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Jump to navigation TELL ME A STORY. FICTION POETRY NONFICTION ARCHIVE by Author by Title, Form, Section... Issues Story Lists Contests BACKSTAGE STORE SUBMIT ABOUT Mission Narrative in the Schools Masthead Board of Directors Friends & Patrons Events Narrative in the News FAQ Advertise in Narrative Internships Terms of Use Privacy DONATE LOG IN JOIN US! SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE FICTION POETRY NONFICTION ARCHIVE BY AUTHOR BY TITLE, FORM, SECTION... ISSUES STORY LISTS CONTESTS BACKSTAGE STORE SUBMIT YOUR WORK ABOUT MASTHEAD MISSION BOARD & COUNCIL FRIENDS & PATRONS EVENTS NARRATIVE IN THE NEWS FAQ ADVERTISE IN NARRATIVE INTERNSHIPS DONATE CLASSIFIEDS WRITERS' RESOURCES Narrative is a nonprofit supported by readers who love great writing. Read us. Support us . SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE Sign In MY ACCOUNT CONTACT US ADVERTISE KINDLE EDITION PRIVACY POLICY TERMS OF USE Narrative is a nonprofit supported by readers who love great writing. Read us. Support us . Prev 1 2 Next Prev 1 2 Next STORY OF THE WEEK To This God I Will Say By Tryphena L. Yeboah Nothing would be the same without him, but, frankly, selling Joseph would be the best thing to happen to the boys and me. POEM OF THE WEEK On Future Rhyming “Fuck You” with “Fuck You” Four Times in a Row By J. D. Debris I’m convinced any word that keeps repeating & repeating is a prayer. FINAL DAYS TO ENTER Deadline: Fri., July 31, at midnight, PDT. Narrative winners and finalists have gone on to win honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, and have appeared in collections such as The Best American Short Stories. Please see the guidelines . FICTION Lust By Susan Minot Leo was from a long time ago, the first one I ever saw nude. In the spring before the Hellmans filled their pool, we’d go down there in the deep end. Spring Issue FICTION FICTION FICTION Spring Issue FICTION Isolation By Richard Bausch There he is, a man she knows to be good and gentle, sitting there being himself, confident in her and in their lives. FICTION Fort Pierce, Florida By Lisa Cupolo In this part of the country, they can ask you anything. They can be openly curious about you and demand to know your name. And you better answer. FICTION The Frenchman By James Jung My mother was coming to New York to see the Frenchman who’d been in love with her for the past fifty years. FICTION FICTION FICTION Roommates By David Rabe Emma hit her call button over and over, turning it off and back on in the hope that the blinking would send a kind of SOS. FICTION A Saint from Texas By Edmund White Middle-class people imagine the privileged are bored and negative and languorously disapproving, but the truth is you’d swear they were on speed. NONFICTION NONFICTION NONFICTION NONFICTION A Life with Bears By Rick Bass Why do bears matter? Let me tell you a little bit about a thing I love while it is still here on the earth. NONFICTION I Long to Kiss You: Napoli in the Time of Coronavirus By Heather Hartley For the past eighteen years, I’ve lived in two cultures that take their kisses very seriously. NONFICTION Pink Adobe By Sam Shepard The whole aching despair of bar life comes flooding back and I can’t believe I’m actually back in this old familiar situation of drinking alone. INTERVIEWS iSTORIES ANTHOLOGY INTERVIEWS Narrative 10 with Lacy Crawford Q. Best part of the day? A. 8:47 p.m., reading to my little boys. iSTORIES Weightless By James Silberstein During the last of it, the death rattle is so loud we give him the morphine we promised we wouldn’t. ANTHOLOGY Stories in a Time of Plague By Various Authors Collected here are works selected from our archive to lend comfort, cheer, and hope to us all. READERS’ NARRATIVES READERS’ NARRATIVES GRAPHIC STORIES READERS’ NARRATIVES Nowhere, Australia By Natasha Ayaz When we emerged, the shore was littered with luminous discs, hundreds of toxic blue jellies lying washed up like evil eyes. READERS’ NARRATIVES My Mother’s Marathons By Sara Houghteling On April 20, my mother, age seventy-one, decided to run her own marathon, her first solo, her twenty-fourth overall. GRAPHIC STORIES Last Flight from Bordeaux By Sofia Warren If I’d known there’d be a worldwide epidemic, I wouldn’t have relinquished my apartment and moved to France. POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY Across the Sea: A Sequence By Gbenga Adesina On the sea, your prayer is not to the whorl scarf of waves. Your prayer is to the fitful sleep of the dead. POETRY In Airports By Erin Belieu It was the season for weeping in airports for walking and bleeding in airports— POETRY To Cicero’s Hand By Malachi Black In Rome they hailed: and fixed you, wrist-wise, with a nine-inch nail, to a gray beam of the Rostra in the public square. POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY From Deluge By Leila Chatti I won’t be the last to look into a painting like a mirror, to ignore the glutted world in order to better scrutinize the self. POETRY You Said Eden Disappeared and Other Poems By Traci Brimhall Even when God flooded the world, he loved it. Even when he promised to destroy it again with cleansing fire. POETRY Holy Defense and Other Poems By Armen Davoudian A volcano in Italy and the salamander fit to live in the fire of myth, safely immune to it. POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY Dementia Bus By Lisa Dordal My father keeps merging houses, first wife and second. He knows me, he doesn’t know me. POETRY Fish By Shangyang Fang It was a clean doing. No blood. Only the white scales descended like pear blossoms, wafting the metallic scent of snow. POETRY Separation and Other Poems By John Freeman We think we worship life, but we have made a botch of this, encircling ponds and trees with the smelt of disused weapons. POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY The Archive Is All in Present Tense and Other Poems By Elizabeth Hoover I sort through tea lights, radio crackles, fortune-tellers predicting the man who will marry you. POETRY North to Natoma and Other Poems By Kira Jan Daylike, we pass by empty lots of orchard land, the topsoil kept down more by pacing feet than water. POETRY Night Talks By Farah Kader your stories used to spill from you bubble up and over words unable to catch up to one another between hot breaths POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY In Custody and Other Poems By Kawita Kandpal I have written the word for distance upon your tongue. It is a field of almond trees sharp like the seams of a Kashmiri wind. POETRY Dancing Cheek to Cheek By Natan Last I told T (who I haven’t seen cry) men in Nairobi held hands wherever they walked, though the streets didn’t have names. POETRY Between Hospital Visiting Hours By A.D. Lauren-Abunassar The river was a dark lung and a fast machine, whistled humors humors month-mottled with slow freeze and ice POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY Learning the Ancestors’ Tongues and Other Poems By Philip Metres And you call us gathering together a murder? Is it the inked iridescence of our feathers? POETRY Rundown By Jerome Ellison Murphy in shaded suburbs there are shades neighbors dread and I wonder when that tree will let go which must be taller by now and reaching closer or dead. POETRY The Niger Sings of Blood By Romeo Oriogun A man could give up the world to call his home by a name his ears could hear in the middle of a shelling. POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY From Notes at the Grave of James Felix Quigley By James Kelly Quigley Hello drug, hello dreg, my innumerable & faceless angels. Hello anger, my birthright, come now to the water’s edge. POETRY Prayer Before Turning on the News By Hila Ratzabi Let something have been fixed today: The deal among the nations signed, the guns, all of them, taken away. POETRY The Animals and Other Poems By Natalie Rose Richardson The morning after, my mother and father woke and found one snake at the foot of their bed, its belly thick and pulsing with the other. POETRY iPOEMS SIX-WORD STORIES POETRY Whatever You Can By Taije Silverman The German psychic healer on the island of Sardinia said the cat food beside her back door represented my ambivalenc...