by Sharon Kessler —from Rattle #44, Summer 2014 [download audio] Seems like every time you turn around, something else just hit the ground. —Bob Dylan, “Everything Is Broken” I have woven a parachute […]
Everything is Broken
Raising an Invisible Man: A Mother’s Lament
by Angela Jackson-Brown I see you. I SEE you. I remember the first time my family and I went to see the movie, Avatar, and after we heard the Naʼvi characters say […]
Report from the Land of White Privilege
By Susan Lilley Last evening as I was leaving the local supermarket with a million things on my mind, I managed to miss my own car and walked a few cars down […]
Shame to Love: Learning to Live Again After Rape
Jen Pastiloff first posted this essay, titled “Shame to Love: Learning to Live Again After Rape” on TheManifestStation.net, leaving the writer’s name out. She’s posting it again after receiving this note: ”Dear […]
December–You Can’t Take This From Me
by Suzannah Gilman, Susan Lilley, and Lisa Lanser Rose One night at the “Other Words” conference a few weeks ago, we three sipped nightcaps together in the hotel bar. We talked long […]
Transformations
By Darlyn Finch Kuhn “A woman’s body is the most beautiful thing in the world,” the artist says, and staring at the canvas he’s painted, I have to agree. The standing nude […]
Run Towards Each Other by Katherine Riegel
Originally posted on The Brevity Blog:
Another winning entry in Brevity‘s Holiday Smile contest: It is Thanksgiving, again. My smile is a weapon cutting off access to my grief-treasure. Or perhaps my smile…
Blue Canaries
My fiancé arrives home from a twelve hour shift. He left in the pre-dawn darkness, and has arrived after winter’s dusk.
“Who died?” I ask when I greet him at the door, motioning to the black band across his badge. A thin blue line on the band serves as a marker for his profession.
“The deputy in Leon Country,” he says, leaving his boots by the door. “You didn’t hear?”
“No,” I say. “What happened?”
He tells me about the fire and the ambushed deputies, and I’m reminded of the nickname firefighters have given cops–blue canaries.
Pura Vida, or Reflections on “The Good Life”
by Vanessa Blakeslee Since 2008, the year I originally wrote this essay as part of my application for the Gift of Freedom Award, the conversation about the challenges women writers face in […]
Are You Shielding an Abuser? Victims Deserve to be Believed
by Suzannah Gilman No, I can’t pass judgment on what happened in that situation, but I can be glad for the revival of the noise. Sadly, the allegations of sexual abuse at […]
The Gloria Sirens 