Tell Me How to Be

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by Caitlin Scarano

Author’s Note: Starting the night of the 2016 Presidential Election, I started a log on my computer that I maintained for ten days. I attempted to trace my reactions to Donald Trump’s victory, while recording other losses that were happening in my life at the time. This essay is shaped from those notes with some revisions and additions.

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The night of the election, I am all body.

Later, my mother will say: My whole body is numb with an unbearable sense of grief. Later, Josh will write me: I felt it in my spine.Continue Reading

A Southern Mythology: Tales from Georgia

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(an excerpt)

by Erin Armstrong

I’m sitting on my front porch smoking a cigarette because it’s 3am and I can’t stop thinking about fucking my father. And ain’t that just something. Is it? I mean, I’m not thinking about it because I want to be thinking about it, or because I want to fuck him. Even if I did he’s pretty dead so it would be something on several something fronts. Or backs, or my face and mouth… there I go again.Continue Reading

in the orchard of unmentionable

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by loie merritt

11/22/2016

It’s been two weeks since I’ve sat down to write. Everything is just misspelled words knocking against silent sobs in my ribcage. I can’t remember the way I felt before, the safety locked in, like both feet happily grounded in a block of cement, heat conducted and hardened with my own privilege. At the same time, nothing has changed. Day to day, feeding to feeding, broken dish to shitty diaper, my children requiring me to hold my own shit together. But in silence, I hear a clock ticking. And we don’t own a ticking clock. On this rare rainy day, I am thankful that I don’t have to go outside, into the world, the world that is the same except cut open. Do you feel that pain? What does the pain sound like today?Continue Reading

The Better Feminism Workbook–An Interview with Creator Jennifer Williams

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Jennifer Williams is a writer, musician and community organizer living in Oakland, California and has self-published two workbooks titled The Process of Letting Yourself Have a Creative Process and The Better Feminism Workbook. We chatted with Jennifer about The Better Feminism Workbook, finding strength in the era of Trump, and more.

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Oath of Softest–Poems by Jessica Lawson

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Oath of Softest

He makes his money his woman (in the office to steel (but the resolution (will not be televised,
(take this, then (our oath of softest.

A fly by Might operation might operate (on your granny, her (hip hip (hopping below the belt
(and he’s ready to give her (whatever care he can grab (in between conference calls, (while the
full ass of social media (butt dials their representatives (leaving an oath of softest (in the empty
art of the dialtone (when the voicemail box is full.Continue Reading

Un-President-Ed: The Trauma of Trump

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by Courtney Udischas

In the weeks that followed the election, I felt I had stepped into the Twilight Zone. All of the colorful assurance I held about living in a time in history when a woman could hold the highest executive office in our country completely drained away. The worst part wasn’t that an unapologetic narcissist was in charge of decisions that would soon affect my life. The worst part was sitting with the knowledge that we proved to ourselves, and to the world, that our priorities haven’t changed much. A television personality, who mirrors the worst aspects of our culture, was a reality more possible than Hillary. The outcry from my generation was considered an overreaction from Trump supporters. The country shifted into a fugue state as we decided to roll the dice with this deeply flawed, dangerous person over a qualified diplomat.

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On Dick: How Materialism Caught Up With My Queer Life

Fast Fashion 1

by Eric Mueller

I love Dick. It’s more than just looking at Dick on others. With Dick wrapped around me, I feel complete. Dick is what I call any piece of clothing I’ve ever worn, owned, or coveted. It’s my materialism, because a love so deep deserves a name. I didn’t know I liked Dick until Ian, an actual person, entered the picture.

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No Time for Apathy: Processing the 2016 Election

Trump Protest 1

by Rose Heredia

Hearing “This can’t be happening” and “Is this a nightmare” as I walked with my classmates to the bar Pig & Whistle on election night while others, like myself, walked along in silence, breathing meditative breaths, I thought how racist this country is. How do I even begin to live in this country with this man as president? I didn’t know and still don’t know how to answer that question.

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Conifer—Prose Poems by Kolby Harvey

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by Kolby Harvey

CONIFER

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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