Editor – Page 17 – Writers Resist

Late Afternoon in the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe

By Joe Milosch

Sitting in the barrio church,
I look at the altar window.
It is a pale October evening,
but now its rainbow-colored shore
glows in the stained-glass.
Standing mast-like in a boat,
Christ looks toward land as he turns
red at sunset. He doesn’t look
like a carpenter’s son
any more than the men around him
look like fishermen;
any more than the man
I saw drinking from a bottle
looked like a refugee
as he rested near the south side
of the metal barrier on the border.
Wearing his Padres cap
slightly off center, he seemed
to study his shadow.
If someone from north of the border
shook the hand of this man,
their shadows would blend
and speak from the dust:
“We are the earth, mined, tilled,
and worked to exhaustion.”
Here, the gardener rinses
the stained-glass
and interrupts my thoughts
about men, land, and the sun.
Rubbing the cross of my rosary,
I kneel beside the aisle of marble tiles;
their broken pattern becomes
a landscape of farms
in my home state.
Looking up at the face of Christ,
I see watery traces
leading from his blue eyes to
the lead-bordered edge of his jaw,
and there, droplets fall unnoticed
among roses, stones, and soil.

Joe Milosch graduated from San Diego State University. His poetry has appeared in various magazines, including the California Quarterly. He has multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and he received the Hackney Award for Literature. He has two published books: The Lost Pilgrimage Poems and Landscape of a Hummingbird.

Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash.

Sonnet: Australia in 2020

By Chris Collins

‘graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day’
– P. B. Shelley, England in 1819

An orange light, pale, sickly, dying
Chokes the sky, while it anaesthetises.
Infected air, poisoned, thick and blinding,
But smoke can’t shroud our eyes from these fire’s sizes.
Our rulers neither see, nor feel nor know
But deny, scorn, politicise and peddle
As drought, hunger and extinction grow;
The stench of half a billion gone to the devil.
They make glib comments on cricket and ‘soul’
And our ‘resilient spirit’ that sucks the lie.
They warm their hands on lacquered coal
While their people sleep on beaches – and die.
Now even water, and breathing air aren’t free
Unless you’re on holiday in Hawaii.

Chris Collins writes poems and fairy fiction in between marking essays, narrowboating, Morris dancing, and folk singing. Her writing has previously been published by Animal Heart Press, Between These Shores Literary Annual, and several online presses and magazines, including Cephalopress and Mooky Chick.

Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash.

Fire Storm: Poem Beginning with a Line from Jane Kenyon

By Lynn Wagner

Into light all things must fall, glad at last to have fallen
while the crown fires burn and branches break, charred
and brittled to the tall trees’ bones. Fall down from the sky
fantails, so stumble purple swamphen along the shore.
And day is night and ash is all while pyrocumulonimbus
counterclockwise circle the globe.

Into light all things must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
Australian sharpshooters cull ten thousand thirsty camels
brought to their knees. To the east, their brothers in choppers
tip carrots and yam to wallabies. Call the Karajarri to pray
for rain. Call the prime minister back home. And all is ash,
is ash, so the children make a circle and sing a tune.

Into light all things must fall, glad at last to have fallen
like the very same rain from the sky, that gratefully
commingled with beads of hail. And the black earth
knows its sacrifice. And the beasts, vegetarians and sad
predators alike, their bodies baptized in death, yet koala
come, pockmarked, to puddles and drink, satisfied, at dawn.

Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Subtropics, West Branch, Green Mountains Review, Cavewall, and other journals. See more at lynnwagner.com.

Photo by Joanne Francis on Unsplash.

Americans are rushing around stocking up on toilet paper

By Marcy Rae Henry

In Himalayan India we used leaves

buckets of water and our hands

Best-selling tampons have applicators

because Americans are afraid to touch themselves

In Himalayan India we didn’t have tampons

We used rags and pads

but didn’t touch each other’s hands to say hello

When wiping with leaves or plants you have to know

which ones are poisonous and that’s different

from knowing the price of toilet paper at Sam’s v. Costco

They want to install outhouses in rural India

where people have only used the forest

Don’t women have enough problems on buses

without feeling vulnerable trapped in a shitbox at night

We learned to cut off tops of water bottles and pee in plastic

during an unknown night

With the tops we made spoons and flimsy guitar picks

At crowded train stations or bus stops food was sold

on plates of leaves that were tossed from windows

to degrade sooner than bones that are outlived by plastic

In Himalayan India we didn’t have many choices

for shampoo toothpaste or hair ties

We got whatever someone carried up the mountain

The States is mad about choice

about opening bars and closing borders

Some see the lack of a mask as an act of rebellion

The Great American Rush on Toilet Paper

A virus that cannot space out everyone

And we are the perfect hosts when we don’t want to be

Marcy Rae Henry is a Latina born and raised in Mexican-America/The Borderlands. She is a resister and an interdisciplinary artist with no social media accounts. Her writing and visual art have appeared in national and international publications and the former has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. Ms. M.R. Henry is working on a collection of poems and two novellas. She is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Fine Arts at Harold Washington College Chicago.

Say Their Names

Writers Resist is honored to share some of the many and diverse creative writings recently inspired by Black Lives Matter, systemic racism, police brutality, U.S. protests, and the gorgeous, global chorus demanding equity and equality for all. This issue includes works by Kitty Anarchy, Despy Boutris, Schyler Butler, Marcy Rae Henry, Dana Kinsey, Christa Miller, Aaron Sandberg, Sarah Sheppeck, Jennifer Shneiderman, and Rebecca Tolin.

We’re grateful to be able to illustrate the writings with images of protests, labor that often puts photojournalists and lay photographers in police crosshairs.

Please join us in celebrating all these works by sharing them wherever you feel safe doing so and—more important—when it isn’t comfortable.

Silence is not an option; resistance is transformative.

We’ll be releasing one piece daily on social media for the next ten days. Follow us to share the posts on Facebook @WritersResist, Instagram @WritersResist, and Twitter @WritersResist.

And subscribe at writersresist.com. It’s free, and words do create change.

With love and persistence,
K-B, Debbie, Sara, and Ying
Writers Resist
Publishing the resistance since 2016

Years that ask questions

By Marcy Rae Henry

Black like me said John Howard Griffin and the world listened

(Black like losing electricity)

Black like me said Rachel Dolezal and the world blistered

(Black like the plague)

Black lives matter (now) say my neighbors

(Black like squares on a checkerboard)

Black is beautiful said Bill Allen (maybe) and the world paused

(Black like hair before silver)

Doesn’t matter if you’re black (or white) said Michael

(Black like a birthmark)

And what did I mean by ‘black’? asked Coates

(Black like seeds)

I became black in America said Adichie

(Black like pepper)

Black Power is a cry of pain said MLK

(Black like blindness)

The Black Revolution is controlled only by God said Malcolm

(Black like Goth)

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide
welling and swelling I bear in the tide wrote Maya

(Black like ink)
(Black like mud)

Education is indoctrination if you’re white—subjugation if you’re black argued Baldwin

(Black like leopard spots)
(Black like the unlucky cat)
(Black like guns)

Animals weren’t made for humans any more than black people were made for white
(or women for men) claimed Alice Walker

(Black like pupils)
(Black like funerals)
(Black like devil’s hooves)
(Black like beaches)

Las caras lindas de mi gente negra son un desfile de melaza en flor sang Susana Baca

(Black like asphalt)
(Black like all colors blended together)
(Negro como mina de lápiz)
(Black like the absorption of all colors of the spectrum)
(Black like film noir)

Black, brown, beautiful—viviremos para siempre Afro-Latinos hasta la muerte lyricized Elizabeth Acevedo

(Black like eyeliner)
(Black like beans)
(Black like a cocktail dress)
(Negro como el opuesto de blanco)
(Black like the depths of Langston’s Africa)
(Black like a red-beaked swan)

Who would have thought, when they came to the fight
that they’d witness a launchin’ of a black satellite said Ali

(Black like charcoal)
(Black like black holes)
(Black like coal)
(Black like Christ)
(Black like Olbers’ Paradox)
(Black like the anoxic Euxine Sea)
(Black like the eight ball)

I am black because I come from the earth’s inside answers Lorde to the question she posed

Each Day I Ask Nine Words

By Rebecca Tolin

Less than nine minutes is how long
it took to snuff
the life out of a man
a white officer with his knee
on the neck
of a black man in Minneapolis.
Necks are not meant for kneeling
mister officer.
Necks are meant for breathing
turning
linking head to the heart.
Before his lungs collapsed
like a balloon
deflated
George Floyd once
talked and danced and cooked
with his mother and brothers
washed clothes in the sink
dried them in the stove.
His cousin said when Big George
wrapped his arms around you
your problems vanished
for a while.
Nine days is how long
it took to be charged
with second-degree murder
for holding down
a man
as the last breath
slipped from his lips
as he begged for air
as he called for his mama
as he fell forever out of reach
of his five children
Gianna just six.
Nine words is how many
it takes to ask:
How may I make each day
a living reparation?

Rebecca Tolin is a writer and poet living in San Diego. She enjoys tree gazing, trail blazing, word playing, asking unanswerable questions and drifting into the silence that gives rise to it all. She previously worked as a broadcast journalist covering science and nature. Her essays and articles appear in places like Yoga Journal and Sierra Magazine. Rebecca’s poetry is featured in the anthology Song of Ourself: Voices in Unison and other journals including Perigee. You’ll find her, occasionally, on Facebook.

Yes, All

By Sarah Sheppeck

Car break-ins were frequent in the city. Insurance only covered the damage if I produced a police report, so when I left work to find another window smashed, I simply left for the precinct.

It was already dark. Trying to avoid traffic, I stayed on side roads and in residential neighborhoods. Two miles from the station, whoop. My arm hair straightened, as did my spine.

They never even approached my window.

Exit your vehicle, said the megaphone.

I just got pulled over, I texted my friend.

Are you OK??? she asked. I opened my door, certain she’d never receive an answer.

Stand on the sidewalk, said the megaphone. Place your hands on your head.

I did.

I wept, ugly and loud, and when two large men exited their vehicle to approach me, I prayed that the first bullet would hit my head so that I wouldn’t feel the rest.

Even though I sat in the passenger’s seat the officer looked at me first. Then he noticed my friend’s quivering lip, the smooth expanse of pale freckled skin extending from beneath her romper.

He asked her to approach his cruiser.

In the rearview, I watched him direct her into the passenger seat. She sat, leaving her door ajar. He signaled to her, and her eyes turned forward. I met her gaze in the rearview. She swallowed. She closed the door.

I watched for nearly ten minutes. He advanced as she receded.

She returned to her driver’s seat. He drove away, and she cried.

“The next time that happens, call Mommy. Just leave me on the line, so I can hear if …” My mother choked.

“I will,” I said.

I knew I was going to be pulled over.

I didn’t know there was a cop behind me, but I knew, the way you know that you’re going to be sick, or that the man who just sat next to you at the bar is bad news.

It was two a.m., my partner beside me as I drove. We were out of town, we’d missed turns, I was frustrated. I chose to ignore the NO U-TURN sign on the otherwise empty street, and the red and blue lights blinded me from behind.

My partner, a white man, said something calming.

The cop, a Black woman, knocked on his window.

“Where are you headed? Where are you coming from?” she asked him, while watching me.

Then she saw it, the cardboard carrier containing six empty bottles we’d drained the day prior, stupidly, so stupidly left on the passenger side floor mat. She retreated, returned with her reporting officer, also a white man. This time, they approached my window.

I wasn’t drunk, and neither was my partner, the white officer determined after six sobriety tests.

The bottles were a mistake, my partner explained. We’d meant to recycle them and hadn’t thought to move them to the backseat. The white officer nodded. The black officer fidgeted.

“It’s your call,” he said to her.

She looked at him. Looked at me. Wrote a citation for violating the state’s open carry law. Left.

In the motel, I dreamt of sirens.

Sarah Sheppeck is a graduate of U.C. Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Rochester and her Master’s in Secondary Education and Curriculum from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Born and raised in upstate New York, with stints in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, she now lives in the woods of northern Maine, where she pays the bills by ghostwriting for motivational speakers. Follow her on Twitter @EpicSheppeck.

Photo credit: Raffi Asdourian via a Creative Commons license.

Dear Captain

By Jennifer Shneiderman

after Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain!
our fearful trip has just begun.
Exit the door of no return –
grim vessel of horror,
the treasure chest,
black gold, first wealth and power –
America cannot go back.

But O heart! heart! heart!
the bleeding does not stop.
Black men struck down – life seeping,
fallen cold and dead.
How many ways are there
to sink a heart.

O Captain! my Captain!
rise up and see what has become of us.
The bugle is trilling,
soul of the country.
Bouquets, wreaths fly in the wind
ashes and flames
burned out buildings
broken storefronts
looted dreams.

Here father! dear father!
swaying masses call out for relief
from wretched rudderless elect.
Lips of justice pale –
a standstill, a dead fall.
The anchor sinks,
voyage done, heads bowed.
Exult no shores.
The bells are still

You are betrayed, my captain.
We mourn what could have been,
complicit in silence,
eyes averted.
Time to pay for the passage.

Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a writer living in Los Angeles. She writes poetry and short stories about health and mental health. Her work has been published in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now and her short story, “Housekeeping in the Time of COVID-19,” was in the most recent issue of The Rubbertop Review. Her poetry will be included in the anthology, Poetry in the Time of COVID-19, Variant Literature, and the Bright Flash Literary Review. She is the recipient of a Wingless Dreamer flash poetry prize. Currently, her teenage son is in quarantine and her emergency room doctor husband is on the front lines of the pandemic.

Photo by munshots on Unsplash.

oppression Olympics

By Kitty Anarchy

you can’t even
say a problem

without someone
having a better
story than yours

suddenly they’re
the ones
telling theirs

yours out
the door

it’s the
oppression
Olympics
out here

but those
doing the
oppressing

aren’t even
playing
with us
down here

they watching
us fight
over crumbs
from up
in the
hills

Kitty Anarchy is an anarchafeminist, chicana womyn poet and short story writer. She has a background in social work, having earned her MSW from California State University, Long Beach, and she listens to KPFK radio. She has 7 cats, her favorite being ChiChi and 2 dogs, named Nibbit and Chato. She is published in Chiron Review, Rabid Oak Journal, Los Angeles Review, and Ghost Town Literary Journal, as well as in anthologies through Arroyo Seco Press and Picture Show Press. Visit Kitty’s website at www.kittyanarchy.com.

Photo by Donovan Valdivia on Unsplash.

The Gospel According to Saint Bryan

By Dana Kinsey

There was in Georgia a humble young man, jovial and curious,
who came upon two others who knew the law and the prophets.
Confined and detained, this man had no recourse but to run.
Hunted, he must have cried out to implore neighbors for help,
and sought shelter from bullets he knew were inscribed for him.

Fortunately, there was a Good Samaritan traveling the same road,
one whose benevolence forced him to stop and end the plight of
the innocent Georgian, offer him the help denied by the other men.
Sunday school lessons flooded back and he knew what he must do.
The victim was not of his race or religion, but he loved this neighbor
as he loved himself, and so reached in his pocket to offer a phone.

Gently, fearlessly, without flinching or uttering even a gasp, he
put the camera in video mode, took care to turn it horizontally
and filmed the man’s unfortunate ordeal, a sign of true mercy.
This Jesus, reincarnate, knew what a selfless gift he provided,
footage for the young man to show his grandchildren someday.

Roddie held steady to get the best quality video, kept his reactions
stifled so as to not mar the 28 seconds with any jolting or shock.
In time, all could see that his footage revealed God’s truth while
the other two men walked away appearing blameless in the town.
He thought of panning the area to show the 11 shotgun pellets
dead on the sidewalk, but he was expected in Samaria by sunset.

Dana Kinsey holds a BA in English and an MA in Theater from Villanova University. She is a poet, actor, freelance writer, and teacher at Lancaster Catholic High School in Pennsylvania. Her poetry has been published online in the Yellow Chair Review, The Broadkill Review, and Spillwords. Her work also appears in Fledgling Rag and Silver Needle Press. Dana’s screenplay, WaterRise, was filmed in Manhattan by Sagesse Productions. Visit Dana’s website at www.wordsbyDK.com.

Photo credit: William “Roddie” Bryan mugshot courtesy of Glynn County Sheriff’s Office.

Response/Ability

By Schyler Butler

Share the photo of Keisha with tire marks cascading her back.
Remember the protest last night, the hungry eyes.
Ask the masses where were you.
Ask them taste blood in exchange for God.
After the ashes settle on the campus rooftops
and the downtown glass is swept,
pay for Speedway Marlboro’s.
Listen to birds chirp and avoid the eyes
of every child still young enough to grow.

Schyler Butler received her BA in English from the University of North Texas. A recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY 2020 and a lead poetry editor for Human/Kind Journal, her work appears and is forthcoming in Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Heavy Feather Review’s #NoMorePresidents, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym “Iyana Sky.” She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.

At Heaven’s Door

By Christa Miller

After ten days of scavenging around the houses in our subdivision, I know it’s unsustainable.

Zoe and I had started with the houses next door, then worked our way down the street, but we were walking farther and farther for less and less.

I decide to head for Myrtle Beach, but Zoe doesn’t want to go. She’s worried about running into more mobs. I tell her, “They’re mobs, not zombies,” but my words fall flat. The memories in her dark eyes reflect in my mind: the way they banged on our door, broke our windows, searched the house.

I haven’t been able to tell her why they came. I’ve never been an open book, and my stepdaughter is as much a stranger to me as I am to her. She was 12 when I met her, 13 when I married her mother. Zoe had been deep in the throes of puberty-driven issues, and I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m white.

When I finally convinced her it was time to hit the road, I expected it all to start up again: the thrum of National Guard Chinooks, the bizarre scenes of mob violence, the screams and gunshots that made us barricade ourselves in our home, our prepper stash enough to sustain us for six weeks.

But the streets are eerily quiet now. The sounds are long gone, along with the people who made them. Did they all leave? Move with their mobs into other communities like schools of fish, flow into the Lowcountry like floodwater? Or did they all give up once the mob lost its meaning and they came to their senses, go inside their houses to starve themselves or take pills?

I don’t know which thought unsettles me more. But I’m glad I made the decision to go on foot, just a pair of backpackers. I don’t want to draw any more attention to us than we already have.

On the road, my memories are so strong that, as we search stores for food and clothes, I nearly hallucinate perky greeting girls and tired middle-aged clerks, asking if they can help me find something. I catch myself with my eye out for store detectives following Zoe, or well-to-do white women eyeballing her clothing choices at checkout like she doesn’t deserve the moisture-wicking sports gear or new pair of Nikes. That’s why, at a truck stop off the interstate, I don’t even notice the trucker drawing down on me until he screams something about this place being the domain he’s taken for himself. Blinking, my head still full of distracted thinking that the place should have bustled with crying children and cranky clerks and zoned-out drivers, I turn and face the black hole of his muzzle and think, This is why I left my guns behind. I’d almost welcome the bullet.

When the glass display case full of little crystal figurines crashes down on the trucker’s head, I don’t comprehend what’s happening right away. That big old burly white guy lies there screaming, a thousand tiny cuts from pink tinted glass all over his face and neck and eyes. Then there’s movement in my upper peripheral vision, and I turn my attention there.

It’s Zoe, of course. My stepdaughter has gone above and beyond what I deserve.

We grab up as many snacks as we can carry and hustle on our way. Zoe doesn’t exactly walk with me, but she doesn’t disappear either. She has this way of sort of eyeballing the space around her until she sees that I’m in it. Then she keeps going.

After the truck stop, there’s nothing but forest and farmland. By now, despite crazed white truckers, we’ve worked out that most everyone is gone. Disappeared, like the Rapture was a real thing, and we were the only sinners who didn’t get taken up. I don’t really think so, of course. Occasionally, holed up in a garage or shed, we’ve had to endure that sweet smell when it wafted on a breeze. Not often enough for suicide to account for all the disappearances, maybe more people died in the mob riots, but there’s no way to tell.

We manage to steal a truck from a farm and we drive just past Sangaree before it runs out of gas. It’s only been about an hour, and we’re a lot closer now to the coast, but the thought of walking makes my legs throb. Zoe, too. I can see it in her stiff limbs, the way she picks up her feet and puts them back down: gingerly, like she wishes the hard ground weren’t there.

We haven’t spoken since the truck stop. Time to give conversation a try. “We’re so close. All I want right now is to stick my feet in the surf.”

She shrugs, pushes her long box braids back away from her neck. “I’d settle for a place to stay and relax.”

“With a nice sun porch,” I try. “A hammock.” I chance a look at her face and catch the tail end of her eye roll.

We’re in a small community just off the highway. Zoe gestures at a little ranch. “No place matters if we don’t have food and water,” she says.

We have plenty, so much that I’m afraid any more will slow us down, but, whatever her reasons—probably a general disdain for my incompetence—Zoe seems to want the responsibility for scavenging.

The optics of a white cop letting a Black kid break into houses aren’t lost on me. After what happened to her mother, it feels like I’m setting her up for certain death. But arguing with her feels like an assault on her individuality, and so I watch her slip, cat-like, into the dark gap beneath the garage door.

Was Zoe into urban exploration or was it something she’d picked up from her video games? Jaye had never said anything about it. Jaye wasn’t a permissive mother, but she wasn’t strict, either. “Zoe’s like a river with a fast, deep undercurrent,” she told me once. “Damming it is only temporary, and you’d best have a way to relieve the pressure when it rains too hard for too long. Better to direct it. Set its path in the direction you want it to go, and hope it doesn’t overflow its banks.”

I could only wish I’d been raised that way. I might’ve gotten into less trouble. At the time I’d been excited that maybe Zoe and I had more in common than I realized. Now I think spit-and-polish discipline has been a part of my life for too long to be helpful to either one of us. All I know is, these urbex skills of hers, however she came by them, are exactly what she—what we—need to ensure our survival in this new world.

I come to a stop almost in front of the house, where I can see and hear anything that might go down, but I don’t go inside. That would be a good way to get myself hurt or killed if I were to turn a corner and surprise her, or anyone else who’s in there. Instead I wait. I keep my pack on my back and do a slow 360-degree turn, because I haven’t looked behind me in a while and I want to get my bearings.

As always, there’s nothing. A few high cirrus clouds tell me rain might be on its way, but that’s about it. There are no sounds, not the chatter of children playing nor the whir of lawn equipment. No footfalls or the squeak of a bicycle to tell us someone followed us. The air is flat and still, heavy with moisture and heat that won’t rise, and I suddenly have the irrational thought that we should be heading inland, away from the coast, because it’s hurricane season and what if? We’d never know until it hit us.

I shut it down. It would take us days to retrace our steps, and as bad as inland flooding has been in recent storms, we’d still have no guarantee of safety. I’d rather stay, maybe in a house built up on stilts, than risk fleeing.

Another five minutes and Zoe comes back out. She rolls her eyes again. “Why are you waiting for me?” she demands.

“Basic safety. Watching your back. Would you rather I went in there with you?”

She clicks her tongue and suddenly I know: Someday, perhaps sooner than I think, she’ll walk off without me, decide she’d rather just live on her own. I’ll wake up one morning, and she’ll be gone, or she’ll roll right out the back door of one of these houses and keep going, disappear for good.

I force myself to breathe, focus. Her hiking backpack doesn’t look any more stuffed than it did before. I resist the temptation to go in and do my own search, and instead I ask, “What’d you find in there? Anything good?”

She relaxes, just a little bit. “Nah. Those people took everything. Shelves were empty.” She hesitates, then meets my gaze. “Where are our photos?”

It takes me a few seconds to understand what she’s asking. The shame compounds tenfold when I realize I didn’t even think to bring any of the pictures Jaye printed from now-unreachable servers.

We halt in the middle of an intersection. Gas stations at opposite corners, a McDonald’s on one side, a Rite Aid on the other. All of them surrounded by weeds.

“How could you forget?” Zoe’s soft alto turns harsh, guttural. Her brown eyes meet mine, then slide away. Her mouth compresses into a thin line on her delicate face, and she twists a thin braid around her finger. “It’s not like we had no time. We spent weeks at home, waiting for the riots to blow over. Weeks. Plenty of time to go through the photos.”

What she’s saying is that those memories meant more to her than they did to me, and I’d never even stopped to consider that. I realize two things: one, I’d long ago reconciled with the idea that I might lose Jaye—you can’t both be cops and not recognize that—but I’d thought of Zoe as an extension of her. And two, I hadn’t thought—really thought—that we were truly leaving everything behind, but it pissed me off that Zoe blamed me when neither one of us had been able to think straight. I say the only thing I can think of to say: “If they were so important, why didn’t you go through them?”

She rocks back on her heels like I physically hit her. Then she takes off running.

Shit. Shitshitshit. The one thing Jaye would’ve entrusted to me, and I’ve fucked it up.

I stay in the same spot in that intersection for much longer than I tactically should. When Zoe doesn’t come back, I go looking for her.

What will I say when I find her? I don’t know. She probably won’t let me hug her. I’m so pissed off and frightened and ashamed that what I really want is for her to see me and follow me. To prove she didn’t just stick with me because she felt somehow compelled to.

I hear footsteps behind me, and my mind starts to play havoc. What if it isn’t Zoe, but some half-crazed resident, looking to loot me or worse?

The thought of being assaulted and left for dead out here in the street, under the baking Carolina sun, is what makes me finally spin around, hand at my hip where my gun used to be.

Zoe stops dead in her tracks.

She’s tied her braids into a ponytail, so it takes me three beats too long to recognize her. The first thing I notice is her expression: fearful, astonished, and, worst of all, betrayed. She eyeballs my hand until she’s sure I’m not really carrying. Then she seems to melt into the landscape.

I didn’t think the shame could get any worse, but it does. It burns my face along with the sun. I just made the worst possible assumption, not only about the only other living human being I’m aware of, but Jaye’s daughter, for fuck’s sake. And now I’ve chased her away, and the two of us are worse off for it. “I’m sorry,” I call out to the deserted street. My voice thin, weak.

She doesn’t respond.

I could end this all right now, one way or the other, if I could just tell her what happened to her mother.

She deserves that from me. They both do. I should have told her.

I take a deep breath, channel my most authoritative voice. “Zoe,” I call into the silent street. “Remember when we had to hide in the attic last month?”

No answer. But I wasn’t expecting one.

“I never thought I would ever have to do that,” I continue, “hide from people I considered friends, brothers even. But after what they did to your mother. … She tried to make them stop. They’d whipped themselves into a frenzy, thinking a group of unarmed civilians was looting a store, and she got in front of them. I couldn’t get to her in time. I promise you, Zoe, if I’d had any chance— In that moment, you were all I could think of. That moment … I’d been seeing for days, weeks, even months, who those people really were, but I couldn’t accept it until I saw what they did to their sister officer. Until I couldn’t say what they’d do to you. We were our own mob. The damage we did or were complicit in. So I deserted.”

Zoe sidles out from behind a parked car. I don’t give in to the relief. Not just yet.

Then she says dryly, “And you used to worry that video games were desensitizing me to violence.”

I have to let out a bark of laughter, because she’s right.

She doesn’t laugh with me, but her face softens. She hefts her pack on her back and without another word, starts to walk once more. East, of course.

I follow her.

Too goody-two-shoes for the rebels and too rebellious for the good girls and boys, Christa Miller writes fiction which, like herself, doesn’t quite fit in. For nearly 20 years, Christa has written in genres ranging from crime fiction to horror to children’s, but prefers to write—and read—blended-genre stories. Her affinity for the dark, psychological, and somewhat bizarre doesn’t stop her from volunteering at a local wildlife rescue, adventuring with her two sons in rivers, swamps, and marshes, or—when she’s not running her freelance business—relaxing with a book and a beverage in her hammock. Learn more at her website, christammiller.com.

Photo by Donovan Valdivia on Unsplash.

Cicadas in Protest, 2020

By Aaron Sandberg

they emerge—
suddenly and briefly in large numbers—
symbols of immortality—prominent eyes—

active during the day with some calling at dawn or dusk—
modes of locomotion—walking and flight—
take to the wing to travel distances—

the structure is buckled by muscular action—
removing dirt in the process—
sometimes cause damage—
blunt spikes—
drumlike—

yet to be studied carefully—
many await formal description—
common names—red eye—black prince—
trees may be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers—

cicadas are preyed on—
making them drop to the ground—
variety of strategies to evade predators—
long lifecycles may have developed as a response—

the cicada-hunter—
mounts and carries them—
pushing with its hind legs—
sometimes over a distance—
until they can be shoved down—

a loud cicada song—
especially in chorus—
distinct distress call—
asserted to repel predators—
calls to maintain personal space—
emitted when seized or panicked—

resonating chamber—
sing in scattered groups—
an exceptionally loud song—
may use different heights and timing of calling—
loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss—
the pitch is nearly constant—the sound is continuous—
they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge—

they emerge, all at once—

Poet’s Note:

Audre Lorde said, “Revolution is not a one time event.” With the reemergence of the cicadas this season and the uprising protests, I saw a point of positive comparison—gathering in large numbers, being viciously preyed upon, making a unified chorus of sound. This is a found poem—all the phrases here are taken in some form or another from the Cicada Wikipedia entry.

Aaron Sandberg resides in Illinois where he teaches. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction, English Journal, Yes Poetry, One Sentence Poems, Vita Brevis Press, Literary Yard, and elsewhere. You might find him on Instagram @aarondsandberg.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.

This Morning, I Mistake the Sound of Thunder for Bombs

By Despy Boutris

for Brittny

which tells you something about the state
of this country. This morning, I open Instagram

and see Céline lying through its teeth.
I’d love to write about planting flowers

on my forearms, or my best friend’s collection
of wool coats, but the police pulled guns

on her husband standing in his own yard.
I want to love my country. I’d love to write

about the scent of honeysuckle,
but this city has gone up in flames. I learned

only yesterday that Charleston was the center
of the slave trade. A few miles from the port,

another white couple exchanges vows
at a plantation. I wish I could love my country.

Right now, I live a mile from where George Floyd
grew up, hear that Cartier and Dior

have boarded up their windows uptown.
That’s more than just a metaphor. I was twelve

when Oscar Grant was killed at the same BART station
where my mother debarks. She has blonde hair,

blue eyes, has never had to fear for her life.
At seventeen, in math class, someone said

I have major jungle fever, and I watched
as my friend stiffened, brown eyes unblinking.

I waited for her to say something
so I wouldn’t have to. I still think about that.

In college, every English professor but one
was white, and I’m from California,

which thinks itself superior. In college, I read
an Audre Lorde poem and my heart beat fast

as rubber bullets leaving the barrel,
which aren’t really rubber at all, I’ve learned,

and these are what the police keep firing
at the people I love. I want so badly to love

my country. Last July, I saw a man I knew
from college on Instagram: shirtless,

in a MAGA hat, the photo captioned, America
is fiyah! If that’s true, then let’s let it burn.

Despy Boutris’s work is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, Southern Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Palette Poetry, Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches at the University of Houston, works as Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.

Photo by Donovan Valdivia on Unsplash.

War

By Linda E. Goodliffe

Stolen

sanity
childhood

classroom

teacher
hummus
art

photographs

home
garden
cow
goat
silver

Fire

skin

IED

arm

RPG

spine

grenade

leg

bunker buster
drone strike
mushroom cloud
burn pit

Rape

gang

woman
child

knife

vulva
vagina
cervix
uterus
bladder
breasts

Feasting

oligarch
cat
dog
vulture

on human carcass

Linda E. Goodliffe has both her bachelor’s degree in English/Creative Writing and her MFA in poetry from Queens University of Charlotte. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her family, which includes cocker spaniels. Linda is a veteran of the United States Navy. She believes the written word is a powerful force, and she hopes her work will contribute to the continued evolution of the human condition. You can find more of her work in the journal Leaping Clear and on her web site, lindaegoodliffe.com.

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash.

Dream Interpreter

By Jie Wang

“I was on an underground train. The announcement kept saying ‘Terminal. Terminal,’ in a slow way. Then the train stopped. The man in a grey jacket was on the platform. He was the only one there. He looked into the train. He looked around. I felt that he was looking for me. I felt that I knew him and I used to love him. But I was trying to hide from him. I don’t know why. He didn’t seem very eager to find me either. He seemed … lost. Then the train started. The announcement still saying ‘Terminal. Terminal.’ It was very dim. Occasionally, I saw colourful lights from the ads. They swam on my skin like koi fish … What does it mean?” she said.

“Does the man in grey resemble anyone you knew? An ex? Your father?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It was very dim. I couldn’t see his face.”

“Well, I think it’s about unresolved relationship issues, and suppressed memories. It could be a relationship that didn’t end well, or abusive, so your memories about this man were suppressed, and you couldn’t see his face. Does this make sense?”

“Yes, yes. I think you are right. I had this dream several times this month. It started to drive me crazy. Should I try to remember who this man was?”

“My suggestion is no. It’s probably something very unpleasant, and your mind was trying to protect you from seeing his face. In your dream neither of you was keen to make contact. Let’s leave it that way. Next time you dream about him, try to say goodbye in your mind. Then you can move on.”

“Move on? I don’t know where the train was going. I don’t know what ‘terminal’ was. Could it mean ‘death’?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t read too much into it. Sometimes there are no deep meanings in dreams. Perhaps you used to take a train and get off at the terminal, or perhaps you just heard the word a lot on TV recently.”

“That’s possible. Oh, I’m feeling better now. Thank you very much.”

“You are very welcome.”

• • •

Okay, that was my last client today. She is a regular, often creeped out by her dreams. She probably had some traumatic experience, but that’s not really my expertise. My expertise is … well, I guess I’m really good at sensing what people want to hear. I’m no scientist. I’m no doctor. She knows that. She just wants somebody to comfort her, and that’s the service I’m providing.

I feel lucky that I still have a job. Readers of the past, in case you don’t know—AI, general or narrow—have taken away most jobs. AI give us universal income, so we can live comfortably. Everybody is pursuing their dreams. There’ve never been so many writers, painters, musicians in human history. Many of them think they are geniuses, like statistically there can be so many geniuses. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s as natural as mutations—a lot of mutations are generated, but only a few can survive. AI used to create art for us, and people used to love it, until they knew who the artists were. Then they said art is a human thing, it’s mysterious, no machines can understand it.

Well, I’m no human supremacist, and I’m really fed up with the word “mysterious.” My father is a Taoist priest. My mother is a lecturer in ancient Chinese poetry. I used to hear this word ten times a day when I was a child. I’m glad we don’t talk any more. They think I’m a disgrace, as a “dream interpreter.” I’m a con artist, I know, but my parents on their high unicorns quote Freud in their work all the time. Yeah, whatever. I’m not a bubble burster.

I had a blind date with this guy recently. He had long hair and this floral shirt. I said, “You must be an artist.” Everybody is some sort of artist these days. You can’t go wrong with that. No human scientists or bankers any more, but always human artists.

He smiled and asked what I did. I said I was a dream interpreter.

“Dream interpreter?” He raised one eyebrow. “Cute,” he said. “Do you want to hear one of my new poems?”

“Sure,” I said. Then he started to recite his poem quite loudly in the restaurant. It was all nonsense to me and I didn’t feel a thing. My mother used to say I lack artistic temperament and mysterious feminine charm. I guess she was right, because when I tried to say something nice about his poem, he got annoyed and said I was like Icarus who flew too close to the sun. Did he mean he was the sun and I couldn’t understand his depth? I’m not sure. I’m always dumb about these things. Anyway, I said I forgot to feed my dogs and I had to go home. I guess I will die a spinster.

I do find some of my clients’ dreams poetic though, like the one I just told you. I don’t really understand them but I tell plausible stories about them. I try to make my clients feel better. Occasionally, I even feel I’m helping people. It’s no easy job. There was this client, a bodybuilder and a believer in Bodism. There’ve never been so many ideologies. My mother called it the “Renaissance of Mythologies.” There are people worshiping bodies, sex, AI, animals, large eyes, small eyes. … Anyway, this guy, this bodybuilder, told me he had a dream that different muscle groups in his body all achieved consciousness, and they started talking to him.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“They said I served them well, and they would return the favour by giving me what I wanted—sex, love, fame. Their voices sounded so real.” He hesitated. “Could this mean something?”

I didn’t know what to say. It’s always risky to tell a client that some dreams have no meaning and can be pretty random. It’s like devaluing their dreams or even themselves. But on the other hand, you don’t want them to get too delusional in case they do something dangerous to themselves or others. So I said, “I don’t know where the voices came from, but I do know you have a great body. Maybe it can bring you sex, love, and fame.”

He fell silent. He looked a bit disappointed, but not offended. Sometimes that’s all you can hope for.

Occasionally a client does get offended. I had a new client this week. He’s a qigong master. He told me he dreamt that qi was flowing from the sky into the crown of his head, and out from the soles of his feet, but then the flow got disrupted and disappeared, and his body started withering away to a mummy. He was terrified and asked me how to avert this disaster.

Naturally, I told him it was just a dream and it was not real, but he was convinced it was a sign. He started mumbling to himself, “Maybe it’s because I live on the second floor and lost contact with qi from the earth. Maybe I should move. …”

Eventually I plucked up the courage to ask him, “What is qi exactly? Does it mean air?”

He looked at me as if I was some illiterate. Then he said, “Qi is everywhere. It’s in the air, in heaven and earth, in your body.”

I said, “So it’s the gases in the blood and the digestive system?”

He suddenly got angry and called me ignorant, and I apologised! Then he calmed down and said, “Qi is something very ethereal, very mysterious. You can feel it, understand it with your heart, but you can’t and shouldn’t put it into words. It’s just so vulgar.”

I looked at him blankly. He stood up and walked away. I thought, Shit, I lost a client, and I have five dogs to feed. But he didn’t leave. He just walked to the window, looking at the sky and sighing loudly. I felt the urge to say something, but I still didn’t know what qi is.

Eventually he turned around and said, “Nice talking to you. See you next week.”

Anyway, it was time to go home and I started missing my dogs. I got on the train. When it was at full speed, the people outside the window became blurry, like ghosts trapped in shards of a distorting mirror.

After I got home, I fell asleep on the couch while watching the newest remake of Interstellar. I dreamt of a train. It was passing through space. The announcement kept saying “Terminal. Terminal” in a slow way. My dogs were sleeping under the seats. My clients were there too—the woman, the bodybuilder, the qigong master. Even my parents were there. The lights from the stars were tattooing our skins. We were together, no longer haunted, no longer anxious, and we felt it was the best thing in the universe.

I am a flash fiction/short story writer. I was born in a northern city in China in the 1980s, and have been living in the UK since I was 23. I am interested in the interaction between literature and science. You can follow me on Twitter @JieWang65644813.

Photo by Roman Koester on Unsplash.

Two Poems by Gregory Wolff

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80 Percent

The human body is 80 percent freshwater,
and 80 percent of freshwater is suspended in glaciated forms at the southern pole,
where it’s rapidly melting.
80 percent of laborers in the United States of America
live paycheck to paycheck,
and 80 percent of college students engage in drunkorexia—
that’s starving oneself to increase the effects of intoxication
(for those who don’t know). 80 percent of women don’t orgasm
from penetrative sex, and 80 percent of animal species are as of yet undiscovered.
Sadly, that doesn’t make them much safer than the rest.
80 percent of earth’s forest has been destroyed,
and 80 percent of American kids have an online presence
by the age of two. 80 percent of the world population lives under skyglow
and 80 percent of Americans believe in the existence of angels.
80 percent of America’s food went uninspected in the shutdown of 2019,
and 80 percent of Central American women and girls are raped
on their way up to the US border. If they make it, and most don’t
they will meet thirty-three million registered Republicans,
80 percent of which trust Trump more than the media.
80 percent of forest fires are started by human action or negligence,
and 80 percent of smartphone users check their phones
before brushing their teeth in the morning.
Humans have killed over 80 percent of all wild mammals on earth,
and 80 percent of Americans aren’t content
with the brightness of their smile.

Drone Love

you take me whether or not
I am willing or able
you find me in the grey streets and persimmon groves
and flatten me with your persuasion
I know you watch me
with my shy child in the rusted park
and I know you will follow me
to the very ends of the earth
your commitment is unwavering
your determination bone cold
with steely hands
you pluck me from the wedding party
and the funeral procession like a dandelion
my roots limp and in utter disarray
your silence is uncanny
and your thoughts a coded mystery
nonetheless you persist and remain always devoted, always faithful
you, after all, have haunted my dreams
since I first saw your fiery passion
touch upon the ground in the lost courtyard
of my childhood
now I wonder, as you rive the unshorn sky
your eyeless head bulging where a mind ought to be
have you already decided that I’m the one
or are you just searching
for love at first sight?

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I am an almost-PhD in philosophy turned organic farmer; writer of fiction, poetry, and children’s literature; and very proud father of two enchanted and half-wild children. I live with my family amidst the musical forests of the Saint Lawrence River Valley, just north of the Adirondack Range. My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in EVENT, Zone 3, Vassar Review, Blue River, Writers Resist, and Poets Reading the News. I am currently at work on a novel about an unlikely garden, a short story about life beneath ground, and a collection of my recent poetry. Visit my website at thewildernessofwords.com.

Photo by roya ann miller on Unsplash.

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Now More Than Ever

By Marissa Glover

You must pretend
this is the first
mask you’ve ever
worn—act like it
is the first time
you hid yourself
at home, away
from the unseen
thing that might
make you sick,
might kill you,
if too much gets in.

Now more than
ever, dream
of snakes walking
into the house
on legs, of teeth
cracking, collapsing
into your throat,
of flying—slowly
only two feet
above the ground.

Now more
than ever, be
calm when folks
call you coward,
cunt; let them
drink a punch—
this darker red
spreading heat
in their chests now.

More than ever
we’re alone,
together.
Everyone is
uncomfortable,
forced to pretend
this is the first
time no one
can see us,
know how
we really feel.

Marissa Glover teaches and writes in Florida, where she is co-editor of Orange Blossom Review and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Marissa’s work appears in Rust + Moth, SWWIM Every Day, and Okay Donkey, among other journals. Her debut poetry collection, Let Go of the Hands You Hold, is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2021. Follow Marissa on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.

Photo credit: Kristin Schmit via a Creative Commons license.

Scrolling

By Laura Grace Weldon

Two penguin chicks are the only survivors
of a 40,000 bird Antarctic colony.
I imagine fuzzy hatchlings
chirping for food till silent,
scroll on to read
about a dog taught to talk
with an adaptive device. Stella,
a mixed breed, already uses 29 words
although her choices don’t include “why.”

All this bluster about GDP and NASDAQ,
about trends, ratings, followers,
about so-called political divisions
is just Oz shouting
Pay no attention
to that man behind the curtain
to keep us consuming, keep us distracted
keep us from the startling recognition

we are Stella tapping “want” “Jake” “come,”
then tapping “happy” when Jake indeed
comes home at the expected time.
We are the penguins, the ocean,
the plastic debris filling bird bellies.
Everywhere, curtains.

Laura Grace Weldon has published two poetry collections, Blackbird (Grayson 2019) and Tending (Aldrich 2013). She was named Ohio Poet of the Year for 2019. Laura works as a book editor and teaches community-based writing workshops. She lives with vast optimism on a small farm where she’d get more done if she didn’t spend so much time reading library books, cooking weird things, and singing to livestock. Connect with her at lauragraceweldon.com., on Facebook, and on Twitter @earnestdrollery.

Photo by Cassidy Mills on Unsplash.