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A Political Pregnancy
The spring that Trump wins the Republican primary, I discover I am pregnant with my second child. The pregnancy is unintended. A surprise. A month after I tell my husband I want to stop at one child,...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Mother We Share
Whenever I am in a crowded room, I find a person standing far away and wait until they look in my general direction. I imagine they’re really looking right at me. We forge a connection, plan without...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Witch House
I’m not saying polyamory can’t work after you have kids. I’m just saying it stopped working for me. I didn’t want another lover. I just wanted someone to help with the dishes. Even in our hip little...
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Too Close to Home
I tell my body to sink into our leather couch because people are outside firing their guns into the cold black sky as if they have lost their natural black minds. I keep sinking deeper and deeper...
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What It Means to Be a Human: Talking with Maggie Downs
It all started with her mother’s subscription to National Geographic magazine when Maggie Downs was a child: Every month, when a new issue arrived, my mom and I sat at the kitchen table and let the...
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Milked
I never noticed my breasts when they were round, fleshy, and upright. They were parts of me: a complete being. I notice them, now, when I step out of the shower. My self-image has fractured, narrowed...
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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...
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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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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...
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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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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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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Rumpus Exclusive: “Dirty Little Secrets”
His eyes rested on the naked Barbie with matted red hair and a blue ribbon tied around its neck that she’d dumped on the table in front of him. “I need to know it’s not you.” Shaking hands spread the...
View ArticleHaunted by Hoax: Paul Griner’s The Book of Otto and Liam
Paul Griner’s new novel, The Book of Otto and Liam, opens with Otto Barnes, a thirty-something freelance artist, getting pulled over. He’d been following a route mapped out precisely three years before...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Tangible Darkness
“What time was I born?” Yashar asks his father. “4:45.” “It’s 4:22 now. So in half an hour, I’m six. Right?” “That’s right.” “How old are you?” “Thirty-four.” “Are you ten times older than me?”...
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Cooped
Just before it all begins, the dog gets out of the house and kills one of our chickens. He shakes her until she goes soft and limp and then he drops her body on the ground. My husband gets rid of the...
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Voices on Addiction: Family Tree
I’m the first in a long line of resilient Midwestern women not to marry an alcoholic, but to become one. The shadow in the veins of the men in my life slid for generations through both bloodlines and...
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