Like a painting by a Dutch artist,
Vermeer or Rembrandt.
Van Gogh: “The Turnip Eaters.”
They pause, motionless, a tableau (more…)

Featured Faculty: LESLIE EPSTEIN

Friends! Leib Goldkorn speaking. Though I can hardly believe myself the miraculous events I am about to relate. They took place on the night of my 104th birthday, in my birthplace of Iglau—now, in the Czech Republic, the town of Jihlava. (more…)

Fiction: ANTHONY WALLACE

The old priest is a Jesuit, brainy and fey.  He smokes Pall Malls fixed bayonet-style in an onyx and silver cigarette holder and crosses his legs at the knee.  He tells stories as if he is being interviewed for a Public Television special on old priests. (more…)

Poetry: TESS TAYLOR

Nimble, preserved together,
milkweed-white rears upturned,

female tule elk
bowed into rustling foxtails. (more…)

Fiction: FARLEY URMSTON

The streets are quiet near Samuel’s house and no one is in the shops, not even the shopkeepers. Mr. Chigudu’s OK Market is empty, too; anyone can go inside at any time because there is nothing to steal or protect, only trash and dirt. (more…)

Fiction: STEVE SANDERS

On a Sunday afternoon in the middle of football season, I ride with Emily to visit the condemned man’s family. This is probably for the best since I’ve lately come to realize that football games are what those in the program refer to as one of my triggers. (more…)

Poetry: SOPHIE GRIMES

Wild plum thickets form a dense tangle
[criss crossed string in a shoebox]
of small, stiff branches. (more…)

Fiction: MICAH NATHAN

I found my cousin Sarah in Delfino, a small bar at the end of Kairos Street. She wore a short white dress and was barefoot, with tawny calves and thin wrists, the sort of girl you expect to see in a vacation brochure. (more…)

Poetry: REBECCA KAISER GIBSON

A papaya sprig needs
only two years time                         and then will grow. (more…)

Fiction: ANTONIO ELEFANO

I met you by the pig pens on the last day of the state fair.  You were holding onto your mother with one hand and a half-eaten corndog with the other.  I asked, “Who is that?” (more…)

Fiction: JESSICA ULLIAN

In the cramped staircase, Irene and Amy bicker over whose turn it is. Last weekend Amy took the smug family of four with the fair-haired children who wailed as she conveyed her regrets from the chef, who declined to make spaghetti and meatballs “just this once.” (more…)

Poetry: RENEE EMERSON

I read books of myths, legends, consolations to add
to the untouched library of the mind. (more…)

Fiction: P. B. O’SULLIVAN

Jean-Marie walked down General Lee Boulevard holding his daughter’s hand. They crossed over into the white part of town where the Dance Inc. store was. Baptiste was skipping and singing. (more…)

Poetry: CALVIN OLSEN

She sits alone, a small chapel
all to herself. Please do not enter
the sign reads, except for confession. (more…)

Fiction: ROMAN STURGIS

Before his first year at Texas, Bruce and I spent most of the summer on our family’s property in Round Top, improving the land for grazing.  Our mother had passed on Fourth of July, and we just had to get out of the house. (more…)

Poetry: CHLOE MARTINEZ

Their voices come back to us thin with static:
describing a pockmarked dustscape, they sound

almost disappointed, until they turn and see—
blue-marbled, strange, familiar—earth (more…)