A hundred hopes flickering beneath the altar of the Madonna, fresh flowers arranged at the foot of her image. Seen like this, just beyond flames and behind glass, I see what it might have meant to be the mother of God. To be God herself—how do they not see it? At her breast, the Christ child, soft infant flesh beneath her warm hands. A man … Continue reading At the Altar of the Virgin by Kim Cope Tait
falter follows off rails and roads drowning in streams of conscious pushed toward the rocks as another dream crashes for another and another love and death is all there is but only one can survive the fall. Continue reading don’t go by Ed Canavan
Are the first thing you draw. Obsession with ownership, a rare Irish thing. I did not partake, so fell foul of a crushing system. I have rented seven places, each move excruciating. For a time I dreamt of haunted houses, my mother dreams of new rooms in her house since she started to paint. No matter that I make homes, women’s labour is squared against … Continue reading Houses by Ingrid Casey
Call me ignorant or bitter–or both–but a girl’s got to do what she can sometimes to find the silver lining in being chucked by a token “literary white guy®.” Some might even posit that being chucked is the silver lining itself. Most beneficial of all though, as you might know firsthand, is not feeling compelled, or, more precisely, feeling obligated to read books that are … Continue reading All the Books You Don’t Have to Worry About Reading Anymore Once You’ve Been Chucked by “Literary White Guy®”
As is the case with many a writer’s life, it is their death–or, more precisely–their suicide that will define them. Virginia Woolf is just one such scribe from an era in writing when a person felt things so deeply that no matter how much of it poured out of them and onto the page it was still there. Always lingering, never fully gone. Over the … Continue reading Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again
What’s a thimble but an opportunity to protect the tips we thread through the air with, pointing out the lonely and how they only wear sewn-up tattered things. Continue reading Lonely is a very crowded place to be by Thomas Fucaloro
I have never used Tinder. Never even toyed with the initial steps of creating a profile. And it’s not because I missed the generation that it took by storm–millennials–so much as I possess an unshakeable mistrust of this notion of “love” being just one swipe away. The lack of tactility, effort and emotion involved in Tinder and offshoots like it are what have kept and … Continue reading Anikó Dóra Tóth’s Right Swipe Stories: An Anthropological Study of Tinder
Best known as an editor, senior vice president at HarperCollins and an essayist, Karen Rinaldi’s first novel, The End of Men, contains the thread of a plot you might already recognize from Maggie’s Plan, a film released theatrically in May of 2016. Yet somehow, the film managed to come out exactly a year and one month before the book. How, a reader/viewer might wonder? Well, … Continue reading A Tale of Two Maggies in Maggie’s Plan & The End of Men
Charming and ladylike she stretches her torso towards him as he comes and joins the group He drinks, she thinks ‘How can I magnetise?’ Roaring and high pitched her voice takes on pitiful shapes He listens, she yells ‘This is me, I emphasise’ Longing and distant from a sane mind She swims in fake pride He gets up, she follows No one is talking How … Continue reading Too Much Woman by Sarah Helena
Phones ringing without hesitation, this becomes the nation of unworldly attachment to instant reaction. The obscurity of our age set on fire by technologically advanced parasites, everyone’s turning into the same person, paralysed. Fuelled with mortal visions of an ease that is impatiently awaiting us at the gates, or some tunnel, in any case I’ve heard that there’s light. Some people call it peace. But … Continue reading Connected by Sarah Helena
