And when you have put
Into it the soul
That through the bedrooms
Became entangled
Then, good man,
Ask that I be white
Ask that I be like snow
Ask that I be chaste
via swissinfo.ch
Terese Nielsen
Fact and Fiction Are Different Truths
When we hand over the responsibility of discerning the true from the false, we lose our ability to identify it ourselves.
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Michael Ramstead
Community, Murder & Feminism on the Podcast My Favorite Murder
I have discovered a pretty well known podcast called My Favorite Murder. Two women, Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff, host the show. It’s considered a comedy podcast. Most people wonder: Where’s the humor in murder? Most would also argue that there is none. However, the humor comes from somewhere else. It’s part of this idea that in order to understand something better we have to get close it. In order to understand why people like Dennis Rader kill we have to pay attention and get closer. So, the humor then, it comes from a place of trying to conquer fear and come to a point of understanding.
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Via Lizz V
Instagram Accounts By Goth Female and Non-binary POC
Women and Non-binary people of color have often been overlooked by film, books, and music, yet their communities are strong. Here are a few fun Instagram accounts that celebrate the darker things in life.
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Cookie Mueller, by Don Herron
Invoking Your Idols: Cookie Mueller
Other than the cliché "fake it till you make it" mentality, it’s hard to find a how-to guide for confidence, especially within a consumerist society that profits off a lack of it. On New Years, trapped in my grandparents’ Floridian subdivision, I found an old college-lined notebook and began to write a list of the people I wanted to invoke for confidence. It included the obvious, like Bowie and Kim Gordon, but without thinking twice the first name I wrote was Cookie Mueller.
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Lola Ridge by Christiana Spens
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Lola Ridge
Don’t you hate those articles with headlines like 20 Movies You Probably Never Heard of but Should Watch Now! And then you click through the exhaustive list, pop ups and all only to discover that you have seen 18 of them? I do. Now don’t get me wrong, I am always, always grateful for discovery. I have added quite a few books, records and films to my household I would have never heard of if it were not for these types of articles. I just do not like the assumption that I am completely clueless, so I am going to write about poets that I have never heard of and share them with you. And if it is someone you have heard of, you will either click elsewhere or keep reading just in case there is that one tiny factoid unknown to you. Most are poets I have come across by way of old anthologies (I have quite a few) and a few are just from me searching on my own terms via Google and research. If I continue this series it will be entitled Another Poet I’ve Never Heard Of!
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David McCliste
My Brandi Carlile Liner Notes
I think I heard her song "The Story" for the first time during a car commercial. It’s hard to actually pin it down now when I think about it. I’ve been listening to Brandi Carlile for a while now. Unlike Aimee Mann, I can’t recall when I found her music. However, like Aimee, I listen to her every day and her work has always been the kid I think about often. I had the opportunity to see her in concert once in Charleston. It was sometimes last year and I was looking forward to it very much. At the last minute, however, she cancelled the show. It was never rescheduled and I was depressed over it. Later, Brandi released a statement about it and said that she cancelled it because she was having troubles with her chronic illness, her endometriosis. I have endometriosis and cried when I read that. One of my musical idols, a woman who has accomplished so much, suffers from the same thing I do. In many ways, it made me feel closer to her.
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Poetry by Angelo Colavita
Founding Editor of Empty Set Press, Angelo Colavita lives and writes in Philadelphia, where he hosts Oxford Coma, a nihilist poetry reading series. His work has appeared in Occulum, Be About It, Mad House, Apiary Magazine, and elsewhere on line and in print. His first chapbook, HEROINes, was published in March 2017. Follow him on Twitter @angeloremipsum and @emptysetpress
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Imaginary Boyfriends Once Inhabited My Imaginary Homeland
Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a practicing physician and writer whose work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Awl, jellyfish review, aaduna and elsewhere, with poetry forthcoming in Natural Bridge, apt magazine and Hobart. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of color. She recently received the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a Henfield award for her writing. Her work received four Pushcart Prize anthology nominations this year. Follow her on Twitter at @chayab77 including for upcoming readings and events.
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Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World
Tabitha Blankenbiller is a Pacific University MFA grad living outside of Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, Narratively, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Hobart, and a number of other venues. Her debut essay collection EATS OF EDEN is forthcoming from Alternating Current Press in March 2018.
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Poetry by Samantha Lamph/Len
Samantha Lamph/Len is a writer and cat masseuse in Los Angeles. You can read more of her work in OCCULUM, Queen Mob's Tea House, Connotation Press, and Inlandia. She is also the creator & co-curator of Memoir Mixtapes. You can follow her on Instagram & Twitter @quandoparamucho.
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Poetry by Charlotte Seley
Originally from the Hudson Valley region of New York, Charlotte Seley is a poet and writer living in Providence, RI. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she served as Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor of Redivider. Her first collection of poems, The World is My Rival, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Press.
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Poetry by Rachel Evelyn Sucher
Rachel Evelyn Sucher is a queer-identified Vermont writer, activist, performer, horsewoman, and intersectional feminist. Her poems have been shortlisted for the International Literary Award (Rita Dove Award in Poetry) and the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets, and longlisted for the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. Rachel is the founder & editor-in-chief of COUNTERCLOCK literary & art journal, an editor at Sooth Swarm Journal, a social media manager at Half Mystic publishing house & literary journal, and a founding member and editor at Mandatory Assembly literary journal. A mentee in the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and the Glass Kite Anthology Summer Writing Studio, she has also attended the New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf and the Champlain College Young Writers' Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tinderbox, Dream Pop Journal, and Rising Phoenix Review, as well as the anthology Destigmatized: Voices for Change from Madness Muse Press. Rachel is also a 2017-18 Trevor Project National Youth Ambassador. When she isn’t wrestling writer’s block or the patriarchy, Rachel can be found snuggling puppies, making music, and overthinking in her nerdy poet's notebook.
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via Vashtie
Five Poetry Forms to Nudge You out of Your Writing Lull
So while looking for a type of Morningsong that was NOT an Aubade I came across quite a few gems that I will hope inspire you to write different, or write anew.
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Katherina Jung
The Wild Hunt by Jennie Ziegler
BY JENNIE ZIEGLER
Voices call to my blood. It hums when I sleep, electric skin, bones cracking from wood smoke. Marked throat, painted nails. Remember, there, with the woods behind us and the city before. Liminal spaces, creatures, voices. We’re kept in glass, in tombs, in waiting rooms. They press clocks into our wombs, fold over skin and conversation. Make us chase rabbits that turn into FunDip dreams. But here we go, we’re sipping that potion, shrinking ourselves down to fit between rooms and breath, somewhere between floor and ceiling. Scrape our skin raw and clean and smooth, no longer scaled, part our legs away from each other, so we can stand, you say. Laughter like orange blossom honey, smooth and fragrant, stuck to our throats. Clock us in by moon cycle, seek our hearts to place into tinderboxes, gift us keys but deny us doors. Oh, darling, bloodstains do tell, after all. Saints save us, let us wander, barefoot, into forest so we can unbecome, the chilled earth sinking like fog into our bones. Ravens whip from our throats, offer stories to midwinter gods. Remember your feet, remember your teeth. You are untethered, boundless, endless. Hair spread like flame. Moonless or moonlit, our hands shine in the dark.
Jennie Ziegler completed her M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing at the University of Arizona. She is currently an Instructor and Outreach Consultant at the University of North Florida where she teaches fairy tales, food writing, and adolescent literature.