It’s summer and all kinds of things are in bloom—beautiful and ugly—but we’re happy you’re here. We’re moved by the courage of those who give voice to their righteous struggles. We’re determined to continue to be able to challenge the inequitable and untenable. We’re hopeful climate leaders will be followed. We’re particularly grateful to Dorothy…

By Kayla Blau   Our five-year-old fingers plucked mancala beads, wove white flower crowns, blew dandelion seed wishes. Our Barbies knew no god. Our families spoke nothing of politics. Sleepovers at hers were cardamom and allspice, steaming lamb nestled under mounds of rice, fried eggplant, labneh and cucumber. Sleepovers at mine, sustained by cardboard box…

By Anna Lucia Deloia   a school principal confiscates the dictionary. When a student tries to look up the meaning of ontology (n.), she is informed that she doesn’t exist. In Massachusetts, the police storm a classroom to apprehend a graphic novel. They bury it in it the woods behind the station, because ideas aren’t…

By Dameien Nathaniel   1. 2007 and I have gotten my first flip phone. We are hanging out after the after school art club, and Alyssa has just informed me that this cell phone can take photos. You just have to open it, access the camera, hold the phone at arm’s length, and do your…

By Ell Cee   Artist statement As a queer person and artist, I’ve been struggling with the constant legislative attacks against the queer community echoing across America. So what’s at the heart of my piece, Make A Splash? Honestly? This is me looking into the eyes of homophobic politicians, homophobic people, and those who just sit neutrally…

By Laura Grace Weldon   Outrage drives me outside, a choice a woman can still make. I clamber close to our muddy creek collecting trash caught in fallen branches. I empty water from a Stroh’s bottle and battered jug of Cheer detergent. Pull out blue plastic bags and an honest-to-God wire hanger. Untangle a multicolored…

By Zhihua Wang   1 It’s October now, I am still listening to the song “Beautiful Springtime.” It seems the spring of 2020 never came. 2 The moon must love my daughter’s window more as it often has songs flying out of it. 3 I am in love with my bed now. Every time I…

By Myna Chang   My sleeping bag’s nestled in the drainage ditch where I used to play hide and seek. The new people living in our house don’t have any kids, so they don’t know the neighborhood’s good hiding places like I do. I see them in our kitchen. Mom’s curtains are gone. The walls…

By Elizabeth Birch   Come mourn with me. Pour your aching hearts into the endless hole we dug to house Mother Nature’s empty self. Come throw your smashed cans, stretched plastic, burnt oil, and dung on her hollow body below. Come cry for all the ifs, buts, and whys we should’ve asked ourselves decades ago…

By Eduardo Ramos   Thank you for sharing your world and helping me connect with mine. For speaking words unfamiliar to my ears stirring memories in my tongue. Usted reacquainted me with Al-Andalus and the road across Africa to Al-Mashriq, reaffirmed that my barrio is a rich mix of cultures, where we eat arroz and…

By Micaela Kaibni Raen   Artist statement I am my grandmothers’ dream, and she is mine. We exist together through Tatreez, Indigenous Palestinian textiles and embroidery. We share cultural memory and wisdom traditionally handed down, Palestinian female to Palestinian female. As a Palestinian lesbian artist, I feel Tatreez patterns hold a deep connectivity to ancestral…

By Michal Rubin   Mohammed, Wadia, two brothers Ala Asous, Hazaa, Rami, Ahmed, four brothers six cousins Rizkallah, seventh cousin, one missile, hundred shards of glass, one ambulance, one mass funeral, one village, one sleepless night at Muthalath al-Shuhada I wish my body moved, shook the numbers off, 22452600 my passport number, two, Yehoshua and…

By Shieva Salehnia   The fountain in the middle of Washington Square Park has not always been there, just as I have not always been here standing next to it. In the middle of the park, I climb inside the edge of the fountain’s lips. I lean back against them, cool slick stone. The bubbling…

By Dick Westheimer    “The only winning move is not to play.” —from the movie War Games “You can’t call it anything else. It’s just slavery.” —Calvin Thomas, who spent more than 17 years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, working the fields and cattle processing facilities as part of his terms of…