mothers
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OG Dad #21: The Head Bang, the Hole In The Wall, and the Happy Fart
My daughter likes to bang her head off the floor. It makes a point—an especially guilt-tinged one, given that we had to get rid of our carpets due to a mold infestation, so now there’s no cushion between baby cranium…
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Standard of Care
He has no short-term memory and will probably never walk again on his own. He was twenty-five when he was incarcerated for larceny over $250 in 2005. His name is Paul.
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Lisa’s Book Round-Up
I recently discovered a fascinating cookbook: Rufus Estes’ Good Things To Eat. Written in 1911, this cookbook is the first ever written by an African-American chef. Born a slave, Estes triumphed over unimaginable odds to become one of Chicago’s finest…
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Under the Table
The headaches, my difficulty focusing, my specimen-daze, that floating island, my spastic, nervous heart—which are side effects from drinking, and which were inevitable?
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Birth Story
This is the part of the birth story when the woman is supposed to tap into the primal strength of her ancestors, a pool with a hundred thousand years of depth…
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Speech Therapy
They told my father three hours. Ideally, she would have needed to get to the hospital within three hours for the best chance of recovery from the stroke.
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Twenty-Seven
For two days, I fight the story welling up in me, denying the itch of the burn, the angry redness biting at my skin. And then I wake up the third day and say to myself, “My mom was raped…
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A Brief History of Swans
We frighten away boyfriends, lovers, strangers, and we do not mind, because we are together: together, we are glorious.
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
We hope you were so busy taking your mamas out to brunch and showering them with love and appreciation that you simply had no time for The Rumpus this weekend. We celebrated Mother’s Day with two very different interviews that…
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Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
No one comes in to check on me, no one asks if I’m okay after I finally emerge, embarrassed, my eyes completely red. They all love me, but not enough to forgive what I’m about to do.
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Brace Yourself
Jennifer Richter’s poems invite us to understand that each of us is a threshold—something pain passes through.