Rumpus Originals
-
Notes from the Playground
I am four years old, standing on the playground of the Jewish Community Center where I go to nursery school. My best friend Alice is not here today. Alice is my only friend. She lives in a bigger house than…
-
Silent Nights
He talked on and on then, about how you’d have to get to the airport very early in the morning or else miss your flight, the X-ray machines at the security, the little cans of soda and bags of pretzels…
-
Lifesaving
I wasn’t good at managing the cold. It wrestled the breath from me, pressing deep into my chest and throat. Once, when I knew Rob would be out, I cheated and put the heating on, sitting against the radiator and…
-
Apartment by the Sea
She tried to visualize all those photographs from art school that now pop up as Facebook memories. They had been friends for half of their lives now. How could she have forgotten something so obvious?
-
Infestation
Everyone knew the housing projects had rats, but when Liliya first saw one she was lying on her mattress on the floor, looking at her phone until a sudden, furtive movement caught her eye. The rat was only a few…
-
The Age of Nightmares
My son’s voice came through on the monitor. I waited a second, eyes closed, not losing hope he’d fall back asleep, even though that hardly ever happens. He’s two years old; they say it’s the age of nightmares. Almost every…
-
Always Watching from the Roof
Below the red roofs, a new strip of pale earth cuts across the hill where last year olive trees still stood. The fence has crawled lower, closer to our side, and from up here it looks like a fresh wound…
-
Invasive Species
Shuko had such an imagination, even for a child, that no one paid attention to her remarkably intuitive understanding of the new species, not when she woke up screaming from nightmares in sweaty sheets, and not when she flat-out refused…
-
![National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”](https://therumpus.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/pic-Ty-Raso.jpeg)
National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”
I have this dream where I am the last person alive on a two- dimensional earth, my body 3D like a fruit, and start- ing to inside-out itself, until my gut is a skirt and my DOOM- sense is like…
-
Born on a Dying Planet
The glittering sphere lives in the top drawer of Lela’s dresser. Sometimes she takes the ball and rolls it between her palms, and when she does her parents’ voices float forth. She rations these messages carefully, knowing there will never…
-
Pita
“When I visit my home, which is not very often, the local billboards I will pass are either for online sports gambling, car accident litigation, or mile counters to the nearest funeral home (which way, South Jersey man?). The current…
-
National Poetry Month: “Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma”
A body can waste away quietly, carrying an enemy in its blood. It doesn’t want to fight; it wants to toil skin-deep in the blood.