A Vocabulary for Apostates
I needed to reshape the definitions of words that were used against me.
...moreI needed to reshape the definitions of words that were used against me.
...moreAda followed her song deeper into the bush, until the windmill loomed up before her.
...moreShe can really throw herself into a stoning.
...moreOliver de la Paz discusses his newest collection, THE BOY IN THE LABYRINTH.
...moreMy whistle was useless. Using it felt like an insult.
...moreThese butterflies needed help, and I wanted to deliver them my garden.
...moreValeria Luiselli discusses her new novel, LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE.
...moreWe were beginning to exist on the periphery of our own lives.
...moreEven when these questions are not articulated, they’re there.
...morePeter Mishler discusses his debut collection, Fludde, the effect of ritual on poems, and childhood psychology.
...moreTo pick a strawberry, one must crouch.
...moreMy devotion to the cats was not an imitation of human motherhood. To confuse the two, I thought, was an insult to both.
...moreMeaghan O’Connell discusses her new memoir, And Now We Have Everything, perfectionism in motherhood and writing, and being pregnant again.
...moreThe poem is no longer a part of the book I own. I ripped it out, had it framed, and nailed it to the wall right next to the door in our master bedroom.
...more“Being thrust into forced ritualistic closeness does break the ice, but doesn’t guarantee closeness.”
...moreWe seldom forget when people promise to give us something, whether we need or want that thing or not. I promise you death, you want a death.
...moreWe want to protect our children from everything, even sometimes ourselves.
...morePraise the family that tethers me. Praise the well-used kitchen utensils and scoured mixing bowls and butter knives, thick slabs of jelly on the bread.
...moreWhat makes him think she’s in any less pain? Because hers isn’t prolonged by uncertainly, isn’t moored by hope.
...moreI wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
...moreIt makes sense to me that Johnny Appleseed, a man, would travel God’s earth spreading his profligate seed. And then women are doomed to their lives trying to make that seed into something useful.
...moreMaggie Smith discusses her new collection Good Bones, how motherhood has changed her writing, and what it felt like to have a poem go viral.
...moreMy lover became the Pope. It was the twenty-tens and the Catholic Church wanted to rebrand with Newport cigarettes and Hermes chiseled calves.
...moreWhat would it be like to not be us? We were trying to figure out so much about the world then, and this is something we could never get to the bottom of.
...moreRene Denfeld discusses her latest book, The Child Finder, the ways in which trauma traps us, and the important role of imagination in finding resilience and escape.
...moreAlice Anderson on her memoir, Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away, drag, and motherhood.
...more