death, the lasting scent of things fades.
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
Dependents and Other Poems
By Cate Lycurgus
Life nothing but one massive lag—shoulds & shouldn’ts unwound now to dids & didn’t you feel the mainspring let down & love it, regardless?
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
Force Majeure and Other Poems
By Julia Anna Morrison
You assure me you will find
me in the next life,
and the one after, that no other
mother will do.
SPRING CONTEST WINNERS
SPRING CONTEST WINNERS
FICTION
SPRING CONTEST WINNERS
Bad Girl in Berlin
By S.L. Wisenberg
Etta and I were close as sisters. Every girl wanted to look like us. Men talking to us all the time. Are you a natural blonde? As if that were a new line. Can I take you out for a drink?
SPRING CONTEST WINNERS
The Dishwashing Women
By Tryphena L. Yeboah
Adoma was the youngest, and at twenty-nine she didn’t want to accept that well-meaning people designed their homes with small rooms of this kind for other humans.
FICTION
Rouses Point
By Sarah Balakrishnan
A scowl was growing on the man’s face, but if Marnie noticed it, she didn’t understand. For all her skill in moving men’s hearts, she could never tell when the effect she had was just the opposite.
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
The Long Consequence
By Richard Bausch
It was a beautiful morning. But there in front of the house was his son’s ratty old Thunderbird—askew, muddy, wrecked.
You couldn’t look past it.
FICTION
When People Fall
By Ann Beattie
If the person who falls becomes unconscious, their dog might lick their toes. Assuming they have a dog. And were barefoot when they fell.
FICTION
Uncertainty Is the Problem
By Tom Grimes
“Do you think I’m drinking out of this pint whiskey bottle for sport? I’m an injured Christian.”
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
The Russian Tank Commander, the Capitalist, and the Cover Girl
By Josh Haven
He was in the uncomfortable position of knowing that Gazneft could outbribe him.
FICTION
Bridesmaid, Revisited
By Katherine Heiny
It’s hard to say why Marlee wears the bridesmaid’s dress to work today. It’s the kind of decision that comes
from a hangover and a laundry crisis.
FICTION
Holy Men
By David Rabe
I had no idea how fitting this passing field of tombstones would prove to be. I was on my way to visit Father Lillius, from whom I'd been estranged for a dozen years.
FICTION
FICTION
READERS’ NARRATIVES
FICTION
The Garden of Israel Will Never Sleep
By Sandra Sidi
Israelis aren’t usually buried in coffins. Dust to dust, like the Bible says, but with soldiers sometimes there’s no body, so they put us in coffins.
FICTION
Turkey Day
By Morgan Talty
My sister Jess was getting out of prison the day before Thanksgiving, and Mom was sober and said she would host Thanksgiving. I was excited.
READERS’ NARRATIVES
Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles
By Shanda Connolly
It was my grandmother who first taught me how to find the North Star and the Big Dipper, where to look for them in the night sky.
CLASSIC
POETRY
POETRY
CLASSIC
Slepnevo, 1916
By Anna Akhmatova
Like a white stone sunk down a well,
The memory inside me.
I can’t struggle
against it: joy and suffering inseparable.
POETRY
Consanguinity
By Kaitlyn Airy
This is what it must have sounded like in the hollow of her: a timbre not unlike a hushed beach fire blue with salt faint hiss of smoke
POETRY
The Marcos Highway
By Alexandria Delcourt
The war never ended here, merely hid itself in the violent heat, disguised the sky as a tangle of black wire, crept up onto the sides of buildings.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
My Father’s Ampersand
By William Fargason
looks like a dollar sign as if he drew a tree trunk struck by lightning as if he had forgotten that shorthand squiggle
POETRY
Of or Pertaining to the Dog Days
By Timothy Leo
I do not want to maim my father. I want to suck, sleep, lie. Cradled at his hip, sole hooked in popliteal fossa, breathing his fur, his folds.
POETRY
Long-Haul Poems
By Brandon Lewis
Argue they’re misunderstood even while they swallow us whole. What is understanding but whatever the mind no longer slathers with longing?
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Salt and Other Poems
By Richard Quigley
Once, I wanted you around my waist so we could dance. Now I call my friends, afraid my stories will be overwritten in order
to bail you out.
POETRY
Because I Am a Good Shot and Other Poems
By Natalie Scenters-Zapico
I shoot a piece of paper so pale, from far away, it could be an image of me. After the range, I search for pills in my desk drawer.
POETRY
Helen of Troy
By Maria Zoccola
Much later, when the clothes were washed and dried, three women came in their nakedness so i could choose
from among them the most beautiful.
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2022-09
By Various Artists
Dogs, cats, and human conundrums from Kendra Allenby, Kaamram Hafeez, Mary Lawton, Ali Solomon, and P. C. Vey.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2022-10
By Various Artists
Wolves, sheep, pronouns, old movies, and laughs from P. C. Vey, Todd Condron, Pat Byrnes, Mick Stevens, and Kim Warp.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2022-11
By Various Artists
Whale watching, medicine, support animals, with humor from Tyson Cole, David Gomberg, Dan Misdea, Teresa Parkhurst Burns, and David Rowles.
