From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: Forty-Six
Waiting to turn forty-six is like standing in the unrelenting sunshine.
...moreBecome a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!Waiting to turn forty-six is like standing in the unrelenting sunshine.
...moreYou are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
...moreBut Griner is too skilled a realist to allow The Book of Otto and Liam to become a simple revenge story.
...more“A poem is like a vision test—its vision is either clear or it’s not.”
...moreGustavo “Goose” Alvarez talks with Cullen Thomas about PRISON RAMEN, and more.
...moreEach sentence is calculated; each word explodes.
...moreFear is real. Pain is real. Loss is real. Suffering is real.
...moreI can’t relax. Bullets are on my mind.
...moreWhile my friends write their truths in nearby cabins, I wear my silence like a bulletproof vest.
...moreSurvival, for Landau, is both instinctual and ultimately pointless.
...moreI imagine Lady Justice’s fingers tipping the scales: Rose to leave, and me to sleep.
...moreSaeed Jones discusses his new memoir, HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES.
...moreI tell Kurinda I’d lie flat on the floor under a pile of jackets.
...moreReveal yourself. Reveal yourself. You cannot be dead. Reveal yourself.
...moreIt begins with a gunshot.
...moreDave Cullen discusses his new book, PARKLAND: BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT.
...moreWe must find a way to keep the roots of love and justice strong.
...moreThe process of guiding people to speak their truths was isolating.
...moreI was seven the first time I fired a gun.
...moreThrough drill, artists have a means of exploring and challenging the political marginalization of their voices.
...moreThe obscenities and tragedies of American life pile up with speed, and in quantities, that are appalling.
...moreDoesn’t murder exclude a person from being described as “a good guy”?
...moreIt seems when our dialogue loses nuance, society in turn loses its mind.
...moreTom McAllister discusses his new novel, How to Be Safe, workshops, Twitter, dystopia, and narrative voice.
...moreDickson Lam discusses his debut memoir, Paper Sons, the writing advice that transformed his approach to thee book, and the duty of a memoirist.
...moreJustin Phillip Reed on his debut collection, Indecency, why he loves struggling with connotation, and the irresponsibility of American society.
...moreLove twists itself into fear, into statistics, into things people can live with.
...moreWhose lives are visible? Whose pain is just? Whose grief is vocal? Such inquiry is not rhetorical.
...moreI do the best I can to reach out to those I see isolated or disturbed, but I have to also be careful I don’t make myself a target.
...moreDon’t join them in their prayers (the god they pray to doesn’t exist).
...more