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Lean and hungry women take on new strength
when disguised as men.
They wrap themselves in tailored suits as in cocoons.
They savor the simplicity of the cut,
the smooth material, the presence of pockets.
Above all, they don’t have to accessorize.
What’s more, dressed in this manner,
they begin to speak more calmly,
with a precise elegance, no frills.
Words unspool from them,
from the core of their being,
and fitfully, they take flight.
Izabela Filipiak, author of several books of fiction and nonfiction and the poetry collection Mme Intuita, teaches at the University of Gdańsk.
Karen Kovacik is Director of Creative Writing at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Her translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, West Branch, Poetry East, and numerous anthologies.
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Draconian individual punishment distracts from systemic change and reinforces the cruelest and most racist system of incarceration on the planet.
Our well-being depends on a better understanding of how the logic of labor has twisted our relationship with pleasure.
Fiction
“I was my father’s son. My father was Nai Nai’s least favorite.” A Taiwanese American man, driven from home by a secret, reevaluates his childhood memories of his grandmother.
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