Women’s Issues + Awareness – Page 4

Plan B

January 28, 2024January 28, 2024 Maeve Flanagan

It’s 2:04 a.m. No more denial. I’ve got exactly eighteen hours and fifty-six minutes. Okay. I’m in the Dark Web. Now what do I do? Take a breath. Think. Maybe I should go to a forum. No. Too many crazy people. And spies too. They might figure out what I’m Read more

A Bald Girl

January 21, 2024January 21, 2024 Sarah M. Levy

My mom had it. I know she had hair in all of the pictures of her before I was born. I know she had hair when I was little. I know she got her hair done at Menage e Trois Coiffers on Burton Way, and I didn’t know what “Menage Read more

Angel’s Eye

January 17, 2024January 18, 2024 Carolyn McAuliffe

A lone woman wades through sea green laps of city-grade fountain water under the specter of the Angel’s eye. At noon she folds prayer rugs of teal, sapphire, and gold in neat stacks; hangs rosary beads onto a wooden board bearing crooked nails. Seeks Jesus’s son through spoken word and Read more

I Saw Charles Darwin On Tinder

December 4, 2023December 4, 2023 Ericka Russell

I take the Plan B at 8am sharp in the Walgreens’ parking lot. He says he’ll split the cost with me, but we never talk again. I blink, and I’m 15, ravenous, researching male species. The toll to impregnate their mate. Of course he drowns his Anas Read more

The Catalogue of Men

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023 Cynthia Good

Before sunrise I’m flipping through a catalogue of men, A parade of men looking for relationships, super closeups, Guys in ball caps, blurry headed, sideways, in bed, crazy Faces with monsters, in cubicles, beside lattice fences, Strapped into car seats, in the shower, in private airplanes And parking lots, with Read more

How Do You Feel About Nudity?

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023 Dianne Blomberg, Ph.D.

I had been someone’s wife. When he died, I was someone’s widow. I could hardly breathe, carrying the weight of us in me. One pint at a time, Ben and Jerry’s Karamel Sutra soothed, but the feeling of longing took me down, longing for us and longing now for me. Read more

ARMED

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023 Susan Shea

I didn’t want to raise an unarmed saint after seeing my mother wear that role, always waiting for some relief like an unsheared sheep, she walked her muddy field alone until she fell from the weight of her own worsted wool, unable to feed herself. I was powerless then but Read more

Late Night

November 6, 2023November 6, 2023 Judith Staff

“You look tired.” Yeah. “Late night?” No….no, it’s not that. I’m tired of trying change; of trying to heal from the trauma; of trying to discover a plateau of self-acceptance; of trying to be an adequate person, and better wife; of trying to worry less about being a good mother. Read more