A Certain Hunger

by Chelsea G. Summers

Any old human woman can see a man orgasm. We so rarely get to see them die; it has been my greatest gift and my most divine privilege.

mia madre

some of us were born with a howling void where our souls should sway.

being female is as prefab, thoughtless, soulless, and abjectly capitalist as a Big Mac. It’s not important that it’s real. It’s only important that it’s tasty.

I was so careful and so thorough that ex-lovers would stand up for me, not because they liked me but because they feared me.

You can’t be a woman without protection. Condoms fail. Pepper spray can be turned against you. Information almost never does.

From my mother, I learned that beauty was armor. From my teenage friends, I learned that femininity was junk. They were both right.

Marco was idle only in appearance. At his soul, he was angst-ridden as Kierkegaard pondering his deathbed.

“A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism,”

For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, ’til death do us part: a life sentence is like being married, but without the handholding.

“Say what you like about Mussolini, but at least the trains run on time.”

Trenitalia’s inconstancy is an issue when you’re planning a perfectly orchestrated murder from 4,000 miles away.