From the Archive: The Saturday Rumpus Essay: DNA
Of course, maybe dividing the world into two kinds of people is just another way of making sure there is a crack in everything. When can you smooth out this fault line?
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Posts Tagged: essay
From the Archive: The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation
I want to leave the party through the window and find my uncle standing on a piece of iron shaped into visible desperation, which must also be (how can it not?) the beginning of visible hope.
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Boys and Oil: Taylor Brorby on Making Space for Queer Stories on the Great Plains
I developed two books. One I called “The Gay Book,” and one I called “The North Dakota Book.” Well, those are the same book, as you can imagine.
...moreFrom the Archive: Explicit Violence
Afterward, there was dead silence in the kitchen. I know because I held my breath. Even air molecules seemed to still.
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From the Archive: What Burns in the Pit
“Things can catch fire even when they let each other go. But we don’t give up. We don’t stop loving them.”
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From the Archive: The Saturday Rumpus Essay: I Left My Heart in Taos
You might gasp. You might gasp and your heart slips out. You whisper and let red willows drift toward the river.
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Waypoint Transition
I want to know more of what it is like to feel lost and not always have someone there to tell me how to find my way. Or, to tell me my way.
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From the Archive: Why Writing Matters in the Age of Despair
No word is wasted. No story is told in vain.
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From the Archive: The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Butch and the Bathroom
Then there is the bathroom issue. My beloved is like me, like you, like anyone. Sometimes a person has to go.
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Cure for Last Night’s Leftovers
Let’s be clear: There is no hangover cure. Anyone who claims to have never had a hangover is either a) a liar, b) a teetotaler, or c) a responsible drinker. I’m none of those things, most days, despite effort, and the number of times I’ve searched for “how to cure a hangover” in the harsh light of a weekend morning is embarrassing the older I get, so manage your expectations.
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Opioids in Sobriety
Using opioids while maintaining my sobriety became a skill that I continued to develop over the following couple of years. The irony—finally becoming capable of moderating my drug use—was not lost on me.
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From the Archive: The Dark All Around Us
There is still light in the dark. This is the paradox that Little Bear has to accept in order to fall asleep.
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You Keep Everything Outside
“So it’s a surprise to you—and not entirely a pleasant one—when you fall in love with someone who has a penis. You thought you’d set up defenses against the possibility, but here he is, and here you are, loving him.”
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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.
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Heart Work
I want them to know that heart work is hard work, but worth the struggle.
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Introducing Lamoishe and Hezbollah Schoenfeld
I nearly got disowned over my decision not to pass on the family name.
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Pig on a Stick
My Filipino father refused to be upstaged by a white man’s lechon.
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Open Letter to Our Body
The only thing I can count on to be there tomorrow is my body. And yours.
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How to Name Dead Babies
Let’s not pretend first means there’s a good place to start.
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How I Lived and Wrote in Las Vegas
Then again, I wonder if the distinct pleasure of Las Vegas lies in the simulacrum.
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How I Love Her: On Depression and Suicidal Ideation
Maybe the worst part about living with this is that it doesn’t leave me.
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Free Indirect Suicide: An Unfinished Fugue in H Minor
I want a PhD in how to want, effortlessly, to be alive.
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The Language of What Happened to Us
“We knew things were wrong then,” she says, “but we didn’t know how, or why.”
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Smoke Screen
I am an oracle who, while dispensing answers to all those who seek them, cannot predict my own future.
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If You Let Me Tell You a Story
Stories need concrete details to help you understand, don’t they?
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The Algorithm of Love
The life I had doesn’t flash like I see in movies. The life I want is what stares ahead.
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The Loss of a Whole Korea
Only peace. Wholeness will not happen for our generation.
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People You May Know
Staring at that profile picture, I couldn’t not click.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Amy Fusselman
Amy Fusselman discusses her new book, IDIOPHONE!
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