Antler Review: August is always burning.

This quarantine will never end. The months go on and on. At least there are new stories every day. 

I am consistently impressed with the work that Catapult buys, and this month was no exception. This is a beautiful illustrated piece about a peach and the will to live. It’s gorgeous, and it’s by Shing Yin Khor. 

Anya Johanna DeNiro is one of those bylines that always has me running to read, but this one was a whopper. There is a quality of longing in childhood that can hardly be spoken; the terrible hunger of seeing a thing you know you will someday be and not having any idea how to cross the distance between here and there. DeNiro is an incisive writer, able to cut right next to that feeling so that you can see it pulsing but she doesn’t let it bleed. This story is required reading. 

Louis Evans wrote us a gorgeous story about a superhero and her wife, and how tough things can be when the world knows who you are. 

Sometimes the shortest of work can be the most dense, the most meaningful. Marissa Lingen whipped this one so fast across my heart I didn’t know I was cut until long after. This will take you minutes to read and years to get over

Body horror is one of my favorite subgenres, but there’s way too much that’s about torture and way too little about the way we get hijacked by pregnancy and the things people project on to the pregnant body. Haily Piper brought a new blossom to this bouquet of rosemary and babies, and I was jaw-dropped by the end of this one. 

This is just a thing to stuff in the mouth of the next white dude who tells you there’s no such thing as rape culture. 

I quit Facebook a couple of months ago, and I have zero cravings and no regret. Shit like this is why, amongst the revelation that a lot of friends and family are possessed of embarrassing opinions. 

I was sorely tempted to yell back at that racist kazoo who taunted women over WAP with the idea that this is where feminism has brought us. It is, but not in the flawed, two-dimensional way his underpowered brain understands it. Anyway I am done listening to men about this song, and this essay by Nichole Perkins nails exactly why it is a feminist anthem, you fermented high school debate captain. Get a job. Alexa, play WAP again. 

 

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