Peter never learned why no one asked about the violin or told him he needed to return it to Standish Middle School. Only later he realized it was probably because it was worth so little to begin with …
“Mamma, I met this beautiful guy.” “Oh really? Where is he from?” “Pakistan.” “No no, no need. Those are very aggressive.” “Ma, we are literally the same. We …
Beside the gulch, beneath a willow, there was a girl who chipped her tooth into a boy’s mouth as they kissed. She never got that sliver back. My legs grew every night, keeping me awake. In summer, …
"Impure Mythos" is an anagram of "My Promethius," a poem of my father's. He died in 2024, leaving behind a vast archive of poems, stories, and hilarious, rambling emails. In my recent practice, I've …
My First EDM Concert It’s 1:20am, and I contemplate dying. Should I do some coke and call it a day? I write a poem at a rave. Sue me. Behind the men who DJ is a screen projecting the head of …
Misquotations People always remember the first words Neil Armstrong said when taking his famed steps. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” People remember …
When Olanna O. Odum was promoted to standards editor at the Times, she found herself laughing. The job description had said they were looking for someone with “strong, sharp judgment” and …
Dr. Robin Davidson has had a long and inspiring career as a poet. She is the author of two chapbooks, Kneeling in the Dojo (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and City That Ripens on the Tree of the World …
Jake Rose’s debut collection, JOAN, winner of the 2026 Phoenix Emerging Poet Prize from the University of Chicago and longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Poetry …
My friend Claire said that her daddy once told her that if you took all of the lies humans had told since the beginning of time and set them up in the sky, the sky would become the lies because …
When I sat down, we shot the shit about this and that for a minute, but I knew there was something on Pablo’s mind. So, after he started his second drink while going on about how students always …
Looking to spend a few minutes not sad, I traveled to South Florida with my husband Steve, my sister Colleen, and her husband John. One morning, early in the trip, I stood at the counter in the …
He’d drive us out into the desert and we’d hike through that dirt and brush, rocks wrapped by lichen, until he’d say, This is good. Then we’d shoot coyotes. Shoot them all day. Smoke her, …
I’ve known abandonment because I’ve known and loved the image. The image abandons, abandons by its nature, like nature abandons. If I say, the body is a stone, I have abandoned the body. If I …
After Charles Wright I can’t describe the photograph with the clarity of the photograph. That is the anxiety of the image. I can’t describe the groan in my head without imbuing it with a sense …
The people now inhabit the crowns. There is, in fact, little space up there, but no one turns off your water or comes by with the leaf blower or raises your rent out of the blue. Up …
A hair fell from her head. It fell and fell and I followed it with my gaze. It landed in one of the trays that sat on a scale. It threw the scale out of balance. The scale tilted. It …
As in some demented romantic comedy, my wife and I divided the apartment in half. She took the living room and I took the bedroom. Bivouacked and bleeding, we waited for the lawyer to finish the …
A frog jumped out of the broom closet; the wife was already screaming; and the husband burst into the kitchen, squeezed the trigger of his face. In the time it took the morning light to stream …
“Though there is ordinarily no language for pain,” Elaine Scarry writes in the introduction of The Body in Pain , “under the pressure of the desire to eliminate pain, an at least fragmentary means of verbalization is available both to those who are themselves in pain and to those who wish to speak on behalf of others”.…