death
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Readers Report: Haunted
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “Haunted.”
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We Who Leave
I could not bring myself to talk about losing my last living grandparent, because talking about her would mean talking about the literal and figurative ocean between where I come from and where I am now.
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Crack My Heart Wide Open
Surviving suicide is like balancing on the edge of a blade. Either way the knife flashes, you’re going to get cut.
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Reworking History
Over at The Monthly, J.M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz elaborate on stringing a good yarn: What ties one to the real world is, finally, death. One can make up stories about oneself to one’s heart’s content, but one is not…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Casa Azul Cripple
“I wanted to be sexual/sexualized, but not fetishized. But was becoming someone’s fetish the only way? How was being fetishized different than being desired for having a unique, unrepeatable shape…or would the one leg always and forever be the only…
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Survivors
The history of the whole world can be told as the stories of conquerors and the conquered—the former consumed with thoughts of destiny and tyranny, the latter knowing only the persistence of time and the pure grit of bodies.
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Sinking, Steadily
Over at Buzzfeed, Leigh Stein paints a portrait of two lovers before the fall: Jason and I met in 2007, at an audition for a tragedy. I was 22 and wanted the role of Medea. He was 18 and didn’t…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
This Sunday, Ted Wilson turned five. Happy anniversary, Ted! In the latest “Last Book I Loved,” Michelle King finds a kindred spirit in Sylvia Plath, who, the first time she kissed husband Ted Hughes, allegedly bit his cheek and drew blood.…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: We Are Not Dead
“The wants and desires of dead people, the one’s they didn’t get to fulfill—that’s what slays me…What if they wanted more? What if they didn’t want to leave behind the things they left behind?”
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Do You Believe in Afterlife?
The Southern Review recently excavated a poem by Aliki Barnstone from 2002, “My Friend Steve Asks if I Believe in the Afterlife.” It begins: When a boy delivering her eulogy / first uttered “mother,” a baby sparrow/ landed on his…
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On Death and Ice Cream
Rumpus contributor Julie Morse remembers her father over at The Toast: During the last handful of years of his life my father became one of those unruly cool dads, perhaps exceptionally unruly. My sister and I had no curfews and he…
