Authors
Poem of the Week
Every dawn you’d toss the feed, your hands faithful to the good work of rising.
Story of the Week
Her will is resolute, and he knows enough not to challenge it.
Story of the Week
Like superstitious sports fans, we played the song night after night.
Since giving birth I’d become hyperaware of death.
Story of the Week
“Rev. MacLean’s been stabbed in Oban,” his wife said, her voice thin.
Graphic Stories
Fly through 13 billion years of history in this graphic story.
Story of the Week
“Make it look like you’re working on a nearby shelf,” Aunt Mary whispered.
Story of the Week
We had run out of every necessity. You name it, we didn’t have it.
Fiction
I felt that this maternal oblivion could be the rest of my life.
Poem of the Week
She fell out of her own composition, fell and landed flat on her face.
Poem of the Week
When I was born I saw death devour the birth of something.
Fall Contest Winners
It was good they were Africans, she thought. It meant less danger.
Fiction
There were classes where you became a family. It was a kind of love affair.
Story of the Week
The night before my mother’s double mastectomy, we went skinny-dipping.
Story of the Week
When nobody knows where you are, you get to talk however you want.
First & Second Looks
Then they pulled out their swords, and like two bulls they lashed.
Poetry
The grass is always greener in the cemetery, was a joke I made to Jed.
Poem of the Week
The light, returning, nudged me from sleep, and walked me to dinner.
Poetry
The website said November was a good time for appreciating bark.
Poem of the Week
In the truck’s bed, resting where a dog’s might—the dead deer’s head.
Spring Contest Winners
We chose to stay in the brutality of that night, even as the girls walked away.
Story of the Week
Oh, how fascinating it was, watching it all! It was exactly like a play.
Story of the Week
“It’s so unfair being accused of doing something you didn’t do.”
Story of the Week
“Your mom is awake,” I said. “You need to go in and see her.”
iStories
My husband barely noticed, while I felt the sharp bite of her words.
N30B Winners
Find a hair in the rose bush, wrap it around a thorn until that thorn is soft.
Poetry
I feel them slice me open and tug, then I smell my own innards burning.
Story of the Week
On that still, snowy day, Mick’s neck popped like a flaming log.
Story of the Week
She looked over through the falling snow. “Jack?” she said. “Is that you?”
Story of the Week
I’d never seen my mother’s breasts. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Story of the Week
The preacher looked me in the eye. He laid his hand on my chest.
Poem of the Week
Do you really want to live in this filth? And me answering, Well, yes.
Poetry
To enter the dust of their bedroom, to stand invisible on the plush carpet.
Nonfiction
The story doesn’t begin until the van breaks down, I always say.
Poem of the Week
I remember speaking to Allison who asked me if I wanted to be a girl.
Fiction
Kenny Wade makes do with short-term schemes and part-time work.
Photography & Art
A new Wyoming photography portfolio from Twister Marquiss
Photography & Art
A new Wyoming photography portfolio from Twister Marquiss
iStories
He’s got it out. And I say Who’s there right now? Just your ex-wife.
Spring Contest Winners
Sonja slapped her sister. How could she shed tears for the past?
Story of the Week
The world seemed newly made and filled with a frightening silence.
Fiction
Part of me wished I’d never tried heroin. The rest wanted to be high.
Fiction
Our grandmothers were bakers and nurses, spies and traitors.
Narrative Outloud
Sonja slapped her sister. How could she shed tears for the past?
Narrative Outloud
Narrative Prize and Pushcart winner Anthony Marra reads “Chechnya.”
Nonfiction
The Warsaw Pact invaded in 1968
and soon banned Hrabal’s work.
Story of the Week
The interrogator was both man and deity, prophet and god.
Features
Our lives are often shaped by small, seemingly trivial choices.
Fiction
“Your mother’s fine,” Giuseppe said. “We’re all completely fine.”
Story of the Week
Tirelessly her arm rose and fell, till the child at last fell at her feet.
Poem of the Week
Sometimes in sunlight the scar shines, skin smooth and tight.
iPoems
Oklahoma, a state shaped like a pot, probably some gruel inside.
Graphic Stories
Since I am in my seventies, it is now or never, and I know it.
Graphic Stories
Up there there’s not a sound except for the wind and the buzzing of bees.
Poem of the Week
Brain an inkblot liquor stain until the heroine blinks the coma away.
Poem of the Week
I pass my hands over my eyes, mired by the miti-
gation of routine.
gation of routine.
Poetry
A car curved left, leapt the curb, and came at us like the line of a bullet.
N30B Winners
Welcome to my bed. I have these two beers, do you want them?
Poem of the Week
Sundays, your wife at Mass, we locked ourselves in my room.
Poetry
If every cowboy has a sad song, I’m afraid you are mine to perform.
Poetry
First a mother puts her child to sleep, then the other way around.
Poetry
Slice a finger while opening a beer can, fizz the gin high in tumblers.
Graphic Stories
People assume married cartoonists are laughing all the time.
Fiction
He was ready to move on, to touch his patients, to cut them open.
Narrative 10
One of my stories was rejected by a journal as “theatrical and self-limiting.”
Fiction
I found myself alone on the train in possession only of Knoll’s journal.
Poem of the Week
That’s how a lifetime passes, closing the wound, a million stitches.
Poetry
Eyes wide open, I offer myself to a new boy and watch him grow.
Story of the Week
Pale dust clung to their skin like the lime he had thrown on the dead.
Story of the Week
She transfigured into a swallow in flight, or a hippo in the rainy season.
Story of the Week
We left our lives behind us as fast as the Beemer’s zero to sixty.
Story of the Week
Shit happens, you still have to pay up or lose it all, even if it ain’t your fault.
Fall Contest Winners
The strange man expected to be picked up by aliens during the eclipse.
Poem of the Week
I wonder why I feel bound to the gray-dry skin of you, the barrenness of feet.
Poetry
Perhaps the only way to see a whole body is to see one coming out of you.
Poem of the Week
money gotten by blood tends to stay in the blood, which has no race.
Story of the Week
Frank Avery came into the kitchen. In his left hand he carried a .22 pistol.
Story of the Week
The dark creatures are still, yet they give life to the whole mountain.
First & Second Looks
I thought it was beauty alone that gave significance to life.
Story of the Week
His eyes rested on the trees. By George, it’s like the garden of Eden.
Story of the Week
I wander among my recollections of the world of letters in London.
Classics, Story of the Week
Kitty reached the age of twenty-five and was still unmarried.
Poem of the Week
Each night I curl my body around a small piece of silence.
Story of the Week
Lebanon’s sky was full of stars. The sky here doesn’t have any stars.
Readers' Narratives
We crossed the length of Iran to reach a lake so big they called it a sea.
Short Shorts
The linebacker grins, but the lines around his eyes tighten.
Poetry
We are everlasting. A friend is a friend is a friend in a string of lives.
iPoems
sunrise reminds the shama to emerge from her perch in the pandanus tree
iStories
I figured he wouldn’t know for shit if the dog knew me or not, right?
Poetry
When I land we argue over the little hazards a marriage is made of.
Fiction
Their leader is a badly wounded boy in need of wounding others.
Story of the Week
Their mother was the real beauty of the family, or so everyone said.
Fiction
Please, Theresa thought, as a tenderness surged within herself.
Poetry
Phaethon thought he could drive the sun but was struck down to earth.
Story of the Week
The specimen, a man oblivious, is beautiful to behold, perfect, enough.
Classics
His hands stiffened so that the fingers curled inward like gray claws.
Poem of the Week
My mother’s house was packed, painted, put up for sale—sold.
Poetry
It seems too late for them to change, to find a way to survive awake.
Poem of the Week
I wanted to ask what her secret was but I was too busy knitting socks.
Poetry Contest Winners
Bright rot laces the air, light sharpens each leaf. On our way to fallow, fire.
Poem of the Week
Under pillows of snow, the creek shushes the sharp architecture of ice.
Story of the Week
The features of the girl in the bathing suit suggest a mixed-race origin.
Fiction
“That pool,” Kenny said, breathing harder. “I’m telling you, it’s magic.”
Poem of the Week
Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
Poem of the Week
A voice like my mother’s nail polish and my father’s lottery tickets.
iPoems
The light from dead stars only exists in the minds of the living.
iPoems
The dead man’s suit coat
is a good fit through the shoulders.
Poetry
I have placed my thoughts for you in a nest of copper shavings.
Poem of the Week
If you are water my left hand is a horse thief my right hand is alder smoke.
Fall Contest Winners
It was where salvation often lay in little more than a piece of duct tape.
Poem of the Week
Now he’s grazing my books. The Bible is his favorite so far. He is a goat.
Poetry
A sociopathic streak on my father’s side I try to put to good use.
Poem of the Week
Get all of it. Set up the shots. Get beautiful stuff and get the ugliness.
Poem of the Week
Old wives, I wish I could be one of you. Instead I am the born old maid.
Poem of the Week
These things once-living drift toward the stone more movingly.
Story of the Week
A widow is sort of a holy figure, while a divorcée is a tawdry one.
Poem of the Week
I stand within her walls with not a shred of terror, not a word of jeer.
Poem of the Week
That Hawaiian shirt is the first thing Ratso’s owned that he hasn’t stolen.
Poem of the Week
Alva knows the storm is coming. The ground is falling away.
Story of the Week
They all pivoted to face us, tan mannequins on a conveyor belt.
Poem of the Week
She couldn’t have carried knowledge their kind would soon be extinct.
The sediment came when it did, sealing them in their varied positions.
Poetry
People talk this way who would prefer the earth parceled out in standard lots.
Poem of the Week
My new car cost more than my dad’s first house; I Googled it.
Story of the Week
“People think Sean is a screwup. I want them to know him as I do.”
Story of the Week
She looks down the street for Scott’s truck. He’s late but so is she.
First & Second Looks
The thing that illuminated him might have been guilt or outright lust.
Classics
“As your brother, I ask you, how did you get that scar on your face?”
Story of the Week
“We see you tryin’ to hide. Ain’t no use tryin’ to hide in God’s House.”
iPoems
Sitting on the edge, I leaned back and fell, wrist-deep, into the body of a deer.
Poem of the Week
My hands only knew. The painkillers in our mothers’ cabinets.
Story of the Week
The eyes of men were drawn, numb and automatic, to her youthfulness.
Story of the Week
My father would have ended my clandestine career on the spot.
Poetry Contest Winners
Who needs driftwood when I can bury myself in your loamy soil.
Poetry
We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts. This we know.
Readers' Narratives
In the school smock, I looked like an angel in search of her crèche.
Story of the Week
Sarah let herself be guided by her desire, inescapable and true.
Story of the Week
When you turn fifty, you have to prove to yourself you’ve got something left.
Story of the Week
She imagines his clothes on the floor, his arms wrapped around her waist.
Story of the Week
She pictures her suitcase covered in blood, wishing for anything to happen.
Story of the Week
Maybe she’s gay. I wonder if she masturbates when I’m out of the room.
Poem of the Week
The pumpkins are looking up my skirt, making orange a kind of festive.
Story of the Week
Like a ghost, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.
Features
The main thing a poet tries to do, above all things, is to write a poem.
Story of the Week
You and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better.
Poetry
I have, in the long solitude of my body, asked for something else.
Story of the Week
Your intelligence and charisma would serve you well in life.
Story of the Week
The peanut seller tore sheets out of paperback books to make the cones.
Poem of the Week
We are going south where I know that my father is going to die.
Poem of the Week
Another light is growing out of their shadows. You can hear it.
Masterpieces
I see the garden far away in itself reflected in the polished spade.
Poem of the Week
we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars
Poem of the Week
The dove calls from far away in itself to the hush of the morning
Poem of the Week
forget how to count starting with your own age starting with even numbers
Poem of the Week
I must be led by what was given to me as streams are led by it
Poem of the Week
What consequence is a body/a body nonetheless. If the light in me is gone.
Poetry
In the republic of pain, we bloom ice bags and crutches on limbs.
Poem of the Week
In the reign of the cold, in the name of the sorrow, in the flame of the hark.
Poem of the Week
Take my hand, lead me by heart over the blind stepping-stones to the edge.
Story of the Week
There was no hiding; right there on my brow was a second nose.
Poetry Contest Winners
I slipped one sparrow black and shivering into my mouth.
iPoems
Always I obliged the urban tree, any speechless unblessed nature.
iPoems
My brother, only his son by the way he fixes his tie, blind-fingered.
iPoems
Draw me a map of your agonies, all the missing rivers you dried.
Poem of the Week
You’d probably prefer to sneak back into me very still, swollen.
Poetry
There is the ghost of a child in me. It longs to die, so afraid of living.
Poetry
There is a lot about others I don’t remember, outliving an interest.
Poetry
The notes must be crying inside me falling from their proper octaves.
Poem of the Week
Is there anything that hasn’t been sold yet? If it’s true then let’s celebrate.
Fiction
He was staring at his car like you might a stare at a dog.
Poem of the Week
My advice would be not to trust. The ocean is just the ocean until I say otherwise.
Poem of the Week
She was bad. A cool bad. All third-graders wanted bad like hers.
Poetry
Of course he escaped. He would be the one. My legendary brother.
Poem of the Week
Death is a home unseen by the side of the road, the rifle barrel aimed.
Poem of the Week
Black wings thrash in trees, then strafe me low, my head their devil.
Poem of the Week
A woman pushing a walker understands—gravel can be pain.
Classics
The person was seeing his printed face superimposed over his real one.
Poem of the Week
Through Joan’s window, my childhood. I want this view.
Poetry
Finger tracing the terrain, you hold me through autumn’s loss of color.
Poetry
On the anniversary of your death, a memory sharpens, as if illuminated.
Poetry
Fidel narrates the home video: See the women on the beach? Beauty.
Poetry
I realized you were my fourth love, and the system was always doomed.
Poem of the Week
All of this leaves me floating in seas of prehistory and indeterminacy.
Poem of the Week
insomniacs gesturing in a cave of neon light the narrative of their lives
Poem of the Week
One makes one’s peace with words in a poem and space in a dream.
Poem of the Week
The dead cowards my parents on a tear through the goddamn fields.
Photography & Art
The pickup trucks in this portfolio were photographed in June 2015.
Poetry
cannibal chowder and a kiss by the splashing voices of a pool
Poem of the Week
Is it that he is too tired or too afraid to blink into the oil of his own machine?
Poem of the Week
Another disposable medical mask drying in the June sun after all the ceremonies are done
Looks for a second like a lip snarling in that flirting way you see the tattooed girls snarl
Poem of the Week
Bees may not be bought. Our children may never know apples.
Poem of the Week
In every pair, one shoe smells of exodus, the other of the body’s sweat.
Poetry
Now the mulch has come between us seven turns, I’ve grown dramatic.
Poetry Contest Winners
Stop her there, on the bank of knowingness, just before spring.
Poem of the Week
I wound through the Gothic castle buildings in the university.
Story of the Week
I should never have the notebook and the pencil in the right pockets.
Story of the Week
The presents you receive will not have been chosen with such care.
Story of the Week
The lock surrendered, after a short struggle, to the poker.
Story of the Week
We drove, talking fast, fast, fast. He was always going for my zipper.
Fiction
Your life is your own and then suddenly it belongs to someone else.
Fiction
Riding back from her studio, Ivy thought, I’ll just stop for a minute.
Fiction
Nobody knows where I am, Ned thought. No one in the whole world.
Spring Contest Winners
I thought about the little graveyard where the man would be laid.
Poem of the Week
The horse is in the air, her legs withdrawn, a diamond shape.
Story of the Week
The stories of terror continued well after the tsunami had passed.
Story of the Week
We all agreed we would evolve into something, a family of sorts.
Poem of the Week
It comes as no surprise that everything is flying toward one point.
Poem of the Week
Certain elements of isolation were built into the design, given the odds.
Poetry
It’s so easy these days to receive what you thought you needed.
Poem of the Week
Everyone has something lodged and jittering inside them.
Poetry
No one seems to long for what it was before memory gained purchase.
Story of the Week
For me, Selweh was the real magic. She was nothing like my mother.
Poetry
Fatwas condoned our arrest for the rouged contours of our lips.
Story of the Week
Yup, that’s me. Dirk Fish. Funny, right? Fish who likes to fish!
Poetry
My mother’s city and I were both named after an assassinated king.
Poetry
Sometimes they revert to trickery, apple their venom with a smile.
Poetry
The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.
iPoems
To fulminate, to go on a tear, because what’s wanted is forbidden.
Readers' Narratives
I never prayed before. Since this happened I’ve been praying every night.
Story of the Week
Paul King was shiftless and drunken; ugly tales were told of him.
Story of the Week
He did not look at Prissy, nor did she wish him a happy New Year.
Poetry
My ups and downs never stop on the hump we call a hill behind the house.
Story of the Week
Our neighbors the Bells are watching, watching us when we play outside.
Story of the Week
Ask your mother about babies. Ask her about the baby that died.
Story of the Week
It was just what it was. Sex with someone who was not her husband.
Story of the Week
If he wanted to kiss Sophie tonight, he probably shouldn’t steal from her.
Poetry
Premonitions return to me like a carrier pigeon, disaster strapped to its leg.
Poetry Contest Winners
Tongue, eye, nose—which has the shortest route to the brain, heart?
Poetry
This must be what it’s like to be seen by God as we inch toward the infinite.
Poem of the Week
He tossed her over his head like a ballerina, one rough hand on each hip.
Poetry
My soul is simple; it doesn’t think. Something strange paces there now.
Poem of the Week
History howls for direction so I remind him how the hero was lost.
Poem of the Week
There is still the same reaching of the tongue for that pink ridge.
Poetry
The beasts and fowl and all manner of slithery thing can love like us.
Poetry
I’d wager a cicada is fond of a high note on a synthesizer.
Poetry
Two softened reeds of rosemary pair, and spin in the white velouté.
Fiction
There in the trees, swinging from branch to branch, they saw Pete.
Fiction
Pete gazes into his mother’s soul and finds a piece of smoldering coal.
Story of the Week
The dog glares back at Roger, his eyes on fire, but he doesn’t let her go.
Fiction
She often feels something kinetic between herself and younger men.
Story of the Week
She wonders if he will be all right. She assumes he has four-wheel drive.
Story of the Week
I must tell you what it is like to be human, or you will drift away.
Fiction
Just before four in the morning, the dog barks, the headlights appear.
Story of the Week
Henry surprised himself with his inability to start looking for a job.
Story of the Week
I am visited daily by unrelenting spirits evoking my accumulated flaws.
Poetry Contest Winners
I have wasted your childhood, photographed you too much.
iStories
Doctor, he devoted. When she poorly, he bring her mint tea in bed.
Poem of the Week
We couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy we gorged on dirt.
Poem of the Week
If you are going to be my teacher, you will have to become a tiger.
Poetry
There’s nowhere he can kiss where she hasn’t been kissed by the sun.
Poem of the Week
A suitcase of the body slapped with stickers of scars from every location.
Poetry
I know you want your mother’s dial tone like you want a KFC box.
Poem of the Week
she will unchew the dried bulbs of history, spit them at the foot of her post.
Poetry Contest Winners
Exhausted, androgynous, delirious, I delight in my many parts.
Narrative Taste
Diane cupped my cheek in her hand, studying me, memorizing me.
Poem of the Week
I slide my heart inside a folded sheet of paper and tape down the opening.
Poem of the Week
I know it’s a problem, that I prefer to think instead of live.
Six-Word Stories
An ironic story about skepticism and education, in just six words.
Narrative 10
Henry Chinaski is just so deplorable and lovable; he makes me laugh.
Story of the Week
I found Lowell’s gun a long time ago. He’s not a genius at hiding things.
Story of the Week
Our hopes swirled around the act of swallowing a teaspoon of yogurt.
Fiction
Writing to you is like putting a note in a bottle, hoping it will reach Japan.
Story of the Week
My head was muffled in velvet, my body exposed in an old slip.
Story of the Week
He was so frail, how could your heart not break when you saw him?
Story of the Week
At age eighteen, Deirdre packed her bags and moved to New York City.
Poem of the Week
The notebook’s cotton pages are spangled with axes and sickles.
Poetry
Carte blanche is bodily as chalk on dark asphalt, so enliven these eyes.
Poem of the Week
Never takes much, a fingertip’s touch, or beak-brush of prey-probing bird.
Poetry
Well, back home has really changed, you won’t get that same bammy.
Poem of the Week
Now he chuckles with the sea, stitched within its timeless jive.
Photography & Art
A photo essay on hope in the wake of the devastating Bosnian War.
Story of the Week
From that day on, Sivaprakasam got embroiled in an ungodly mess.
Poetry
What if it does choose, the egg, I mean, her favorite spermatozoon.
Poetry
There it was, the urge to hurt one’s neck by craning toward the dazzle.
Narrative 10
What’s the most useful criticism you’ve received? “Keep writing.”
