Authors
Poem of the Week
Have you no one else to talk to? Your life is really that empty?
Story of the Week
Jimmy’s jacket, mittens, and shirt were in a pile next to his frozen body.
Story of the Week
Her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores.
Story of the Week
They met on the app in April, shortly after her twenty-ninth birthday.
Poetry
The trees were a sign from the devil, a warning of the terror to come.
Poetry
I never felt heart stop or skin burn, just the first split second of sound.
Story of the Week
Even then (Colin remembers now), it felt like the end of something.
iStories
Far below, the right fielder circles and stares, mitt raised to the sky.
Fiction
The boys came down out of the woods and crossed toward the dock.
Fiction
I understood that for us there would be no mourning the shortstop.
Story of the Week
We are nothing; less than nothing, we are only what might have been.
Poem of the Week
No fountains to quench the thirst between rounds of tag.
Spring Contest Winners
My job requires me to make things disappear like a Vegas magician.
Readers' Narratives
I reacted like a thief caught red-handed, and snapped the screen shut.
Readers' Narratives
Vrindavan. Lord, what a place. Joyful, unbelievably filthy, and divine.
Readers' Narratives
I never wavered, even when it was clear he was the dangerous one.
Master Class
I think of each story as a big circle that’s all around me and I’m in the center.
Nonfiction
No author dodged readers who were indifferent to masterpieces.
Readers' Narratives
There was no way of knowing how many would answer the call to march.
Poem of the Week
Your hand on my nightgown, my soft places. I wish you wouldn’t do that.
Poetry
They’re shrieking down Little Round Top, receiving the good girls’ glares.
Poem of the Week
Praise the ease of it: how simple it is to tell the dog he loves her.
Poetry
I make a point of smelling the lilac every day that first week in May.
Narrative High School Writing Contest
I come home in the evenings to Mother scraping my scalp for God.
Poem of the Week
The white geometry of caulk between bathroom tiles—I’m held in place.
Poetry
How do we heal our savage hearts, foolish wrath gone rogue on any soul.
Poetry
My lust works like the tides pulling in reverse, controlled by a simple ballast.
Poem of the Week
Years after the Sisters of the Holy Names left you unlock the door.
Story of the Week
He was shirtless and showcasing a large tattoo of the Twin Towers.
Poetry
I was tracing my finger along his hoodied back, to draw the route.
Poem of the Week
I peel back the hours and search for the light before it scatters.
Poetry
Even glaciers have phone lines even Roquefort has its soft tufts of sweet
Poetry
he has come to write like nervous wasps in my mind like a grocery list.
Poetry
Here lies the girl difficult to discern. Here lies the girl misanthropic.
Poem of the Week
Because I am lonely, I am always shying away from the mirror.
Story of the Week
It is a city of sea, sun, boulevards, strolling beauties, life-altering food.
Story of the Week
So long as there was money, the girl felt established, and brutally proud.
First & Second Looks
I felt a blush rise to my skin, the sense of being trapped, helpless, exposed.
First & Second Looks
Literature lost its voice. Except on the page, it was silenced.
Poetry
Judging beauty, which is keenest, Eye or heart or mind or penis?
Poem of the Week
This is the day when the saints all go silently to church in France.
Story of the Week
It was as if my dead husband was flowing within me now, like blood.
Poem of the Week
Let me tell you stories about lands far from here where you are absent.
Nonfiction
My grandfather committed my grandmother to a mental asylum.
Poem of the Week
A goddam mean big sonofabitch boar rooted me in the stomach.
Poem of the Week
Gotta watch them damn sorry folks he sez they leave the best stuff.
Poem of the Week
She countered the reverence of his efforts stroke by stroke, tit for tat.
Poetry
Getting over being drunk makes you wonder why the hell you did that.
Poem of the Week
That piece of flesh you’re with is a high school student, a minor.
Poetry
The goose cannot see the North but knows exactly where it lies.
Poem of the Week
A strange odd lost duck day all over—sunrise with a honed edge.
First & Second Looks
It seemed impossible for two people to fuck that long.
Story of the Week
Joshua was well versed in things to which I was not yet privy, like sex.
Poem of the Week
I wouldn’t know what to do with the body, gills pumping like an accordion.
Fiction
If a friend’s family is persecuted, call Sinn Fein on that number.
Story of the Week
The dean’s voice was stuck in my head. Plagiarism. Expulsion.
Story of the Week
It was as if we were shedding our very selves to become someone else.
Story of the Week
The golden-haired ones, they think they’re better than Virgin Mary.
Poetry
With no words to speak about our love, we’re each one more alone.
Fiction
I hadn’t always liked being around my mother while she was alive.
Fiction
Her biggest secret was Jay Currie — her white American boyfriend.
Narrative Outloud
Here, Min Jin reads from her novel at Narrative Night, New York City.
Narrative Outloud
You don’t know what it’s like to be so hungry that you’d steal to eat.
Narrative 10
I once heard in a sermon, “Choose the important over the urgent.”
Poetry
Sometimes a story is like a beehive. Sometimes an idea is like a poem.
Narrative High School Writing Contest
Even Medusa was beautiful once, before the sea, snakes, stone.
Any chimera is regal if you turn a certain way. Even Medusa was beautiful.
Poetry Contest Winners
He said, every night you close the store, I watch you walk to your car.
Poetry
Let those shadows sift the spirits of their children from the silt.
Story of the Week
The world is where we brace for a joke that’s about to be played on us.
Poetry
There are only two genders! Ma cries there is one sun, one moon.
iPoems
damn it we both die anyway at different times, with different pains
Poetry
give me a fish and I will make a necklace of its sharpest bones
Story of the Week
Let the squeamish suffer their fear, let them live without really living.
Poem of the Week
Last year alone, every American choked to death on a red balloon.
Poetry
I felt nothing, which was cool, totally cool with me. For my blood was cola.
Poem of the Week
Are these poems just cumbersome or a critique of cumbersomeness?
Poem of the Week
Why am I always asleep in your poems? Look at me Ben, when am I.
Story of the Week
She closed her mind to all familiar shapes and strained back.
When I think on it, I can’t believe I’m going to kill two people over weed.
Story of the Week
Felicia knew why he was there. He was waiting. Waiting for her.
Graphic Stories
In high school I walked around with a beat-up copy of Kafka’s stories.
Poem of the Week
Motionless at the window. Forehead beaded with a line of fevered moons.
Poem of the Week
The raven cocked its black eye, dipped its beak in the red pool.
Poem of the Week
I’m trying to believe I can sense the river when I can’t.
Hard to call beauty an affliction, but I think it is what makes my blindness hurt.
Story of the Week
I cradled the lifeless bird in my hand and marveled at its beauty.
N30B Winners
Her sly smile was a vicious remnant of her life before Real Life began.
Narrative Outloud
I will tell you about the sick. They are ruthless, they are like Attila.
Narrative Outloud
I will tell you about the sick. They are ruthless, they are like Attila.
Poetry
Our griefs perceive what we dismiss: the slight give of stage boards.
Story of the Week
She was here. She could not go on. It was the end—the end of the world.
Poem of the Week
The cat was your cat, the bed your former bed, the moon the moon.
Readers' Narratives
Her nostrils flare with the intensity of effort; she’s like a little horse.
Story of the Week
I have three girls from my previous marriages, but she beats them all.
Story of the Week
She’d lifted the plot from a TV show she’d watched the night before.
Photography & Art
A poetry of texture and light runs through these photographs.
Photography & Art
After moving, I began to look at the images and piece them together.
Poetry
If life is an open vein, what’s brave about a sleeve-heart, sweetheart?
Poem of the Week
A heart takes precautions, withholds warmth, but it’s mistaken.
iPoems
Passions played among the orchids and through cherish and reveal.
Poem of the Week
I hope I do not baffle or bluff. I hope I will not raise your hopes.
Fiction
The surface of night is disrupted. Ripples cross the neighborhood.
Poem of the Week
I’ve never cared for the National Anthem. It’s not a good song.
Poetry
Filarial worms in bloodstream darkness know when it’s night.
Poem of the Week
I know that hairs
on my head go singly gray only
by night.
on my head go singly gray only
by night.
Features
Abandon the idea that arts and sciences are mutually exclusive.
Story of the Week
If he was going to pick me up, the least he could do was look at me.
Poem of the Week
Between me and the sky is a screen door and a whole mess of wind.
Photography & Art
Photo portraits, landscapes, and world scenes by Sandra Lloyd.
Story of the Week
I’ve made a rigorous effort. But it’s been hard, this hug embargo.
Story of the Week
“I—I am Martin Eden,” Martin began. (“And I want my five dollars.")
Poem of the Week
The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence.
Fiction
At a red light he touches his cheek. The stubbly skin is sensitive, febrile.
Poetry
My cry for the first time fastened garlands of hope to the roof.
Poem of the Week
If you are hidden treasure, mine, don’t let me lose what I have gained.
Story of the Week
I pictured myself as a chart inside her head. Two sides: good and bad.
Fiction
I was only five when Dad told me I had died. “You drowned,” he said.
Story of the Week
It was the way of the world: everybody wanted someone else.
Story of the Week
It was up airly and down late with him, and the loom never standin’ still.
Poem of the Week
I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots outside in the night.
iPoems
I read an article and learn that the gloomy octopus has three hearts.
Story of the Week
Your mother still glows with a smoothness that you envy.
Fiction
“Why don’t you call yourself Butterfly?” he said. “A pretty thing like you.”
First & Second Looks
Heroic redemption relies on the revealing of one’s true hidden self.
Poetry
Love cannot override what cells do in the nighttime of our bodies.
Narrative Outloud
After my father passed away, I’d go back to stare at the cave paintings.
Poem of the Week
If all along we all had known the leaves we leafed would leave us
Poetry
I want to step out into sun to scintillate for waves to come and spray.
Poetry
A man jostles my stride to the street, no shoulder on which to move.
Poem of the Week
Mild nights would have us out of doors—at their opening I am rapt.
Poetry
she thrust to where her gut bucked acid & gave out a taurine heave
Poetry Contest Winners
shoulds & shouldn’ts unwound now to dids & didn’t
Poetry
you cut through brush with the iron edge you push before you
Poem of the Week
and there I was five-foot-four and most way old enough to drive
Poetry
You walk into your gramma’s kitchen only once for the last time.