Authors
Story of the Week
The mistake you make with this man is, you wait around for him.
Poetry Contest Winners
There are parts of a man that are born again with each of his daughters.
Poem of the Week
Translucent white prayer strings of her bonnet trailing in the air.
Poem of the Week
It is like the call of a voice the call of a voice that is not there.
Poem of the Week
The emblazoned vessel performed my false and vulgar life—I knelt to it.
Poetry
It’s all that I have left of “the old country,” as my mother calls it.
Poem of the Week
Staring down the barrel of a black gun I forget I’m no longer just a boy.
Story of the Week
His name is Lloyd. He lives on Percival. He’s super creepy.
Story of the Week
Our father crumbled after her affair. We watched him for signs of cracking.
Story of the Week
My father left me in the car while he was grabbing one for the road.
Story of the Week
Maybe all of it was possible. Maybe it all could work out.
Fall Contest Winners
You’re feminist? Neither one of you. You just like getting into fights.
Story of the Week
He’s weirdly hard to pay attention to, even when he’s threatening you.
Story of the Week
I opened my pocketknife, grabbed his hair in a fistful, and cut.
Story of the Week
My father then got partials implanted, which were later punched out.
Fiction
“I wonder what will stay longer,” Frick said. “Me or that headstone.”
Story of the Week
“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have done it, but they had it coming.”
Fiction
“I can’t believe she’s drinking,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”
Fiction
I had to prepare. I had to be able to save us from what was coming.
Narrative Outloud
The writer was there ahead of the world. And that was a great moment . . .
Narrative Outloud
My closet was a repository of foibles and fetishes, an archive of my life history.
Poetry
They found her where such girls are found. A Manhattan street.
Story of the Week
“The rattlesnakes glow in the dark, man. You should see them.”
Story of the Week
The lion was still near them, stalking. Crazed against its cautionary nature.
Story of the Week
No one is dead, but you should come back. See what’s become of us.
Story of the Week
I hightailed it out of the hospital like my ex-wife was a prison I’d escaped.
Poem of the Week
I confessed to loving another man, streetlamp sequin on a rain puddle.
Later, in sleep, your arms opened to me. Mid-snore compromise.
Story of the Week
Saint Clark, halo and all, patron of wildlife shows and the cigarette tax.
Classics
When he had passed from view, I stumbled back from the window.
First & Second Looks
Taylor measures every word, as if holding the world lightly by the throat.
Story of the Week
These old guitar players were the last pure thing this country produced.
iPoems
The willows crack as the startled deer flee into a deeper darkness.
Poem of the Week
The old hen scratches then looks, scratches then looks. My life.
Poetry
Before there was air, sublime silence. There was no one not to hear it.
Poem of the Week
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light.
Poetry
We called for the dead dog because toddlers do not understand death.
Poem of the Week
Stable-keeper’s kids know broken then healed, but healed with limits.
Poetry
My students are in rows, alive—day-picked apples cut by teeth.
Poem of the Week
He tries to appear slight in his leather jacket and turbulent jeans.
Poem of the Week
It was comforting to see her suffer the way we suffer, hollowed out.
Story of the Week
I went for a natural, “I look pretty even when I’m giving birth,” look.
Story of the Week
“Why, Ma? I don’t understand. I just don’t want you to be alone.”
Nonfiction
I want to change the subject, but I can’t. I need to think about dying.
Spring Contest Winners
“I don’t think I can do this,” she says, after a pause. “I don’t trust you.”
Poem of the Week
A family becomes fossilized—a darker crosshatch etched in hard sand.
Poem of the Week
There’s nothing left to do but crush the garlic, check the water on the stove.
Poem of the Week
Tonight’s moon has dropped its shawl. I’m in the yard again, waiting.
Poetry
What a noise it must have made long ago. It’s not just me saying this.
Poem of the Week
Some longings appear so frequently they must be instinct.
Fall Contest Winners
“Fuck you,” I said, but it was hard to say it with any meaning.
Story of the Week
Virginia surprises herself: she wants this warmth, wants skin and breath.
Fiction
They give me a pitying look, as if I am alone, and they are invincible.
iStories
I opened my eyes and they burned; I closed them and saw my father.
Story of the Week
The thing was, I didn’t care what I ate in front of a woman.
Every day, I told her things I would have been too embarrassed to tell anyone else.
iPoems
In carved hearts—the artery, link that links but won’t spell it out.
Story of the Week
For days after she left him, he roamed the house, unable to function.
Story of the Week
He wondered how others lived with their sins. Maybe they never did.
Fall Contest Winners
Owen’s head throbbed, his ears ached, and an anvil sat on his chest.
Story of the Week
I wondered if the coyotes and deer were mourning the loss of Steve.
Fall Contest Winners
What’s a man supposed to do when his best friend is a falcon?
Nonfiction
He told his father he wanted to make art pictures, not lousy mobster stuff.
Nonfiction
They believed that the American movie should be taken seriously.
Nonfiction
These days murder is as common as love scenes were in the 1930s.
Fiction
“Out to lunch,” she learns from an older colleague, is a euphemism.
Fiction
Here is my father on the last day of his exceptionally long life.
Fiction
The solution, she’s discovered, is always to err on the side of caution.
Poem of the Week
Let us not forget the desuetude of nailed-shut carousels.
Poetry
A memory in the drip, drip, drip of the kitchen sink that won’t stop.
Poetry Contest Winners
I could go in for some pie
why the hell not, there’s so little time.
Story of the Week
With my son in the NICU and my wife in tears, it felt good to disobey.
Poem of the Week
ursula says she’s seen everyone she loves in an apple, save herself.
Poem of the Week
a clock struck again & again by a granite fist; us masked & rocking
Story of the Week
She possessed a quality that made one forget all shortcomings.
Story of the Week
“We must also buy twenty acres or so. Life is becoming impossible.”
Story of the Week
Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided.
Classics
“I can’t die, I don’t want to die, I love life,” Prince Andrei thought.
Story of the Week
All was hushed and stonily still, like the moon and its lights and shadows.
Narrative Taste
To me, the very point of cooking is to wildly praise what’s wild.
Poetry
Men are so delicate, must be given many portals. I try to be game.
Story of the Week
This kind of childhood stuck with a person, twisted things up.
Poetry
Think how you move, how a room changes with your smallest breath.
Poem of the Week
You walk and the world bends toward you like leaves waiting for rain.
Poetry Contest Winners
The highway hot with possibility, a new herd expected every five miles.
Story of the Week
Suddenly Julia’s silence had solidified like cold fat in a frying pan.
N30B Winners
You decide that in this city all things are possible, even happiness.
Poem of the Week
When she passes you, her name is a bright blue phrase on your tongue.
Story of the Week
He could smell the bear’s breath, feel the hot huff against his ear.
Poetry Contest Winners
I see now that motherhood is not required to speak a mother tongue.
Poem of the Week
It doesn’t matter who he is. I don’t think about him much anymore.
Poetry
Oh they pay me well. I make a small fortune. Yes they pay me well.
Poetry
Oh brother,
the eye of the needle is shaking the weather
awake.
Classics
Professor Flacks could tell you everything about James Joyce.
Story of the Week
‘Isn’t this great?’ she said. ‘A bit of peace for ourselves?’
‘No one could go into a cafe on their own on Christmas Day.’
Narrative High School Writing Contest
Hands brush the curtains, making them quiver like butterflies.
Poetry
In a future we believe in, these plants will all be ghosts.
Readers' Narratives
The mountains out your window make Central Park feel rinky-dink.
Poem of the Week
I’m the one with the most crumbs, little bits of salad or fudge.
Poem of the Week
I wonder if those tiny computers in pigeons’ brains ever crash?
Fiction
What was she thinking, driving alone to see a man she’d never met?
Story of the Week
Why had she asked him to come along, someone she did not even know?
Fall Contest Winners
“My brother’s last words to me were about you. Did you know that?”
Story of the Week
He was last in Calcutta more than fifteen years ago, for his mother’s funeral.
Han Ru feels something vaguely discomfiting, followed by a surge of recognition.
Classics
I like that it’s not me you pine for, and like that I don’t pine for you.
Poem of the Week
Then came “the sea of trouble” as he crumpled his bank statement.
Spring Contest Winners
Protect your hands. You can always get by if your hands aren’t broken.
Story of the Week
I try to get her to drink again. We were okay drunks, before Jesus.
Story of the Week
Sleepy and pensive, July succumbed to the day’s isolating heat.
Story of the Week
Amy put her arm around his shoulders. My boy. Isn’t he wonderful?
Poetry
Don’t worry baby, that’s just the way things be sometimes.
Classics
The sunrise does not blaze fiercely but spreads in a gentle flush.
Story of the Week
The jealous Othello, ready for murder, was transformed into a school-boy.
Story of the Week
Let the public do itself the honor to read and follow in my footsteps.
Story of the Week
Any invented quotation, played with confidence, can deceive.
Story of the Week
He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open.
Story of the Week
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can resist.
Story of the Week
An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.
Poem of the Week
We had a pact to live outside the adult world forever, and we broke it.
Poem of the Week
Dogs electrocuted, set on fire. What buys the right to drown a dog?
Poem of the Week
Ice and evergreen and sun; three moments arranged for human looking.
Poem of the Week
That what I call my Self is asleep, and has dreamed up these lilacs.
Poem of the Week
We pried the last of the pallid squid from their crevices and ate them.
Poetry
This storm scares me. A foreign climate occupies the land.
Poem of the Week
I like to take little sips of the horror, morsels of poisoned meat.
Poetry
Strange then, strange now, that language wants to be alone with me.
