Authors
Nonfiction
We take our solace, in a time of malaise and mourning, in the close-at-hand.
Fiction
She knew what boys can do to girls: if the girls are alone, and helpless.
Story of the Week
Why do you keep so much from your husband, don’t you trust him?
Story of the Week
Isn’t Nightshade sad, people said; isn’t he pathetic; isn’t he hideous.
Nonfiction
“Happy? Nabokov died yesterday, we all move up a notch.”
Story of the Week
He’s an excellent student. It’s just that . . . he thinks ideas are real.
Fiction
I saw her bed wasn’t slept in and knew—something had happened.
Fiction
He didn’t mind, he insisted, that he loved her more than she loved him.
Nonfiction
Insomnia! There is a sickly romance to the affliction—initially.
Nonfiction
She could not have known how uncannily she resembled me.
Fiction
This is not deception. This is a subtle way of conditioning.
Story of the Week
“A book is an ax,” Franz Kafka once said, “for the frozen sea within.”
Fiction
Late March 2002. “Mud time”—so called in Mad River Junction, Ohio.
Fiction
If Vann kisses her, a mist will rise in her brain. A promise of oblivion.
Fiction
With a couple, there must be one who outlives the other: the survivor.
First-Person Winners
Mother had always told me that everybody loves a self-absorbed ass.
Fiction
Five dark shapes loped after the car. Dogs—as far as the eye could see.
Fiction
Lindy knew what happens in the dark behind shut doors: girls tell stories.
Fiction
I seek these ghosts because they allow me to return home outside of time.
Poem of the Week
Think of the fish whose stripes appear only on cooking through.
Fold each thought: the highway stop where toilet paper is piled.
Classics
A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t think I could ever write about it.
Poetry
What if my mother could have been happy if I hadn’t been born?
Poetry
I am desperate to love myself, to tolerate myself, vanity is fine.
Poetry
He drew on time, and space, he drew on his powers, and their sleep.
Poetry
Imagine being able to calm the one you love best, who loves you best.
Poem of the Week
On your Desk—Oak Penshaft—Necklaced with Pearl—Iron Nib—
Poetry
When I’m reading him I feel myself come closer to you than usual.
Poetry
She could not remember what Past and Present stood for.
Poetry
I am part dumb, and blind, and deaf, and untasting and unfeeling.
Story of the Week
After nearly a year of dating, I never stopped thinking of that other boy.
Poem of the Week
I was once very brave. Once I was very brave. I was very brave once.
Poem of the Week
A cuckoo calls the hours like an old clock, only not the hours we mean.
Poem of the Week
It’s been months since the cat died and still we find her hair.
Poetry
This morning I watched two elephants dance the boogie-woogie.
Poetry
Help me, please help me, is the beggar’s refrain on the F train today.
Story of the Week
The school’s committed to an all-sterile facility by the year 2025.
Poetry
One day, we will all turn into choir girls—all soft and hollow inside.
Narrative 10
I love talking to girls. That’s why I’ve written so much about them.
Poetry
I can’t hold a face held before dawn & not see behind the eyes bullets.
Poem of the Week
A boy knew he wouldn’t see his mother’s face as he rose from the mat.
Poem of the Week
Through all this the sands kept vigil, harboring blood and bones.
Narrative Outloud
When I went to Scotland for a wedding, I didn't plan on firing a gun.
Narrative 10
In real life, my favorite character, so to speak, is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Story of the Week
“I’m sorry,” I wrote, “but I have to go back to the bookstore.”
My only plan was to plead for my old job back. To my surprise, it worked.
The law was safe; the law was my father. I decided to go to law school.
First & Second Looks
The illusion is so complete that it seems the world has been re-created.
Story of the Week
She’d ransacked his heart the moment she unlocked the door.
Fiction
Some people you come across you come to love. He was one of them.
Story of the Week
Theirs was a free fall that went on and on. If it’s time to fall, let’s fall.
Features
Needless to say, when it was my night to read I was beyond terrified.
Poem of the Week
The gravest season and least understood is more than pale heads
Poem of the Week
In that world I was a fish too eager to enter the nets; here, I’m a river.
Poem of the Week
Now only the single syllable that is the beloved, that is the world.
Poem of the Week
The letters combine into words that resurrect the beloved every time.
Poetry
Nothing holds the universe together; nothing is the secret force.
Poetry
Fearing for them, I clustered them together, then cut them off.
Features
The smart hide their claws in their paws, then add fur for allure.
Poetry
It was the year we learned to wash our hands. That was one lesson.
Poem of the Week
My daughter cried her tears; I held some ice against her lip.
Features
Longtime residents witness the eruption of violence in Charlottesville.
Story of the Week
In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.
Poem of the Week
Bodies, moths, destroyers. Fear like finding a bullet in a snowman.
Poem of the Week
I have many dreams, I say. In my dreams I am better than myself.
Poetry
Tell her I put poison in the pot and I intend to watch her drink it.
Poem of the Week
I am subject to you in the way the water is subject to the moon.
Poem of the Week
But we do despise beauty. We connect it with softness and immortality.
Winter Contest Winners
Unnatural as a ghost; the thought rose unbidden to his mind.
Narrative 10
Most days, at the pool, we are able to leave our troubles on land behind.
Story of the Week
Mafia didn’t like me, except for the tickling game. It went like this.
Classics
The true Lesson of the Master is, simply, to husband one’s own stupidity.
Story of the Week
They rose before us under a halo of lights like figures in a shrine.
Poetry
Even the busiest of businessmen are out for the count, paying the price.
Poem of the Week
For years, all we showed her for her pains were two deaf ears.
Poem of the Week
Music that tells of how things stand in the troubled world you now have.
Poetry
On Christmas Day, we lost one of our great advocates for poetry.
Story of the Week
Teddy, the new sous chef, is on fire again. It’s the second time in a week.
I make a silent promise to myself never to have sex on a beach, not even with Ryan Gosling.
Story of the Week
Children are never old enough to understand their parents’ affairs.
Story of the Week
Gerard sat in the shadow, watching his son steal about like a thief.
Poetry
I awakened on my belly—my back a raw field from nape to heels.
Poem of the Week
He calmed the animal with song while loosening the slipknot.
