Juliana tells a reporter in the boxcar that she and her compatriots had only two days of training with their Kalashnikovs. Some of it was target practice.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Sounding
By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
My brother and mother died this summer, two of seven billion, two of a hundred seven billion who ever breathed.
POETRY CONTEST
Open to all poets. Narrative is always looking for new voices, and all entries will be considered for publication. Each entry may contain up to five poems.
Please see the Guidelines.
SPRING STORY CONTEST
We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.
Year in and out, many of our authors receive notable awards, including the BASS and O. Henry prize, and many others. You can find their works here.
NARRATIVE FIRSTS
First-time authors are a regular feature in Narrative. Read the works of some of the remarkable poets and writers who first appeared here.
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
They Were Like Jewelry
By T. Coraghessan Boyle
Owning a snake is a basic constitutional guarantee—life, liberty, and happiness, right? And nothing’ll make you happier than having a snake in your life.
FICTION
Damascus
By Katherine Heiny
The coke made Mia's heart beat very fast. First she felt hot, then she felt cold, then she had a profound idea that would revolutionize the way she did laundry.
FICTION
Asiana
By Wen Jing
I was twenty-eight, already considered old at the National Dance Theatre, and the night before my interview, I wandered to the glass district to watch a stripper.
NONFICTION
NARRATIVE 10
CARTOONS
NONFICTION
Rewriting Illness
By Elizabeth Benedict
I can pinpoint the date, the time, the square foot of couch on which I was sitting, the motion of my left hand slipping into my right armpit.
NARRATIVE 10
Narrative 10
By Dean Rader
I always urge my students to take risks in their work. Writing is about taking chances, charting new territory, toeing the line of confidence and terror.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2023-05
By Various Artists
New laughs over wine, at the end of the tunnel, from the couch, at the theater, and with a couple of tech-savvy pups.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Water Path
By Bruce Bond
When a soul passes out of the body, it sinks as certain bodies do, toward some restitution, some cold and colder prospect of the ocean’s threshing floor.
POETRY
Yard Mercies
By Tara Bray
Bunny thin as knee socks stretched high to the tomato branch, succeeds in an attempt to snap, eat, disappear stems, leaves.
POETRY
Eight Lines on Burning My Hand and Other Poems
By Tyler Dunston
I like the kind of heat I am just able to stand, and I like knowing I can remove my hand the second it becomes too much for me.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Suggesting
By Rose McLarney
I don’t still believe a few split rails are enough to ensure any boundary. I do know how likely a blouse’s buttons are to be undone.
POETRY
Migrant
By Kéchi Nne Nomu
Each raceme-shaped hour in the new country; disciple of inflorescence, I pause to study petals stunned by their topaz. The descent of robins.
POETRY
My Mom Serves Tea to Her Robbers
By Naomi Shihab Nye
Later she will say, they wore white shirts, their faces were kind. One took milk with his sugar.They had an interest in how she’d been living alone.
POETRY
POETRY
iPOEMS
POETRY
Before the Borderless: Dean Rader/Cy Twombly
By Dean Rader
This evening the sun seems to lie down inside itself everything clicks on from within
POETRY
I Sanitize My Hands to Teach The Tempest Again at West Point
By Matthew Carey Salyer
I sit brisk in the spirit |willing| as Caliban. I know at least my heart, my part not so much monster as magician.
iPOEMS
Literacy & Orality
By Timothy Leo
The blood tests suggest cancer; the biopsy suggests cancer; the growth suggests cancer.
