Finally, the winter chill has started to thaw into a warmer, sunnier spring. Making the days even sunnier are these amazing publications from the members of Women Who Submit. Congratulations to all!
From Lisa Cheby‘s “Roof Clearing” at Ruminate:
At 9:30 that morning, I climbed onto the roof of my church, thankful for the overcast sky. I had committed to help at our church work party a few weeks before the government openly started separating and imprisoning families at our borders and criminalizing refugees seeking a better life, like my father did 60 years ago when he immigrated from Hungary. I had considered going downtown to an occupy protest, but I chose to be on the roof among an array of brooms and rakes, a leaf blower, and five other church members. Our task was to clear pine needles from the roof.
From Erana Leiken‘s “Retail Therapy” at *82Review:
What I thought would be a summer job in a small, college town in Indiana, became a time of unexpected and sometimes tragic encounters with other women’s lives. In my early twenties, I just finished my first year of teaching and needed work for the summer.
Also from Erana, “What I Learned from a Cockroach,” at Women for One:
Like most people, I find cockroaches disgusting and repulsive, but one cockroach taught me a lesson just at the time I needed it. I’m afraid of bugs…always have been. I still remember them knocking and buzzing at the screen as I tried to sleep on a hot night without air conditioning in Chicago when I was a young girl.
From “Testament” by Lituo Huang at The Grief Dialogues:
On the day of your passing
I watched your friends
scatter—
some, to high places—tops of trees
to wave their branches in winds that waved yours,
tips of staves, ascending keening notes—
Also from Lituo, “My Neighbor, Who Has a Mail Order Bride,” at Recenter Press:
Gosling-waddling,
skinned peach eyeballs
in a blown-glass bulb
lodged atop a golem of clay.
In honor of National Endometriosis Awareness Month, we share Marnie Goodfriend‘s “9 Endometriosis Symptoms You Shouldn’t Ignore” at SheKnows:
Many endometriosis symptoms have been normalized by our culture, hovering under the golf-sized umbrella with the label “female problems.” The injustice in this is when the invisible illness is diagnosed and managed earlier, women have better options and better help managing their pain. Even though there is no known cause or cure, a diagnosis is critical in creating a care plan with your doctor to help mitigate these symptoms and puts an end to the question, what on earth is wrong with me?
From Carla Sameth‘s “Spinning” at Mutha Magazine:
She has begun to spin. Thirty minutes on the bike, thirty minutes on the weight circuit, trying to follow along. Keep her body moving, round and round.
The gym sits in the little town of Sierra Madre where her older sister lives with her family.
She is the middle sister who lives nearby. Like the Rose Parade floats, she makes the trip from Pasadena traveling on Sierra Madre Boulevard, but the floats only go once a year on their voyage to their holding spot near Sierra Madre, on Orange Grove Avenue.
Congratulations to Lisbeth Coiman whose essay, “Grey Hair of Desire,” was published in Unchaste Anthology Vol. 3!
Congratulations to Lisa Richter whose essay, “Flood,” was published in Joomag!
