Creative | Posted by Carson R on 06/22/2012

Everything Was Okay

*Trigger warning: the following story may be upsetting to survivors of / those sensitive to descriptions of sexual assault*

Eve is a palindrome. Reverse the order of letters, and the word remains the same. You’d never notice anything wrong with a backwards eve.

Eve is a marketing consultant. She lives in a narrow townhouse in Seattle. Her cat, Charcoal, roams the metal stairs and hardwood floors. In her living room, a whiteboard of scribbles rests on the black sofa. On the kitchen counter, a stack of invoices bears coffee stains. This is her office, where the computer is always on. Every morning, she comes downstairs and shakes the mouse, and the monitor casts a glow upon her face. The sky is just beginning to brighten as she types out her …

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Creative | Posted by Tiffany C on 05/4/2012

One Night Stand

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Creative | Posted by Quin R on 01/13/2012

You See A Body

You see a body; not a person,

Mind you, that’s above your comprehension

But a body-strike that-an object, a plaything

A dish to be sampled to satisfy some sick craving

Never mind that you don’t even know her name,

Much less her personality, her interests, but it’s just a game

To you isn’t it? It’s not as if she really has time to give

A damn, what with everything heaped upon her just to live!

Between the driving, and the career, the shopping, the cooking,

The raising the children, the endless workouts, the starving herself to keep looking

Just as skinny as you could damn well please, thank you very much! The night class,

The no-sleep, the three-minimum-wage-jobs-just-to-make-rent, but she’s just a piece of ass

To you, isn’t she? She …

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Creative | Posted by Emaan M on 09/23/2011

Shame

Jane had pretty poetry
And hands the size of shoes
And swirling inky look-at-me tattoos
On the trophy shelves of her skin
And Jane never thought twice about you
And nor did she digress;
Don’t help me once, just hurt me
less
Yet in the eyes of everyone Jane was a trailer-worthy mess.
And some sweet girls they said things about Jane
How small and suffocating cotton would stick to her skin
How a boy with dark hair and slinky eyes
Boasted about the game and the win-
Yet no one ever seemed to whisper anything poisonous about him.
Friends, teachers, the
do-gooders and world-changers
Her righteous church-community youth leader
Would always have their little snickers of Jane
And that’s what drove her from church.
And no one ever had …

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Creative | Posted by Nicole T on 07/15/2011

The Dishwasher’s Daydream

The sink-washed dishes clap thunderously as you dry them

against one another, as if attempting to ignite a fire between

two friendly sticks. The result: a broken dish

or another proclamation that “This cup…plate…bowl is cracking.”

The washed skin on my hand is growing apart, like the leather on

a cow’s back, and it goes down the drain, and gets cozy with the debris

along with the blood that came from cleaning knives too quickly.

You scurry around the kitchen, telling me about your day

as you shove the dishes into their proper places. The plates go

above the larger plates, and ceramic cups go into a different cupboard

next to the other things that aren’t identical in size and shape.

And if I were a bowl, I would be …

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Creative | Posted by Nicole T on 07/8/2011

The Girl Doesn’t Like to Compromise

the girl doesn’t like to compromise.

she likes to sip mauy tais while staring at guys and watching movies waddle across the television screen. the girl likes to tell the truth but is more comfortable with lies.

she kissed one of her boyfriends in secret because of his blue eyes, her girlfriend in secret because of her second pair of lips, and man that she carnally desired behind closed doors because of the extension between his hips, while

still touching finger tips with her girlfriend. Sometimes she wished that they were all just friends. The guys and the girl… and the other guys that are not mentioned. She wishes that she could sit in an apartment alone, while her girl and those guys pendulum closely by, and she can experience …

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Creative | Posted by Talia on 07/1/2011

He Promised Her A Rose Garden

It was 1976.

Peak of the women’s lib movement.

New York, New York.

Peak of the peak.

She was going for a PhD in psych.

She could, thanks to Betty Friedan.

“After you finish your PhD,” he told her,

“We’ll move to Long Island.

Have three or four kids.

Buy a house.

With a white picket fence,

And a rose garden.”

She was nineteen.

She fell for it.

A week after the wedding

He got fired.

It wasn’t such a surprise.

Between the mental illness

Never showing up

And long sick leaves

It was just a matter of time.

“I won’t get a job immediately,” he told her.

“You can type anywhere.

I have to do something important.

I have to have a career.

I’m the man of …

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Creative | Posted by Nurdiyansah on 04/15/2011

The Little Girl Dance

The little girl is dancing terribly wild

She clinks, how her body moves

Only herself

While she’s surrounded by boys

Whirling like a lily

Turning around over and over

Until loose from the rotation

And her hands try to reach the sun above

She laughs so loudly at the moment of her dance

Doesn’t care what people think

A girl is plunging into her own love

Love needs no boy

Love needs herself to be a happy person

The little girl is still dancing madly

With eyes open widely

With smiles bursting widely

Everybody knows they see a happines in her

But somehow, they say : “She is crazy”

The little girl stops and gets dizzy

Every eye lights her

Again, she doesn’t care

Her chest moves up and down…

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