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Essays

173 posts
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Opioids in Sobriety

  • Ren Asba
  • March 8, 2022
Using opioids while maintaining my sobriety became a skill that I continued to develop over the following couple of years. The irony—finally becoming capable of moderating my drug use—was not lost on me.
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  • Essays
  • Rumpus Original

Complete the Sentence

  • Maya Jewell Zeller
  • March 3, 2022
We baked a fresh bowl for dinner?, I wonder. Do you think the pen will sink or grow? Do you think a pen will sink or throw? Sure. This could be a very delightful exercise (for poets), I think to myself.
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Burning

  • Dionne Irving
  • March 1, 2022
Oh yes, she knows about the holy trinity of colorism, good hair, and a banging body. She understands what she is for these white men, that she is the socially acceptable version of black womanhood...
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From the Archive: The Dark All Around Us

  • Ryan McDonald
  • February 24, 2022
There is still light in the dark. This is the paradox that Little Bear has to accept in order to fall asleep.
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The Three-Month Curse

  • Melissa Johnson
  • February 22, 2022
For seven years I’d met the perfect man in fall, dated him for three months, then wailed as Fate plucked out my heart and devoured it, whole and beating. (Only to grow back and be eaten again twelve months later.) This was some Prometheus-level bullshit.
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The Flowers You Left Us

  • Annelise Jolley
  • February 15, 2022
Looking at the two stems housed in a water glass on my kitchen table, it strikes me that “in the ground” means opposite things for flowers and people. As long…
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Calliope

  • Lesley Jenike
  • February 8, 2022
There are, as my niece says, so many ghosts in Cincinnati; they initiate the weather, evaporating only to rain down again...
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Play for Camera

  • William Horn
  • February 3, 2022
I want to tell her that Hunter is Hunter and Daisy is Daisy and both should be allowed to breathe. I want to tell her I know the instinct to split yourself in half, too, that I know the violence required to hold your true self in shadow, that I have another name I only dare whisper.
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The Divine Aquatic

  • Nafisa A. Iqbal
  • February 1, 2022
After all these years, I know now that what felt like rebirth to me had felt like—had been—near-death for them.
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You Keep Everything Outside

  • Rachel Cochran
  • January 25, 2022
"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."
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From the Archive: Unbound

  • Lauren Kayes
  • January 18, 2022
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.
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On Being Tough

  • Kathleen Gullion
  • January 11, 2022
The path down to the riflery range was steep and winding, littered with roots.
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