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.
...moreBecome a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!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.
...moreMetaphor can make life more bearable, meaningful, or simply comprehensible.
...more“…each month I embrace a kind of death within my womb that offers me a life I can live with.”
...moreChristopher Gonzalez discusses his debut story collection, I’M NOT HUNGRY BUT I COULD EAT.
...more“Balance is its own beautiful practice.”
...moreActive Reception writes into the place where language fails.
...moreYou stood and put your hair up. It made you a different man. You got hard and decided you were why.
...moreThe individual and the crowd might prove as false a binary as anything else, even that [perforated] line sketched between poetry and prose.
...moreIf I were to stare into a mirror, I’m not sure I would see anything back.
...moreLiz Asch discusses her new book, YOUR SALT ON MY LIPS.
...moreWhat makes a body violable? This jaw, a piece of evidence. This body, the remains of a life.
...moreTo brand myself with something I feared and sought to subdue seemed like a reclamation.
...moreA Rumpus series of work by women, trans, and nonbinary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
...more“Stories hurt, stories heal, stories save our lives.”
...moreThere was nothing in the world I had ever needed to do quite like dance.
...moreKrys Malcolm Belc discusses his debut memoir, THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD.
...more“The book is about the complicated problem of loving.”
...more“The grief felt like giving birth, these waves of pain and then receiving.”
...moreMy hands grow cold and rigid. In those blue-tinged palms, I can see my future.
...moreFor as long as I can remember, I wanted to be strong, to be tough. I didn’t want to be soft.
...more“In my own experience, anxiety entails dwelling on the past.”
...moreThe body, like a country, holds so much, and all at once.
...moreChang-rae Lee discusses his new novel, MY YEAR ABROAD.
...moreGeorgina Lawton discusses her debut memoir, RACELESS.
...moreRanda Jarrar discusses her new memoir, LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY.
...moreIt’s exhausting, I realize, to constantly convince myself that I matter.
...moreJennifer Berney discusses her debut memoir, THE OTHER MOTHERS.
...moreHurting heightened everything, both within and without it.
...moreWhere my masculinity dwells, I am in control.
...more