Scarlet
A Literary Journal
Scarletย is a bimonthly blog dedicated to publishing the work of artists whose pieces give voice to the complexities of our multiple identities. In keeping with JIPโs mission to uplift marginalized voices,ย Scarletย aims to showcase bold and unique framings of the view from the margins, giving strong preference to writing that questions norms and provokes discourse.

โThe Bark of a Tree Was Once Gentle in the Mouth”, “Over the Valley of the Kings”, and “Lucy to Her Children Under the Awaash Sky”
“The Bark of a Tree Was Once Gentle in the Mouth” During war, famine spoilsthe

“What’s First To Fade”
JACK: Our fight will fade, yours will too. Thereโs no stoppage to the stoppage of

“Motherland Black”
I lung for that pollen sneezinโ, sticky car seatinโ, Atlanta heat, but it ainโt enough

“Diaspores”, “Portrait at the Border”, and “The Seedling”
“Diaspores” A broken clothesline leans against its shadow nothing to hang memories on through the

“Life in Wedding Anniversaries”
Till death do us part,for as long as we both shall live,She and He vowed.

โJโy suis, jโy resteโ (Here I am, here I stay), โAllons-yโ (Letโs Go), โMademoiselle Mulliganโ, and โjaywalkingโ
โJโy suis, jโy resteโ(Here I am, here I stay) Across the cerulean chasm of id,I

Good Compost
prologue :: the roots have & to hold A man holds his still-beating heart in

“Becoming one of those people who writes poetry about their menstrual cycle”
…but you wonโt hear me talk about any โdivine feminineโ i donโt know her. and

Skinless
I was eating breakfast when my sister came into the kitchen without her skin. I

“By Invitation Only”, “Butterflies and Sirens”, “The Fall”, “Invisible”, “After the Assault” and “Last Will”
By Invitation Only Just when you think you can hear beyondthe mowers and raw hum

“The Baseball Lesson in August Wilsonโs Fences”, “In Attendance of the Watch Night Service”, and “When The Hurricane Passed: Rubin Carter”
The Baseball Lesson in August Wilsonโs Fences Baseball can teach you the cruelest of lessons,

“Safe” and “The Line”
Safe On my way to the obstetricianI pass a street of venders.Sparkling jewels reflect Soho

Do you need what I need?
Last Christmas, I was having coffee one morning with a friend at Starbucks. We hadnโt

“The Road”, “Left”, and “We Were Wives”
The Road I have nothing to say to the man at the cross in the

In Winter with Warm Tears
Mother loved a good dichotomy. Thatโs how it seemed to the child. In her blue

Superheroes in Sensible Shoes
โI always knew my grandmother loved me. She saved me, gave me any confidence I

“Birth of the Blues”, “A White Rosary”, “Collage – after Romare Bearden”, and “Childhood”
Birth of the Blues Was it Miles Davis’ “Kinda Blue” bringing me home to you?

Reaching for the Moon
Remembering. A beautiful word. And for the last decade, this was what Kathleen had done

“The Seventh Column”, “Anemoneโ, and โHealth and Safetyโ
The Seventh Column Once again Diderot’s beautiful ruin standsin the corner of my mind,the great

“Cobalt Tears”, “Silent Parties”, “I Think a Painter Drives That Car”, “Red Lines”, “The Parlor”, and “Of Violets”
Cobalt Tears Before his body can form the needed musclesTo uphold the soaking load of

No Fury Like…
Medusa. Thereโs a reason they call you that. Itโs not so much the mythology course

The 12-Year Old Decision that Now Haunts Me
They were to write about their career aspirations. Scrawly English words rioted across a sheet

โNeelakurinji”, “In the Ghazal (a Ghazal)โ, “Drunk Friday Musings”, “Of Inquilab”, “A Villanelle”, and “Majnoonโs Grief (A Pantoum)”
Neelakurinji The blue mountains are purple again as though estranged lovers have washed up ashore

“Collateral Damage” and “Bamboo”
Collateral Damage i. then, as in the past, there were photographs of boys who died

Keeper of the Vortex
Agatha tended the Vortex. It was her punishment for not obeying the Prefect of the

When We Were Cowboys
When the nurse came into the room, I had just awakened from a dream. She

โSerenity Prayer for a Black Woman,โ “Black and Blue,” “Kelly Price is Missing,” and โLight-Skin Chick Bluesโ
God grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change for I cannot change
the kinks and coils of my hair,
the skin that criminalizes me,
the body reduced to what it can do and who for;

โIn Tandemโ, “Corpsing”, “Game of Thrones, S1 E7”, “Hudson Estuary”, “Alley Singer”, and “You, Again”
As my age gains on me, my mother stops short
of hers, buying toys yearly for my grown daughter โ

Dust
โDaddy always loved the lake,โ remarked Jelisa Lu. โHeโd swim in the buff every morning at dawn. Iโd hear him bellow, ONE-TWO-SIX!!! Then a big fat splash.โ

โQueen of Swords”, “Claws”, “In Her Voice”, “Hunger”, and “Sometimes a Bird Outside”
He thought she was the Queen of Swords. She didn’t see herself like that, more like the Queen of Cups perhaps.

Bedding a Ghost
Sshhhck.
She has no idea where she is. Surrounded by blackness, like floating in a void.

Unwritten Rule
Thereโs a rope between me and the edge of the dock,
there to keep people from falling or jumping in.

The Pripyat Marshes
Some marsh plants have hollow stems, could be used as straws. The villagers would have known this, he says, could have taken a few on the march to the marshes, or better yet, pulled the pith from a young twig to make it hollow.

Mestiza
I pledge allegiance to the flag.
Land of the free.
I beam with natural born citizenry.

“Just Two Girls Revisited” “After the Hottest Heat Wave in Earthโs History””Just Two Girls Revisited” & “After the Call When You Learn Your Friend, Sick at Least a Year, Has Brain Cancer”
A bandaid on the road to stop the spread,
dogs process through their noses: goose turds, a seagull feather,
a flock of cancer cells flaps past.

Pulling Out an Ace
In kindergarten, you had a boyfriend, who sat on the bus next to you and held your hand

The Knife
The Johnsons had no pretensions that they from were a class down from even my working-class family, which was not saying much where we came from, except that, behind their backs, everybody called them โwhite trashโ.

Shelter Choices
These are not the cats I would have chosen. I apologize every time someone tells me they are beautiful.

Frescoes Unadorned
That I woke up at all was not my intention. Iโd reasoned with myself in a depressed state that I had had enough life lessons and experiences that qualified me to take a short-cut to the great beyond.

โThe Pain Holderโ โMany Unexplainable Painsโ โSetting The Tableโ & โLament For Winged Thingsโ
Is she The Pain Holder now? my therapist asks.

Prisoner of the Chรขteau-Fort du Louvre
“Confess yourself,” said the priest, coming toward him through shadow and light. “Notable captive.”

แปคmแปฅazi
Chukwu mo! Your air is the whitest version of white. Your voice is the softest version of soft. Your face no mortal or immortal has seen. Chukwu, I speak in my name and those of these two other Chi. We are back from our earthly sojourn with the souls you placed in our care.

The Immigrant Insight: How important is language?
What does it mean to be an Immigrant? Only if you are one, you will really know. For most of us it is a challenging journey, even if you have landed well.

Plastic Dragon
When I birthed my second daughter, the doctors insisted I push instead of jumping straight to a C-section as we had done seven years ago with the first.

Dame Edna
“You didn’t wash your car,” she declares as I pull up to the curb where she is waiting, tapping her cane.

“Stoppers” “Little Alien” & “Toys”
Is it a roofing nail? Its
point meant to fill
a cervix. Later, with legs
splayed to lock it in

“I Am You”, “Chimes of a Bell”, “She Walked Away” & “An Undying Suffering”
Here, for a transitory period, existence questioned sometimes,
I make you seen, an invisible pain killing me.

After the Bars Let Out
The streets were barren at 3:00 a.m. Up and down the main drag, the bars had all let out. She meandered in a sleepy stupor, bags beneath her eyes slipping off her cheeks. One could say she presented drunkenness.

Black Asโฆ
Dad is black
Black as tar
And then some more
Heโs not a slave
But who can tell for sure
Cause heโs black
Sometimes blacker
Than a moonless night
ย

Apologies
โThatโs seven. And eight,โ I said. โTwo in a row!โ โThe next stop is a few miles,โ my father said. I was no longer a child, but I felt like one on that drive.

Jamaica
I donโt think Iโve ever bought Jamaica flowers on my own. I always take some

What Do You Know About Love?
Isabel sat down in her favorite chair, its back leg all wobbly. A bit of

Bad Faith
In the strangerโs basement bedroom, I awoke, facing a staircase that had pale blue lights

Craft Lessons from Cleveland: How Browns Fandom Prepared Me for the Writing Life
Statue of NFL Hall of Fame inductee Jim Brown (Photo courtesy of the author). There

“grocery shopping/i am distraught” & “vermont”
grocery shopping/i am distraught death is not at all in opposition to life i went

S.O.S/Eso Es
Statement from the artist on the piece: Queer, feminine, chicanx, womxn, are all categories that

“Oh master of two worlds” & others
Oh master of two worlds The crescent moon has pulled your

This is a Test
Section I โ Diversion/ Focus This sectionโs instructions are listed below, but the questions will

Nothing Like Swimming & Others
Cecily Schuler is a genderqueer writer and spoken word artist, raised and

A Battery of Tests
โCompensationโ shows itself as a consistent, gendered thread in my life story.

occasional elements and bodies they make
occasional elements and bodies they make Sunlight, consequence of sun, wakes me. Sweeps slow,

from Fairy Tales from Outer Space
Pluto If we were starfish (who can regenerate limbs), what would trauma

[the plural circuits of tell]
What does genre mean to you and how does it build/unbuild your

Town & Country, or How to Find Your Chicana Nerd Style
I wanted to belong โ but I didnโt want to dress like everyone else. Down

Land: Tierra
I want to write about tierra, which means soil or earth to my people, maybe

The Burden of Diversity
Every year it was the same. The then Milwaukee Sentinel printed the pictures of all

Writing Woke
Several years ago during my first semester in graduate school, some of my classmates and

An Open Letter to White Allies in the Literary Community
Disclaimer One: The intended audience for this talk is mainly white writers, so I use

Where Writers of African Ancestry in America Find Themselves
There has never been a consensus or even a plurality agreement among writers who identify

Craft, White Gaze, and Black Gaze
In 2014, I spoke on a panel called โCrossing (Imagined) Borders: Research, Writing, and the

White Supremacy, White Privilege, and Me
When I was 10 in 1969, without permission, I went and had my hot combed

Being a White Ally: Filling my Motherโs Shoes
When I was a kid growing up in a white (and cis and straight) suburb

Love Letter (an avalanche)
My ex-husband suffered bipolar disorder. We lived among the facts of his illness. Trips to

Embracing the Feminine in Writing and in Body
My graduate reading was supposed to be fifteen minutes, which is a hard number to

The Falling Sickness
Of all the gifts a poet can be given, epilepsy is the richest. I fell

Recovering the Joy in Writing
A few years ago, I taught a class on recovering joy in the writing process.

When Truth is Elusive
Somewhere in the middle of my fifth draft, I realized I was full of shit.

I Get By With A Little Help From Humor
I write in a variety of genres: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and the interesting thing

Writerโs Callus
Keep Pure. Rolling Hand. Big Wave. Breaking down the Fortress. Luck and Fortune. Sound Knowledge.

The Thing Writing Classes Canโt Teach
Thereโs one thing that canโt be taught in writing classes. Itโs really too bad, too,

To Bail or Not to Bail on a Book
Every writer needs to read. A lot. All the successful ones say the same thing:

Fiction Writing as a Visual Art
I learned how to write fiction by understanding the language of visual art. As an

How to Find Inspiration for Writing
I find inspiration in very unexpected places. I am a fan of reading biographies/ essays/

What Frozen Taught Me About Writing Memoir
Franz Kafka famously said, โA book must be the axe for the frozen sea within

What is Experimental Writing?
Iโve always considered myself a no frills, linear, begin-at-the-beginning, chronological-until-the-end type of person. Experimental writing

Righting the Rejection
My novel has received 70 rejections over the last 21 months. I have written dozens

The Most Important Writing Advice I Know
I started working at Watson Wyatt in San Francisco after Iโd been let go from

Pregnancy Killed My Creativity
I had fantasies about how hugely creative I would be while pregnant โ my bodyโs

Writing Triumph
The year my dad died, I was taking writing classes at University of Chicago. I

Writing and The Body
Writing on a keyboard has become a natural gesture of many modern humans. Not a

Writing From This Notebook and This Wellspring of Loss
I wrote in a poem once that I am โruled by ruled paper.โ I buy

Writing From This Notebook and This Wellspring of Loss
I wrote in a poem once that I am โruled by ruled paper.โ I buy

What the Man-of-War Told Me in the Gulf of My Youth
To say it now: I can hear the tangible skin of words โ as one

Survivorship Bias in Publishing
How do we as writers best learn successful habits? By emulating the successful? As I