• Robert Stone and Kate Chopin

STORY OF THE WEEK

Miss Burma

By Charmaine Craig
“Why not use her loveliness to our advantage?” Benny said. It was a new low for him, these depths of cruelty to which he sank.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Ghost Writer

By Norman Dubie
The blue-and-white Cessna coughed out over the desert floor. A clumsy coyote descends an old hill of garbage.

OPEN TO ALL WRITERS

We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.

Please see the Guidelines.

30 POEMS TO STIR THE HEART

Self-Portrait in Space

By Dean Rader
The earth is a dime rolling across a black table. Death is a bear wearing a red hat shaped like a cone. Redemption is a broken bar at the front of a cage.

FEATURES

FICTION

ENTER NOW

FEATURES

Robert Stone and Kate Chopin

Stone’s Adaptation of
The Awakening
We went in search of the missing pages from Children of Light and found them in an archive of Stone’s papers.

FICTION

Gethsemani

By Austin Smith
No one in town would take him for a Trappist monk with vows of chastity, just as, in the abbey, no one took him for a lapsed bohemian who played jazz records and danced naked.

ENTER NOW

Deadline: June 15.

$4,000 awarded annually for the best short story, novel excerpt, poem, one-act play, graphic story, or work of literary nonfiction published by a new or emerging writer in Narrative. See the previous winners here.

NONFICTION

NONFICTION

iPOEMS

NONFICTION

Saving Planet Earth

By Bill Barich
Our subscribers tended to be fervent activists, hardcore eco-warriors in the mode of Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang, or delicate souls who ate no meat.

NONFICTION

Christian Soldiers

By Hal Crowther
A tough cookie, this warrior-priest, who talked about his eleven-plus years in prisons the way scholars talk about graduate school.

iPOEMS

In Defense of Ballin’ on a Budget

By Marcus Wicker
Damn, Will—they’ve got you sounding mighty Uncle Phil in these streets. Like the still calling the Ketel One cheap.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Two Girls Bathing and Other Poems

By Ama Codjoe
Carol points to a spot on my back. I resist the urge to hide my breasts. She wears her nakedness like it has been woven from air.

POETRY

Praying Naked and Other Poems

By Katie Condon
It wasn’t guilt I felt. Maybe it was loneliness. Maybe it was my own desire to be desired, since, if a man wants me, I know I have at least a little worth left.

POETRY

The Land of
Five Rivers

By Faisal Mohyuddin
In Urdu, the clock tower is called Ghanta Ghar, meaning Hour House, which sounds just like our house. However, nothing of it is ours.

POETRY

POETRY

CARTOONS

POETRY

Ruth Stone Explains the Book of the Dead to Sylvia Plath

By Christian Teresi
I did what I could to hush the knot and rope, the truth of gravity. There are not enough idiomatic expressions to converse flawlessly with the dead.

POETRY

On Seeing Damien Hirst’s “Kingdom of the Father”

By Laura Wetherington
The butterflies hang grotesque: House paint obscures the edges, black paint licking down their iridescent fur.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2017-04

By Various Artists
Great new toons by Pat Byrnes, J. C. Duffy, Farley Katz, Amy Kurzweil, and Mary Lawton.