a sex thinktank
by Emma Erickson
roses too bloom
I hear babies grow
I hope mine doesn’t
I’d keep my truth warm
but in the shade dark
maybe purple it reminds
me of coloring when you
wipe your dripping nose
with your wrist and leave
it shining in crooked light
where did the clouds go
here in between yellows
A new fall recipe for the end-of-summer tomato harvest.
Pico de Gallo (salsa mexicana, salsa fresca)Continue Reading
by Diana Odasso
6 a.m.
He hurries into my room in the dim early light. I can see he’s upset from the way he stands: his knees hyperextended, fists clenched at his side. Even in the semi-darkness, his eyes are intense, his brown irises glow black.Continue Reading
by Colter Ruland
You should pay for the hotel room on your mother’s credit card. It’s near Washington Square. There’s a park bench. You can sit there and wonder whether your mother will notice it on her statement; she paid for the trip after all. In the meantime, you’re waiting for check-in since your flight landed early—tailwinds or something like that—and there’s a whole eight hours to kill before your connection. Somebody walks up and sits next to you on the bench and you can’t help but feel ousted. You get a splinter when you move your hand across the wood to make room for him; he’s so close on the bench despite the dozens of other empty benches. The splinter turns blue under the skin. Then you hear the guy next to you say, Ouch, and you realize the person has been J all along. He’s shorter and a little heavier than what his profile had indicated just before you’d set your phone to airplane mode. You say, Shit, sorry, I didn’t recognize you. And he says something like, That’s fine, baby. You’re just fine.Continue Reading
The Thought Erotic is open for submissions for Winter/Spring 2016!
We’re looking for stories, poems, essays and art about sex and sexuality—narratives and images that shake up what our ideas of erotica and porn look like, of what they are and what they have potential to be. We’re looking for celebrations of sex while acknowledging that it can be fraught with fear and trauma—recognizing that the sexiest thing might be a reclamation or flat out rejection of current definitions and expressions of sex. We are looking for authors and characters that are underrepresented and unheard, especially around ownership of body, self and voice—for stories from and featuring people of color, people who identify as LGBT, queer and/or gender nonconforming, women and people with disabilities. We’re looking for a spectrum of sexual expression, from vanilla to kinky. We’re looking for fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction (from lyric essay to cultural critique) and visual art. Right now we are looking particularly for erotica short stories.
We have upcoming issues around the following topics, but are also accepting open submissions: consent is sexy, speculative erotica (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.), femme porn (strong female protagonists [cis and trans]) and women writers of color.
The Thought Erotic features stories and essays where sexuality is a site of empowerment, of ownership of one’s own body, identity and story. It is a place to re-story and reclaim some of our cultural ideas around sex + sexuality. To take back/undermine/undo the heteronormative, sexist, racist, cissexist, patriarchal narrative of what sex is and looks like.
Our open reading period is October 15 – January 31. Please see our submissions page for more details and to submit your work!
Why Can’t Women Just Get Along by Melissa Brooks
Steven Universe: A Gender Fusion Buffet on Cartoon Network by Rachel Busnardo
Conifer–Prose Poems by Kolby Harvey
Tiny Dictators and Purple Lattices–A personal essay by Rose Hawthorn
Peruvian Aphrodisiac Ceviche by Eileen Roscina Richardson
by Rose Hawthorn
It was 2 a.m. and I had just peed behind a dumpster in a parking lot. My shoe was in the wrong place at the wrong time and small wet dots speckled its toe. Away from the dumpster, I pulled my pants down for a second time, just enough to show a guy I barely knew a purple latticed bruise covering my right ass cheek. “Holy shit!” he said. We were drunk.Continue Reading
by Rachel Busnardo
I just can’t stop talking about Steven Universe, Cartoon Network’s first show created solely by a woman, Rebecca Sugar.
Cartoon Network launched on October 1, 1992; Rebecca Sugar is the first female to create a show. Let that sink in for a second.
First, let me tell you I’m a woman in my 30s and I love this cartoon. I loved it before I ever knew a woman created it, and loved it even more after. And, yes, it’s made for children—but the older I get, the more I realize that the loving/wounded child in me needs nurturing too. That girl will always have more room in her heart for narratives featuring a gender buffet of badass female-presenting superheroes voiced by an ensemble of diverse, talented women.
Eileen Roscina Richardson is The Thought Erotic’s chef-in-residence, and a true fermentation enthusiast and certified Natural Foods Chef. Eileen discovered her passion for food, fermentation and health at a permaculture ranch in Costa Rica six years ago. She attended culinary school at Denver’s Nutritional Therapy Institute and has since helped in the development of various commercial fermented products, started a fermentation education business, written a variety of recipes, completed a fermentation focused residency with author Sandor Katz and founded the culinary seed company, Grown Home, with her partner Stephen.
by Kolby Harvey
I am talking about the wind in the trees, the pine shake dappled. Pockets of fog on the road at night after you pull a pheasant off the wall, a plucked duck out the freezer, laid out on the den’s bear rug tackle box. Hit a crow on the nose and the ducks tip under a metal washbasin. The dogs may eat too much if given the chance. Can we agree on this at least. That there’s too much iron in the water. An orange dome over the boiling pot, it’s best to puncture the film with a fork and let the pieces somersault through the dingy liquid.
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