I was tired of wanting, tired of morning, tired of the way the ocean waits for the sun to set. ~from "Perennial" by Bruce Willard AGNI Online

Did you hear it by chance, or were you aware of a verb often heard by us here below The verb to love? ~from “Poet-pig who knows me . . .” by Hilda Hilst Trans. from the Portuguese by Justin Greene 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥

In the late summer evening, the two boys and the father came to a meadow. One boy had the eyes of his father and a similar walk; the other boy was a friend. ~from "Doberman" by Joseph Hurka AGNI Online

The dogs that Singleton’s characters cherish are good ole down home dogs, loyal and trusting, former strays, as mongrel as an AKC toy poodle is pure. ~from "Saving Our Dogs to Save Ourselves" by David Holub AGNI Online

🔥NEW at AGNI Online🔥 Three years after my mother’s death, I broke my left wrist in a fall. My right wrist was sprained, my dominant hand barely working. ~from "I Think of My Mother, I Think of Maureen" by Denise Duhamel

And when the truth about the emperor’s clothes was revealed the crowd convulsing with laughter at his flaccid gullibility you noticed a young man easing the battered patty of a wallet from a bald man’s back pocket. ~from "Mumblety Peg" by Leslie McGrath AGNI Online

Here’s what Jordie said: “To forgive, that’s human. To err, now that’s really divine. There’s nothing more beautiful than a big old-fashioned fuck-up.” ~from "Jordie" by Wendy Button @wendybutton.bsky.social AGNI 55

There are guards anywhere that people, money, or information cross over from one realm to another: tourist to native, city to country, conversation to dissent, official economy to black market. ~from "Havana City Limits" by Joel Brouwer AGNI 64

I’m reading Anne Carson again. I didn’t know what else to do; a former lover recently took his life, in a way that my mind keeps replaying, on a secluded beach in Hawaii. ~from '“Immortality on Their Faces”: The Persistence of Autobiography of Red' by Greg Wrenn AGNI Online

Saint Leonard of Noblac, d. 559, With your codex skin And shark-meat ass, you are here Floating in the cold air like blood ~from "Annunciation, Part III" by Talin Tahajian 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥

By the time middle schools finally resumed classes, three years of complete freedom had turned my cohort—who’d last sat in a fourth-grade classroom—into a herd of wild things. ~from "In Which No Sex Takes Place" by Xujun Eberlein AGNI 88

🔥NEW at AGNI Online🔥 Two cannibals are eating a clown; one turns to the other and asks— “Does this taste funny to you?” ~from "Explaining the Joke" By Campbell McGrath

🔥NEW at AGNI Online🔥 no, we’re not ready for this kind of thing, are we? Artificial diamonds, fine. A meat made of vegetables? Preach. But soon our conversations will end with “Call me old-fashioned, but . . . ~from "The Rapture is Happening Slowly, One at a Time, to Everyone" by Jeff Whitney

In the beginning there must have been a word, though what it was I can’t recall. An introduction. Some pleasantry, banal. ~from "If Knowledge Is a Splintering" by Mairead Small Staid 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥

⏰ There's still time to send us your work before our submission portal closes TONIGHT at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time! Find out how 👉 buff.ly/auE6ZFe

🔥Reminder🔥 Our submission portal closes TOMORROW at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time and won't reopen until September 1st! Send us writing that catches experience before the crusts of habit form—poetry and prose that resist ideas about what a certain kind of writing “should do.” More info👇 buff.ly/r7UkLPy

Benjamin Voigt's mini essay "Disappearing Messages” is the latest addition to our Minneapolis 2026 scroll, “The Border Moves Through Us." Read it here 👇

It was getting late and everyone was telling their gun stories. Times they’d had a gun pulled on them, almost been shot, or, for just a couple of people, times they actually had been hit with a bullet, mostly accidents, nothing serious. ~from "Gun Stories" by Jane Morton 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥

ICYMI 👀 Our submissions portal closes on May 31st, ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! We seek out writers who tell their truths in their own words and convince us as we read that we’ve found something no one else could have written. Read our full submission guidelines here 👇 buff.ly/auE6ZFe

🔥NEW at AGNI Online🔥 "Pigs" by Zach Goldberg, after Renée Good’s “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” is the latest addition to our Minneapolis 2026 scroll, “The Border Moves Through Us." Read it here 👇

🔥📚 Memorial Day Offer 📚 🔥 Get a FREE YEAR with any new subscription. New subscribers (domestic and international) will receive an additional year of AGNI with any subscription order. Renewing subscribers will receive a free six-month extension. Offer good through 11:59 p.m. PT on Monday, May 25!

🔥 NEW at AGNI Online 🔥 In early 2025, I read Erica Stern’s first book, Frontier: A Memoir & a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse, 2025), in which she addresses the traumatic birth of her eldest son. ~from "Rewriting the Script of Matrescence Memoir: A Conversation with Erica Stern" by Elizabeth Brogden

Summer to-do list: ✅ Stock up on sunscreen ✅ Assemble summer reading list ✅ Submit to AGNI by May 31st! Our submission portal closes for the summer in two weeks, so make sure to send us your best by then! More info here👇 buff.ly/auE6ZFe

🔥 NEW at AGNI Online 🔥 I couldn’t sleep that night. I was due to travel the next day and found myself riddled with anxiety, relentless questions. What if I’m not allowed to leave? ~from "The Crossing" by Muhammad al-Zaqzouq (trans. from the Arabic by Wiam El-Tamami)

Of the house only the gabled roof remained over the column of memory— like an umbrella opened for no reason ~from "War Tableau #2" by Fereshteh Sari (translated from the Persian by Kaveh Bassiri) 🔥 AGNI 102 🔥

He called eel grass what she called seaweed. He insulated their house with it. She was interested in the transparence of her skin. ~from "A Romance" by Stephen Dunn AGNI 5/6

It’s morning. I’m off again to my tree, my bundle of tricks slung over my shoulder, the summer solstice having played out a few weeks ago. ~from "The Sundial Pilgrimage" by Niamh Mac Cabe 🔥 AGNI 102 🔥

The feathers appeared first as concentrated patches of peach fuzz. Her mother compared its brightness to her hair: the soft, shiny fuzz growing from her forearms was the same near-white hue. ~from "Florence, now a bird" by Silja Liv Kelleris AGNI 101

In death I am waiting for my soul to arrive that I may divide it equally among frightened neighbors. ~from "Elegy" by Martha Rhodes AGNI 37

O, it’s always a snuff film, always a slaying in pencil, the way this silver man collapses, knees bending like paperclips. Round head to the ground, body stretched to a line— ~from "Flipbook" by David Hernandez AGNI Online

I fell in love with a pianist, with his dextrous fingers across the keyboard. Long fingers, knuckles firm and resolute under the lights, but flexible and floating like liquid across the keys. ~from "Bone on Bone" by Jai Clare AGNI Online

There's still time to join us for tonight's virtual launch of 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥 Register at Eventbrite to get the link! See you at 7pm EDT.

Join us TONIGHT at 7pm EDT as we launch 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥 Our virtual celebration will feature readings by Joel Calahan, Giovanna Frene, Hayan Charara, Christie Hodgen, & Charu Sinha, and live music by Alisa Amador. Register at Eventbrite to get the link!

TOMORROW 🔥 🔥 The Launch of AGNI 103! Register to join free ON ZOOM: buff.ly/2cQ0ITV AGNI celebrates its ONE HUNDRED THIRD issue with readings by > Hayan Charara > Christie Hodgen > Joel Calahan & Giovanna Frene > Charu Sinha > Musical performance by Alisa Amador

It was about ten-and-a-half hours on Greyhound to get to Omaha, where I’m from. It could have been an hour and ten minutes on the plane. But I flew in no plane. I rode the bus. I rode the bus because I wanted to be with the real people. ~from "Bus" by Joe Hoover AGNI Online

Across the hall was the girl my age who wet her pants and ate uncooked hot dogs for lunch. Upstairs was the guy Mom dated for a while, who’d let us jump from his bar stools into his beanbag chair. ~from "Red Balloon" by Sarah Jane Shute AGNI Online

Join us in ONE WEEK to celebrate the arrival of 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥 Our virtual launch will feature readings by Joel Calahan, Giovanna Frene, Hayan Charara, Christie Hodgen, & Charu Sinha, and live music by Alisa Amador. Register at Eventbrite to get the link!

This modest print by Rembrandt of a goldsmith finishing a statue of a woman and two children, is nothing like the great portraits that move me, move most of us, I think, and yet it draws me in— ~from "Goldsmith and Charity" by William Wenthe AGNI Online

"Coopering was mostly winter work. Once the oaks were down and the bark removed, the resulting beams would be sawn into planks, to be cured outdoors for three years until all the tannin leached out—tannin might change the taste of wine." 🔥 NEW at AGNI Online 🔥 "The Cooperage" by Melissa Green

Celebrate the arrival of 🔥 AGNI 103 🔥 Join us on Tuesday, April 28th at 7pm EDT for a virtual launch featuring readings by Joel Calahan, Giovanna Frene, Hayan Charara, Christie Hodgen, & Charu Sinha, and live music by Alisa Amador. Register at Eventbrite to get the link!

Welcome, AGNI 103! Check out this gorgeous cover by Danielle Mckinney 🔥

We made our pit stop about half a mile From the demesne gates, pissing like men Together and apart against the wall. ~from "Pit Stop near Castletown" by Seamus Heaney AGNI 57

There’s a break, a hiccup in the conversation, of the kind that always happens when people find out I’ve had a bad cancer. And how bad, these people have no idea. ~from "Catastrophes" by Paul Eberly AGNI Online

Morning pried apart, a shell of paled oyster, grayed blue-white calcified spit. Broth of a chill muscle. Day still raw. A clot of sun, milky grit, rolls higher as it dries. ~from "Regret" by Siobhan Phillips AGNI Online

Welcome, @k-e-c.bsky.social!

That was it. I had no idea what else to read. I paced the neighborhood, in Chicago by now, the baby in a backpack, the toddler in the stroller. Old women came up and chided me about the baby’s uncovered head. ~from "Dearth" by Angela Woodward AGNI Online

A bird was missing, or maybe a boomerang, but a blue one fallen off the wire so the others hung crookedly, twirling and colliding when the window fan blew strong. ~from "Under a Calder Mobile, August 1959" by Jackie Craven AGNI 91

My way, as a writer, is to look hard at under-seen things, to feel out language for wordless states of being, to make something of whatever, by chance or design, shows up in my path. ~from "The Ecology of Attention" by Lia Purpura AGNI Online

Always on edge, always desirous Of becoming someone else, I see myself At seventeen in a stripped-bare room Poised at a window that breathes into my face The damp spring chill of that raw afternoon ~from "The Line" by Tom Sleigh AGNI 33

In his own beauty he had discovered an endowment not to be overvalued or abused. What came to him as a result of his beauty would be accepted gratefully, but with no accompanying sense that he had done anything to deserve it. ~from "A Beauty" by Robert Boyers AGNI 74