small articles/poetry

To My Rapist 
Sarah Lilius 


Tattered fabric falls to frozen winter ground. Your face, your face, your shove, it’s madness in this place.

Fence built around, wood will splinter if you try to smooth your hands across the white wash grain.

Like it, love it, keep it, suck it, blow it, but now it’s touch this, mend this— bandage, balm.

 Sew around what matters most, even when the machine is broken. That dress looks homemade. That dress has blood at the hem.

Water never hot enough, confusion settles in like a contusion, it blooms purple, lingers like a birthmark.

 I ate Chinese food with girlfriends. Denials, fake confessions, their real happiness, virginity lost means I’m a woman.

Victim: my shaking flesh, the vomit in my palms when I tried to face school, locking knees, the punch I gave you.

 Hidden, pieces of me— a shard, a wing broken never to match the solid wing, purity and innocence.







Exploring feminity 
Victoria Gourley 

“Exploring Femininity” shows how women can pick themselves apart in a mirror. Mirrors are a huge part of everybody’s lives, and women especially can be very conscious of their appearance due to societies influences. I used a mirror that had been decorated with cuttings out of magazines, depicting a contrast between beauty objects (mascara, nail polish etc), and quotes, “I felt helpless”. The dark space to the left of the photograph also enabled me to add text for the front cover



On the Coastal Edge of Eden
Lindsay Emi

Eve sits on the shore, grace pooling around her knees. Alone, she considers the rain of angelic accusations: godless, unholy, woman. Behind her stands a burning field, running red, like a city bombed. Why blame her when the whole world was temptation? She thinks. She tosses an urchin from hand to hand, thinks of how Adam called her thighs light, her ribs a mirror. She fears the future, fears that nothing could splice the garden from her body, summer from violence, home from herself.



My Body, as a Utopia
Lydia Havens

I have made this clear to my family: I am not taking hour long walks every morning to feel pretty. I am not gathering dried mango slices, cold water bottles, and vegetable patties to feel pretty. I am not burning off these 70 pounds and scattering their ashes into the desert to feel pretty. I’m already pretty. These 70 pounds are leaving because I am tired of choking on staircases. I am tired of feeling like my body absorbed a cemetery. I am tired of back aches, interrupted oxygen, my doctor’s abrupt handwriting, my doctor’s slow-burning stare. The word “unhealthy”-- it is haunting. That word roams in so many directions at once. We pluck it from the girls with stomachs like Jupiter, the girls who make dance recitals out of their thigh gaps. As if that’s any of our business. Today I find out that I’ve lost seven pounds. Nine pounds away from what The Biggest Loser would tell me is “One-derland”. God help me if I ever begin to believe that the weight someone else wants me to be is paradise. I want bodies to be seen as Utopias. I want my dream vacation to take place right in my own skin. I will write a lease that never expires, all under my terms. This body, it is my home. The love I have for it is no secret. Yes, today I am unhealthy. But just because I am does not mean that the next girl you come across at 215 pounds is as well. You did not get a key to the front door for a reason. Let this be mine. And let that be hers. My Body, as a Utopia