Authors
Story of the Week
He ached to move into and out of her body and make her feel him fiercely.
Spring Contest Winners
He loathed them most, despising their desire to get on with things.
Poetry
Picture the thing you want most. True love? A new car? Let it go.
Poetry
Trysting lovers kissed while breezes fidgeted the leaves.
iStories
I thought fleetingly he might give it to me, as he knew I wanted it.
Story of the Week
He was trying to seduce me with his history, which was mine as well.
Poem of the Week
Redemption is a broken bar on a cage. Loss is a sky of stars.
Poem of the Week
There is a pinhole of light through the fog. A skiff on a lake.
Poetry
All roads lead to Rome, but all trails take you to Oklahoma.
Poem of the Week
Death will come for us so fast we will never be able to outrun it.
Poem of the Week
Lost land, this is a song for the scars on your back, for your blistered feet.
Poem of the Week
If it hasn’t killed you by now just wait. This doesn’t mean you can fly.
Poetry
Reader, you and I stand once more before the borderless.
Poetry
you here and these words also here meeting in your shared beauty
Story of the Week
Everyone they pass is consumed by some desperate interior story.
Poem of the Week
He whispers words that sound as miraculous as the skinned fish of the clouds
my father writhed like pentecostal snakes while he drove drunk
Poetry
Decay enters us through the eyes. As always I lose focus.
Poem of the Week
In the photograph we look nearly the same. Heft and hewn.
Fiction
Stripped we are — no mark of wealth or rank upon us. We wear our skins.
Fiction
“We have heard that this blackened smear is art. We do not see it.”
Poem of the Week
If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you time is a language I don’t speak.
Poetry
No fields of gold. No ripe. One hill, no wave, no roll. I am billboards.
Poem of the Week
I try to imagine him wanting only a Toblerone bar for his birthday.
Poem of the Week
Outside, pears swathed in socks ripened, protected from birds.
Fiction
Miriam slept at the ranch often, although little sleep happened there.
Poem of the Week
That’s why Mam drinks whiskey. That’s why he drinks whiskey too.
Poem of the Week
We are good at thinking we can stay. We are good at finding hurt.
Poem of the Week
Puppets share wine. A dog dressed in a red gown growls.
Poem of the Week
It takes you more than ten thousand years to orbit the sun.
Poetry
God, I need to know what happened to those who tried to cross.
Story of the Week
Again, nature has written a good script. The skunk saga will continue.
Interviews
The excuse, of course, was that men had to support families.
Poem of the Week
L comes over & we walk turns around the block—this is what we’re allowed.
N30B Winners
We were hurtling close to a hundred miles an hour through the dark.
Poetry
There is beauty in the way she looks at me over the kitchen table.
Poem of the Week
What that truth is doesn’t matter, finally, because of your persistence.
Story of the Week
Her hips, her pelvis, broke free of concerns. His eyes hovered.
Winter Contest Winners
Our life is fine as it is, she would say to him, and it seemed true.
Story of the Week
When his father was out cold he tied him up, roping his arms to his sides.
Story of the Week
He knew deep down that only her ridiculous optimism kept them going.
Narrative Outloud
The author reads her story, a finalist in the Winter 2013 Story Contest.
Poem of the Week
I will have to remember the man’s hooded eyes as he watches.
Story of the Week
The man said in a hard voice, “I wanna fuck you, little Indian girl.”
Fiction
“Look in my eyes. Do I look like someone who has heard this story?”
Story of the Week
It was a Saturday night in November when his diagnosis finally came.
Story of the Week
Once she had loved him. When had she stopped? She did not know.
Poem of the Week
His mouth hardens whenever their son’s name is mentioned.
Poetry
Her body is no longer the source of pleasure but constant pain.
Poetry
It wasn’t the bees I thought to tell but wasps the evening you died.
Narrative 10
The story of racism does not simply happen to people of color.
Poem of the Week
On her tongue was a wick and her body was invented a nation of lice.
Six-Word Stories
A snapshot of loneliness and vice in this powerful six-word story.
Story of the Week
The old man drinks some more liquor and whacks down two trees.
Poem of the Week
The day holds a cup of milk and sits on the couch, legs tucked up.
Poetry
It’s cruel to watch my edges crystallize and reflect light.
Poetry
Is that coffee you have, or the hell of fusion in your cupped hands?
Poem of the Week
I take Saturday’s unpopulated trains, since there is no safety in numbers.
Poem of the Week
Bill Evans’s quiet solo was walking out on unbelievably thin ice.
iPoems
How did the light take forty years to work its way across that room.
Poetry
My books, I can hardly read them, they make so much sense.
Poetry
Flies at our dinner—Won’t eat much sings the tiny ghost of my mother.
Poetry
What my father and I destroyed, I take back—kneeling, among the shells.
First & Second Looks
Trees had been old men with beards when the woods were still whips.
Photography & Art
The photo portraits express the unguarded essence of each author.
Poem of the Week
It swims for a while, but abandons itself, slips from its own grasp.
Story of the Week
The leaves of the olives were made entirely of night, as if cut out of skies.
Poem of the Week
A boy watching another boy lucky gets an ache. That is a small motor.
Poem of the Week
The danger of the shirt—always, every moment, it is so obvious.
Poem of the Week
What I eat, that heap has eaten. What I like, it gets, but less of.
Poem of the Week
The places in between places are like countries themselves.
Poem of the Week
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow. Together we are green.
Poem of the Week
A pie can’t go to college, work hard for the grades, two jobs on the side.
Poem of the Week
Remind the children never to use the state as a metric for ethics.
Photography & Art
My mother said a woman’s handbag is more private than her body.
Story of the Week
Howie and Nadine were confident they’d be among the survivors.
Story of the Week
Children were driven by deep yearnings that should be satisfied.
Poem of the Week
The cicada will crawl up a tree and leave the murmur of skin.
Interviews
I recoil from the certitude that religion can give a person; it’s horrific.
Poetry
I’m going to save up against the flood and stagger to carry nothing.
Story of the Week
Go came up with the idea that all things were part of a good conspiracy.
Story of the Week
Their eyes met from time to time. I thought about what I could tell her.
Story of the Week
Somebody would be a lot happier if she were more like her mother.
Poetry
what happens in all these villages after we ride through them?
Poem of the Week
The celebration stops, like a sparrow hitting a sliding-glass door.
Poetry
When a cobra eats it starts with the head, goes to the place that thinks.
Story of the Week
Mikey said the hole wouldn’t lead to China, but he was frequently wrong.
Poetry
How large our muscles have to be to lift our wings even a single time.
Poem of the Week
Our spirits are as transparent as the gown my wife wears in bed.
Poetry Contest Winners
I sit next to a man I never loved but let kiss me wetly for two months.
Poem of the Week
I am a pornography of small promises, the chugging gin of the universe.
Poetry
What I became was not pretty. Like a needle on water-warped paper.
Poem of the Week
I bring out the emergency in people and I don’t know why.
N30B Winners
The Bengalis negotiate their space with corrupt politicians and landsharks.
Fiction
Lily hated Ray’s cancer. She couldn’t see it or cure it.
Poem of the Week
The neighbor needs his blaring-music his car-cocoon of sound
Poetry
You sounded so confident about the Old Masters and I loved you for that.
Story of the Week
He cut down on beer and moved into the hotel that had my name.
Poem of the Week
If I had known I would have saved the abacus from the fire.
Poetry
My son trims a curtain of lashes, immures them into a stray year.
iStories
“Tell me how it felt”—he narrows his eyes—“when you first saw her.”
Poetry
My body. Stop the air. Travel by stopping, full stop, just there.
Poem of the Week
I hand in my form. I wonder if the doctor with the needles will laugh at me.
Narrative 10
A more typical writing day for me is being constantly interrupted.
Poem of the Week
On her sixty-second birthday Marge Olson got a call, not a gift.
Poem of the Week
Stocking shelves, like serving, is a job that will not let go of your mind.