Ely Shipley I wanted to come back but the world didn’t want me. Your face was a blank bullet that still terrifies a blanket that hides a face erased page sheet we might have slept beneath without touching. Before I died, I cradled an infant. I sang it lull-a-byes. Aren’t all songs? But it kept crying. Its face frightened me, a fevered balloon of blood about to burst. I swaddled it tighter, rocked it in my arms. I began to...

Sutton Strother When her father died, Granny couldn’t afford a casket. She refused everyone’s money, and in the end, when she could think of nothing meaningful to do with the ashes they brought her, she poured what was left of my great-grandfather into the kitchen trashcan. “He’ll get where he’s going, anyhow,” she told us. For a long time after that, I believed everything we threw away was taken to Heaven. On my eighth...

The winner of the 1999 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and 2002's National Book Critics Circle Award discusses his life, work, and relationship with Anthony Hecht.

A full stream of Bryan Laurier & The Lost Acres' Bought and Sold

Musician Bryan Laurier sits down to play three acoustic tracks, one of which, "All of My Heart is Burning," has never been released.

Patrick Donnelly’s second book has a very big title: Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin. As the title promises, the book is a compendium of night songs from the place where bodies seek love and lives encounter philosophical undoing.

The keyboardist and lead singer of the indie-pop band California Wives discusses the band's new record, Art History and working with distinguished producer Claudius Mittendorfer.

Denise Duhamel I remember him as always having a tan, this guy I longed for in high school, whose affections I misunderstood, who became my good friend only to tell me how he was in love with Sally. How could he make her like him? He stood against a brick wall, smoking, as I gave him advice— good advice, as it never occurred to me to undermine his efforts. (But now, in this dream, he wants me, as though he was mistaken all those years...

Denise Duhamel It’s the first sunny day after weeks of rain so the line for the car wash is twenty-six deep. But I wait anyway, reading a book in my lap, looking up after every sentence or so to see if I can move, if there is progress. I’m number twelve when a Lexus SUV barges into the little space between the Toyota Corolla in front and me. I lean into the horn, all my sunny goodwill gone, roll down my window and shriek, “What’s...

Dusty Cooper Shotgun shells rolled on the floorboard of Tarot’s pick-up, clanking across the bare metal as he navigated sharp curves. The trip up the mountain hadn’t been so bad. The trip down threatened to pull the axle apart. He’d bought the old truck from a man outside of Tempe, AZ. The seller’s ad was forthright with the facts: ’92 Ford flare-side F-150, 195k/m, rough exterior, worn interior, radio, rowdy engine, $450obo. It...