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by Ocean Vuong The October leaves coming down, as if called. Morning fog through the wildrye beyond the train tracks. A cigarette. A good sweater. On the sagging porch. While the family sleeps. That I woke at all & the hawk up there thought nothing of its wings. That I snuck onto the page while the guards were shitfaced on codeine. That I read my books by the light of riotfire. That my best words came farthest from myself & it’s awesome. That you can blow a man & your voice speaks through his voice. Like Jonah through the whale.…
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by Alexandra Vasti 3/5 This was the cheesiest of cheesy romances, to be sure, but it was better than I expected from the title. The characters fell flat for me, which is why I gave it three stars instead of four, but overall it was well-written and entertaining enough to breeze through quickly! I would have liked more slow burn and fewer cringy nicknames. I’d still recommend it to anyone looking for a historical sapphic romance!
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I never thought I wanted to be a parent. I know I could never be pregnant, wouldn’t want to be anyway, and it seemed unlikely I’d ever have enough money to adopt, given the whole “recession” thing. I didn’t want to be called “Mom,” either. But I was always good with kids. I started babysitting my little sisters when I was 12. It was a system that worked for everyone—Papa leaves for work first, then Mom, then I walk the little ones to Rock Harbor Elementary on my way to the middle school. I was never later than the second…
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by Simon Maddrell born just six months later in the same place, on the same island.even though i can’t act or sing or dance —but apart from that, we shared a common fear of cybermen and we couldn’t hide behind the same sofaeven though we had the same difference in our way. before it’s a sin was sung we tried to escape from shame— i hid in a similar island home, river-locked in the forest of dean.even though i was fifteen years behind your pink-palaced fun and follies, we were the man most likely to realise our ambitions with damn…
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by Elena Ferrante 4/5 I read this for book club and loved it. I thought it was incredibly interesting and well-written, and I loved the extent to which I did (and didn’t) find it relatable. But only one other person in the group liked it! Everyone else said they found it boring—I was shocked! I think the main reason I liked it is because of the extent to which it poses itself as a story of two friends, while actually revealing a narrative much darker and more disturbing. My Brilliant Friend is ultimately a story of masculinity and the insidious…
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I do not want to be loved like the sea. I do not want to feel my waves crashing against your shore, to become a predictable, natural menace around which lovers plan their evening picnics. I do not want to be feared like the sailor fears the squall. I do not want to be loved like the moon, admired from afar, respected, written about, sung to. Untouchable in my aloofness. Alone in my tragic beauty, a victim to my impenetrable, inevitable fate. I do not want to be worshipped in the night and forgotten with the rise of the sun.…
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by Marge Piercy Learning to love differently is hard,love with the hands wide open, lovewith the doors banging on their hinges,the cupboard unlocked, the windroaring and whimpering in the roomsrustling the sheets and snapping the blindsthat thwack like rubber bandsin an open palm. It hurts to love wide openstretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster,then of blunt knives, thenof sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexesof grab, of clutch; to love and letgo again and again. It pesters to rememberthe lover who is not in the bed,to hold back what is owed to the…
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by Fernando A. Flores 4/5 I heard about Fernando Flores’s writing first when I still lived in Texas—he’s a local Austin author who’s well known there for his book Tears of the Trufflepig. I never had the chance to read any of his work before I left, although I always meant to. I saw this book at my favorite bookstore here in Brooklyn and knew it was finally time! I really enjoyed Valleyesque, and I’m hoping to lend it out to several of my friends soon. This collection would be a great fit for fans of Kelly Link (whose short…
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The last time I visited here, I was worshipped; the people birthed and married and fought and died in my honor; they donated the finest scraps from their tables, even when those tables neared empty; they built temples and destroyed monuments for the sake of my glory, and when I finally fled I did so knowing that my names, of which there were many, would not be forgotten. And they have not forgotten me, although the names that were once whispered in pleading prayers are now found more frequently in their square-bound scrolls and their talking pictures and the neon…
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by Billy-Ray Belcourt Utopia is an impossible demand. Most likely,it’s what happens when no one’s looking. On Grindr, my profile stated: DESIRE IS A PLANETTRAPPED INSIDE AN EVEN BIGGER PLANET. The men I met were aroused by the world; I was aroused by the opposite of the world. Turns out there can be so much nightinside a single man that to be contained within it is a kind of violence. Turns out the bodyis so much more than I ever bargained for. Of course I didn’t love them properly—I livedwith the vastness and loneliness of a continent. Please don’t ask me…
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Emily Vance Brown 