Essays
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From the Archive: The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Butch and the Bathroom
Then there is the bathroom issue. My beloved is like me, like you, like anyone. Sometimes a person has to go.
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Cure for Last Night’s Leftovers
Let’s be clear: There is no hangover cure. Anyone who claims to have never had a hangover is either a) a liar, b) a teetotaler, or c) a responsible drinker. I’m none of those things, most days, despite effort, and…
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Sons and Daughters
Boys were boys and girls were girls and gender norms were there for a reason. We didn’t realize the reason was to keep women down. Maybe we just didn’t care.
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Opioids in Sobriety
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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Complete the Sentence
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…
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Burning
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
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
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.)…
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The Flowers You Left Us
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 as a flower remains in the ground, it lives. “Poppies…
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Calliope
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
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…
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The Divine Aquatic
After all these years, I know now that what felt like rebirth to me had felt like—had been—near-death for them.