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Sept/Oct 2016 • Vol. XXXVIII No. 5 • Nonfiction |

On Not Eating the Marshmallow

If I were a preacher—if I had a sermon—if I were a protester, a radical in the totalitarian regime of the self—if I were fearless enough to be jailed—or fearless enough to break out—if I were Aretha, or the organist on her gospel album, or her reverend father—if I had a voice like that—a voice with a dream, the kind of voice that screamed—then I’d scream you a song about—

That sweet fluffy thing.

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Helen Betya Rubinstein’s essays have appeared in Seneca Review, Paris Review Daily, Witness, and the New York Times, and her fiction in the Collagist, Ninth Letter, and Salt Hill. She is the Dana Emerging Writer Fellow at Cornell College. “On Not Eating the Marshmallow” is from her current project investigating womanhood, hysteria, and self-control.

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