by Diane Saarinen Throughout the month of October, the International Museum of Women’s “Imaging Ourselves” online exhibition hosted a film festival featuring original films by women directors. As my heritage is Scandinavian, I was especially interested in Maja Borg’s Look at Lucia, a 52-minute film on the Swedish celebration of Santa Lucia, the festival held [...]
National Novel Writing Month: One Author’s Journal
by Karen Harrington Writing a novel in one month? Can it be done? I’ve been just about every kind of writer you can imagine. Articles. Brochures. Speeches. Screenplays. Novels. Short Stories. You name it. I’m good at deadlines. I like deadlines. But I’ve never had a deadline loom this large. I’m talking about the National [...]
Still Life In The Art Room by Liesl Jobson
Ufudu is restless today, says a boy under his breath. He rinses a sable brush in a jar of water. Ufudu indeed! grumble the scissors on the shelf. Silence matrics, says Miss Dube. Yesterday the name given affectionately to the art teacher by her students suited her ponderous tread. Today she moves like a plover [...]
Deliverance by Barbara Reese
I held it in my hand, gender unknown The blood sticky and warm Taking repose, inside the crease, of my lifeline, The rusty brown, half-circle path course circling Delicately, down and around my thumb I stared mutely at the pad, meant to absorb, Not cradle The miniature purple skull and curve of a limb, Barely [...]
Layers by Adriana DiGennaro
It is midday and she reads on the bed. Her curves are clothed, she lies on her stomach: Copper strands strewn over a black blouse, a line of purple shirt hem under the first, next a gap between clothes layers— a strip of skin, a narrow expanse for kisses to stick to. Magenta lace pantywaist, [...]
Tradition Bound by Naureen Amjad
The walls around me They hover Menacingly Coming closer From all sides Joining hands Together They weigh me down Constrict Restrict My every move. Now My remains Lying in a sepulcher Have learned to conform; But the spirit Crawls On the walls Looking for a leeway. Beyond the wall A leeway to go Beyond the [...]
Encounters With Difference: Discovery Of Feminism In God’s Room by Sumana Roy
I wasn’t born a woman. I really wasn’t. Unlike most parents in India then, my parents had wished, and perhaps prayed (my father was an atheist then, so, I really cannot be very sure!) that their first-born be a girl child. So my grandfather who was later to dream of the Lord Shiva, not the [...]
Bird Women by Patty Somlo
We have come to this village high in the mountains in search of the bird women. It has taken us all day to get here from the city, climbing the wet mountain roads so slowly sometimes I feared the truck would give up and start rolling back down the hill. Bright green banana leaves cover [...]
To Say Mirror Is Only Half The Story by Loren Kleinman
Cut me up and put me back together as another body. Take the thumbs and poke out the eyes. Sew the heart into the pelvic cradle, staple the stomach. Break lights are contagious, and there are so many roads. My pace resembles litter-ridden potholes, backed up gutters. The crayfish rebuilds their shells over and over [...]
Origami Birds by Shannon K. Winston
I tiptoe over clothes scattered across the floor. It is noon and the room is dark. The shutters are closed, holding in damp air, shutting out light that persists and falls in bars around your bed. Seeing you curled on sheets, your back towards me and pressed (almost clinging) to the wall, I worry you [...]
