“She cursed that baby—” “Her thirteenth, I heard, and who can blame her—” “You can’t blame her for thinking it, but doing—” “Who among us—” “I wouldn’t—” “That’s you, though, isn’t it?” “You’re better than us?” “You think she’s…
The first thing they had to do was name us, as if we were rescues or strays. As if they would need a way to gossip about us, to get our attention. We mostly did not like our new…
We were agents of change. We wrote about how hugging, laughter, and kissing can lengthen your life. Warned that toxins in commercial cosmetics seep surreptitiously through nails and pores. We advocated ditching pesticides and gardening with beneficial nematodes instead.…
Later, you’ll claim there were warnings. Unusual bird calls. That double rainbow you snapped for Instagram. A knowing gleam in the eyes of the hibachi waitress. To make sense of a thing is to make it your own, and…
The monsoon our mother delivers a boy, we’re saved from our father’s anger. Our hands are raw, unrecognizable, carrying hot water, tugging clean sheets beneath our mother’s heels, taut like our names. The baby looks whittled out of a…
When we were twelve, we taught ourselves to fly. —John Murillo, from “Renegades of Funk” All of us girls, now women. —T Kira Madden, from “The Feels of Love” That winter, we watched New York Undercover on group phone calls,…
“We want you to know how we lived. That we lived. That we were girls before we were game. That we were alive.” Essay by Melissa Benton Barker • Gayle Brandeis’s recent novel-in-verse, Many Restless Concerns (a testimony):…
They taught us how to kill with assault weapons, bayonets, bare hands. They taught us the lay of the land, how to navigate by rivers and stars, how to use cover to outflank enemy operatives, how to make a…
We make a ton of money off Christmas in July, because customers have too much hope. It’s not their fault. Me and Rubina feed it to them. We decorate Paradise Pawn with tinsel and lights. We smile and hold…
By Jesse Motte • When I read Dustin M. Hoffman’s first collection, One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist, during undergrad, it felt like I’d been suddenly gut-shot by some invisible, benevolent entity. The shock excited me. I prefer my writing like that: unforgiving…
