Freak Lip, Volume 5

Why do some words, some sentences seem impossible to speak aloud? Trapped inside us, unsaid, how is it possible they have such impact on our lives anyway—on our relationships? On our ability to share intimacy and vulnerability with others? Do our unsaid sentences sentence us—to death, to hard time—unless we run? And caught in a race against time, against death, and inevitable endings, could it still be possible, enroute, to create a little space, enough openness, for a bit of love? Folding the essay's form with everyday accumulations—communications with women writers, absent and present, break-up emails, AirBnB reviews, and text-message threads—Freak Lip does more than document, it swells impossible words that ever-press into the point, edging up and down the blade, resisting the urge to burst, but just barely, it lets the blood we want to talk about and the sex we want to have—body forth. Innovative Prose, No. 5 Selected by Katie Jean Shinkle

Julia Cohen is the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She is the author of three previous books, I Was Not Born (Noemi Press), Collateral Light (Brooklyn Arts Press), and Triggermoon Triggermoon (Black Lawrence Press). Her work appears in journals like the Georgia Review, The Southeast Review, Fugue, and The Bennington Review. She co-curates, with Abby Hagler, a poetry interview series at Tarpaulin Sky Magazine.