Derica's LA Loft Debra Cartwright

Mercy

by Joy Sullivan

Once, we were grilling zucchini from the garden. It was summertime and I was about to leave you. A praying mantis landed on the grill. He was bright and beautiful even as he fizzled and I burned all my fingertips trying to save him. You can't tell when an insect is in pain but he must have been and you put him in the grass so softly where I found and stomped him. And I think it surprised us what we each defined as mercy.

against death by Noor Hindi

Run You Might Get Away Faith Ringgold

"The witch, the whore and the monster are all really the same archetype. Dangerous and unpredictable, they defy the archetypes of ideal womanhood that we have encountered throughout this book. They defy Venus with their ageing bodies and menstrual blood. (All things that are suppressed in our images of Venus overflow in our monsters.) They undermine maiden virginity with their unapologetic sexuality. They don't submit themselves to their husbands, nor are they exclusive with their partners. They are either happy in their own liberated independence, or they operate in covens of collective womanhood. Monstrous women know things that others don't, not just facts or magic spells but deep, primeval knowledge about bodies, time, death, and the powers of reproduction. And they age and entropy in a way that mirrors the inevitable flow and decay of all things. They are connected to wild nature in the outdoors, away from the feminised domestic spaces of the house. Most monstrous of all is that they know their power."

excerpt from Women in the Picture: What Culture Does With Female Bodies by Catherine McCormack

we lived happily during the war by ilya kaminsky

My (?) Body by S. Bruzon

shoutout to whatever staff member has this bumper sticker at my school

frog4scalpel

Love You, Sleep Again, Retier Softly, and Pethetic Little Thing by Tracey Emin

good mother by Rachel Eliza Griffiths