Fiction & Poetry

How do I reinvent it, the story, our lives? It was going to be only her and me from now on.

Everyone loves you here. Most days you are pretty sure of that. Everyone touches you all the time.

What was the point of keeping all those secrets? Wasn’t your story wasted if nobody knew it?

Everyone’s done something good that’s hidden—the opposite of a dark secret.

Everyone was looking at us as though they all knew that Ritu had done the work and I had tried to mooch off her.

We all play a bit of a game when in love, don’t we?

Arman scoffed at the idea of a life beyond death, and Dad pointed out the irony of a ghost denying the afterlife.

Could be half my life, I said, could be all of it. Could be a third, Gabby said.

The author discusses her story “Something Familiar.”

The author discusses her story “Predictions and Presentiments.”

The author discusses her story “This Is How It Happens.”

The author discusses her story “The Quiet House.”

The author reads her story from the March 2, 2026, issue of the magazine.

The author reads her story from the February 16 & 23, 2026, issue of the magazine.

The author reads her story from the February 9, 2026, issue of the magazine.

The author reads her story from the February 2, 2026, issue of the magazine.

The author joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Gold Watch,” which was published in The New Yorker 1980.

The author joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “A Small Flame,” which was published in The New Yorker in 2017.

The author joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Elephant,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1986.

The author joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Backbone,” which was published in The New Yorker in 2011.

The man from Kabul had warned about the number of men assigned to each room. “I won’t lie to you,” he had said. “You’ll be uncomfortable. You’ll have to adjust.”

It was empty when I logged in. I’d been off it since Vic died, four years ago.

“Of course, Arlette understood, this was not a tragedy. Tragedy would be a broken neck or spine. Paralysis for life. A coma.”

“It’s time to turn up the heat a little bit more. My boys are getting bored, and that’s not good for their appetite or their temper.”

“Everything has its dwindling. / Everything was dwindling.”

“Though I’ve never uttered the name pharaoh / I knew he was there.”

“You / As if dancing / As if slowly dancing, approach / My face.”

“There are no sorrows / In our lives / Nor joys either.”

The poet joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “Against the Encroaching Grays,” by C. D. Wright, and his own poem “Almost Home.”

The poet joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “A Worldly Country,” by John Ashbery, and her own poem “Beagle or Something."

The poet joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “In the Waiting Room,” by Elizabeth Bishop, and her own poem “Love Poem Like We Used to Write It.”

The poet joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “Refrigerator, 1957,” by Thomas Lux, and her own poem “Love Poem Without a Drop of Hyperbole in It.”