Tag: GenderSexuality

Acquainted with the Night  

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Erin Redfern

Featured art by Jordyn Roderick

At the all-girls school they taught us  
don’t fight back: the rapist might get mad.  

Against my will, I remember this  

when I need to take a walk to clear my head.  
When I fear the sound of feet, a distance  

closing. When I drop my eyes in passing,  

my neck for decades bending. On the train  
a man asks me what I’m reading. Show me  

the Great American Writer; I’ll show you  

a man who finds by walking out alone 
what freedom is,  

and, so, America, I want to be  

the kind of woman who walks into night,  
a fine rain, her own thoughts.  

If at dusk I hear a clutch of cries 

and rush of wings from powerlines.  
If I love a spread of stars, dark wind in trees. 

If walking is a bodied way of thinking. 

If I love a subway map, a screech of trains. 
If walking out and back intact is luck. 

If I have been a long time without thinking. 

If I wanted to go there by myself

thinking. If I just wanted to go somewhere.  


Quoted phrases and lines are from Robert Frost, “Acquainted With the Night”; Judy Grahn, “A Woman Is Talking to Death”; Kim Moore, “On the train a man asks me what I’m reading”; June Jordan, “Power”; Lisa Shen, “Sixteen Seconds”  

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Fortune Cookie

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Brad Aaron Modlin

Featured Art: Emaciation by Brooke Ripley

Yes, everyone says to add “in bed” to end
everything with sex, but all I think of is
the deathbed. Your hard work
will soon pay off
in bed. Great surprises await
in bed. Your experiment’s results
will reveal themselves
in bed. When I Christmas-visit
my parents, who love me in ways I
can’t understand, they say,
“We don’t want to leave you
a lot of junk to sort through
[when we die],” so when they dial
Chinese takeout, I suggest pizza.
No cookies.
I think about it all January. It’s still
that January, I think, I’m only in the middle
of it. If you say you’re in the middle,
you assume you know the end date,
that’s why religious Southerners say, “Lord
willin’” when making plans.
In a college poem, I made
the Gingerbread Man pickup lines about lic-
orice. I was afraid to rhyme cookie
with nookie, embarrassed by words
that might be 40–90% crass?
Afraid to expose myself
to danger: our Shakespeare
professor defined la petite mort.
I was afraid to talk about
death. My Brit Lit professor
angered me by saying,
“It’s all sex, death,
and madness,” so I yelled,
“People fully clothed
and alive under rainbows of sanity!”
Even I didn’t realize at the bar
the Gingerbread Man was flirting
with the fox.
No matter who writes the story,
everyone dies. I am too old
to find this so surprising.
Too young to keep repeating
the crassest word.
Too waste-averse to ask the fortune
teller to flip my cards
on her front porch. Congratulations!
You are on your way
in bed. All your troubles will pass quickly
in bed. Stormy seas ahead
in bed. You will find bliss
in bed. Love is around the corner
in bed. Love is around, love is.

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She Asks Me, Who is Roger?

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Chrys Tobey

Featured Art: Time Lapse Photography of People Walking on Pedestrian Lane by Mike Chai

I could tell her about my yoga teacher, Roger, who wears the cutest shorts,
which I overheard him say were tailored, or when I was five, there was

the dad, I think his name was Roger, of my neighbor I’d play house with until
my mom caught us humping. But really, I could give her a long list of Rogers—

Roger who never reciprocated my love when I was fifteen. Roger who, on our second
date, burped all of “SexyBack.” Roger who stole my money so he could buy me underwear.

There was Roger with the engagement ring that he threw at my head. There was
Roger with his fondness for spanking. Roger with his missing tooth. Roger with his

fake front tooth. One Roger told me, You’re not really a feminist. Another Roger asked,
Are you really a feminist? And Roger from New York who said, You don’t seem bitter

enough to be a feminist. I could tell her about all the pretty Rogers. The first
Roger I married. Or the second Roger. I could tell her about the Rogers I don’t want

to remember—the ones that taught me I should only live on a second floor.
When she asks me, Who is Roger?—because in a text I wrote, Roger; because she is new

to the U.S.—I smile and tell her about truckers and lingo and don’t tell her how when
I see the small scar on her nose, all the Rogers peel away like dead skin.

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A Coyote Runs Down Michigan Avenue

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Sara Ryan

Featured Art: “The Bridge: Nocturne (Nocturne: Queensboro Bridge)” by Julien Alden Weir

and she is a phantom. gray blur on
gray pavement. green lights flicker

their rhythmic patterns. in the right building,
at the right angle, she becomes one

thousand coyotes shimmering in glass.
she screams and Chicago screams

back. howls. scavenges the oily corners
of the train stations. the river gulps

through its channels and feeds the lake.
she is a wild thing. she crosses high bridges.

she becomes the color blue. she becomes
the color blood. the city is haunted

now. by the trees. by women, their mouths
full—bulging, really—with fur. she is one

of the lucky ones. she runs unjailed without
worry for traffic, turn signals, speed limits.

ghosts wearing masks yell from
their windows. they’re warning her.

they’re warning her.

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Chickens in Your Backyard

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Miriam Flock

They come, like the dishwasher, with the house.
“No trouble,” swears the seller, and—presto change-o—
for handfuls of Layena every morning,
the pair of hens trade one or two brown eggs.
The chick, if we approach with proper coos,
will let itself be stroked. This we learned
from our new bible, Chickens in Your Backyard.
Like neighbors of a different faith, we practice
tolerance, let them grub among the bulbs,
ignore the way their droppings singe the mulch.

Meanwhile, we are intent on our own nesting.
My husband paints the nursery; I quilt
a golden goose with pockets shaped like eggs.
We hardly register the added squawking
from the coop or look for more than tribute
when we rob the nesting boxes. Then
one dawn, I’m roused by what can only be
a cock-a-doodle-doo. And in the breaking light,
our chick-turned-rooster struts, ruffed as Raleigh,
shaking his noble scarlet comb. What waits

inside me to astonish like this male?
Such sudden majesty, sudden red.

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I’m Only Dancing

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Chris Ketchum

At ten, I meet myself in the mirror of my sister’s vanity, squeezed into the tiny
corset of her pale blue dress, Cinderella’s image printed on the breast like a
brooch. My little-boy pecs puff out like cleavage. The tulle skirt brushes against
my thighs, rising above the knee, billowing around my Fruit of the Looms as I
prance down the staircase to the dining room where my mother lights a candle
before dinner. She laughs to see me skip across the hardwood floor, turning and
twirling on the ball of my socked foot—and when she does, I know I want to
keep her laughing. I’m not sure why, but I speak in a higher voice, with a lisp,
and she laughs harder, and as I’m preening, brushing my cheeks with the back
of my hand, leaping into the air like the hippos in Fantasia, I notice the tears—
how they run down the corner of her nose, wetting her upper lip. I don’t know
why she’s crying—maybe I’m really that funny. So I keep dancing.

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The Elks at the Watering Hole

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Steve Myers

Sundays they’d meander down from surrounding hills
                                                                                                  to the watering hole
just south of French Creek, where it joins the Allegheny, maybe twenty,
thirty on a good day in summer, the fog in no hurry to lift off the river,
& if I were visiting,
                                 my father-in-law would take me along, because
this was the rhythm of Venango County men, week after week, season
on season, for the members who hadn’t lost wives to dementia, cancer,
or a cheating heart,
                                    a chance to get away from the women, bullshit, maybe
win some money in the big drawing,

                                                                 the Iron City flowing & Wild Turkey,
not yet noon, a thumb-flicked Zippo, cover clicking back, scratchy rachet
of the wheel, flame-sputter, flame, head bowing, a face
                                                                                                  sudden, illuminated,
the long fhhhhhhhhhhh, with smoke stream, & a story would begin:

an Army jeep bouncing into a bombed-out Rhineland town, & in an old church
cellar, great shattered wine casks, you drank as you sloshed through it, dark,
fuck-cold;
                   someone’s uncle down the Mon Valley, the Gold Gloves boxer
who lost an arm; a lieutenant’s first whorehouse.
                                                                                       That was the talk,
and everything was Eddie, almost whispered, a shibboleth:
duck boots, fly rods, the Eddie Bauer Ford Bronco—Elks Masonic
to the nth degree.

                                 Laugh, move among them, wear the flannel, stand them
a round—still, I carried the scent of a distant country. One slight shift
of wind & heads would lift, the circle tighten.

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The Helms Man

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Kathryn Jordan

Featured Art: Creative Abundance Flower by Wendy Minor Viny

The Helms Man, we called him. I mean the man in white

baker’s trousers who drove the Helms Bakery van

around our bright California cul-de-sacs and streets —

coastal hills carved to asphalt, tract, and pink ice

plant that we broke open to write on sidewalks.

               

He drove slowly down our block, stopping to open

wide temptation’s door, inviting adolescent girls in

to view his wares:  jelly and glazed doughnuts,

cinnamon twists, sparkling crystal sugar.  We ponied

up quarters for paper bags of treats, to be consumed

out of sight of perfect mothers, lying out in lawn chairs,

all Coppertone and Tab gleam, who gave us Teen Magazine,

left us to banana and milk diets, vertical stripes, and scales.

 

Left us to ripe womanhood and the gaze of men,

to shape and flavor we could never taste ourselves. 

To motherhood and stretching of skin, joint loosening,

the joy of being food.  Then cronehood with arroyo

of wrinkle, slump of breast, lump of belly.

 

Each one alone now sees herself in hollow mirror,

flattened chest, belly bulge assessed, while outside

the window, teenage girls parade in short cutoffs,

long legs supple and smooth.  And our long-gone

mothers watch us watch them.  We, who still hear

the van coming and run, hurry, to be ready, radiant

and thin for the helmsman, just turning the corner.

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The Pathologist’s Wife (or, When My Daughter Leaves the House I Will Go Watch Baby Sea-Turtles Being Born in Savannah)

.Reading time 4 minutes.

By Jeff Tigchelaar 

Featured Art: American Gothic by Jason Douglas and Wendy Minor Viny

Volunteer vacations. That’s what

I’ll do, so help me. Go away

for a week at a time or two. You know, have fun,

help out. Save some

baby turtles. And I’m not going

to ask. It’s my money too. Money’s not

an issue. My husband’s

a doctor. Well not

just a doctor, my Lord: a forensic pathologist.

More of a scientist, really. He puts away

murderers. We’ve had – he’s had

death threats. We’re absolutely

not in the phone book. And he is

so addicted to his work. He’s always thought

he can just hand me money and

that’s it. Though, he does expect his

meals.

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Laywoman

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Jeff Tigchelaar

Featured Art: Blue Cat by Dar Whitlatch, Jason Douglas, Mallory Valentour

Evenings, let me tell you, are for

coming down. Going home and getting

into bed. Or slippers, at least. Yeah I’ve got bunny slippers

and there’s no shame in that. My only child

is insane. I don’t care who thinks

what about my PJs, either. I sleep

in a faded 4X orange and green T-shirt worn for years

by my father before me. So thin you can see my nips.

If you were looking, that is.

At the mercantile today I couldn’t stop thinking

about how I always just keep looking – nodding –

at Dr. Prajeet even when I haven’t

the slightest what he’s on about.

How hard would it be

– wink – just to say “Dr. Prajeet,

if you wouldn’t mind reiterating a bit –

you know . . . in laywoman’s terms?” Just ask him.

Laywoman, Dr. Prajeet. That’s me.

I wonder what I’d say if Dr. P. asked me

to elope. Off to some far land. Or even if he just asked me

out. Dancing, maybe. Here in town. I wonder what my little

Richie would think about that. If you don’t want mommy

coming home with doctors, don’t be a grown man living

with mom. Maybe I’d say that to old Mr. Ricardo.

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He’s Fine with a Little College (or, All Those Pups)

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Jeff Tigchelaar 

Featured Art: Atlas the Pup by Troy Goins and Mallory Valentour

College is for people who think

they’re too good to work.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m fine

with a little college, as long as it’s

in a Lego set, like.

But the kind with full-size

buildings and professors . . .

that right there’s a different sack of bait.

 

But you know what? Life’s like a dogsled team.

Unless you’re in the lead, the scene don’t change.

All those pups, yipping and chomping

to get ahead and be up front . . . but

the top dog’s been chosen from the start.

And that one mutt might not have to

have his nose up the asshole in front of him,

but guess what he’s got right behind him. A dog.

And another dog, and another and another. A whole

damn pack, and a few feet back there’s a sled

and you know who’s standing on that sled?

The man.

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The Tenants of Feminism

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Denise Duhamel

Featured Image: The Valley of the Seine, from the Hills of Giverny by Theodore Robinson, 1892

When the interviewer mishears “tenets”
I know my gals are not in a villa,
never mind the United States Senate.

My heroines crowd in drab tenements,
their image scaring even Attila
the Hun. The interviewer hears “tenants”—

bad asses, public housing. Bob Bennett
wakes sweaty from a nightmare, Guerrilla
Girls rushing the United States Senate;

Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, and Joan Jett
stuffing manifestos in manila
mailers. The interviewer hears “tenants,”

sees kitchens where women cook venomous
dishes. His lady smells of vanilla,
minding their house, not the U.S. Senate.

My principles are not set in cement,
nor are they adrift on a flotilla.
I call upon all feminist “tenants”—
Steer your U-Hauls to the U.S. Senate.

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All About Skin

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Leslie Adrienne Miller

On a reasonably sized female adult,
two square yards of the stuff,
all etched with nerves of wild
to be roused, altogether the largest
organ in the body. Unless you count
the considerable accumulation
of disappointment that sprouts
as fast as creeper in a chemical-free
yard. Or all those useless tears,
salt and mucus and plain old water
manufactured by the ducts every time
hurt shows up for dinner, rather more
often too, as the years advance,
putting his feet on the sofa,
leaving dishes in the sink. Perpetually
twenty with his tight ass and gorgeous
hands, he invents longing like a tall tale
and gets us to drink one more glass
of merlot than we’d meant to tonight.
If only we had more feathers and horn,
that sweet jacket of woolly lanugo we wore
in the womb and swallowed like a marvelous secret
just days before the world turned on the lights
and pronounced us girls.

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’69

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Kathy Fagan

Featured Art: Alfred Sisley by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

If it’s been ten times it’s been forty-five
I’ve checked the man out in the car behind
mine, teeth bared, laughing in my rearview.

I cannot stop myself from watching him,
sun full on his face. He’s all alone—
we are, among our fellow rush commuters—

and then it dawns on me: it’s Mr. Cahill
from sixth grade, my first male teacher (heart, be still!),
who taught sex ed to us in ‘69,

in Catholic school, till someone narked and he
was gone for good. Those days, we venerated
the venereal, reciting sex words right

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Notre histoire sinister

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Michael Joyce

Here is our lurid history, the days that were before us once
have slipped behind now and press against us as in a crowd
stumbling from the circus. The circus again! How it haunts
their memories, the afternoon at the Tibetan resto juste en face
where the young clown reminisced about life as a dominatrix
in San Francisco and how gentle it all was finally, her smile
truly angelic, framed in a corona of spun gold hair, le coiff’
paillé, soft, vaguely leonine, the archangel with golden hair
at Petersburg perhaps or Raphael’s lost “Portrait of a Boy”
pillaged by the Nazis from the Musée Czartoryski. This she
recognizes in herself, how in the snapshot from her troupe
she had them guess which one she was, eyes giving her away:
the boy in the pale blue jumper, a play upon Pierrot, fey,
younger, at that age where gender is permeable, apt to slip
hermaphroditic back to girlish, qualis ab incepto processerit
et sibi constet, as Horace had it, i.e., let him stay what he was
at first, but what that was hardly any of us can remember.
And now the children come pouring out from the matinée
into rue Amelot as dans le coin de la salle the three of them
whisper softly lost in each other over tea and dumplings

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