From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: Mustard Seeds
At the end of the week, which was long with sleepless nights, Miri picked her heart out of the kitchen sink, put it in a paper lunch bag, and took it to the witch.
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Posts Tagged: cheating
From the Archive: The Rumpus Interview with Jade Sharma
Jade Sharma discusses her first novel Problems, the complicated feelings that came with debuting to rave reviews, and her writing and editing processes.
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The Last Poem I Loved: “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden” by Matthea Harvey
I read poetry for enjoyment now, to feel seen, and to see the world differently.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Danny”
Allow her to bewitch you as she bewitches all who cross her path.
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In All the History of Wanting
For what, after all, is more monstrous than a woman who wants?
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A Love That Leaves Scars: With Teeth by Kristen Arnett
Reading Kristen Arnett’s With Teeth is like taking an afternoon drive down the I-4 of my memory.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Dirty Little Secrets”
They were alone, and in his apartment, but not in the way he’d imagined it to be.
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My Boyfriend, His Lover, and Me
There is nothing I want more than a happy ending.
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What Toulouse-Lautrec Taught Me about Intimacy
I wanted to stop withholding from them, but withholding was like a drug.
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Otherwordly: Talking with Rosebud Ben-Oni
Rosebud Ben-Oni discusses her new collection, TURN AROUND, BRXGHT XYXS.
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Voices on Addiction: The Promises
In my secret mind I saw him; I spoke to him every day.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Someone Will Come and Get Us
It always feels like I’m making a mistake on purpose.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Softest Part
We sleep and we pretend to sleep. We wait for the day to turn into night.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Beginnings
It is often a curse, this imagination of mine. Life pales in comparison.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Earth Revolves around the Sun
I imagined myself from the outside: the picture of a woman waiting.
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Albums of Our Lives: Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight
Something about the twangy banjo and the melancholy vocals just made me feel less alone. And I hated being alone.
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This week, a new Maggie Shipstead story at Virginia Quarterly Review explores love, infidelity, and the ways life can slip from under your feet like an avalanche. Bonus: there is also a literal avalanche. The story, “Backcountry,” follows a twenty-five-year-old ski instructor named Ingrid (#1 baby name for future ski instructors) who meets a fifty-plus-year-old […]
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The Truth About Lying
My gut is a red, fiery drum, a beacon of rosy light. My instinct to run is a bright radioactive pink arrow, a bloody blade. I was correct.
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Market Researching My Desire
I noted the weirdness, and then filed it away until a time I might really consider the implications of wanting to bury someone’s stockings. I was lost in metaphor, which meant I was lost in everything.
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The Alienation of an Irish Abortion
Was it a dream? A nightmare? I felt like I’d been sold a lie. There was no husband or caring partner, no safe home or solid income. Just me, pregnant and alone, in an abortion clinic with my rapist.
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Not a Widow
I want to think of him as inhuman and selfish instead of an admirable man who eventually succumbed to a brain chemistry he had no control over.
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The Big Idea: Dawn Tripp
Dawn Tripp discusses Georgia, her new novel based on Georgia O’Keeffe’s life, O’Keeffe’s distancing herself from feminism, and balancing biography with fiction.
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#Betrayal: On Instagram, Is Hell Other Women?
Instagram: an app powerful enough to blow a million Think Pieces to smithereens in everything it says about female relations.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
When The Bennington Review re-launched this past April after thirty years, its first issue packed a table of contents studded with prize-winning authors and exciting emerging voices. This week, to our good fortune, the biannual print publication has made several of its pieces available online, among them new short fiction from Iranian-American writer Porochista Khakpour, author […]
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Wishing and Hoping: Card Tricks, Love Spells, and Methods of Escape
I’ll go one further and posit that we need our illusionists: to disprove our eyes, investigate our dreams, and sometimes charm the money from our pockets.
...moreTo Cheat or Not to Cheat
Life coach, Rumpus columnist, and novelist Rick Moody lends his ear to those at the crossroads of love over at Lit Hub. This week, he addresses the unfaithful: And: what we’re talking about, here, really, is intimacy. In order for someone in a relationship to be especially intimate with you, he (or she) has to be less […]
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R.I.P.: Facts
I wanted to write about death to get closer to it, to face it clear-eyed. Now I had the opportunity.
...moreDiana Athill, the Other Woman
The role that seems to me most comfortable is not that of Wife, but that of the Other Woman. And in that role I am good, because I have never for a moment expected or wanted to wreck anyone’s marriage. Over at Granta, Diana Athill writes a moving essay about life, relationships, and her education […]
...moreCheaters Sometimes Win
While the poetry world continues to grapple with the Best American Poetry controversy, perhaps its worth considering why anyone would try to game the system. Theodore Ross over at The New Republic explains how cheating is one of the best ways of getting published. He confesses to his own misdeeds, including ignoring submission guidelines and […]
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