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Rumpus Original Fiction: La Yegüita
Karen broke out into a full sprint; that was the only way she’d ever hope of catching up to the new mare that everyone said would end up killing her. The locals used meters, but from what Karen could...
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A Photographer’s Wife
Pre-pandemic, my husband was always meeting new women. These women worked as food and prop stylists and assistants to food and prop stylists on the sets where my husband was the photographer. The women...
View ArticleThe Cost of Liberation: Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
A woman leaving her young daughter to seek out a life for herself in another country seems reprehensible. Shocking? Bold? Or perhaps, brave? When a woman is willing to separate herself from her child...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Bad Kind of Puppy
One morning, after her husband had left for work, Clara noticed a ticking in her house. She mentally retraced their steps that morning to see if either of them might have accidentally left an appliance...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Two Flash Fictions by Kelsey Norris
DECENCY RULE The mayor told us not to wear clothes anymore. It was really a crazy thing for him to say. We couldn’t believe it. No one thought he’d make it into office and then no one thought he’d make...
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Owning Your Piles: A Conversation with Maggie Smith
When I teach college introductory creative writing, I always begin the poetry unit by having my students read Maggie Smith poems. I do this because the magic of a Maggie Smith poem is not just in the...
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For Now
Do you know that I believe in God every time that I approach our house from the south? First, I see the huge fir tree in the front, hundreds of feet tall, reaching toward the sky, beyond our little...
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The Hope of Time: Talking with Judith H. Montgomery
Judith Montgomery has a PhD in American Literature from Syracuse University. Originally from Torrington, Connecticut, she now lives in Oregon, in a suburb of Portland. She has won Fellowships from the...
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Wingtips and Shell-Toes
I grew up the beloved only child of a father who—having moved on up from Sheepshead Bay to the Upper East Side—cared deeply about good clothes. His shelves held stacks of Turnbull & Asser shirts...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Footnotes on a love story
Before they were married, they met in a photograph. They stood on opposite ends of it, and beached between them was a dead sea lion, breaded in sand. The way she tells it, they were the only two1...
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American, Not Blonde
After seventeen hours of travel, my husband and I arrive at our destination: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, the Paris of Africa. It’s hot when we land. Tropical hot. Dense and thick, not at all like the oven...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Overlook
Sometimes birds fly into Grand Central Terminal. They cruise around the sky-painted ceiling with its contrived constellations like it is the real sky. It is maybe a better sky because there are less...
View ArticleA Holiday in Hell: Lauren Tivey’s Moroccan Holiday
“The villagers think I’m a witch. Of course, they’re not wrong.” – from “Cerberus” If you’re going to Hell, bring a good guide. A guide who can sneak you in, past Cerberus, of course, but—more...
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Touching What Once Was: A Conversation with Meredith Clark
Meredith Clark is the author of Lyrebird (Platypus Press, 2020), a story of loss, told in fragments. Documenting a miscarriage and the end of a love relationship, Clark’s debut presents a moving...
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Voices on Addiction: The Monster’s Matchstick Mistress
“Draw what you love about yourselves,” Ted, the therapist, says to me and a group of women. Crayons and paper are scattered across a worktable. I’m in a rehab facility in Atlanta struggling with sex...
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Complicating Unhelpful Binaries: Talking with Deesha Philyaw
Deesha Philyaw has always been a dynamic writer, but she wasn’t always in the realm of fiction. In 2013, she co-authored Coparenting 101 with her ex-husband, Michael D. Thomas. For several years, she...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: What Kind of Alone?
A white woman in a red leotard is applying oil to her elbows with five precise rotations. She counts in an intense whisper, her teeth pressed together, her eyes fixed on a spot far ahead of her. All of...
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Winter Baby
I am still on medication when I find out I am pregnant: Zoloft, Ativan. We hadn’t officially started trying, so I hadn’t officially started tapering. But now there is a timetable, a deadline, an...
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Instantly Gritty: Talking with Jennifer Pashley
In 2015, Jennifer Pashley published her first novel, The Scamp, a breathless murder ballad that pitches the reader into an unflinching look at love, lust, and the ravages of poverty. Its themes weren’t...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Black Talk
It was a rare night: David and Keisha had gotten Ava, their always in motion two-and-a-half-year-old, asleep (in her own bed!) at a decent hour. What to do with the extra time? Their choices were...
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