Re-interpreting the Carved Revenge on Your Own Back by Shauna Osborn
“Re-interpreting the Carved Revenge on Your Own Back” by Shauna Osborn In the White Tigers section of The Woman Warrior, we bear witness to a short-lived family reunion before our warrior heads off to battle. Her parents carve oaths on her back, making her body a text where genealogical memory is visible and an emotional connection to the family’s interests are made physical: “Wherever you go, whatever...
Unmaking the Form by Marya Hornbacher
“Unmaking the Form” by Marya Hornbacher Professor Firchow was a giant even when seated, like a bear who towers even when on all fours, and he had enormous hands that gestured slowly, gently, as a bear might gesture if it did. He spoke to us softly of Modernism, and the end of narrative arc, and multiple selective omniscience, and the poetics of fragmented time. I was a snippet of a girl, not yet twenty, shy...
Counting and What’s Counted On by Robyn Hunt
“Counting and What’s Counted On” by Robyn Hunt “Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.” (Virginia Woolf, Orlando) I know for sure: 1 I am married. 2 I own a home. 3 I write poetry – creating metaphor where others claim they cannot. 4 I have a daughter; she lives elsewhere now. 5 My grandmothers, both storytellers, lived well into their nineties, and in one...
Erotics of Making by Barbara Rockman
“Erotics of Making” by Barbara Rockman The woman brings her body to the page the way a climber clamps her thighs to the rock face the way a lover drops the last garment the way a girl crawls into a copse and, singing, arranges acorns and logs the way a mother skips away from the departing school bus. What is arousal? Words at the pen tip, ink rich as...
The Task by Alison Hicks
“The Task” by Alison Hicks Late at night into the time before dawn is best. Too easy to put off in the afternoon— how long until cocktails, a swim, dinner? Salvage enough to approach sideways, crab-like. Lighted by what you wanted, present what you’ve lifted proudly, though it might be refused. You could be drinking, pouring a mug to really twist you up. Instead you’re here. When it is dark it seems...
Does the sea remember everything? I wonder.
Does she absorb everything? Does she keep it safe?
Virginia Woolf
. . .
The Q: Can you fathom the spectacle that would be created if we moved together, arms outstretched, close enough to touch?
The Q: What echoes through you that longs to take form—a poem, an image, a mark, a whisper of becoming?
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fathoms Feb 28, 2026 -
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