Joanna Penn Cooper

from “The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis.” I think it’s time we stop, Children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down. You don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand. Dear Twentieth Century, As a very small child in the Nixon years, even I was tired. But there’s ironic satisfaction to be found in Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” being number one the week you were born. I wasn’t your best citizen. I couldn’t fix the business of the Panama Canal in my mind, try as I might, sitting in pigtails and watching the news. And even though I knew about Ella Fitzgerald at a very young age, I thought her first name was “Ellafitz,” last name “Gerald.”

Dusty Springfield and Buffalo Springfield drifted unmoored for years, intermingling. Roxy Music seemed important, but insidious. It was all the disappearing sixties then, louche magic and hips. All I mean to say is, I miss my can headphones. Car window handles. Decaying Chevy upholstery. The smell of warm grapes and peanuts at Pope and Airey’s grocery store. The world had heft and weight to it then. We had Charlie Chaplin and Richard Pryor then. I was born at the exhausted end of a barbarous century, but we had the good people. Joanna Penn Cooper

“As a very small child in the Nixon years, even I was tired. // But there’s ironic satisfaction to be found in Carole King’s ‘It’s Too Late’ being number one the week you were born.” — @joannapenncooper.bsky.social, “The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis”

Decorative cover of About Ethel chapbook.

Cover of Celebrity Ghost chapbook, showing a drawing of a woman looking at a ghost in sunglasses

A drawing of an owl saying "what."

An collaged image of a woman with Rasputin behind her and gold embellishments.

More new chapbooks from Ethel to check out: Celebrity Ghost, my book of drawings/comics; and About Ethel, by and about Ethel!!

Simple line drawing of a scowling person with the words, handwritten, “my face is gonna get stuck this way. Thanks, patriarchy. Thanks a lot.”

And number 2 in original art that sums up today…

(this one thanks to @joannapenncooper.bsky.social)

Synchronicity still exists

Wow! ❤️ And thank you!

Richest guy in the world telling us we can’t afford to have our government fund cancer research.

Guess Hulu didn’t pay for the pro Zoom.

I have no words.

Etel Adnan: *Poetry reaches the unsaid, and leaves it unsaid.*

every few hours i think about how the nea just completely capitulated immediately while other agencies, including those that fund businesses, haven’t, and it makes me furious all over again

In a world of endless heartbreak, we bring you work that's full of heart. Welcome to Split Lip’s February issue. Thank you so much for spending time with our contributors' beautiful art & words.

Our team reviewed the entire DOGE website. Nothing they have identified constitutes evidence of fraud or corruption—both of which are crimes. Feel free to audit us. The funds were allotted by Congress, and OIGs regularly reviewed expenditures for fraud.

If you’ve ever taken the oath to uphold the Constitution, this is the time to live up to it.

Totally not a nazi salute. Not at all.

In troubling times, people experiencing high stress or crippling anxiety deal with it in different ways. Some have a therapist, some have a deep breathing exercise & some even have a personal mantra.

I have a Mabel.

Image of seven of my books with Haymarket, Hope in the Dark (black), Whose Story Is This (violet), Men Explain Things to Me (blue), Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, coedited with Thelma Young Lutunatabua and including 20 amazing writers from around the world (green), No Straight Road Takes You There (yellow), The Mother of All Questions (orange), and Call Them By Their True Names (red).

Happy Valentine's Day, especially to anyone who might identify with one of the letters in LGBTQ, particularly the day after someone Trumpy stripped the letter T and then the letter Q from the National Park Service website for Stonewall in New York City.

Alt text: a woman with green eyes, brown hair, and a slight smile, wearing a blue helmet, brown bandana around her neck, and a black Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirt, with green foothills behind her.

Jill Kitchen’s poem “in a parallel universe, there is nothing i cannot do” uses a gorgeous cascade of language to open a portal into a different state of being. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:
https://buff.ly/41bnV5t

Ha, the poets always have lightly sordid details to share. (I don't exclude myself.)

Wait, what.

From “The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis.” It was her mother who first noticed it, how when the girl was eighteen, men’s gazes would sometimes linger on her for a moment, curious. At times, the daughter’s own gaze rested half a step inside herself, her eyes down and to the right, like those Pre-Raphaelite women. Twice, people had commented on this. “You look like one of those Pre-Raphaelite paintings,” they said. That isn’t how she saw herself, though. And she bristled at references to young women “blooming.” “I’m not a flower,” she would say. Mostly she stayed in her room and read books. Boys at the dorm would come by to

watch TV and propose massages. She wasn’t a Catholic, but she began to think of convents—silence, the low swoosh of robes, the feeling of beads moving through her fingers, the smooth wood in the chapel, and other women gliding by, their gazes also resting on God Within. Mostly she thought of the silence and how she would step into the courtyard alone with the green and the arches, the statues and the low, protecting sky. Joanna Penn Cooper.

“men’s gazes would sometimes linger on her for a moment, curious. At times, the daughter’s own gaze rested half a step inside herself, her eyes down and to the right, like those Pre-Raphaelite women.”
— @joannapenncooper.bsky.social, “The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis”

Ugh. I’m sorry. That’s awful.

I Send You Out On the care and wisdom of women

@joannapenncooper.bsky.social I read your post on substack this am and found both the lead-in and the essay great.

My amazing doctor’s research will be cut by our govt research funding because she studies women, and they’ve banned the word “women.”
joannapenncooper.substack.com/p/i-send-you...

Thank you, Angela! Yes, what a catastrophe all this intentional chaos is for scientists and nonprofits. Friends have been personally/professionally affected because they work In women’s health or with nonprofits partnering with survivors of gender-based violence. It’s infuriating.

Ooh.

In 2004, I interviewed for a teaching position. The principal asked me how many kids I had. I answered. He asked if I was planning to have more —said he couldn’t afford to have another teacher out on maternity leave.

This is why women need protections, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Pete Hegseth admitted to the Senate that he paid $50,000 (!!!) to silence a "Jane Doe" who accused him of rape.

But at his hearing last week, he said he was “falsely accused."

More questions than answers. We can't rush his vote and trust him with our national security.

Resisting Dictatorship: Ways to Fight Back Your Guide to Resistance: Fighting Authoritarianism in the United States

Whatever happens, you are not alone.

olgalautman.substack.com/p/resisting-...