You Keep Everything Outside
"So it’s a surprise to you—and not entirely a pleasant one—when you fall in love with someone who has a penis. You thought you’d set up defenses against the possibility, but here he is, and here you are, loving him."
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
Rumpus Original Fiction: Parallax
Summer was ending, and my sister was shrinking. I first noticed when we were sitting on the dock near the lake at our summer camp; as she stretched her bare…
Poetry, Performance and the Little Black Dress: An Interview with Michael Chang
A conversation with Michael Chang, "the bad boy of poetry."
Before the First Book: A Roundtable Discussion
with Jai Hamid Bashir, Joshua Burton, and Nanya Jhingran
Voices on Addiction: Motherless in Albertsons
I am sick with grief, triggered by my mother’s death, in turn triggered by Chardonnay.
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Kate Hao
I thought / you had grown angry with me but turns out / you were just lazy.
ENOUGH: Screaming at Ghosts
A Rumpus series of work by women, trans, and nonbinary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
Delicious Anger: A Conversation with Gwen E. Kirby
When I’ve been running regularly and writing regularly, it tends to go well. When I haven’t been running or writing in a while, then I’m bent over heaving for breath and wondering why I ever thought I knew how to write a sentence.
Defying Gravity: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars
This book is disarmingly—in fact, unnervingly—amoral.
From the Archive: Unbound
It’s always been ground glass, scraping against my insides. I imagine a light held to the place where I open would illuminate a mess of torn flesh, throbbing red-wet.
Ancient Voices, Language, Cats: Talking with Kaveh Akbar about Pilgrim Bell
To reduce a poem to a purely autobiographical, experiential reading feels limiting to me. To reduce a poem to an “aboutness” seems limiting to me. The poet Allen Grossman said, “A poem is about a thing the way a cat is about a house.”