Every time I walk in a woman's bathroom, I have on a hard shell. Prepared for stares and whispering. Ready to respond to the comments. "Yes, I know I'm in the women's room. Would you like to see my ID?" So, I braced myself and I walked on in.

I was immediately surprised by what I saw. Her strong hands, her shaved head, and her broad shoulders. She stood before me in line, this handsome dyke.

I watched, unconcerned with who was looking at me, judging my presence in their sacred space. I belonged here. I was no longer the boy in the girl's bathroom. I was a part of a community. I stood proud; in admiration that she stood even prouder.

And then I noticed the others in line. They weren't staring at me or whispering about me. A welcome change. But everyone there was staring, staring at the handsome dyke in front of me in line. She absorbed the stares, protecting me by her very existence.

I felt I stood next to her, but really, I remained behind her; unreachable to the women ahead. I wish I could deflect the stares, that people would see me, and free her from this silent war. But I stood silently, enjoying my moment of peace. I relaxed, and mentally prepared myself for my next visit to the woman's restroom.

Because maybe next time, a girl will have just cut her hair, or just worn her first guy's outfit, and will be afraid to walk in the women's restroom, unable to handle the stares and the questioning. And I will stand proudly, so I can be that handsome dyke in front of her in line.


Author Bio:
Jordan Rubenstein is Communications Associate at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, the largest soup kitchen in New York City. A nonprofit advocate and freelance writer, Jordan is passionate about social justice and equality. Jordan identifies as queer and genderqueer, and strongly believes in the fluidity of gender and sexuality.

(dedicated to the Delhi Rape Victim, and the hope for a safer India)

A deadly disease plagues my nation-
One neither of the body nor the mind,
but of character rotten so black from vice,
That virtue becomes too hard to find.

The sister you shared your childhood with,
The daughter that now holds your hand,
Has just one question if you read her face-
'Why aren't I safe in my own motherland?'

What story would you tell your daughter next-
'Please don't go out, even in broad daylight.
Stay put at home, for you are but a girl
And I can do nothing to set things right'?

Or would you rather take some charge
To change the system inside out,
So when a lady boards the bus next time
She's fearless beyond the shadow of a doubt?


Author Bio:
I hail from the valley of Rishikesh, nestled in the Himalayas in India. Though my love for English poetry began with Shakespeare, my city has inspired my creativity.

I started writing poems in my engineering college – on the ever-so-dear theme of “unrequited love.” I wrote some my best love poems there.

After I started working, I experienced various emotional ups and downs in the form of my quest for love, opportunities to travel, meeting new people in new lands, finding my passion, trying to better understand life, working with children, learning a new language and learning to dance. In this period, I wrote poetry extensively. Better yet, I realized that poetry was my way of connecting with people, and the world. It was the part of me that came closest to that elusive “purpose” all of us seem to want to find. It was effortless, it was beautiful, it was liberating, and most importantly- it touched people’s lives. For me, the most fulfilling thing about poetry is the sense of belonging it inspires when people discover that someone out there feels the same things they do.

I have written 50 English poems so far and I am looking for publishers for my collection. The themes are as general as love, God, destiny, my travels in India and the US, nature, dance, passion, and as specific as the Delhi gang-rape, a teenage mother, a Turkish cab driver.

It is my sincere hope that my poems make you smile, cry, ponder, wonder, feel, and in that way, touch your life too.

Forget elastic, also tentative explorations of dressing rooms; there’s no tomorrow after
Church bells peel funeral dirges for single digit sizes. Such stay forever with the devil.

Rather, run amok among ordinary confections; it’s better to indulge in gibber
Than to suffer ringworm, dysentery, other raucous diseases, also dislodged thoughts.

Advertisements that affect cures for unrecognized problems, like kudzu, the bejeweled eyes
Of grasshoppers, bumblebee’s comings, goings, and feuds, slyly reproduce without legislation.

Old fashioned common-sense, new-fangled funding, the “signature” of elements,
Belong in museums, mayhap to line polyarchs’ walls or our wallets. At fifty, break free!


Author Bio:
KJ Hannah Greenberg giggles too much to be actually indomitable. What's more, she: eats oatmeal, runs with a hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs, watches dust bunnies breed beneath her sofa, and attempts to matchmake words like “balderdash” and “xylophone.” Sure, she's been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Literature and once for The Best of the Net, as well as received National Endowment for the Humanities monies. Nonetheless, she refuses to learn to text or to own a digital watch.

Faithfully constructive in her epistemology, Hannah channels gelatinous monsters and two-headed wildebeests. As such, she helps out as an Associate Editor at _Bound Off!_ and at _Bewildering Stories_, and serves as an Instructing Author at Dzanc Books. Look for her two newest books, _Citrus-Inspired Ceramics_ (Kelsay Books), poetry, and _The Immediacy of Emotional Kerfuffles _(Bards and Sages Publishing), short fictions, in September and December of this year.

I am a listener.    People come to me.
They pay me to listen.  They pay me
not to speak.       That is the contract.

I must make notes to myself…
that is also part of the contract
but notes must be kept in dark,
double-locked spaces…in case…
in case of…
                       the unspeakable.

When I go home at night,
I cannot tell a lover, or even a
husband, what I know.  I cannot
call a best friend or my sister
to tell her of the pain I took in
today.

I must censor.  I go to the movies,
see someone whose life I  know
intimately, and all I can do is wait…
wait to see whether he nods or
smiles or somehow gives me an “o.k.”
to just say, “hello.”

Someone asks me: 
“Do you know so-and-so?”
and sometimes I must lie. 
To say: “Yes, but don’t ask how,”
is the same thing as telling
                                    how.

I begin to write and I must
censor.  How do I know this thing
I want to say?  I begin to tell
a casual  story. I check the source.
Sometimes I feel as though
I carry an internal Rolodex.

This listening … it leads to another
full-time job.   Sometimes my head
feels as though it will split in two. 
Sometimes my neck gets so rigid
and my shoulders so tight, I want to
Hang myself upside down.


Author Bio:
ML Roberts is a retired psychologist living in Milwaukee, WI. For the better part of two decades, she practiced psychotherapy in Boise, ID. Uprooting herself from both a career and a place she loved resulted in a great deal of soul searching, followed by a feeling of loss far greater than what she anticipated.
In preparation for a change in careers, Roberts studied creative writing at Boise State University and Boise’s Log Cabin Literary Center. After making the break, she moved several times and, with each move, sought out other writers through workshops and critique groups. She is currently an active member of the All Writers’ Workshop and Workplace, in Waukesha, WI.

In addition to publishing as a professional psychologist and as a communications specialist, she has placed fiction and poetry in Cabin Fever; Boise University Radio INPRINT; Boise Weekly; Standing: Poetry by Idaho Women; and two anthologies: What Mattered Once, What Matters Now (Live Poets Society, Boise, ID) and Women with Wings (Women Writing for a Change, Bloomington, IN). Roberts holds degrees from Marshall University (B.A.), Virginia Tech (M.S.), and Penn State (Ph.D.)

This dive had shelves above the bar once,
ground floor dwelling without a first or second,
warm in spring and even warmer in winter,
grab the hand of her and buy a drink because-

- the shy shouldered girl draped in black
is about to sing, but from the back
her thin thighs are stubborn
covered-up in cloth-polyester, hiding all fantasies of fun.

She takes her shoes off for the show,
the guitarist, and fifty-percent of her makeup, glows in the light,
tonight there's a crowd, a real bunch of loud
drinkers drinking up the fridges.

Let me see where your vocals come from,
deep within the chasm of your acid marquee.

The singer's eyes hide under hair,
with firm fixed eyelids of a winter bound and dark hare,
visions of the hunted trying to hunt,
keep quiet, the dogs are there.


Author Bio:
Tim Knight is a student and self published poet, based in Cambridge, UK. He has three collections of work out and is also the founder of Coffee Shop Poems, a poetry blog.

He makes the private world public and does so with, preferably, a cup coffee in hand.

www.coffeeshoppoems.com

They say that women hold up half the sky.

They stand, side by side, arms stretched, backs bent, holes in their sides pouring blood and light.

I am one of them.

There is a dark woman next to me, her large eyes vast oceans of knowledge I will never have. A black river of blood runs from her nose as her sinews tense and shred, the weight too much.

They never said the sky was light.

We have everything in common, all beating hearts, balloon lungs, and the men that sit on our piece of sky.

Men that sit on everyone’s piece of sky.

Our feet flatten under their weight, broaden, turn into oceans of veins and skin colours.

I do not know the woman next to me but she is me with flat feet, balloon lungs and her own piece of heavy sky, the burden we were given.

Every bird I see is the bird I found when I was a girl, flightless and wrinkled and motherless. I put it in a nest I built of too much mud and dead grass, dried in the fiery sun that men believe shines for them. Every bird I see is this bird, its beak uttering the words

“This is not for you, this is not your burden.”

But it is.

All of these women are my mother, feet broadening and the sea coming out of their eyes. We all have hearts that splinter ribs with love and hope and anguish and fear.

They say women hold up half the sky to keep the sun that shines for men.

We hold the entire sky.

The sun does not shine for you.


Author Bio:
Emily Hollenberg is a twenty-two year old English Literature and Creative Writing student at Alma College in Michigan. Her main hobbies include writing novels, poetry, short stories, blogging, and being a women's and mental health advocate. She hopes to move to England and become a professional writer.

"Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana

She fingers the chopsticks
she tucked in the side of her pants
when they left the banquet hall. A souvenir to remember
the donation her lover made
to “Wake up America before it’s too late”
to “Restore America’s decency laws”
to “Return to the values of our American Fathers”

During the car ride home, they jab
the under part of her ribs
She shifts her shoulders
to dislodge them
from her flesh
“When did they stop teaching American history?”
the speaker blared

She barely makes it to the porch without
one of them sliding down her leg. He kisses her
goodnight, waiting for the invitation
that doesn’t come
“Don’t tread on me,” cried the man at the podium

She kisses him back, one hand
on the small of his neck, the other
on the door behind her

She navigates her dark
entryway, taking small measured steps
“This is my country and I'm not surrendering it”

Blood splashes
the white floor of her tidy bathroom
“They took history out of our schools!”

Lest she would’ve known
to use
a coat hanger


Author Bio:
Pamela Emigh Murphy is a teacher, sister, wife, and proud mother of two sons who love and value the women in their lives. She is a founding member of Straw Mat, a women’s writing group in Rochester, NY. While she has a particular interest in issues that continue to confront women into the 21st century, she works to challenge the social prescriptions of gender, with the hope of improving the lives of both men and women. She is a professor of English at Monroe Community College where she teaches women’s literature, American literature, and courses that explore the intersections of science and the humanities. As a ghost-writer, she has authored two articles published in The Alpenhorn, a national magazine publication for the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America and recipient of the prestigious Maxwell Medallion Award from the Dog Writers Association of America. She busies herself with bird watching, agility dog contests, and reading incessantly. Her favored pastime is simply being (and writing, of course).

My body is not my own.
It belongs to the man brushing his arm against it.
So innocent, but we both know the motive.
It belongs to the woman sizing me up, sneering with disgust,
Am I too pretty, or not pretty enough?
It belongs to the group of boys whistling at me from their car,
Making me bark back like the dog they must think I am.
It belongs to the people using the phrase “Kept her girlish figure,”
And makes me fear the day I become a woman.
It belongs to my boyfriend tracing circles on my back,
And it makes me believe I am beautiful.
It belongs to the bikini I will never properly fit into,
And I laugh at the string that should encompass my curves.
It belongs to my jeans that don’t zip like they used to.
It belongs to the women revered as beautiful, tall and thin - my opposite.
It belongs to my mother, who always thanked God I “stayed small.”
It belongs to the size 12 who looks at me imploringly.
It belongs to the size 0 who looks at me with superiority.
It belongs to every friend who told me I would make a perfect trophy wife.
It belongs to whoever classified 36-24-36 as perfection,
And did not know that 32-30-35 is just as good.
It belongs to the man who once defined womanhood.
It belongs to the women who won’t challenge that concept.
It does not belong to me.


Author Bio:
Born in New York City, returning after an 18 year hiatus, Nicole Alexis Nadler is ready to being her career as a writer. After graduating from the University of Delaware in 2011 with a B.A. in English - Creative Writing, she took a well paying job that didn't feed her soul. A year and a half later, she left it all behind to pursue her dreams in the city of dreamers.

Though she enjoys writing fiction as well, it is creative non fiction, poetry, and prose that she has always felt the strongest about. This is the first piece she has submitted for publication.
She is very adamant about not only women's rights, but the quality of life surrounding them. If she can accomplish one thing in her life, it would be to teach all women, young and old, that they world belongs to them and to never let anyone stop them from believing that due to their gender.

“Don't you think you're overreacting?”

Biting back the sarcasm that begged to be let free, I thought out my response carefully, knowing my job could be riding on what was said in this meeting.

“Sir, what would you do if someone grabbed your wife's behind in view of the entire office?”

He swelled with anger at the thought. “I'd probably punch the man. But I understand you are single, is that correct?”

“I don't see why that should matter, sir.”

“Why is that?”

“Why is it understandable for a man to punch someone for fondling their wife, but a woman yelling             'Don't touch me' is overreacting? I dislike men grabbing at me just as much as you dislike men                     grabbing at your wife.”

His brows furrowed as he frowned and looked at the report in front of him.

Finally, he looked back at me and nodded.

“I think this company needs to take a tougher stance on sexual harassment.”


Author Bio:
S. Arawn Lynden is the pen-name of a Toronto woman with a passion for the written word. Having first sat down at a typewriter at the age of four, she fell hopelessly in love at first write. Currently involved with several short stories, she aspires to work her way up to novels. Typically a fantasy or science fiction writer, she's known to dabble across all genres. She has yet to meet an idea she doesn't like. Drawing from an eclectic set of life experiences including adoption and reunion, taking a stand for equality, and three near-death experiences; S. Arawn Lynden prefers to look at things from a different perspective. She hopes that through her work, she can help others take a fresh look at life.

                                                She became a ghost in my arms...

I couldn't pull it off. Under the tree in front of my grandmother’s house as rain banged on top of my head. Many times I have stood under this big oak tree as a little boy. Where I learned to tie my shoelaces, where I first saw my friend hit by a car, where I checked out and hit Donald in the face. It was all I ever remembered about my childhood. But what do you get with a watery nose? And now I stand as a man with my own family and study for a test to not cry under this tree.

Everyday I listened to my Duke or Ella screaming. Three kids cried for their mother and daddy to stop fighting in the night. One day it will all be fixed. One day I will sit at the oceans edge and look back at my beloved country and see nothing but laughter. The issues with the car, the job, the damage of living in the city, the suburbs, or fixing my eighty-eight Ford parked in front of the brick house I grew up in thirty years ago. Was it all worth it…the blue book and almost eighty thousand miles? I wanted a drink. That would help me through the night.


Author Bio:
I am George, or author G. Franklin Prue. I live in Seattle Washington, USA. but was born in Washington, D.C. I am also ex-military Vietnam veteran. I am also teaching in Seattle as a special educational Instructor. I have also worked as a government consultant for the Defense Department. I travel a lot to the Caribbean, Central & South Americas. I have a BA in Political Science & Masters degree in Education/Administration. My published novels are, A Year of Madness, Mammie Doll and The Man from Sweet Loaf, all by CreateSpace/Amazon.com.