Authors
Poetry Contest Winners
Her mother is a locked door with another door behind it.
Poem of the Week
A Good Samaritan refused is no more good than any Bad Samaritan.
Poem of the Week
When she sleeps, Shakespeare writes one more sonnet we’ll never read.
Poem of the Week
Exit the building. Say nothing to anyone. They did. And they didn’t.
Poetry
Waiting for a cure, waiting for the closeout sale, the black sail.
Poem of the Week
I saw Baryshnikov twice. Heard Pavarotti, Marsalis, and Ma.
Poem of the Week
Your voice on the phone, a gesundt in dein keppel you blessed my head.
Short Shorts
My first girl, only sixteen year and she go, she run away to you.
Narrative Outloud
He finds the note taped to the lid of the toilet: “There’s someone else.”
Story of the Week
For my part, I do not want a Happy Christmas: I want a Merry Christmas.
Winter Contest Winners
“I’m torturing you,” she said. “It isn’t fair.” Now I saw there were tears.
Story of the Week
Somehow my confession became a sharp knife I kept hidden in a drawer.
Story of the Week
Was this where he would grow old? Would it all end in a room like this?
Story of the Week
I am not prepared for postwar Freetown. Postwar Sierra Leone.
Story of the Week
Somehow, Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford.
Story of the Week
I stood there, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me.
Poem of the Week
I have so many questions for you, for you are closer to me than anyone.
Story of the Week
He’s walking loopy, so I know he’s been had something besides beer.
Story of the Week
The phone rang at an awkward hour, too late at night to be good news.
Poem of the Week
Our father turned to me and said, Why does he sound like a girl.
Poetry
All these barns with their busted spidery limbs strewn over the lupine.
Poem of the Week
I wear a gray sweater not unlike the one my father used to wear.
Poetry
There was a ladder planted dead center in a field of high, thin grass.
Poem of the Week
It is this—what you hear when you stop listening—that counts.
Readers' Narratives
Rows of women, young and old, were bent over sewing machines.
Story of the Week
“I don’t want to see these patch towns,” she said, raising her voice.
iStories
If, on your deathbed, you want to watch a movie, don’t let me pick.
Poem of the Week
They say it is the soul that rises, not the body. But the body does rise—
Poem of the Week
so this god is only wood and holes, a blank, like the moon’s unlit side.
Poem of the Week
I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week I saw a real bat.
Narrative Outloud
Words appear like the answer to a question I hadn’t yet asked.
Narrative Outloud
Dan Gerber reads poems of boyhood, and from the end of his mother’s life.
Narrative Outloud
She holds her smile like a note sustained at the end of a phrase.
Poetry
The walls pull apart like a troubled couple, finally deciding to hold.
Poem of the Week
The coyotes are making a kill. Their voices rise through the darkness.
Poem of the Week
I bow to the life being lived in this finch on my terrace this morning.
Poem of the Week
I continue composing my love letter, hoping to love her more.
Poem of the Week
I don’t remember being born,
only the great dog
whose fur I clung to.
Poetry
His mooseness was implacable, the light behind him from the trees.
Poem of the Week
As you watch the picture and begin to notice more, the nothing grows less.
Poem of the Week
The toes you step on today may be attached
to the ass you kiss tomorrow.
Story of the Week
She always came back with her lipstick smeared all over her mouth.
Poem of the Week
Indifferent day. Sparrow fretting for rain gathers grass and seeds.
Nonfiction
Marriage changes passion. Suddenly you’re in bed with
a relative.
a relative.
Story of the Week
We’re stuck floating around on the surface of our lives like kids in a pool.
Narrative Outloud
Best-selling author Melanie Gideon reads from her novel Wife 22.
Narrative Outloud
The light is like a benediction. My husband reaches for my hand.
Fiction
When she gets to Lenny’s he offers her a beer and a bong hit...
Story of the Week
Mostly he was in a hurry, so he’d just stick it in and away we’d go.
Short Shorts
The Wolf put on a great performance, crawling around on the stage.
Story of the Week
“She showed me her tits,” said Jimmy. “Bullshit!” said Frank.
Story of the Week
They come to America and their child is shot down like a wild animal.
Story of the Week
“Go watch the showgirls, Roy,” said Chino. “It’s educational.”
Story of the Week
If your father were here, he wouldn’t put up with your insolence.
Story of the Week
“For the entire time I was there I couldn’t get that out of my head.”
Story of the Week
They danced only with one another and did not speak to white boys.
Story of the Week
When Roy got to school he told his friend Jimmy Boyle about the dead body.
Poetry
How, like a dream, all the world’s characters are aspects of me.
Story of the Week
On my way to the airport I hit a Christian. This was in Arkansas.
Poetry
the woman wiped her hands on her apron saying “lord these children”
Story of the Week
Liz wore a brass wedding ring, and had no marriage certificate to show.
Story of the Week
He betook himself to the metropolis to become a literary man, of course.
Story of the Week
Youth! Goodness! Joy! Hope! Strange things to bring to a place like this.
Poetry
My brush an M-16, thirty-round clips for tubes of paint, all of them red.
Readers' Narratives
After several months, I worked up the courage to share a war poem.
Story of the Week
He only told the world what the world wanted to hear from a guy who graduated from Harvard.
Poem of the Week
The local madman’s been here even longer, lying across the sidewalk.
It’s no sin, all who hurry past his babble: no word-salad unlocks God.
Poem of the Week
Men veer into the earth and don’t come out.
Silent choirs of canaries roost in a forest of chimneys.
Poetry
When I saw my father for the last time, we both did the same thing.
Nonfiction
This has been a good day. First the milestone of getting to page 300.
Fiction
The draft of ten handwritten pages would have to be cut back to five.
Nonfiction
Write simple sentences. Report. Don’t moralize. No pretensions.
Narrative By Hand
Words and sketches from Gail Godwin’s upcoming novel Flora.
Nonfiction
They don’t dance but simply monitor our movements, like bodyguards.
Fiction
I was nagged by those boxes from my old life stacked in the garage.
Fiction
She had come to the scene where she needed to get them in bed.
Nonfiction
I can’t see a way out of this. Things will not necessarily get better.
Nonfiction
It begins on the sunny morning of November 14, 1960.
Classics
Yes, the race of children possesses magically sagacious powers!
Poem of the Week
Hands that have waved farewell, sooner or later I will see them again.
Fiction
A rumour went round that the Australians had bulletproof clothing.
Poetry
No more laughing like the waves. No more ocean of words to drink from.
Story of the Week
“I think he does not care for art; I fancy he has not even read Pushkin.”
Poem of the Week
I was born hating paths, apostasy. We came alive wrong for union.
N30B Winners
That’s what I want, to feel terrified, excited, and free, all at once.
Winter Contest Winners
I knew my father started the fire. It’s not the first place he’s burned down.
Fiction
“No, no,” we say. “We’re fine! Really! We love things just the way they are!”
Poetry
These days I watch the world go by and do not breathe life into it.
Poem of the Week
I will make my own man I will stitch together a coat of drunk minks
Narrative 10
My grandmother read one of my early stories and warned—don’t force your muse.
Story of the Week
If someone looked into his eyes they would see how ugly his mind was.
Story of the Week
When and why had I begun to think about Ingrid Stoltz? She was a bitch.
iStories
“Jesus Christ,” Dad said, after the counselor spelled it out for him.
Story of the Week
I bought the gun after my therapist said he wouldn’t have sex with me.
Story of the Week
“Listen,” Mike said. “You’ve had a hard day. How about I drive you home?”
Story of the Week
I will never know what my mother guessed or didn’t suspect.
Fall Contest Winners
Lydda, when she closes her eyes, has traded one war zone for another.
Fiction
The first time I met you I fought your father in the driveway.
Story of the Week
“No one shoots when the army inoculates and hands out money.”
Story of the Week
I pictured you at Bagram Airfield in a metal coffin, quiet and still.
Fiction
Why did it take Steven’s small coffin to get me to see my own son?
Story of the Week
It’s just a great big old world with Santa and angels all around.
Story of the Week
The horror of the waste appalls me. This beauty. This habitation of dream.
Poem of the Week
It has its life, returning always to the ocean. It doesn’t care.
Poetry Contest Winners
The small, inadequate marks follow the outline, things left behind.
Poem of the Week
So here’s the tale, the rumor of the body, and we have to tell it.
Poetry
The first skeleton drawn from the earth, they called beautiful.
Story of the Week
I saw her drunk, with bleary eyes, tousled hair, and a hideous grin.
iStories
Loved this little portal to my past so much that I went looking for others.
Story of the Week
I can’t talk yet. But I know things. I will tell you all this later when I can.
Fiction
My mother used to cry in church seeing a child walk down the aisle.
Poem of the Week
Tell me our species matters more, tell me that, and I, I will crawl back.
Poetry
Oh, won’t you lie here darling whistlepigs, here, curled at my side?
Poem of the Week
Grasshoppers tumble from the reeds, snapping like electricity.
Poem of the Week
My days pass through me as music through a thin, stretched wire.
Story of the Week
A nearly perfect guitar fell from the sky and landed in my mom’s azaleas.
iStories
In the story she was a dripping, chocolate-covered vamp.
Narrative High School Writing Contest
From the deck, the burnished red peel of an apple beckons temptingly.
Nonfiction
Art is a way for the mind to master the body, even if it is not one’s own.
Winter Contest Winners
I found it impossible to forget that we lived in a poor country.
Poem of the Week
The dead men don’t look like themselves or anybody else.
Poem of the Week
We could use our arms to squeeze or hold or load not a gun, not a gun.
Poetry
Sometimes a you is a lover, but he is not my lover. He is looking at me.
Poem of the Week
Let me lie down with you and listen, let me tell you what I know.
Spring Contest Winners
I’m covetous of my worldly neighbor. And he’s not accommodating.
Fiction
Ivan rolled his eyes, and looked at the sky like someone about to be martyred.
Fiction
I floated in the tub, my head bobbing, until I felt slick as a seal.
Fiction
The suite cost as much as a two-pound brick of Panama Red.
Story of the Week
I do not want to fall prey to the bewitchment of my mind by language.
Nonfiction
He was frightened, a creature no more or less unbound by time than I am.
Fiction
“You know what they say about
free health care. It costs money.”
free health care. It costs money.”
Nonfiction
Only one constant existed: I wrote. Writing was my center of gravity.
Story of the Week
When he got up in the morning the work was done ready to his hand.
Spring Contest Winners
Firing stopped, and Bedouins herded camels across the artillery range.
Story of the Week
Loss. That word echoed in my ears as my eyes ranged around the garden.
iStories
“When we heard the horn, we left—our faces wet—not looking back.”
Fall Contest Winners
“Refuge,” Nina said, tilting her head back; it was a word she learned.
Fiction
What was he, twenty, no, twenty-two years younger than me.
Spring Contest Winners
On this small island, everyone knows who comes, especially who goes.
iPoems
The shadow carves the hours while the Latin inscribes
iPoems
The truth has always been thus and the response the same.
Narrative High School Writing Contest
The knife in my mother’s hand flakes into penny-stained rust.
Poetry
Imagine the world you want to live in; make the world in this image.
Poem of the Week
Unwall the summer in blue threading, gift of someone who loved me.
Poetry
A charmed sequence of words. The jangle. The strum.
Story of the Week
Order and gardens. Penelope liked things to grow just as they would.
Poem of the Week
they released themselves so knowingly into the soft wet air
Poetry
Maybe it’s a Thursday, & I’m coming home to make you dinner.
iPoems
For years I thought this light was love, or God, but now I know it’s fear.
Poetry
Her songs, her records—I entered them. I jumped in and out of myself.
Poem of the Week
That cold green streak morning had nothing in common with us.
Poetry
Arrows shot by the halt at the lame,
Opinions come and go just the same.
Fiction
The judge’s mother was impossible; her mere presence was infuriating.
Poetry
Under Saint Peter’s Gate, I put good foot after bad, and derided, I chased.
Story of the Week
He was getting a divorce. I was married with two teenage children.
Poetry
You see, I plan on remaining here as the most foolish god in the world.
Poem of the Week
Let father be a man walking to the river, ready to bargain with water.
