Mother
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Voices On Addiction: Speaking Ill of the Dead
I have always felt stuck in the quicksand of Wanting-Things-To-Be-Different.
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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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Mothers of My Diaspora
It paralyzes me to think about the sacrifices my family made before I was in my mother’s womb. When they came here they knew they would lose a part of their language, their memories, their sanctity of self.
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Sunday Rumpus Poetry: Five Poems by Jan-Henry Gray
Dry-mouthed, standing shoulder to shoulder, / They watch the carousel spit out black bags / And mumble “not mine” over and over.
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The Alienation of an Irish Abortion
Was it a dream? A nightmare? I felt like I’d been sold a lie. There was no husband or caring partner, no safe home or solid income. Just me, pregnant and alone, in an abortion clinic with my rapist.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Leaving Deficit
Feathers are a gift and flexible protein. Mom put down tobacco and ran her fingers over its exposed parts. She told me the salmon run is coming and this bird would have wanted for nothing.
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This Is Not a Story About a Ghost
This is a story about memory. About neurons misfiring, about the strange space between dream and awake, that feeling, when I’m falling asleep, of falling backwards, swinging my arms up to catch myself.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Motel Ecstasy
Alia Volz’s artist, expat mom needed to leave Mexico and go back to the United States for a heavy-duty chemo treatment, which meant it was time for a mother-daugther road trip.



