Rumpus Original
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A Gentle Touch: Annie Hartnett’s Unlikely Animals
What’s special about Hartnett’s chorus of the dead, though, is that they stress the tension between overlapping realities.
Revelation is Absurd: A Conversation with Adrian Nathan West
...we live in a culture that’s at once euphemistic and profoundly hyperbolic, where people try as hard as possible to not actually be saying anything so that they can never be accused of holding any position. Whereas it’s important to me, to talk about what people really do, what they really feel.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: FUNNY WOMEN: Feminist Valentine’s Day Gifts
Stretch. Listen in hundreds of different positions. Listen a little to the left; now a little to the right.
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 required to hold your true self in shadow, that I have another name I only dare whisper.
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Sarah Fathima Mohammed
Moons empty in the whisper / of space between us. / Mother’s ankles roll into / my calf, brimming with silver, / with sleep. The night is made / of photographs. We sleep over / the prayer rug, woven from / all the daughters that have / pressed their lips to it / and swallowed.
The Woman in My Head: A Conversation with Emily Maloney
There’s a lot of rules or feelings about how writing a book should be, but very little of that actually corresponds with reality.
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.
What It Means to be Human: Natashia Deón’s The Perishing
A review of THE PERISHING: "[H]ope keeps you in the ring, pushing off the ropes. Hope keeps you in the fight."
ENOUGH: Girl Power
A Rumpus series of work by women, trans, and nonbinary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
Letter to a Poet: Matthew Olzmann on Writing Humor & Befriending Whales
Matthew Olzmann: [S]uddenly the poem becomes this meditation on mortality, but at no point do you think, “Oh my gosh, Yusef, why is he talking to a maggot or how does he know this maggot? Or what kind of relationship do they have?”