In Walked Mania by Another Name… (and It wasn’t Bud)
I always told myself, “If I could just finish college.” Then, “If I could just move.” And then finally, “If I could just find a job in my major and work.” The voices would stop then. But they didn’t. I finally had to admit to myself this was a for-real lifelong struggle. I wasn’t ready to handle that, and death was my contingency plan.
Continue reading “Jacquese Armstrong”
Child Witch
Summer of 1975. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released. Elton John’s Philadelphia Freedom manned the top of the Billboard Charts. Michigander Gerald Ford was president, succeeding Watergate- disgraced Richard Nixon. My favorite jeans were vertically striped in white, yellow, green and brown.
It wasn’t Levittown, but it was similar. Livonia was a once new-ring suburb of Detroit, where I was born. Our little burg was called Devonaire Woods and carpeted with post WWII brick ranch homes. All were designed and built alike: three bedrooms, one bath, living room, kitchen and basement. If kids visited someone else’s house, you didn’t need to ask where the bathroom was.
Continue reading “Gina Fournier”
This month, the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo hosted a book reception for “Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art” (Vernon Press), co-edited by Jessica Lowell Mason (MITA’s co-founder) and Nicole Crevar. The reception was held held at UB in Clemens Hall, North Campus, on March 15, 2023.
Continue reading “A Book Reception for Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art”
Dear Abu
It’s a curious thing. I don’t know why when I see photos of you I must fight the urge to cry. First as a kid it was anger, then sadness, wondering why? Now as a grown woman, it’s still sadness and tears. As if my heart has been broken. As if my heart has been ripped out of me. As if there’s an emptiness inside, a void that’s never and will never be filled.
Continue reading “Daaimah Lyon”
Jody
“Hi, I’m Jody. I’m a lesbian but don’t worry, it’s not like I’m going to attack you in the middle of the night.”
I spun around to see a stocky woman with close cropped hair standing a bit too close for comfort. Jody appeared to be 20-something, like me, and wore tattered dungarees, left-overs from the 70s, like mine. I had been unpacking and quietly checking out my new digs on the unlocked unit of this prestigious, private, psychiatric hospital south of Boston. I think I did feel a bit attacked as Jody’s booming voice jolted me back to reality. I likely jumped a mile.
Continue reading “Betty Aubut”
That’s It
By Bonnie Henderson Schell
Strange things were happening to me, and I was scared. I knew that I had developed tardive dyskinesia and torticollis. The skin around my lips was chapped because my tongue hung out of my mouth, making a circle, licking my lips. I drooled all night on my pillow and down the front of my clothes. It was difficult not to walk to the left because lately my neck and body were painfully twisted in that direction so that the necklines of my sweaters and tunics fell off my left shoulder. I had stopped going to lunch with anyone and turned down phone calls using Facetime. I avoided the mirror over the sink.
Continue reading “Bonnie Henderson Schell”
For You
You told we are beyond any boundaries
I traversed and transgressed every boundary
For you
When I asked you do the same
You want to limit in your limits
And started hurling loaded words
Trust, honesty. . .
Continue reading “Pulkita Anand”
I Collected Four Pall Bearers Along the Way
1: The Notifying Officer
Estranged is an elegant word for a particular brutality. My family is sick with it. My brother died within the immurement of many estrangements: from me, from our bad father, from our mother, from (presumably) friends and old lovers. Meaning, he died alone. “Unattended” is the word the very gentle sheriff used when he broke the news to me a full country away from that brother, away from his body that was now in need of a next of kin. We don’t discuss how or why my brother was not in possession of a next of kin during the last moments of his life nor in the many days he waited after death for neighbors to summon a clean-up crew.
Continue reading “Deb Rogers”
In Memoriam
September 30, 2021
Four months ago, my partner and I broke up.
We were together for six years. We met during our first year in graduate school. We clung to each other like lost children. We had sex the first time we kissed. Twenty-four hours later, they told me I was the one. I was the one for years. The one who got lost in a department store in New Jersey. The one who was bullied for being Asian. The one with the traumatic memories. The one who almost made their mother faint with their difficultness.
Continue reading “MT Vallarta”
And a Cherry on Top
It was a brisk January day, the sun was bright and shining. It was the kind of day when I look out the window and the sun convinces me Spring has come early, I go outside and then have to immediately zip my jacket all the way up, pull my collar high around my neck and shove my ungloved hands into my pockets: ridiculing myself for being naïve.
Continue reading “Diane Renee Tomasi”
Madwomen in the Attic 