Part of growing up with someone is learning how to grow apart too. When we started high school we drifted a little. Our senior year we had anatomy together and became friends again. We spent every morning together in the commons area eating breakfast. Our friend, Emily, dubbed us "The Breakfast Club" and decided which characters from the film we were. The night we graduated we all rode together to the local movie theater still in our graduation regalia and we watched back to back movies before going home. My own family had pizza and gathered together, but we went out together instead. I still think about it a lot: the way friends become family.
Read MoreFact and Fiction Are Different Truths
When we hand over the responsibility of discerning the true from the false, we lose our ability to identify it ourselves.
Read MoreCommunity, Murder & Feminism on the Podcast My Favorite Murder
I have discovered a pretty well known podcast called My Favorite Murder. Two women, Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff, host the show. It’s considered a comedy podcast. Most people wonder: Where’s the humor in murder? Most would also argue that there is none. However, the humor comes from somewhere else. It’s part of this idea that in order to understand something better we have to get close it. In order to understand why people like Dennis Rader kill we have to pay attention and get closer. So, the humor then, it comes from a place of trying to conquer fear and come to a point of understanding.
Read MoreThis Is What Our Readers Loved in 2017
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
We really didn't want to do a "best of" list because it can feel reductive (and we love all of our content and all of our writers)—but we did want to do a roundup of some of the reads favorited and widely-read by our readers, along with those pieces that deeply resonated with our team of editors. There is no way that this list is comprehensive or representative of the many incredible pieces we've published over the past year, though!
Interview with Author, Mortician and Death Positive Activist Caitlin Doughty by Trista Edwards
On My Unapologetic Mother by Vanessa Wang
What Being a Caulbearer Means to Me by Kailey Tedesco
Poetry by Leslie Contreras Schwartz
Mexican White Magic by Lucina Stone
Read Tarot With a Simple Deck of Playing Cards by Tiffany Chaney
10 Movies About Witches That Will Terrify and Enchant You by Leza Cantoral
Intersectional Feminism: 5 Things White Women Need to Remember by Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro
Book of Shadows by Tina V. Cabrera
The Only Living Girl in a Rock Opera by Hannah Cohen
Poetry by Dominique Christina
"The blood of black women is unremarkable.
Window dressing, you might call it
For the horror show of lugging around
A body built for a funeral."
A Song for My Voice: A Non-binary Survivor Speaks Up by Chloé Rossetti
A Collaborative Poem by Alexis Bates & Logan February
A Water Ritual For Grief & Trauma by Lisa Marie Basile
How to be A Duplicitous Woman by Lydia A. Cyrus
Three Small Occult Presses You Should Check Out This Month by Trista Edwards
A Spell for Body Love & Appreciation by Laura Delarato
"It’s 2017 and 91% of women in the US are unhappy with their bodies. There is something wrong with this number. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like; we all walk around with an invisible cloud of insecurities based on our distorted view of how we are suppose to look — measured by impossible beauty standards. Advertisements, film and tv representations of women, media criticisms of bodies: they don’t care if you can wake up every morning as a person who love themselves. They want you to buy their product."
Poetry by Stephanie Valente
9 Reasons Why the Canadian Horror Film "Curtains" Deserves a Remake by Tiffany Sciacca
7 Doable, Inexpensive & Meaningful Ways to Practice Witchcraft by Archita Mittra
Where My Latina Protags At? by Amanda Toledo
Fibromyalgia: Three Instances of by Jay Vera Summer
Darrryl by Justin Allard
Valerie Hsiung In Conversation With Vi Khi Nao by Vi Khi Nao
"I am also drawn to the idea of poetry as thrown dice, poetry as a ritual effort (ie: climbing up a mile-long set of <stone> stairs only to encounter the Oracle--you know what I’m talking about, disembodied as It may be, who then takes over your body and voice and dictates to you yet ever so tenderly what to do. In this case, what poem to write)."
Every Single Reason You Should Brag Your Pushcart Nominations by Lisa Marie Basile
Theresa Duncan, My East Village Ghost by Patricia Grisafi
How to Create an Altar for Self-Care & Intention Setting by Lisa Marie Basile
What Self-Care & Beauty Rituals Mean for Trans & Non-Binary People by Joanna Valente
"I've really struggled with beauty stuff being genderqueer/transmasculine, but lately I got my eyebrows done and started wearing bright red lipstick as a way of claiming beauty rituals for myself."
Poetry by Diannely Antigua
Is It OK To Make Fun Of Instagram Poets? by Lisa Marie Basile
Whisper, with Blonde Hair: Mi Vida Loca's New Gangster Queen by Monique Quintana
Poetry by Kristin Chang
The Car Goes On: On My Father's Death by Fraylie Nord
Poetry by Tim Lynch
The Labyrinth of Anti-Aging and Shame by Claire Rudy Foster
The Sensuous, Feminine Power of Drinking Beer by Trista Edwards
The Barbaric Silencing of Transgender & Non-Binary People by Joanna Valente
When Someone Dies By Suicide, Headlines Sensationalize Their Death by Lior Zaltzman
How to Sew A Poppet by Mary Lanham
Poetry by Cooper Wilhelm
"I’d like to ask her if it’s narcissistic to fall
in love with the taste of your own blood,
needing the damage enough to craft a window into yourself
from a cut on the roof of your mouth."
On the Ritual of Downtime and the Oppressive Trappings of Writer's Block Literary Citizenship by Lisa Marie Basile
An Open Letter to My Nipples by Chloé Rossetti
How to Avoid a bad Tarot Reading by Asa West
Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief and creative director of Luna Luna Magazine and community. She is the author of a few books of poetry, including a full-length collection, Apocryphal. Her book Nympholepsy (co-authored with Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein), will be published by Inside the Castle in November 2018 and was a finalist in the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards. She is also working on her first novella, to be released by Clash Books in 2019. Her first nonfiction book, Light Magic for Dark Times, will be published by Quarto Books in 2018. Lisa Marie's work has appeared in the New York Times, Narratively, Refinery 29, Greatist, Bust, Bustle, Marie Claire, The Establishment, Hello Giggles, Ravishly, Marie Claire, and more. You can catch her on the podcasts Into the Dark, Essie's Hour of Love, and Get Lit With Leza. She recently received two Pushcart nominations—for her work in Narratively and The Account. She received an MFA from The New School in NYC.
Creative Non-Fiction by Umang Kalra
Paris was blue – tired, sleepy dawn mushed into
slow sunset folded over a city that is laying itself open yet
hiding every part of it under bricks and light.
Writing a (Poetic) God while Disbelieving
This isn’t a new concept. Epic poetry has been calling to gods and muses for centuries. However, the nuance is in a lack of spiritual power attached to that character. The Poetic God is a trope to which I address my existential idiosyncrasies. This God exists only in my writing as a thematic apostrophe linked to all the other poems that address a god. For someone that believes in a higher power, my lines may resonate for them as a genuinely religious exhortation. I encourage that. For me, their poetry referencing a religious god becomes my Poetic God.
Read MoreMa Says Monsters are Real
I’m still so afraid of all the monsters that I never want anyone to know or even know about, that no one should ever have to know at all.
Read MoreDo This in Remembrance of Me
My mother says that she feels the presence of my aunt a lot. Something in the way the curtains move and shake when the wind blows makes my mother feel her there. I’ve never experienced that. A month ago, however, I experienced something else. I had dreams about her often after she died. In the beginning, it felt kind of her to show up like that. Despite the experience of watching her die and then seeing her body leave, I never had nightmares. It was always dreams about her talking to me and being confused over my crying. Even in my dreams I would cry because I was aware of it being a dream.
Read MoreEvery Single Reason You Should Brag Your Pushcart Nominations
All the petty energies expended on downtalking the nominations or defending your own excitement is better spent, I promise. Like on resistance. Or supporting people. Or writing more
Read MoreThe Death of an Artist - Kurt Cobain
In his final letter to humanity, Kurt writes at the end of the letters, “I’ll be at your altar.” If he is speaking to humanity he must be referencing the altar of religion, of fate. If he is speaking to his wife he must mean the altar on which they built their lives: the one filled with drugs, rehab, and guitars. But maybe he’s speaking to his daughter, just a two year old girl at time of her father’s suicide, and he means he will be at her crib, her bedroom altar, waiting for her like a father feels he should. Kurt was a mystery for most of the world. Though many of us would argue we knew him all along.
Read MoreThe Barbaric Silencing of Transgender & Non-Binary People
Next month, you are turning 15. It’s almost December and you have Joan Jett hair and you are so excited to just have been kissed. You haven’t told anyone about being kissed, however, because you were kissed by two girls near the restrooms in a mall—and that’s the only place you can find privacy when your moms don’t let you close your bedroom door. When you can’t be alone.
Read MoreI Believe in Ghosts: A Tragedy
I asked her to show herself to me. Please. I needed her to show herself to me. "I’m all alone," I said, "I swear I won’t be afraid." Sometimes it made me cry when she didn’t show. When not so much as a light would flicker or an object on the dash would move. There was no sign at all. I cried or I shouted or I grew very afraid.
Read MoreStrawberry Rhubarb Jam
Because Pauline? She was dead. And it couldn’t have been her daughter because she had stopped by the day before she left and dropped off the secret recipe to Pauline’s strawberry rhubarb jam. That jam had been our family’s favorite for years, but until now, the only way we could have any was when she brought it to us in the summertime herself.
Read MoreWhat Wonder Woman Means to Me
When I was a little girl, my favorite women were women with dark hair. I liked strong female characters with dark hair: Sporty Spice and Xena the Warrior Princess, but mostly I loved Wonder Woman. Her hair was dark like mine and I admired her ability to fight for truth, justice, and compassion. There were never any Wonder Woman movies, only cartoons that came and went. Over time, I became a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan too. I gravitate to women who move mountains for the betterment of humankind. Aside from shows like Buffy, the representation of such strong women was sparse. Most women are portrayed as detrimentally broken and that’s how they came to be strong. And that’s okay, but I often wondered then, as I do now, why couldn’t women just be strong because they are?
Read MoreThings My Illness Took from Me
When I ride the subway I become so many ages, I carry so many different years, and they appear in layers inside of me in a way I wish I could erase
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