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.
I told Alex that, even though I’d gotten kicked out of etiquette school, I’d actually learned how to be a lady from our grandmother, and that it had nothing to do with how you get out of a car or set a table, but with how you treat people: how you look at them when you’re talking, and whether you actually listen when they try to tell you something important.
By Christian ZwahlenJuly 2013We walked the city after dark, talking / about the things that mattered to us then: / the most vivid ways to live, how to keep the fire / ablaze inside; the girls we’d loved, the women / we’d meet someday.
By Michael HettichJune 2013After my parents lost our farm and we moved into town, I started attending an evangelical Quaker church with my friend Brad. I wasn’t sure I liked it at first, but as the months passed with my mom and dad rarely speaking, I did start to find something like peace when I prayed.
By Doug CrandellJune 2013Freeing a lizard, reaching “full organ,” taking a day flight
By Our ReadersMay 2013Skiing naked, horseback riding, building a “snow convict”
By Our ReadersJanuary 2013In the woods I saw box turtles mating, and I got down on my hands and knees to watch. The female had brown, mournful, thick-lidded eyes, a hooked beak like a bird, and a delicate, curving mouth. She stretched her wrinkled neck away from the male. I felt sorry for her.
By Miciah Bay GaultNovember 2012One thing no one ever informs you of when you get ready to kiss a girl / For the first time is where to put your nose: do you lay it alongside / Hers, like a skipper eases his ship along a dock, or do you take turns, / Alternating left and right?
By Brian DoyleNovember 2012As Ochs delivered the song’s most incendiary lyric — “Serve your country in her suicide / Find the flag so you can wave goodbye / But just before the end even treason might be worth a try” — McCarthy threw his arms in the air, and the crowd erupted.
By Lad TobinAugust 2012For some people life is effortless, like running as a child with no sense of the world turning beneath our feet. It is not that way for you. You will always be aware of the weight of your footsteps and the force of will required to move forward. Anger keeps you together, a mortar that begins to harden.
By Jennifer Mason-BlackAugust 2012— from “Wondrous” | I’m driving home from school when the radio talk / turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit / the here and now of the freeway at rush hour
By Sarah FrelighAugust 2012Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today