Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Small Wonder
“What’s got you obsessed with this? Late night redditing?” “No,” Kathy said. “I think I dreamt about it. About being her. The girl robot. You know how dreams are; it’s all a jumble and you forget as soon as you…
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What Forced My Father to Buy Our First TV?
Give us a movie with a good fight, a wild spectacle of flying fists and stylized blood, and we were in heaven. Looking back, it wasn’t just about the action. It was a psychological displacement, a two-hour escape from a…
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If You Love That Lady
We were, I thought, as Karl Barthsaid about Mozart’s music, drawing weight and significancefrom the yes at our center that overpowered and contained a no.A bow rubbed against an ancient string. Thunder caught between atmosphereand earth, windows struck by heaven’s…
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Wolf Spiders
At the end of the week my grandma came and got me. I wasn’t really close to my grandma, because she lived two states away in Arizona, but Arizona was two states away from my dad, so when she asked…
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Vanlife at the End of the World
I expected Wells to launch into an inspirational speech about the nomadic life, one that—like his many YouTube monologues or his appearance in Nomadland—affirmed our collective decision to abandon the rat race for a more fulfilling life on the road.…
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Reaching Toward the Memory of Past Stories: A Conversation with Paul Yoon
I find revising and editing my favorite part of writing. The first draft is the most grueling, horrible part for me; I don’t know what I’m doing and just trust something’s there. But then, once you’ve got something with a…
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Three Poems
Hit and Run Lover Met him at the low bar of the evening mesitting there nursing another rum & detachmentwhen in he slips through the thinnest crackin the door like an unpaid gas bill that tells youyou got two more…
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To the First-Born Daughter on the Fourteenth Floor of the Marlboro Housing Project, 1958
This time, when your mother returns from the hospital,she isn’t volatile, but her eyes are black and the pills that stop her hands from shakingmake her docile, not gregarious, a word you heard in school and think describes her best.You’re…
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Living in A Slow Moving Catastrophe, Following the What Ifs: A Conversation with Mary Helen Specht
“I found myself writing a scene with an indie rock musician playing a set at Burning Man, and her daughter goes missing. But, I didn’t really know if this was a novel or a story or what was going to…
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Two Pink Lines
Jade and Lucas were fraternal twins. That their hypothetical respective children be born in tight proximity was important, imperative, lightly exacted. Our babies will be just like twins. They’ll be the best cousins. The best friends. Jade’s tender want. Friendly…
