His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Mestra as Translator
By Martha Paz-Soldan
In a language I couldn’t understand he once told me about the night he spent in a jail cell. The birthdays he missed. The dogfights he won.
NARRATIVE FIRSTS
Publishing First-Time Authors
First-time authors are a regular feature in Narrative. Read the works of some of the remarkable poets and writers who first appeared here.
FROM THE LIBRARY
Anaphora
By Maggie Millner
Whether the trace of animal or mineral wins out I cannot know, being myself a brief, confusing hybrid of the two.
FALL CONTEST WINNER
NONFICTION
FALL CONTEST WINNER
The Spectacular
By Renée Thompson
Con held Glacier close to his chest and inhaled the scent of her feathers—a mix of mountain air and high-desert sage, of dust and bark and willow.
NONFICTION
The Measure of All Things?
By Hal Crowther
There are mornings, not few enough, when I feel like burning my birth certificate and resigning from the human race.
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
Daddy’s Girl
By Cally Fiedorek
He’d always seemed to run in some pretty smarmy circles, Daddy. Everything incestuous, everybody knowing everybody. A Midtown shadow world.
FICTION
The Rooms
By Susan Minot
What she wanted, she found herself saying before the sob choked her, was to be able to live—not just with another person, but with herself.
CARTOONS
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2024-04
By Various Artists
New laughs with a modest matador, some fashionable wishes, a new approach to exercise, and much more.
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
Rhythm & Sound
By Donald Hall
Every time you write free verse you are improvising your way toward a conclusion that will bind everything together.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
My Opera
By Kim Addonizio
The staging is difficult. Exploding stars are involved, high-redshift galaxies, interior chambers, a little country blues, a little jazz guitar.
POETRY
Cocaine & Flowers
By Brian Gyamfi
When the gods came to America with a bag of cocaine and flowers they were beheaded. Their death had nothing to do with the president.
POETRY
Old Friend
By Naomi Shihab Nye
Spring billowing, I navigate my daily pool of gloom. Arrange your five deflating basketballs under the lonely net. I always loved the honesty of old friends.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
At the Museum of Empress Livia’s Garden Room
By Pimone Triplett
The nouns pile up. Umbrella pine, oleander, quince. Or go missing as anything else.
POETRY
The Loneliness of Fireworks
By Zhai Yongming
Fireworks and bar girls all dance in revelry before they subside, in the end, into loneliness. Anyone can go wild in this moonlight.
POETRY
Home Is a Verb of Motion
By Grace H. Zhou
On a bald knoll, circled by on-ramps and overpasses, weathering and weighted is a concrete behemoth for the gods of want.
