Deadline: Fri., July 15, at midnight, PDT.“Poetry is a tool for navigating transformation,” writes Joy Harjo. We agree and are seeking poets and poems to celebrate with prizes and publication.Please see the Guidelines.
Spring Issue
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
Spring Issue
FICTION
Big Mary
By T. Coraghessan Boyle
What she did behind that microphone made everything I’d ever done and everybody I’d ever played with seem like filtered water.
FICTION
The Forgotten One
By Madelena Grossmann
It was the eve of my fifty-eighth birthday. I needed an ethical accounting of all the romantic affairs woven through my longish life.
FICTION
Commis
By Don Lee
“There are no other restaurants I want to work for, no other chefs,” I said. “There’s only this restaurant, and you.”
FICTION
FEATURES
NONFICTION
FICTION
Winter’s Gate
By Shann Ray
He was too urbanized now. He’d forgotten sinew, flesh, and bone. When he rose from the kitchen table he vowed to get back to the Beartooths.
FEATURES
The Runaways
By Elizabeth Spencer
Supper finished, she was about to shower and go to bed, legs aching from the effort of the afternoon, when she heard a knock at the windowpane.
NONFICTION
Borderlines, Real and Imaginary: Elizabeth Spencer’s “The Runaways”
By Ann Beattie
Little things—gestures, inhibitions, slipups, contradictions—reveal and betray us.
NONFICTION
INTERVIEWS
NARRATIVE 10
NONFICTION
The Most Dangerous Book: Ulysses at One Hundred
By Bill Barich
Those were heady days for me, newly in love and eager to explore the city, with Joyce as my guide.
INTERVIEWS
Narrative 10
with Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Q: Your cure for when the spirit flags?A: Reading poetry. Going outside. Korean dramas, especially zombie movies (try it!).
NARRATIVE 10
Narrative 10
with Ottessa Moshfegh
Q: A line that continues to inspire you?A: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
CLASSICS
POETRY
POETRY
CLASSICS
The Weary Blues
By Langston Hughes
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
POETRY
Return and Other Poems
By Rachel Edelman
Descent jumps and jostles, nausea drops me back to the floodplain I fled. The taxi driver asks, Do you have some mixed blood?
POETRY
I Miss Somebody Still Alive and Other Poems
By Loisa Fenichell
Time punctures the air like sounds from the old city. People leave.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Grand Island, Nebraska
By Matthew Gellman
There was a ladder planted dead center in a field of high, thin grass.
POETRY
Worksong
By J. P. Grasser
“Like a Virgin” scaled the same air trumpet vines climbed, and “Smooth Criminal” settled like dust over the endless, rockbound, dusty ground.
POETRY
After the Shooting
By Henry Hart
At the memorial service, I could barely hear the student read: After great pain a formal feeling comes. The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Intertext
By Ambalila Hemsell
I am reaching for another poet’s heartbroken AI. I am reaching for another poet’s dead lover.
POETRY
Homily and Other Poems
By A. D. Lauren-Abunassar
In June the wheat got blue, and you got drunker still: on imagining the mudflats, the fields where sugar burned.
POETRY
Shadow in My Bed
By Kiran Masroor
The human body can do more than breathe and bend. It can become heavy as a diving board or slick as rain.
POETRY
POETRY
Animals & Instruments
by V. Penelope Pelizzon
If nipped by even the smallest smiling baby mamba, you’ll want just three things: shade, some paper, and a pencil.
POETRY
Shamisen and Straw
By Amy Uyematsu
TsunamiSnow on blue roof tiles— sleeping village awakened by waves
POETRY
Northern California
By Oswaldo Vargas
Boys taller than me warned not to meet the river at its mouth. The reservoir insists I write a song for my breaking.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Arguing with Myself
By Nikki Wallschlaeger
“I know very well what happened last time,” says the heart. “You were there and didn’t listen to me when I told you something was wrong.”
POETRY
Redwoods Up the North Coast
By Edward Wilson
We came among those trees—each an epoch with its origin and history, rising into night.
POETRY
Having Never Said the Kaddish
By Laura Budofsky Wisniewski
Having dreamed endless dreams of trains, always pulling away as I came too late to the station.
iPOEMS
iPOEM
iPOEMS
Finch Me
By Michelle Bitting
I’m forced to telescope my lens, close up capture your needled feeding, thistle sock teat your sharpened beaks pierce.
iPOEM
Why Are You Afraid?
By Yasmine Ameli
I gulped water in a bar then assessed a man’s height and weight, how hard a fight I’d give.
SIX-WORD STORIES
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
SIX-WORD STORIES
I’m Hot
By Laura Judge
A story about midlife transitions and waning human desire—all in just six words.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2022-05
By Various Artists
The road not taken, bad lighting, and more, from Pat Byrnes, Mary Lawton, Dan Misdea, Mick Stevens, and P. C. Vey.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2022-04
By Various Artists
Surly shorebirds, Poe at the park, and more, from Pat Byrnes, Mary Lawton, Rina Piccolo, Mick Stevens, and P. C. Vey.