We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
after my mother’s funeral standing in the receiving line just / below the altar rail shaking hands with people I hardly knew / when Kenny a face I hadn’t seen in twenty years appeared and / grabbed me and hugged me so damn hard the wind went out / of me
By Jim BishopNovember 2019— from “Things My Daughter Pretends” | that she has fairy wings that she / is seventeen that she can talk to dogs / in dog language
By Joe WilkinsNovember 2019I thought tryouts went great. I played catcher, just catcher. You may ask, How solid was my receiving with that lingering double vision? Well, I’m happy to report that squatting behind the plate was a miracle cure.
By Mark GozonskyNovember 2019The first time he calls the talk line, it’s because he wants to die. Whatever has happened in his brain has made him a stranger to himself.
By Katherine SeligmanNovember 2019Try to avoid symbolism and metaphors, and leave fate out of it, too. Fate was not preparing you for this loss when you were an eight-year-old farm girl and held that stillborn piglet for hours in the barn.
By Molly BashawNovember 2019Decorah sat in the impact crater of an asteroid that had struck the earth hundreds of millions of years ago. One of the extinct giant sea creatures exhumed from its crust — the shrimp-looking Pentecopterus decorahensis — had been named after the town.
By Poe BallantineNovember 2019I resist seeing Trump as just a fluke or an aberration, because it’s too flattering to ourselves. When people say, “Trump’s not us,” I think, Maybe we need to see how he is us, so we can prevent this from happening again.
By Finn CohenNovember 2019What was astonishing / was that after a summer of running around the yard / and dragging our rubber dinghy a mile to the lake and rowing / and doing backflips off the dinghy and bicycling around the lake
By Elizabeth PolinerOctober 2019I wake at 2:34 AM and lie in bed staring at the ceiling for a couple of hours, beating myself up for having awakened way before it’s time to get up.
By Evan Lavender-SmithOctober 2019Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today