Narrative Magazine | Writers, Fiction, Poetry, Storytelling, Nonfiction, Art

STORY OF THE WEEK

Eighteen Rules on Writing

By Mark Twain

The characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Bélizaire and Other Poems

By Miguel Martin Perez

Bélizaire—they painted over you—drowned you in the sea’s bleak blue, in olive streaks of far-off land. Your head was shoved a hundred years behind a scrape of cloud.

SIX-WORD STORIES

Six-word stories combine poetry and drama into a short form difficult to achieve. We’re looking for six-word stories that can stand alongside the best that have been written. See the Guidelines.

FROM THE LIBRARY

How I Feel about You

By Various Authors

Here we offer a tribute to the often joyous, sometimes infuriating, sometimes gut-wrenching adventure shared by kindred spirits.

CLASSICS

Dream Children

By Gail Godwin

And as she floated in this silent world, transparent and buoyed upon the dream layers of the mind, she heard a small rattling sound, like pebbles being shaken in a jar.

CLASSICS

Walking Out

By David Quammen

The boy knew he was supposed to feel great shame, but he felt little. His father could no longer hurt him as he once could, because the boy was coming to understand him. His father could not help himself.

FICTION

Life with Mme. Colette, Famous Writer, Anti-Semite, Beloved Friend

By Amy Bloom

Madame shakes off a couple of shawls like an old warhorse hearing the bells of battle.

FICTION

I Don’t Know How to Tell You This

By Marian Thurm

She can’t take her eyes off the man’s strikingly long nails, curved like the talons of a bird of prey and polished periwinkle blue.

FICTION

NONFICTION

FICTION

So Far Gone

By Jess Walter

Books covered every available surface and much of the floor. Leah loved books more than she loved anything in the world, but this . . . this seemed like a sickness, like an infestation of words.

NONFICTION

The Gambler

By Bill Barich

The sulky drivers ate at the bowling alley, and they’d taken a shine to Eddie and touted him on the horses ready to win. “Rhythm Lad in the sixth,” he confided. “It’s a sure thing.”

POETRY

A Poetics of Fiction

BY TOM JENKS

Based on forty years of editing and teaching, A Poetics contains a detailed pattern for study of creative writing, including a great deal of practical knowledge not generally available elsewhere.

POETRY

Some Remarks on Humor

By E. B. White

You certainly don’t have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying.

WINTER CONTEST WINNERS

Greetings from the Desert

By Emily Bales

He left me in the Park, the darkness nesting in the tops of trees, sparrows rooting in the leaf litter, the half-moon the amber of a porchlight left on.

WINTER CONTEST WINNERS

Wives

By Kate Cayley

They turned back to look at the wall, the house rising behind it, the upstairs windows showing light in every room. Falling across the stains on the wall from the rotten apples.

WINTER CONTEST WINNERS

How Fish Learned to Sing

By Debra Marquart

I always wanted a saxophone voice—a voice like a growl in the night, like gravel scratching under tires. Instead, by the lottery of birth, I was given a trumpet voice, metallic and piercing.

POETRY

A Peach

By Paula Bohince

Luscious, flushed in flannel, a peach will keep its leaf, its face forever the face of a boy at fifteen, the loner lolling at school doors, released into wind, on shaking stem.

POETRY

Skylight

By Jaswinder Bolina

Now I’m no longer the buzzards glooming over the mango tree. Now I’m the fuzzy orange sunbeam glazing the buzzards’ shoulders.

POETRY

Parallel Universe

By Lisa Dordal

There is no parallel universe. This one is the only one we’ve got. There’s no place off in the distance where the daughter you’d always wanted is spilling Cheerios—gleefully—on your newly mopped floor.

POETRY

Paean for Dinner Dates with Sarah

By Kerrin McCadden

Isn’t this all one long story of begetting? Forgetting. Whatever. Same thing. Steve comes and Steve goes. We are everlasting.

POETRY

Paradise

By Jacob Sheetz-Willard

Lord, bless this land with an abundance of shitty baseball teams and rush-hour traffic. Let minor lament ring out from the top of the tallest landfill.