• After Closing Up My Mother’s House and Other Poems
  • After Closing Up My Mother’s House and Other Poems

STORY OF THE WEEK

Treasure Island:
The Black Spot

By Robert Louis Stevenson
The horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature gripped my hand like a vise. “Now, boy,” he said, “take me in to the captain.”

POEM OF THE WEEK

Finch

By Luke J. Johnson
I want to tell you how my daughter laid the bird in a wood box and dropped a match. How she wept as its wings went up in smoke.

OPEN TO ALL WRITERS

We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.

Please see the Guidelines.

FINAL MONTH TO ENTER

Deadline: Sun., Nov 18, at midnight, PDT.

A contest for writers, poets, artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers between eighteen and thirty years old. Please see the Guidelines.

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.

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

NARRATIVE 10

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.

NARRATIVE 10

A Short Chat

with Daniel Mason
Back in college, one of my stories was rejected by a journal as “theatrical and self-limiting.”

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Sharing and
Other Poems

By John Freeman
In the mouth of Saint Sulpice two men, three women picnic away from the rain, a man in rags beside them sleeping.

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

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

POETRY

POETRY

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

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

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.

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2018-09

By Various Artists
New laughs from John Klossner, Mary Lawton, Mick Stevens, P. C. Vey, and Kim Warp.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2018-08

By Various Artists
New toons by Pat Byrnes, Felipe Galindo Gomez, Charlie Hankin, Victoria Roberts, and Mick Stevens.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2018-07

By Various Artists
Great new art and humor from Kaamran Hafeez, Mary Lawton, Olivia de Recat, Ellis Rosen, and Trevor Spaulding.