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redrosethorns journal
Conscious raising, frequently utilised by feminists, involves individuals sharing their experiences to enhance awareness of social, personal, and political matters. This method has proven highly effective in fostering unity, building communities, and shedding light on broader issues affecting diverse demographics worldwide. It's a means of expressing our identities and experiences, ultimately empowering us.
Inspired by this approach, redrosethorns launched an online journal publication aimed at facilitating conversations about mental health, gender, sexuality, self-care, and empowerment.
ISSN: 2978-5316 (online)
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A Bountiful Harvest
The earth yearns for new beginnings!
Seeds of hope, seeds of tomorrow.
For this is the way of all living things,
A generation returns to dust and another rises.
They call it: fertilization, meiosis, gametes.
I think I prefer the term: SEEDS.
Ebenezer Mowete
Jul 302 min read
Web of the Storm
When your soul is battered,
by waves, relentless
from a storm offshore.
Seek shelter in an underwater cave,
saving you for another night.
Tomorrow is another fight.
Scott Jordan Frink
Jul 301 min read
Broken Bike
I wanna be free,
not a child curled up in the fetal position,
crying not because he has two scraped knees—
crying because he fell off the bike,
and he failed.
Scott Jordan Frink
Jul 301 min read
Rosemary’s Baby
I’m Rosemary’s Baby
lullabies of the end of times.
Insanity sways me
back and forth
in this cradle of delusion.
Scott Jordan Frink
Jul 301 min read
who names you?
no one calls me john patrick anymore, a title once reserved for scolding & also tenderness. from birth i was reduced to two letters & this suits me, taking up residence within a gray wolf & the alphabet can be howled. out back at the creek i skinned my knees; my mother asks john patrick what happened, he lies about the stolen schnapps. there is no title for isolated experience, just the othering
jp thorn
Jul 302 min read
self-regulating freeze state
i used to write easy,
concise, beautiful
ambiguous yet to-the-point poetry.
these days
i am so wordy
not as worldly as i’d like
so i’ll let gravity do its job
& ground me,
jp thorn
Jul 301 min read
table talk
i kiss my queerness before
taking a seat, captain’s chair.
we’re talking news, cnn vomited
up an article about a body[1]–
woman buried four centuries past,
cadaver garnished by a sickle, jam
jp thorn
Jul 301 min read
warm southern wind
i’ve stopped considering destiny; i’d rather be wrong
than a pessimist. coincidence is a courtesy i’m rarely
afforded like a true wild ochre i must wait for the
leaves to change, inevitable poetry in motion, natural
jp thorn
Jul 301 min read
Wednesday Morning
You are 12, and it’s 7 am, and you are pouring Coco Puffs and chocolate milk into a bowl when the doorbell rings. Some lady you’ve never seen before is at the door, asking for your mom. It’s early. You wear black plaid pajama pants and a giant black sweatshirt. You never answer the door, but you do this time because nobody else is up.
“Hello?” you say.
The lady on the other side of the glass doors has a stern expression and her hair is in a ponytail.
Kailyn Kausen
Jul 304 min read
Unrequited: A Cautionary Tale
Power, politics and passion are a potent combination. Not long ago, I learned just what a wallop they can deliver. I was thirty-five years old and married. I was working as a scribe, crafting editorials, messages and speeches for my charismatic boss, a man twenty years my senior. He was a well-known labour leader, highly respected on both sides of the bargaining table.
Miriam Edelson
Jul 306 min read
Latte, Galão, Blonde, Turkish, Quad+
Cassia’s eyes slowly open to a pounding headache as her eyes adjust to the morning light coming in through the windows. She groans and turns over in bed, her body feeling weak from last night. She feels around the bed for her phone, searching everywhere without actually looking. She finally finds it between her pillows and tries to check the time, only to be met with a black screen and the battery icon indicating that her phone is dead.
Emma Piper
Jul 3011 min read
Flapping in the Wind
My husband said he didn’t want to die and leave me flapping in the wind.
(He actually did want to die, suffering from vascular disease in his legs which caused him pain and the inability to walk without occasionally falling. He also suffered from COPD, kidney cancer and depression.) Even though he said it on more than one occasion, I never knew what to do. If I said “I’ll be fine,” he might take that to mean he was free to blow his brains out with his Colt revolver.
Connie Woodring
Jun 272 min read
Watching the Birds on the Lagoon in Boca Raton, Florida, With My Father
You are a shadow here, a specter from my past, watching me
flip the pages of the bird book, looking at the difference
between a crow and a grackle, listening for the sharp wail
and screech of the limpkins or the squawking of ducks,
the wind rustling the leaves of the live oak sheltering the porch
from the tropical sun. I read with you, search the waters with you.
You’re long gone for many years. Your last words to me were at least ten years old.
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt
Jun 272 min read
Cis
“It’s magic,” the girl squealed with delight; the sunrise was amazing. It was the first one she’d seen this year, or even the year before, she said. Meghan had been sequestered away from her friends and family for what seemed like years, but in reality had been only four weeks. Her friend Darla stood near the window with Meghan and watched the sun peep over the horizon, the pinks and magentas giving way to the oranges and yellows of the fiery ball of unspent hydrogen.
Bill Tope
Jun 277 min read
Awakened to a Castrato Singing
Like a lamb he stayed close
To home, sweet and dainty.
Skin like he bathed in milk.
Walked away as the boys chose
Sides for baseball in the street.
Even a coy look in his eyes,
Mannerisms like a novice nun.
Joshua Meander
Jun 271 min read
I Judge Other Women
Have you ever seen a woman elegantly stroll through the world with a shine; a gold foil that covers everything they are and do in radiance? Or have you seen the infamous Cookie-Monster-pajama-pants woman and got the faint odor of cigarettes on the wind as she passed? I’ve seen both — and every woman in between — and always, without fail, I take my mental ruler and judge where I lie on the (conservative white supremacy) beauty standard scale.
Allie Ailis
Jun 274 min read
Choreo-Dysphoria
The dance expressed through her girl body murmurs I perform. It evokes candy floss flirtation and head-cocked hair twirls. Our hips move for visual consumption by an amorphous “him”. My curves appear designed for her step sequence, but they resist the interpolation. Mind and structure split. I am on the ceiling watching myself struggle in the spotlight of amplified femininity.
F.T. Rose
Jun 271 min read
By Blow
My great-grandmother beat her daughters with a stick, but my grandmother had the guts to steal away to a dance contest, a rebellious girl, on the cusp of the Second World War. The dance contest she won, but from this defiance my mother was born, out of wedlock – in a thunderstorm, Mom would say, with a touch of melodrama – in a stranger’s house in another town. And my grandmother’s name became an omen, overshadowing our lives.
Linda Ann Strang
Jun 272 min read
The Four Acts of Being a Tomboy
The adjectives I'd use to describe myself when I was born
Are Purple and Screaming.
Everyone else in the hospital used
Baby and Girl.
Girl was good, because my parents had a boy already,
And was fitting because my father had had visions of me
In a dream before I existed:
A girl.
Sophia Indelicato
Jun 276 min read
Self-Harm
I was married when we met. It was supposed to be something light, just for a couple of months. But we fell in love. When we broke up, my mom said that some relationships are like chickenpox. The sooner you get over it, the easier it goes away, and it leaves fewer scars. You can only get over it once, because then you develop immunity.
Aisylu Chanysheva
Jun 2710 min read
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