Sexual Violence

Rise

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

I wasn’t about to tell Simon what happened. Buddy Sikes was one of the popular kids. Simon wouldn’t understand. Not because of his differences, but because he was still at the age where a clear line separated right from wrong.

Bars

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

The Basement

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Teenage parties, lost treasures, wartime bomb shelters

Penumbra

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

If Roe was created in the liminal space of the penumbra, Dobbs is the total eclipse that makes all go dark.

Athens, Revised

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Perhaps you know where this is going, or think you do. I do not. I decide the man is just being hospitable, like all the Greeks I’ve met during my ten days traveling through the country. As we disembark from the ferry, he says he is a father, recently divorced, and was raised in Athens, where his mother still lives. He is on his way there to visit her.

Is This Desire?

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:00:00 -0500

Being honest or open about your Pornhub habits is not the same as telling someone, “I’ve just seen Call My Agent! on Netflix. I think you’d like it.” Part of the reason for that is that most people don’t spend terribly long on Pornhub.

The Psychic Is In

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:10:00 -0400

Being exposed to psychics at such a young age was like being raised Catholic or vegetarian: you continue living out these belief systems even after they no longer serve you.

The Blue Devils Of Blue River Avenue

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 05:00:00 -0500

My mother didn’t like my going over to the Sambeauxs’. There was something mysterious and menacing about that house: a bloodcurdling scream, a silhouette of a knife in the window, a wolf on its hind legs with a leather tail scuffling along behind the juniper trees.

Past Lives

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

I know now this is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship: right before the woman leaves. It’s when some women get murdered. I was lucky.

Haircuts

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 -0500

Going natural, looking professional, shaving it all off

The Lovely Harry, Philip Larkin, And Me

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:20:00 -0400

At the end of our weekly sessions, as I’m about to walk out the door, I hand The Lovely Harry a manila envelope of poems I’ve written that week. Some weeks it’s a thin envelope; other weeks the pages inside push against the seams with their folded energy.

The Children Are Fragile

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:00:00 -0400

It was after this, in the three or four weeks before she stopped coming to class entirely, that Sheila started bringing in the Murder Plays.

Firebirds

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 -0400

After barre, Mme. Francesca follows me to the locker room and tells me I’m officially going to the Cupids dance program this summer and I just can’t stand it.

The World We Still Have

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0500

One of the reasons we’re lonely . . . is that we’ve cut ourselves off from the nonhuman world, and have called this “progress.”

Stories We Tell Now

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We’ve all heard there was drinking, that the parents weren’t home, that the house was huge, full of places for disappearing. And when the girl pressed charges a week later, the boy was incredulous, and his parents were ready to put up a fight.

Childhood

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Flunking a driver’s test, frightening a bully, grown up at fourteen

The Only One She Told

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

You had the face of a man who couldn’t help understanding everything — all of it, the whole pathetic, tragic human thing — and that draws people in. To me you were a magnet of kindness.

Nice Girls

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

I used to feel like an imposter because of my breasts, because even before I got pregnant they were pretty spectacular, and it’s made me wonder if I’ve ever actually earned anything, or if all the jobs and awards and opportunities I’ve gotten, really, have just been handed to me because of fat deposits that would be disgusting if they were placed a few inches lower, on my belly.

Waiting For My Rape

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 00:00:00 -0400

This man could have been my rapist, but he looked too nice. He had thick, wavy hair, like a movie star from the seventies, and a jawbone that could take out your eye. I hung my feet over the edge of the roof and let myself slide into his arms.

The Feminist Club

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400

We experience two kinds of violence: the violence done to us by others, and the violence we do to ourselves. The latter hurts more, because it’s of our own making.

People Are Starving

Tue, 01 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

We didn’t know what it was to be desired. We didn’t know what girls’ bodies were supposed to look like. We just knew it was better for us if nothing stuck out too far.

Goodbye, Patriarchy!

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0500

It’s like the French Revolution. One by one, prominent men are wheeled out to the guillotine and dispatched. Of course, the present-day “deaths” are metaphorical. Garrison Keillor is still alive, just out of sight. But “Garrison Keillor,” the charming, folksy, self-deprecating Midwestern humorist, is dead.

Dark Houses

heatherellesellers@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Gingerly, creeping, my mother drives her “safe” back way home, winding through the subdivisions bordering downtown Orlando, Florida. The little truck doesn’t have air conditioning. I stretch my arm out the window as if I might be able to feel the Spanish moss hanging from the trees like witch hair.

Girls Like Her

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500

I got the call in the middle of the night. I dressed fast, expecting Parker to wake up any minute and make me come back, but he didn’t. It was summer, and the air felt warm even at 2 AM. I made a cup of coffee and walked down the long driveway to the road. Julie was giving me a ride, but she’d never been to my house before. Nobody ever came there to see me.

To Have And To Hold

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 16:41:00 -0400

One quality that helps a marriage work is when partners respect each other and are each grateful for what the other brings to the relationship. Relationships run on an economy of gratitude. And if your partner needs to change his or her behavior, it’s important to ask for that change without attributing bad motives to the behavior. When you do argue, or when your partner gets angry, look for the soft emotion under the hard one and talk to that. A belief in the goodwill of the other person is critical.

Saying No

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 16:16:00 -0500

A frat party, a swastika, a peach

A Boy’s Girl

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

At fifteen I know the word molestation, but it is something done to you by strangers, not brothers who build you forts and make homemade peanut-butter cups.

The Encounter At Twenty, 1966

Sun, 01 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The day that it happened, / my teacher had written crap on the bottom of my first poem. / I wanted to throw it into the Hudson / where it would sink with its no / under the gulls, the garbage scows, and the litter.

The Tyranny Of Paradise

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

When I was twenty-four years old, it looked to me as if America were coming down. It was 1979, and there was runaway inflation, long lines for gasoline, a nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island. Men were curling their hair and wearing high-heeled shoes, and the Soviets were still poised to bomb us off the map.

Little Bird, Little Bird

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

There are four types of brick. I remember two of them: pavior and stock. Our row house was all brick with ledges near the roof, four stories up. Pigeons liked to make nests there, but it was stupid; the ledges were too shallow, and with the first strong gust of wind their nests blew down. Still, year after year, they did it. Optimists, those pigeons.