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STORY OF THE WEEK
Early Onset
By Daniel Coshnear
I feel a strange mix of outrage and trepidation; the feeling I often have when one voice says you don’t have to do this and another says you do.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Waxer
By Ted Kooser
I once watched a man wax a hallway with an overweight rotary brush that he waltzed from one side to the other by tipping it ever so slightly.
SEEKING GUIDANCE?
ENGAGE. EXPLORE. ENJOY.
FICTION
Underneath the Bonfire
By Nickolas Butler
Wrapped in lights and ornaments, the trees were no longer merry but combustible. Potential arrows of flame.
SPRING CONTEST WINNERS
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
SPRING CONTEST WINNERS
First Place
Tookies
By James Jung
The sex started almost as soon as they’d arrived in France. Or restarted, if you considered how long they’d been together.
Second Place
Somewhere with a Sigh
By Jonathan A. Stableford
Fursten acted as if he had been sent. Was it possible, Kellett wondered, for an aging man to turn mystic?
Third Place
Wild Snow
By Jacqueline Jones LaMon
My job sometimes requires my silence, sometimes requires me to make things disappear like a Vegas magician.
CLASSICS
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
FICTION
CLASSICS
Hours in a Library
By Virginia Woolf
We have to confess that a bookshop gratifies so many desires which have apparently nothing to do with literature.
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
Carol Edgarian in Conversation with Susan Orlean
By Susan Orlean
Susan kicked off her book tour with us at Narrative.
FICTION
Nowhere Man
By Tom Barbash
“I wrote ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ drunk and pissed off at Paul. He’d commandeered every bloody note and phrase in the whole song.”
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
Paris in the Dark
By Robert Olen Butler
My hand was still in my pocket, on my pistol. At the present time, small talk would be preferable to assassination.
FICTION
The Arms of Saturday Night
By Cally Fiedorek
They hadn’t yet kissed, or even talked that much, but late in the school year she’d felt his eyes on her.
FICTION
The Winter Soldier
By Daniel Mason
Lucius: the name, chosen by his father after the legendary kings of Rome, itself was mockery; he was anything but light.
NONFICTION
NONFICTION
NONFICTION
NONFICTION
If I Owned a Gun
By Andre Dubus III
On the afternoon my father nearly killed me, his oldest son, we were installing new trigger guards on his guns.
NONFICTION
The Third Round
By Josip Novakovich
How do you redeem yourself after a murder? This man may have succeeded. Maybe he’d even saved lives.
NONFICTION
Pilots
By Bridget Quinn
Our unspoken family motto, revered as any coat of arms, was something like We Shall Take No Shit.
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
First Place
The Profundities and Other Poems
By Maggie Millner
All day we had been dating, though it couldn’t last, the log raft of my lust already bumping on toward other shores.
Second Place
Not All of Us Get to Be Ghosts
By Leila Chatti
I’d like to be let go, after, like a balloon wafting toward heaven—but I don’t say it, can’t allow my absence the words.
Third Place
Another Poem with Deer in It
By Christie Towers
Because there isn’t a poem in America without deer in it, I send you photos from the road of their every possible crossing.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
How It Began and Other Poems
By Ellen Bass
We were in for a long, long voyage without a chance to grab even an orange or comb my hair.
POETRY
Sharing and Other Poems
By John Freeman
Everywhere the new psychos strangling other cities. Still, victory has been declared in Mosul.
POETRY
If the Shoe Fits and Other Poems
By Bob Hicok
They have a simple, uncomplicated message, and I long to be a simple, uncomplicated person.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Death of a Dog and Other Poems
By Ted Kooser
For fifteen years our dog had held down what we had by pressing his belly to the floors.
POETRY
The Dream of Adoration and Other Poems
By David Lee
The voice in the dream asked me what it was I wanted most of all.
POETRY
The Fine Arts and Other Poems
By Ursula K. Le Guin
I miss the many that I was, my lovers, my adventurers, the women I went with to the Pole.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Richard II
By Rachel Mannheimer
You said I just seek tragedy but the arboretum website said November was a good time for appreciating bark.
POETRY
Exaggerated Honey and Other Poems
By Elizabeth Metzger
I am not mother enough to tolerate creating my own heat, not human enough to gather close to what’s untouchable.
POETRY
Country
By Robin Myers
I love it in the way I love the first crushed fruits spooned into me before words and before choice: I can’t take them out of me and wouldn’t think to.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
After Closing Up My Mother’s House and Other Poems
By Sharon Olds
If I hadn’t been born, what if she could have become an opera star—and never gone flat!
POETRY
An Elegy Beginning and Ending with a Mouse
By Karisma Price
I won’t remember that little mouse, that furry fist of ears and eyes blacker than omission.
POETRY
This Sort of Thing Happens All the Time
By Maggie Smith
You see a forested mountain, and dusk is suddenly thick with words.
iPOEMS
IPOEMS
PHOTOGRAPHY & ART
iPOEMS
Memory of a Season
By Henry Brooks
We ran along the risen bank of Dead Run, stopping on occasion to horse-kick at a sagging ledge and watch it slide.
IPOEMS
[Gloomy Octopus]
By Wallace Ludel
M tells me there’s an octopus called a gloomy octopus. I google gloomy octopus. It looks like a regular, shitty octopus.
PHOTOGRAPHY & ART
Photos from New Orleans
By Samuel Liebert
Without any intention or goal in mind, I photographed as a way to try to understand the city.
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2018-11
By Various Artists
New art and humor from Pat Byrnes, Charlie Hankin, Farley Katz, Olivia de Recat, and P. C. Vey
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2018-10
By Various Artists
Toons by Felipe Galindo Gomez, Charlie Hankin, Navied Mahdavian, Victoria Roberts, and Julia Suits.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2018-09
By Various Artists
New laughs from John Klossner, Mary Lawton, Mick Stevens, P. C. Vey, and Kim Warp.
