What to Read When You’re Crushing
Crushes don’t have to be romantic, or brief. They are best when unrequited.
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Rumpus Articles
We Are Weird and We Are Not Alone: A Conversation with Mary Biddinger
We are going to need nature more than ever before. We also need to continue being kind to each other and to uplift other writers whenever we can.
National Poetry Month: Leslie Sainz
You never begin with a flashlight but / there are always portraits on the walls. Long women like / Modigliani's, like stretching, life fear.
Is this the Danish Girl, Interrupted? Fine Gråbøl’s What Kingdom
“Have you ever confused a dream with life?”
National Poetry Month: Zeina Hashem Beck
To stay. Oppressors use words to possess: / “settle.” Lovers use words to escape fear.
“I have to go behind my back to get anything done”: A Conversation with Jackie Wang
. . . the reader animates you. And yet you’re also constrained in some way by that relationship that you form with the audience.
National Poetry Month: Tariq Luthun
I wring myself / into a pain loud enough to numb / my sorrow. How long before they learn — / those boys — to do the same?
National Poetry Month: Amanda Johnston
What a waste, / one teacher shook her head upon / my withdrawal. Just another [insert stereotype].
National Poetry Month: Adam Falkner
Who doesn’t ache / for a slice of quiet in the noisy sugar of us? / Pocket of still amidst the looney & clatter?
A Panoptical View of Slough: On Sylvia Legris’s The Principle of Rapid Peering
Scattered with a sparse collection of the poet’s original sketches . . . the poems move through the slanted and repetitive months of the pandemic, bleeding into “self-digesting” seasons.
The Bloodier Your Hands, the More Loyal You Become to the System: A Conversation with Sarah Langan
The thing about cults, they indoctrinate. They whitewash. They blind us to better alternatives.
Voices on Addiction: Last Drunk
In the past, getting the ball rolling has proven to be a Sisyphean task. Max admits he has a problem and is pretty sure he can solve it. Alone.