| Title | Publication | Collected in | 
|---|
| "The Best Place for It" | The New Yorker  (February 1, 1988) | excerpt from Prisoner's Dilemma | 
| "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder" | Grand Street  38 (Winter 1991) | excerpt from Gold Bug Variations | 
| "Escapes" | Esquire  (July 1999) | excerpts from Plowing the Dark | 
| "From 'Plowing the Dark'" | Conjunctions  33 (Fall 1999) | 
| "Singing" | Conjunctions 37 (Fall 2001) | excerpt from The Time of Our Singing | 
| "Literary Devices" | Zoetrope: All-Story  (Winter 2002) | - | 
| "Easter, 1939" | The Paris Review  164 (Winter 2002-03) | excerpt from The Time of Our Singing | 
| "Improvisations" | PEN America  3.5 (2004) | excerpt from Galatea 2.2 | 
| "Cranes" | Black Clock  3 (Spring 2005) | excerpt from The Echo Maker | 
| "The Seventh Event" | Granta  90 (Summer 2005) | - | 
| "The Moving Finger" | The Journal 31.2 (Autumn-Winter 2007) | - | 
| "Modulation" | Conjunctions 50 (Spring 2008) | - | 
| "Enquire Within Upon Everything" | The Paris Review 190 (Fall 2009) | - | 
| "To the Measures Fall" | The New Yorker (October 18, 2010) | - | 
| "Dark Was the Night" | Playboy  (December 2011) | - | 
| "Genie" | Genie (2012) | - | 
| "Lodestar" | Monkey Business 3 (2013) | - | 
| "Saints Hill" | Conjunctions 76 (Spring 2021) | - | 
|