Author Archive

Ovary

January 15, 2013
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I left my ovary on the subway last night. Stepped out. Felt light. Heard the doors close behind me, and realized I’d left my ovary behind.   If there was an honest person left in New York, maybe they would return it. But you can get 2000 dollars for an egg, at least that’s...
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Posted in Health, Poetry, Reproduction, U.S. | Comments Off

The Assembly

November 29, 2012
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Queens, NY 1984 Nothing in P.S. 19 was ever heated enough. The auditorium, the cafeteria, the large windows with their pull-down plastic vinyl drapes rattled in another winter storm.  Ms. Cooperman, our teacher, frowned as she saw us shiver. “Bring your coats,” she said. “We’re having an assembly.”  It had snowed heavily the day...
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Posted in Culture, Education, Health, Politics, Sexuality, U.S., Uncategorized, Youth | 2 Comments »

Secret Survivor: An Interview with Amita Swadhin

October 21, 2012
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Secret Survivor: An Interview with Amita Swadhin

On the morning of July 16, 2012, I received a letter from Amita Swadhin, an activist and educator who is at the forefront of the movement to end Child Sexual Abuse. Her father Vashisht “Victor” Vaid was put on probation twenty years ago for sexually assaulting her during her childhood. Amita had just discovered...
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Posted in Family, Health, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, U.S., Violence, World, Youth | 7 Comments »

The Father

June 17, 2012
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  The hands of the clocks turn until there are no hands anymore   The years unfold: work, work, work the numbers on the paycheck never match the hurt in his bones, the money sent home,   The homes built in Pakistan, abandoned, all the sons of his brothers came here, to this god-forsaken...
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Worry and anxiety have worn me down to the bone

May 30, 2012
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There was no rug on the floor and the old lady from downstairs would crawl up on her hands through the wood and show up at the door, screaming   there was no rug on the floor and any scrape or movement would start the beating up from down below the wooden broom-gunfire and...
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Posted in Culture, Economy, Family, Immigration, Poetry, Politics, U.S. | Comments Off

The Endless Baptism

May 15, 2012
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The Endless Baptism For Palestine For the last few months, I’ve been working on a series of essays on Palestine. I’ve now written and erased my words until there is nothing left but the original title of the series. It could fit on a button: “Islamophobia is not the answer to Anti-Semitism.” —-Eventually, the...
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Meteors

May 13, 2012
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to sleep all day in loving arms or call my mother and hear her say Bushra? I was thinking of you right now   to sleep all day in loving arms or spend the morning in my apartment in the Bronx feeling the sun warm the linoleum looking out the window and thinking:   I...
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Arts & Culture

  • 3 poems by Ian EllasanteIMG_3643

    Diana and the face of the moon another night you are          . turning your face ………………….. i am already gone and you are throwing stones        . Diana swearing never ….. swearing never …… swearing never ………………………………………… again just say what you are trying [...]

  • Two Poems: “Different Pages” and “The Bee Trap”969930_134837700045011_155646280_n

    By Kristy Webster   The Bee Trap   Some girls have eyes like invitations, and some girls wear glasses and scarves, walk with a whistle in their mouth,   Some girls leave the window cracked open, they need more air always more than the breeze will bring and some people [...]

  • from Narrative & Nest by Danielle VogelBook Cover of Narrative & Nest, Vogel

      from Narrative & Nest   by Danielle Vogel   Toward Untraumatizing the Sentence— If anything comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it was conceived. —Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own    I’m beginning [...]