Category: Women’s Issues + Awareness

Non-Binary: Womanhood from the Margins

Lily Hartenstein

I was in my friend Bracha’s backyard, celebrating the end of preschool by making tree-hangings out of scratched CDs (to scare away birds) while her mom listened to NPR from a portable radio. I heard an unfamiliar word and instantly asked her what it was, excited to add another to Read more

Lily Hartenstein

Lily Hartenstein is a journalism student at Emerson College where they spend most of their time underground, either in the broadcasting booth of WECB, the student-run radio station and blog she is Editor-in-Chief of, or stuck on the Red Line of the MBTA.

Birdcage

Alexandra Meehan

She hangs Baskets by birdcages Flowers, a shovel, paper weights On loose newspapers that flutter In the wind—a bearing, A stone garden for zen. Wing clippings. I heard She had a backstreet abortion Once she crossed the law— She knows no-more-wire-hangers Better than I do, I imagine The Swinging Sixties Read more

Alexandra Meehan

Alexandra Meehan is a neurodivergent poet and poetry editor residing in Gainesville, Florida. Alexandra earned her BA in English from the University of South Florida in Creative Writing.She has mentored lyricists and has worked as a professional writer and as a creative director. Alexandra enjoys watching foreign films, cultivating carnivorous plants, and painting. She is enamored by wordplay and has a lifelong obsession with Emily Dickinson. Alex's work has appeared in Feminine Collective and Rhythm & Bones Lit. She has a forthcoming poetry book. Follow Alexandra on Twitter @LexMeehan

36G

Christina Strigas

Living with them can be mostly a drag. I got them in Grade 10, a curse from Aphrodite. I got them gift-wrapped under cotton shirts, cotton bras,  wonder  bras thirty dollar bras, now 130 bare necessity bras, with black lace, purple flowers, a life of heaviness. I got cysts, I Read more

Christina Strigas

Christina Strigas is an author and poet, raised by Greek immigrants, who has written four poetry books. Her poetry book LOVE & VODKA was featured by CBC Books in, “Your Ultimate Canadian Poetry List: 68 Poetry Collections Recommended by you.” Her most recent poetry book, LOVE & METAXA, has garnered positive reviews, including Pank Magazine. Strigas’s poems have appeared in Montreal Writes, Feminine Collective, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Pink Plastic House Journal, BlazeVOX, Thimble Lit Magazine, Twist in Time Literary Magazine, The Temz Review, and Coffin Bell Journal, among others. Her poem, “Dead Wife” was nominated for best of the net 2020. In Spring 2022, she will be releasing her fifth poetry book by Free Lines Press, a French indie magazine that publishes experimental poetry. Twitter: @christinastriga Instagram : @c.strigas_sexyasspoet Facebook: Christina Strigas Author

Pandemic Dissonance

Mary Novaria

Unless we are divinely called to monastic life, most of us don’t thrive in isolation. Even we introverts have our limits. Besides, it’s one thing to choose seclusion and determine for ourselves when we want to hole up alone and for how long. It’s quite another to have confinement thrust Read more

Mary Novaria

Mary Novaria's is a two-time Writer's Digest award winner whose work has been featured in Oprah Daily, Washington Post, Spirituality & Health, Cosmopolitan, Feminine Collective, FF2 Media, HuffPost, and elsewhere. She and her husband are empty nesters who live in the mountains of Colorado with their rescue dog, Rooney. She is currently working on a novel.

FRIDA

Anne Whitehouse

“Love the earth and sun and the animals… And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” –Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass   The address the woman at the market gave her led to a stone house with a wooden door on a rubbish-strewn street in Mexico City. Read more

Anne Whitehouse

Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Meteor Shower (Dos Madres Press, 2016). She has also written a novel, Fall Love, which is now available in Spanish translation as Amigos y amantes by Compton Press. Recent honors include: 2018 Prize Americana for Prose, 2017 Adelaide Literary Award in Fiction, 2016 Songs of Eretz Poetry Prize, 2016 Common Good Books’ Poems of Gratitude Contest, 2016 RhymeOn! Poetry Prize, 2016 F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Poetry Prize. She lives in New York City. www.annewhitehouse.com

One Thousand and One Ways to Make Your Own Gender Trouble

Rebecca Lee

1. I am thirty-six I am marrying a man again I have frozen five embryos my popsicle babies saved for a rainy day when I’m old enough to be someone’s mother Someone on the internet says Anna Paquin can’t be bisexual if she’s married to Stephen Moyer. Someone else says Read more

Rebecca Lee

Rebecca Lee is a public interest lawyer by day and writer of poetry and prose by night. A queer writer of color, she is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Senior Articles Editor of the California Law Review and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice. Her poetry is forthcoming in Dispatches from Quarantine. She lives in San Francisco with her fiancé and their Goldendoodle, Justice.

Women: Ragged and Torn, Again, Thanks to Texas

Marsha Owens

I can become easily pissed sometimes, but today I’m juggling just feeling pissed with wanting to slam every man I see into a frigging wall, smashing his head. If only I had the strength. But I don’t. I’m a fragile little woman, you know—that weaker sex, not strong enough. Of Read more

Marsha Owens

Marsha is a retired educator who lives and writes in Richmond VA. Her favorite quote for these troubled times: “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.” (Meryl Streep) Her work has been published at NewVerseNews, The Wild Word, and Life in 10 Minutes. #Resist

The Pain of My Sister’s Murder Gets Me Up in the Morning

Kim Sisto Robinson

The day he shot my sister, it was like any other day. Gold sun, warm breezes, and aqua air. It was perfect until it wasn’t perfect. The skies didn’t darken until 5:15 PM. This is when he pulled the trigger. This is when he changed our lives. Bang. Bang. Bang. Read more

Kim Sisto Robinson

Kim Sisto Robinson is a mother, lover, poet, writer, educator, obsessive blogger, lover of cats, cheese puffs, chocolate chips cookies, Sylvia Plath, addicted to books, women’s stories, walking with audio books ( Lolita was off the charts!), and powerful, transformative words. Her work has appeared in Scary Mommy, Bella On Line, Glass Woman, Migrations, Rebelle Society, and Feminine Collective. She created her blog, My Inner Chick, to honor her sister, Kay, whom was murdered by her estranged husband in 2010. Her mission is to give “Voice” to all women without one. She was honored the "Men As Peacemaker's Award" in 2015 for her work with domestic violence.