The Ritual
It’s not easy being the mother of a dead child. In fact, it may be the hardest kind of mothering there is.
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Posts Tagged: loss
Spotlight: “Survivors” by Aubrey Hirsch
But more and more I began to wonder if you needed to be human to be a person.
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On Birds, Cats, and Children
My devotion to the cats was not an imitation of human motherhood. To confuse the two, I thought, was an insult to both.
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Mystery and the Unknown: Talking with Lauren Haldeman
Lauren Haldeman discusses her most recent poetry collection, Instead of Dying, making poetry accessible, and being open to the surprising possibilities of form.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #131: Lisa Wells
“I always feel like I’m starting over. I don’t know how I ever wrote a poem. I really do have that feeling.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Even the Moon
When you finished, several minutes passed before we spoke. You dipped a finger in a pool of candle wax. How could I know this was the only real secret you’d ever kept?
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Songs of Our Lives: Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died”
All around me were strangers. All around me were friends. A dark glittering sea of fists. What a terrible, wonderful thing, to be welcomed into this fellowship at last.
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These Women Are Ready to Scream: Danielle Lazarin’s Back Talk
Lazarin has written her heart out chronicling the lives of recognizable girls and women as they come of age, find their footing and chart their path through life’s curves, on their own terms.
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What Did You Expect, Though?
The immune system, meant to protect a body from foreign invaders, works too assiduously, sees danger where there is none, turns on itself. Such conditions lend themselves to metaphor.
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In Defense of Sinead O’Connor
“Remember Sinead?” I asked. My mom nodded her head and shrugged.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Typhoon is a Hurricane
She tried her best to be clinical, but his dreaming scared her, made her think of ghosts and aswang stealing pieces of her—little bit by little bit.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #119: Joyce Maynard
“I was diving straight into the wave, right into the source of my greatest grief.”
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Voices on Addiction: Dead Eyes and Bob Barker Crocs
Broken people are drawn to other broken people. Comparing scars. Laying belly to belly. Two similar pieces of different puzzles.
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Spotlight: “In Memory Of” by Aubrey Nolan
A comic about remembering a person who has passed away, and how that process changes over time.
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The Universal Tether of Identity: Caca Dolce by Chelsea Martin
At its core, the collection is recollected through a loose chronology of memoir essays, all of which will appeal to readers’ younger selves: who were we when we were teenagers and who are we now?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Pet Store
The boy is looking for something specific. I can tell. It shows on his face when he scans the shelves and doesn’t find it.
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Color Is a Language in Itself: Mahtem Shiferraw Discusses Fuchsia
Mahtem Shiferraw discusses her debut collection, Fuchsia, how she uses color to understand the world and to communicate, and why her work continually addresses displacement.
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Ten Minutes of Motherhood: A Conversation with Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy on The Rules Do Not Apply, the illusion of control, and language’s inability to express grief.
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Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #85: Elizabeth Metzger
I have known the poet Elizabeth Metzger since kindergarten—and ever since I have known her, she has been a poet. When we played the The Game of Life, a board game, she wrote small lyrics about the futures we ended the game with; when I had a crush, she wrote light verse about the boys […]
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Day of the Dead
Octavio is tired, tired of trying to separate what he remembers so vividly from the memories he can barely make out in the fog.
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Voices on Addiction: Twenty-Five
I know that there are those who would argue that alcoholism is a singularly extreme condition, and I get that, but I’ve always felt clear that there’s a lot of overlap between alcoholism and plain old ordinary humanity.
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Where You Put It on the Line: A Conversation with Mychal Denzel Smith
Mychal Denzel Smith discusses his debut nonfiction book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, how the activist space has changed in recent years, and who he is writing for.
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TORCH: Blood Trauma
But still: A pattern. The trauma had been diluted by time. But, it was still present, still discernible, in my blood.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, the writers and books that influenced it, tackling addiction with compassion, and the magic of teenage girls.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Pandora and the Naked Dead Woman
Bite that apple, open that jar at your own risk and see how your garden grows, how hopeful you remain. Paradise is, after all, blissful self-ignorance.
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The Rumpus Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Than Nguyen discusses his story collection The Refugees, growing up in a Vietnamese community in San Jose in the 1980s, and the power of secondhand memories.
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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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