From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: No Good
The sounds that she would expect here are entirely absent. There are no cries, no weeping. Just soothing, muffled tones.
...moreBecome a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!The sounds that she would expect here are entirely absent. There are no cries, no weeping. Just soothing, muffled tones.
...moreIt feels like a luxury to have just enough.
...moreHow do we counterbalance or offset our knowledge of particular crimes, particularly those that are so pervasive?
...moreIt is March, almost April, and the year feels like a spool of days spliced out of order, leaping treacherously from sun to ice to sun to rain to snow.
...moreI like to listen to my mother’s voice; the sounds she makes in an English-Korean mashup; we are each the other’s dictionary.
...moreFile this one under “they can’t Trump everything; life goes on.” Last week, I got caught up in reflections on poverty in America: mine, yours, and ours. This week, I decided to do something about it and buckle down to design a careful budget. “Ack!,” I said, early one morning. “We’ve got to make a budget […]
...moreIt will be fine, I had told them. It will be an adventure. I was in love. Love is an eternal optimist.
...moreI’m a small blue dot living in a blood-red corner of a red state, so I’ve grown accustomed to hearing right wing talking points. I don’t like them, but they surface as regularly in my southwest Florida town as white egrets on the highway and dolphins in the Gulf. Talking points at the grocery store, […]
...moreHere we are again, another one-run game, another last chance.
...moreThis evening, after returning home from my job as an English instructor in St. Paul, Minnesota, I locked my keys in my car. I believe the reason for this mistake pertained to my haggard and undone emotions. From my vantage point, your campaign included numerous emotional-appeal techniques. Over the last year, I’ve heard a lot of […]
...moreHe’s the teacher who encourages questions beyond the class assessment, who always gets his students to open the “Curiosity Door.”
...moreTigers are bigger than my comprehension. That’s what I want. I want to be bigger than I am, so big I can’t even imagine it, so real I can’t ever be misinterpreted.
...moreTurning onto my street and looking south I feel the ground drop beneath me every time—I turn the corner and the sidewalk falls. I feel invisible then, as if I’ve vaporized.
...more“I’m a shock absorber for tragedy,” I say, not really knowing what I mean. “Maybe I should just move to Hawaii. I hear that’s a happy place to live.”
...moreHere is something I’ve always believed: Just knowing I am an artist, asserting that identity, is more important than what I produce. It is a victory in itself.
...moreAuthor Brenda Miller discusses the lyric essay, her “poet self” who always bleeds through, and what she’s writing about next.
...more“Don’t become a professor,” he said. “I’d rather you become a garbage man. They get paid more and have better benefits.”
...moreJosie Pickens talks about building relationships through blogging, changing the narrative around black women in America, and eradicating silence through storytelling.
...moreAlissa Nutting discusses issues of gender and consent, and her novel Tampa, which depicts in relentless detail a female teacher sexually preying upon young male students.
...moreAbject admiration is the worst way to start a review. Isn’t it the blurbist’s job to kiss a writer’s behind, the critic’s to skewer it on the formidable barb of his or her literary intellect?
...more