Dante’s warning at the gates of Hell is nowhere to be seen. Nothing about the shop commands he give up hope. On the contrary.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Song of the Old Mother
By William Butler Yeats
The young lie long and dream in their bed of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, and their days go over in idleness.
FINAL WEEKS TO ENTER
Deadline: Fri., July 17, at midnight, PDT.
“Rare relief springs from poetry,” wrote C. D. Wright. We agree and are seeking poets and poems to celebrate with prizes and publication.
Please see the Guidelines.
SEEKING STORIES AND ESSAYS
Narrative winners and finalists have gone on to win honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, and have appeared in collections such as The Best American Short Stories.
Please see the guidelines.
Spring Issue
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Spring Issue
POETRY
Across the Sea: A Sequence
By Gbenga Adesina
On the sea, your prayer is not to the whorl scarf of waves. Your prayer is to the fitful sleep of the dead.
POETRY
In Airports
By Erin Belieu
It was the season for weeping in airports for walking and bleeding in airports—
POETRY
To Cicero’s Hand
By Malachi Black
In Rome they hailed: and fixed you, wrist-wise, with a nine-inch nail, to a gray beam of the Rostra in the public square.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
From Deluge
By Leila Chatti
I won’t be the last to look into a painting like a mirror, to ignore the glutted world in order to better scrutinize the self.
POETRY
You Said Eden Disappeared and Other Poems
By Traci Brimhall
Even when God flooded the world, he loved it. Even when he promised to destroy it again with cleansing fire.
POETRY
Holy Defense and Other Poems
By Armen Davoudian
A volcano in Italy and the salamander fit to live in the fire of myth, safely immune to it.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Dementia Bus
By Lisa Dordal
My father keeps merging houses, first wife and second. He knows me, he doesn’t know me.
POETRY
Fish
By Shangyang Fang
It was a clean doing. No blood. Only the white scales descended like pear blossoms, wafting the metallic scent of snow.
POETRY
Separation and Other Poems
By John Freeman
We think we worship life, but we have made a botch of this, encircling ponds and trees with the smelt of disused weapons.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
The Archive Is All in Present Tense and Other Poems
By Elizabeth Hoover
I sort through tea lights, radio crackles, fortune-tellers predicting the man who will marry you.
POETRY
North to Natoma and Other Poems
By Kira Jan
Daylike, we pass by empty lots of orchard land, the topsoil kept down more by pacing feet than water.
POETRY
Night Talks
By Farah Kader
your stories used to spill from you bubble up and over words unable to catch up to one another between hot breaths
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
In Custody and Other Poems
By Kawita Kandpal
I have written the word for distance upon your tongue. It is a field of almond trees sharp like the seams of a Kashmiri wind.
POETRY
Dancing Cheek to Cheek
By Natan Last
I told T (who I haven’t seen cry) men in Nairobi held hands wherever they walked, though the streets didn’t have names.
POETRY
Between Hospital Visiting Hours
By A.D. Lauren-Abunassar
The river was a dark lung and a fast machine, whistled humors humors month-mottled with slow freeze and ice
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Learning the Ancestors’ Tongues and Other Poems
By Philip Metres
And you call us gathering together a murder? Is it the inked iridescence of our feathers?
POETRY
Rundown
By Jerome Ellison Murphy
in shaded suburbs there are shades neighbors dread and I wonder when that tree will let go which must be taller by now and reaching closer or dead.
POETRY
The Niger Sings of Blood
By Romeo Oriogun
A man could give up the world to call his home by a name his ears could hear in the middle of a shelling.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
From Notes at the Grave of James Felix Quigley
By James Kelly Quigley
Hello drug, hello dreg, my innumerable & faceless angels. Hello anger, my birthright, come now to the water’s edge.
POETRY
Prayer Before Turning on the News
By Hila Ratzabi
Let something have been fixed today: The deal among the nations signed, the guns, all of them, taken away.
POETRY
The Animals and Other Poems
By Natalie Rose Richardson
The morning after, my mother and father woke and found one snake at the foot of their bed, its belly thick and pulsing with the other.
POETRY
iPOEMS
POETRY
Whatever You Can
By Taije Silverman
The German psychic healer on the island of Sardinia said the cat food beside her back door represented my ambivalence.
iPOEMS
Floating
By Karen Harryman
I bought her a sweatshirt with The Future Is Female printed in simple black letters. And today the florescent rainbow bikini?
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
Isolation
By Richard Bausch
There he is, a man she knows to be good and gentle, sitting there being himself, confident in her and in their lives.
FICTION
Fort Pierce, Florida
By Lisa Cupolo
In this part of the country, they can ask you anything. They can be openly curious about you and demand to know your name. And you better answer.
FICTION
The Frenchman
By James Jung
My mother was coming to New York to see the Frenchman who’d been in love with her for the past fifty years.
NONFICTION
NONFICTION
ANTHOLOGY
NONFICTION
A Life with Bears
By Rick Bass
Why do bears matter? Let me tell you a little bit about a thing I love while it is still here on the earth.
NONFICTION
I Long to Kiss You: Napoli in the Time of Coronavirus
By Heather Hartley
For the past eighteen years, I’ve lived in two cultures that take their kisses very seriously.
ANTHOLOGY
We’ve Been Here Before: Stories in a Time of Plague
By Various Authors
Collected here are works selected from our archive to lend comfort, cheer, and hope to us all.
iSTORIES
READERS’ NARRATIVES
READERS’ NARRATIVES
iSTORIES
Weightless
By James Silberstein
During the last of it, the death rattle is so loud we give him the morphine we promised we wouldn’t.
READERS’ NARRATIVES
Nowhere, Australia
By Natasha Ayaz
When we emerged, the shore was littered with luminous discs, hundreds of toxic blue jellies lying washed up like evil eyes.
READERS’ NARRATIVES
My Mother’s Marathons
By Sara Houghteling
On April 20, my mother, age seventy-one, decided to run her own marathon, her first solo, her twenty-fourth overall.
GRAPHIC STORIES
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
GRAPHIC STORIES
Last Flight from Bordeaux
By Sofia Warren
If I’d known there’d be a worldwide epidemic, I wouldn’t have relinquished my apartment and moved to France.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2020-06
By Various Artists
New art and humor from Pat Byrnes, Glen Le Lievre, David Rowles, Julia Suits, and Chris Weyant.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2020-05
By Various Artists
Great new toons by Seth Fleishman, Drew Panckeri, Mick Stevens, P. C. Vey, and Kim Warp.
