Rumpus Original Fiction: Red Cedar
A living tree is a dare.
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Join NOW!A living tree is a dare.
...moreWe have to be urgent and radical in our belief that some solutions exist . . .
...moreI have always felt stuck in the quicksand of Wanting-Things-To-Be-Different.
...moreI want to fashion my black mouth to speak this / journey of our bodies into utterance: What / does one call this road between us?
...moreIn many ways, community is that which allows the heart to heal, and to heal that heart together.
...more. . . in a barren world with little protection and corners to hide, it’s also impossible to hide from our thoughts . . .
...moreI wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
...more. . . intellectual rigor or artistic integrity don’t have to come at the expense of legibility . . .
...moreI love it when a book forces me to reassess my thinking on a particular subject.
...moreif we are lucky / if we work very hard
...moreI’ll keep at it until something in me leaks
...moreI don’t think there are easy answers. Should we make judgments about rudeness when we talk about artistic freedom?
...more“Memory is not a journalist’s tool. Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clear.”
...more“Sprezzatura,” “An Attempt to Explain Myself,” & “The Last Norwegian Wolf”
...moreOlivia Wolfgang-Smith’s debut novel Glassworks (Bloomsbury Publishing, May 2023) follows one family through four generations. The story begins in 1910 with the wealthy young philanthropist Agnes Carter, and then follows her descendants, both in blood and in spirit, up until the present time. Each person’s story builds on those that came before it, creating a […]
...moreOur next Letters in the Mail come from authors Paul Ceballos and James Allen Hall
...moreGrief is the Easter Moon lily that blooms in / an empty room. It is not the canyon / glowing, like the inside of a persimmon torn / open by thumbs, but all of the hours, and / only ever those hours, waiting for that glow.
...moreI’m working on a piece right now for the New York Times where I knew the last sentence before I knew the argument I was making.
...moreIf you want to evoke the idea of who someone really is, start by showing us what they see.
...moreThe slime problem had hatched when her daughter’s first grade class learned how to make putty they took home in plastic eggs.
...moreGoing around the world because you can’t go through it
...moreI approach research dutifully and compulsively.
...moreI’ve made the choice // between brushing flies from a child’s eyes or digging / a grave deeper. It’s easier than you’d think.
...moreThe June 2023 Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection is Megan Fernandes’ I DO EVERYTHING I’M TOLD. Subscribe by May 15 to the Poetry Book Club to receive this title and an invitation to an exclusive conversation with the author via Crowdcast.
...moreWe look for ourselves in literature—for comfort or for guidance—but the page rarely provides a clean mirror.
...moreYou keep the edge of your love sharp, a knife, so that those close to you know to handle it carefully. You think you’ve done it and then you discover that you’ve been endangering yourself to everybody you meet all this time.
...moreSome books defy categories. Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) by poet Camille T. Dungy pushes the limits of what readers might expect from any genre. Is it memoir or environmental literature?The book covers so much terrain: Black history, gardening in the West, motherhood, and the care and cultivation […]
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreTell the Rapture Shelf story!
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