Editor – Page 4 – Writers Resist

18 Jennas

By Jenna Mayzouni

A social media influencer had posted that he looked up how many people were killed in Gaza who shared his name. Morbid curiosity seized me, and I searched for mine.

On November 1,^[1] there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

On my birthday every year, my mother recounts the story of my birth. How I was a difficult pregnancy, how she labored for 17 hours, and how I probably should have been a Cesarean. How my name came to her in a moment of thoughtful prayer and reflection. How I was facing upward and almost killed us both. And every year, she ends it on the same note: “But everything was worth it after I saw your face.”

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

There was a Jenna in Gaza who died before she reached her first birthday. If her parents are still alive, how are they feeling? How does it feel to be that Jenna’s mother? To have protected that Jenna for months as a part of one’s body, only to send that Jenna into the world and lose her? Who will the mother tell the story of Jenna’s birth to now? The dreams of a relationship they will never have will haunt her instead.

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

الشعر الغجري المجنون
Crazy, curly Romani hair . . .

. . . a line from an Arabic poem my mother loved. My mother said that when I was a child, all my hair was straight except for wisps of curls on the back of my neck. When I was 11, I hit puberty, and the worst transformation of my life began. My hair became wild, untamable, frizzy, thick, and out of my control. When I would scream at it, my mother would laugh and say, “Crazy, curly Romani hair.” A straightener stood no chance against Chicago summers and hijab cotton, creating something of chaos for every holiday and event. It wasn’t until my 20s did I appreciate the glory of curly hair. The wisps of curls on the back of my neck became my title card. The crazy, curly hair became something to love, something that marked me and became a testament to my heritage.

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

Seven of those Jenna’s were 11 years old. Instead of worrying about their hair, about school, about their futures, they spent their last moments on this earth afraid for their lives. Who were the women those Jennas would become? Would they love their hair? Would they love their bodies? Would they struggle with the transformation and an awkward phase? Did they have mothers who put oils in their hair? Who struggled every morning to give them the perfect braid? Who whispered their love in the early hours of the dawn with every hair they straightened, with every curl they put in place? They will never be those women; their mothers will never fix their hair again. Girls in Gaza are shaving their heads, using tents as menstrual products for their first periods. Maybe it’s easier to imagine these seven Jennas focusing on their hair because it was the least of their problems.

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

When I was eight, the world felt enormous. I wanted to be an adult so quickly because I wanted to see the world. I was going to travel, fall in love, and have a family one day. The next day I was going to be a pirate queen. The day after that I was going to be an astronaut. The week after, I was going to be an actress. In between, I would practice the faces I would make for my adoring fans. Some nights, I would stay awake because I would worry about dying in my sleep, afraid I would never accomplish my goals. I wanted to be great, to be remembered, to be loved. I wanted the world to see me, and I didn’t want to die before being seen.

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

As Arabs, our middle names are our father’s names. They are meant to trace our lineage. One Jenna had my first name, and her Baba also shared my Baba’s name. She was eight. My inner world was a galaxy when I was eight years old, and I’m sure Jenna’s was too. But now that galaxy is gone. What were Jenna’s dreams? Were they big? Were they small? Was she steadfast and knew what she wanted? Was she shy and worried about what others might think? Could she even have time to dream, or from a young age did she stop?

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

I think about 8-year-old Jenna often. I imagine a world where her worst fear was not being able to see her dreams come true, not the war. Maybe there is an alternate universe where that is the case. Where all the Jennas grow up and get to be these beautiful women with their own dreams, hopes, and futures. Where they wake in the morning to the sound of birds, not drones. But in this universe, 8-year-old Jenna is gone. Eighteen Jennas are gone.

On November 1, there were 18 Jenna/Janas killed in Gaza.

This is my record to the world that they were here. Even if for a short amount of time, they were here and they lived. The world will see them, even if they died before being seen.

_________________

^[1] in 2023

Jenna Mayzouni is a Palestinian Jordanian American author. She has lived in Illinois, Ohio, Jordan, and Morocco, and currently resides in California, where she works as a freelance reporter with BenitoLink. Her stories focus on the narratives of BIPOC and immigrant communities with a special interest in family dynamics. She went to Denison University and majored in International Studies with a minor in English. She has worked as a Bilingual Domestic Violence Victim’s Advocate, was an Authentic Voices 2022 Fellow with the Women’s National Book Association, and as an intern with the Ladderbird Literary Agency. She has a short story in the Women’s National Book Association Authentic Voices 2023 anthology, Between Pleasure and Pain: An Authentic Voices Anthology (Vol. 2). Her work has also been featured in the Posse Newsletter, and Women’s Republic.

Photo credit: Aurelian Săndulescu via a Creative Commons license.

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Jannah is a single strand. My father is the complementary prognosticator strand.

By Abdulrazaq Salihu

3’ 5’
Jannah has seven gates. My father is dead. A dirty cutlass
My people would enter through all. Stabbed into his flesh. My father
Jannah is thirsty. Is dead. Gun to the head, bullet
My people are water. Jannah is shahada. To his skull. My father is dead
My people died in sujood. Jannah is a I cannot unsee the terror. A flood
Myth. My people are the fate. Jannah Cleanses itself with my father’s blood
Is the road, my people are the destinations.               My father is dead. Who did this to me
Jannah is a miracle by the mouth of a Father is gone. Gun too soon. Gone.
Wound. My people are casualties. The Lokoja sands open and swallow
Jannah is a gun, my people are bullets. My father, but he’s only gone when I
Shoot your shot or give the gun, Believe. My brother sees Pa in dreams
Jannah is silence. My people I tell him dreams are only dreams until
Are dead. My people are gone. We believe. My father is gone. Jannah
My people are pebbles Is jannah because my father is gone,
The size of light. Jannah Because light left us black,
Is a gift. My people unwrap. Jannah Because my father is a blue light
Is touch. My people: shy flowers, fold. Full of tenderness. My father is dead
Jannah is poison. My people are milk. Jannah is jannah. My father is jannah.
Jannah is black stripe against the skin                       My father is the only door: enter
Of white music. My people are songs. Through shahada. Through my father’s
My people are sins. Jannah is forgiveness. Delicate skin. Jannah is an RNA strand,
Jannah is jannah because my father died.                  My father is the complement.
Jannah needs my father………………………………………My father needs his people.

Jannah is the gap between my thumb and index. My people are songs the size of quiet.
5’ 3’

Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I, is a Nigerian poet and member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation. He won the Splendours of Dawn Poetry Foundation’s poetry contest, BPKW Poetry Contest, Poetry Archive Poetry Contest, Masks Literary Magazine Poetry Award, Nigerian prize for teen authors (poetry), Hilltop Creative Writing Award, and others. He has received fellowships and residencies from IWE Writers Residency, SPRING, and elsewhere. He has work published or forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Unstamatic, Bracken, Poetry Quarterly, Rogue, B’K, Jupiter Review, Black Moon Magazine, Angime, Grub Street, and elsewhere. He tweets @Arazaqsalihu; Instagram, @Abdulrazaq._salihu. He’s the author of Constellations (poetry) and Hiccups (prose).

Photo credit: BBC, under “Fair Use” for commentary.

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Welcome to Writers Resist, the December 2023 Issue

It’s been a year that too often has left many of us without words—thankfully, not those who’ve made this issue possible.

Their voices offer clarity, sorrow, hope, humor, and a reminder to embrace nature’s beauty. Stop for a moment, listen, and, if you like, let folks know what you think.

Then, join us in the new year for a virtual reading of this issue’s works, Saturday 27 January 2024, at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC. Email WritersResist@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

Our thanks to those who created this issue:

L. Acadia Wrong Rainbow

Amy L. Bernstein Slowcookery

Myna Chang Suburban Median

Deborah Hochberg Two Poems

Bryana Joy what happened before the good sex

Kerry Loughman The Whale

Tim Murphy Wildness Unafraid

Jane Muschenetz Point Blank

William Palmer that name

Linda Parsons Two Poems

Lorraine Schein The Last Revolution

Mary Stebbins Taitt Disappearing into the Flesh Market VII

Phyllis Wax What About the Men?

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Slowcookery

By Amy L. Bernstein

“Because when it comes to truly explaining racial injustice in this country, the table should never be set quickly” – Nikole Hannah-Jones, “What is Owed,” New York Times Magazine, 2020

I stand on the far shore of the fast-moving
Combahee River,
opposite the Collective,

afforded a distant glimpse through a lead-paned window
into a snug, low-slung house on the riverbank where

Barbara, Demita, Beverly,
Sharon, Cheryl, Margo, Gloria
are in the kitchen
crowded hip to hip
making dinner to please themselves

the roast has just gone in to
marinate in its juices,

the carrots and potatoes will grow
fork-tender

but not for hours,
not until the pan is bubbling

I see them drinking wine and dancing
slowly
the river moves fast,
conveying time along wet ribs

and the ever-echoing shots of Harriet’s raid

but inside the house,
all is marination

the womyn are steeped in life—
schooled and schooling others

they slip in and out of the
dining room,

setting the table for dinner
one plate cup fork knife at a time,

for nothing about this meal is
taken for granted,
handed out,
handed over

it is so-so-so not easy
yet will be savored
by them
in their own good time

as the Combahee parades
its flowing witness.

Amy L. Bernstein writes stories, essays, and poems that let readers feel while making them think. Her novels include The Potrero Complex, the award-winning The Nighthawkers, Dreams of Song Times, and Fran, The Second Time Around. Amy’s poetry has appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Loch Raven Review, Lost Boys Press, Parliament Literary Journal, Passaic-Voluspa, She Is Kindred, and elsewhere, and in an anthology chapbook, Baltimore, I (want to) Love You.

Image credit: “Through Forests, Through Rivers, Up Mountains” by Jacob Lawrence 1967, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Editor’s notes:

Read about Harriet Tubman and the Combahee Ferry Raid of 1863.

Read the “Combahee River Collective Statement.”

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The Whale

By Kerry Loughman

never budged

becalmed she was

bleached by sun

& beached on relentless rise

of blue water liquid leeched

from her eyes her orifices

her great mouth agape

her lungs did evaporate

Climate-changed her

wishes drowned

in sand

Kerry Loughman is a retired educator and photographer living in the Boston area. She writes about memory, art, family, and nature in the city, looking for small transient moments of beauty . . . or discord. Her work has appeared in Mass Poetry’s The Hard Work of Hope and Poem of the Moment, Nixes’ Mate, What Rough Beast, The Main Street Rag and is forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review.

Image credit: “The Whale” by Christopher Michel via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Linda Parsons

How a Woman Becomes Herself

When the neighbor’s weed tree drapes over the power lines and shades her garden, she contemplates going out by moonlight to dump salt on the roots—but that could backfire and flow instead into the garden, be its ruination. These good neighbors invite her over for fine smoked brisket and can’t even see the problem from their side, so why doesn’t she just grow a pair and tell them, but she takes the aluminum ladder and reaches to the highest branches she can lop off with her superloppers, so maybe they will see her teetering and mistake her for a dragonfly. Truth be told, she’s out there iridescing for her ownself and no one else, her own muscles braided in the sun, yes, muscles at seventy, her arches hugging the top step, balanced as the scales in her Libra rising, Libra the sign of lovingkindness, and maybe they’ll hear her prayer for a little rain, a prayer that some of the body’s salt sours a root or two—because she’s no old wife in this tale, no wife at all, and who can say how it pours when it rains, how in the end it all comes out in the wash—weed, pride, sweat—all but the wings, or the shadow of wings.

Sassafras

Don’t you be sassafras, my daughter
says to her daughters, and so it goes,
straight from my mother’s shush of seen
and not heard, my mouth not to dispute

her word. Now a woman of a certain age,
word-hunger rages to depths even I
cannot sound, tongue burnt with all
manner of truths: a voice unrecused

to witness, laced with cinnamon bark,
cardamon fire, tea for fatigue and fever.
I speak my palmate self, canopy untold,
oils applied to sting and sprain,

my unquiet seams. I purify the blood,
neither sugar nor spice, but healing sear
for whatever stubborn wound the world
hands out. More than match struck

to tinder, more than knocking on wood’s
door long enough to shatter the walls,
more than sass or backtalk or sulled-up lip
or any tabula rasa, I will be sassafras

and more, all that indisputable more.

Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Baltimore Review, Shenandoah, and American Life in Poetry. Her sixth collection, Valediction, contains poems and prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Image credit: Erich Ferdinand via a Creative Commons license.

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Disappearing Into the Flesh Market VII

By Mary Stebbins Taitt

Artist’s statement: This painting, part of a series, is a resistance statement against the misuse of girls, boys, women, and others by flesh markets of prostitution, child pornography, and sex trafficking. The first painting in the series was a response in oils to an art installation by Tyree Guyton at Detroit’s Heidelberg Project using dolls and vacuum cleaners to represent violation. In this version, a shadow creeps over the disintegrating faces of the lost girls.

Mary Stebbins Taitt writes and paints and walks outside in the sun, wind, rain, and snow. She was chosen to be an artist in the Scattered Ecstasies program linking Detroit and Windsor during COVID-19. She has shown at galleries in the greater Detroit, Michigan, and Syracuse, New York, areas. Her artwork has been published in Third Wednesday, Vox Populi, and Mixitiini; on the online cover of Hopper Magazine; and in two books.

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Wildness Unafraid

By Tim Murphy

What if trees could talk?
No. Of course they do.
What if we could hear
them speak
just beneath our feet?

What if birds of all feathers
who lift the sky with song
and frame it with flight
told us
what names to call them?

What if we could simply bathe
in wonder at the coyote’s
wild music of the night,
not needing to demonize
to feel alive?

What if we listened deeply,
heeding the ancient wisdom
of the many worlds unknown
contained in this one
we don’t own?

What if we let other beings
live alongside us
outside the long, lonely shadows

cast by our fear
of our own wildness?

Tim Murphy (he/him) is a disabled civil rights attorney, environmentalist, and poet who lives in Portland, Oregon. His writing explores the natural world, disability, and the climate crisis. Tim’s work is featured in Remington Review, Livina Press, and The Long Covid Reader, a collection published in November 2023. Tim can be found on Instagram and Twitter, @brokenwingpoet.

Image credit: “Howl” by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Suburban Median

By Myna Chang

We see the body on the way to drop our kids off at school. It’s in the median at the Parkway stoplight. We don’t recognize what it is, at first. Understanding comes in pieces: leg, arm, slender foot. Naked, of course.

We try to look away. But is it someone we know? Nestled there in the ragweed and road debris, snarled hair hiding her face.

We gather over coffee. Talk about what we saw, how we tried to protect our children from it. Close your eyes, baby. Blood pounding in our ears.

One of us admits her husband looked, driving past, looked and kept looking. His breath ragged. She doesn’t say any more, but we know. He liked it. That helpless curve of hip.

We expect the authorities to remove the body. Cover her with a blanket. Gentle the evidence from under her nails. But when we go pick our kids up, she’s still there. No police cars, no crime scene tape.

We steel our nerves. We go to the station. We file a report. We demand: Didn’t you see? Who was she? Who did this to her? We hope for help.

The police officers raise their eyebrows, say there’s no body. Maybe it was a trick of the light, they say, or a dead deer. Maybe you imagined it.

No, we say, we didn’t imagine a dead body in the median! It wasn’t an animal, it was a woman!

The men shrug. I don’t know what to tell you.

We still see her. The bend of her back. Tangle of limbs. Faceless. It could be any of us. We think it might be all of us.

Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, and CRAFT. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. Find her at MynaChang.com, or on Twitter or Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Image credit: R. Nial Bradshaw via a Creative Commons license.

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Wrong Rainbow

By L. Acadia

Describing our droomhuis for Dutch class, my
worksheet filled with my dream house’s garden:
Hollyhocks, hydrangea higher than I,
wrought iron table for morning coffee,
serenading birds, frogs ringing a pond.
My love wrote an interior my mind
couldn’t fit: puppy-claw impervious
tile floors, dormer bedroom, dinner-party
primed kitchen, postprandial dancing space.

Years later, we recall the exercise,
tossing balkon, keuken, venster, fit now
to a dream house: open-plan high-ceilinged
flat—wood beams leading the gaze towards mountains,
snug loft for out-of-town or drunken friends,
green balcony, community garden,
busses to work: a millennial dream.

Rooftop looking out to summer salons
poetry, perhaps acoustic guitar.
Headlights flooding the street below create
a waterfall of light, mist spraying to stars.

We call our droomhuis “Jesus house” for the
forest of crosses, scandalous portraits
of unfashionably long-haired white men with
palm-wounds. The seller greets us cordially,
his wife places hands over their kids’ chests,
as though guarding their hearts from our inter-
racial lesbianism’s tick’ling daggers.

When they ghosted our offer, we enquired
through a new realtor. The Jesus house dad
asked, “are your clients a normal couple?”
Nee.

L. Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University and member of the Taipei Poetry Collective, with poetry in Autostraddle, New Orleans Review, Strange Horizons, trampset, and elsewhere. Twitter and Instagram: @acadialogue

Image credit: Jim Choate via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Deborah Hochberg

Congregation of Ibis

“A barrage of storms has resurrected what was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River, setting the stage for a disaster this spring.”

– from “Tulare Lake Was Drained Off the Map. Nature Would Like a Word,” Soumya Karlamangla and Shawn Hubler, New York Times, April 2, 2023

They drained the Great Lake
in the late 19th century

Humans took
the vast waters from us
to grow their cotton, their tomatoes

Like gods, they separated
the land and the skies from the water
and the water was no more

They came, and they took
what was ours
and we had no say

And they did what they willed
with the earth

And the earth was obedient
for decades, over a century

And then the earth decided —
I have had enough
I am taking it back
I miss the lake
I will bring back the lake

And the atmospheric rivers
raged through the skies

And the land received the waters
waters that the mammoths
once drank

The farms, homes, brewery, and cafe
the crops and ranches
were inundated

And then we returned —
the ibis
and the herons, pelicans, and coots

Soon the snowpack will melt
without mercy
for agriculture
or prisons

The lake, like a surging
aqueous ghost, a watery resurrection
has again staked its claim

And we are here —
as long as the lake
can sustain its deep
irriguous expanse

Migrant Child

Home
is a thing
that does not yet exist
Existed as a point of departure
But a home
where one cannot live
is not a home
My feet are my home
My legs are my home
My sneakers are my home
They carry me
through arduous terrains
that seek to have me
lie down
and sink
into the mud
Mud-child
I hold my own hand
This way, I say
No, this way
Journey of a thousand steps
Countless steps, numerous
as stars in the sky
Stars that blanket me
on cold nights
No longer human
I move through the mud
like a turtle
Did I just crawl
over a border?
I have forgotten
thoughts of home
and now think only
of movement
This journey, a trial
and I am guilty
of what I do not know
Hope
is a thing
that grips you
around your throat
Pulls you
like a leash
and won’t let go

Deborah Hochberg is from Detroit, Michigan, and studied at Wayne State University. She is a musician, a gardener, and a health care provider. She is the author of two collections of poetry entitled Waiting For the Snow and Memory’s Reservoir.

Image credit: Bob Peterson via a Creative Commons license.

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what happened before the good sex

By Bryana Joy

for God’s sake no more games
she said setting the last set
of lace panties in the trash

i am befuddled by all this
rigmarole this muddle this hullabaloo
she threw a negligee out the door
and all of her lipstick tubes

i am i the only one
you are you the only one
my house is as you see it
if you want to come in
Come

Bryana is a poet and illustrator who has lived in Türkiye, Texas, and England, and now resides in Eastern Pennsylvania. Her poetry has appeared in more than 50 literary journals, and her book, Summer of the Oystercatchers, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Since 2021, she has been teaching regular online poetry workshops to foster meaningful arts community and support writers. Find her at www.bryanajoy.com or on Instagram and Threads at @_bryana_joy.

Image credit: Public domain

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that name

By William Palmer

tide in—

imagine
waves scraping away

that name
and the lies upon lies

that feed off it,
dissolving them in foam

imagine
the mugshot gone

the blue suits gone
the long red ties

around our country’s neck
gone

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in JAMA, J Journal, One Art, On the Seawall, Talking River Review, and The Westchester Review. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Image credit: Sean P on Unsplash.

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Point Blank

An Illustrated Poem by Jane Muschenetz

MIT grad and former Bain Management Consultant, Jane Muschenetz arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She is a 2023 City of Encinitas Exhibiting Artist and winner of The Good Life Review 2022 Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay, 2023), was shortlisted for the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize. Jane is Director of Partnerships at San Diego Entertainment & Arts Guild and Co-Founder of the San Diego Chapter of Women Who Submit Lit. Connect with Jane’s work at her website, www.PalmFrondZoo.com, and in various publications. Follow her on social media @PalmFrondZoo.

1 Incident of firearm mortality per 100K population by global developed economies, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-world-comparison/. M.McGough, K. Amin, N. Panchal, C. Cox, “Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries,” KFF.org, Jul, 2022; https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/; USA child+teen data from 2020.

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What About the Men?

By Phyllis Wax

A new drug for menopause
is being hailed as a godsend
for a condition many women endure
in silence. Thing is,
it costs $550 a month.

And, unfortunately, hot flashes (hot flashes!)
are among the most common side effects.
They say it could also be toxic to the liver
or affect the kidneys,
and who knows what it will do
to heart, bones, sex drive, mood or weight.
Still, how wonderful this drug could be.

But why focus only on menopause? And women?
What about the mood swings, eruptions of anger,
the gun-toting rampages afflicting so many men?
Could this be undiagnosed testosterone poisoning?
When will Big Pharma turn its attention
to this as yet unrecognized condition?

Think of it—if medicine can help these men,
not only will their lives be better,
it’ll be the end of
mass shootings, murder
and domestic abuse.

Help women, yes.
But let’s hear it for equal treatment for men.

Poet Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Social issues are a major focus, but she is also inspired by nature and human nature. Among the anthologies and journals in which her poetry has appeared are Feral, The Widows’ Handbook, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Peacock Journal, Wordpeace, New Verse News, Portside, and Your Daily Poem. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry anthologies.

Image credit: “Mr. Goodbar,” 2007, by Rinaldo Frattolillo, under “Fair Use” for commentary.

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The Last Revolution

By Lorraine Schein

The Last Revolution was yesterday.
It was so successful, that all future revolutions were cancelled forever.

A lesbian and her lover were elected President and Vice-President.
Their lovemaking is televised nationally as part of the inaugural proceedings
and greeted with applause by an appreciative at-home audience.

Poets have been elected to Congress. It is now a requirement for election to any political office that the candidate be a poet.
Poems are published in every daily newspaper and online.
Headlines announce the dates of public readings and news about famous poets.

Crowds go to hear poets the way they used to go to see rock stars or football games.
They cheer loudly, in iambic pentameter, for their favorite poet.

“I can’t wait to go to tomorrow’s poetry reading!” people say,
and tickets are sold out months in advance.

Work has been abolished by the smashing of clocks and digital time devices.
Now there can be no office work, or work at all, since there is no way
of measuring a workday.

The gods and goddesses return, and run rampant.

Children and animals are allowed to run for president also.
Next election day, a little girl and her teddy bear running-mate
look to be the winning ticket.

For toys have been given equal rights and a voice, too—
in what matters most.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer and poet. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, NewMyths and Michigan Quarterly, and in the anthologies Wild Women and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry collection, is available from Mayapple Press. Her book, The Lady Anarchist Cafe, is available from Autonomedia.

Image credit: Beatrice Murch via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Call for Submissions

Writers Resist is seeking poetry, fiction, narrative nonfiction, and digital images for a special March 2024 issue.

**Guest edited by former Writers Resist editor DW McKinney, “Amplified Voices” will honor creative works by writers and artists affected by violent conflict around the globe.**

Deadline: February 8, 2024

Please read our Amplified Voices submission guidelines.

Welcome to Writers Resist, the September 2023 Issue

As Mercedes Lawry writes in the closing poem of this issue, “This Time, Ukraine,” how do we watch from afar? How do we watch the countless ravages and failures that populate mass media, our devices, even over-the-fence gossips?

The impulse to look away is strong, but the need to maintain the focus—long enough, at least, to see the truth—is dire.

And so it is that we continue to create and share and publish—and hope. In this issue you’ll see truths of the climate crisis, unregulated weapons and bullying, assaults on reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights.

And you will see hope—in the very acts of creating and publishing these truths. Many thanks to the following contributing writers and artists. and to our readers.

Janis Butler Holm “Skull Fries“

Amy Cook “Amendments“

Amelia Díaz Ettinger “The Lure of Socks on Warm Feet“

Ariel M. Goldenthal “A Sunday in October“

Christina Hennemann “The Mind-Plough“

Emily Hockaday “The first day of cherry season“

Mercedes Lawry “This Time, Ukraine“

Kelsey D. Mahaffey “Ho’oponopono“

M.R. Mandell “Crying in Texas“

Jeremy Nathan Marks “Montana“

Janna Miller “Campers Rarely Drown at the YMCA“

Nancy Squires “Two Poems“

Mark Williams “It’s Complicated“

Join them and the Writers Resist editors Saturday 14 October 2023 for Writers Resist Reads, a virtual literary celebration of this issue. Email WritersResist@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

And, thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Two Poems by Nancy Squires

As the Waters Rise

O God, look down
On all our drowned.
Hear us, we beg—
We’re on our knees.
Sorry, so sorry
About the trees,

The polar bears, the birds,
The bees; the icebergs
Gone, the thirsty lawns,
Plastic gyres, redwood
Pyres and all the many,
many cars. The eclipsed stars

We never see. Our Father
In Heaven, we pray
To Thee: Give us
This day.
We promise, oh we swear
On a stack of extinctions

We will repair
Our awful ways
And lead us not into oblivion
Although we can’t pretend
We had no clue. Save us
Now—before
Amen.

It’s No Use, Ron DeSantis

Before Marie Kondo-ing
I had a pile of beads
in a drawer, cheap baubles
from Gay Prides past:
Chicago, where the crowd spilled
into Halsted, slowing the procession
to a crawl; New York,
where drag queens rode the floats
in headdresses three feet tall
just like Carnival; and Boston,
many years—the one
where Kevin was The Little Mermaid
on the Disney float—his costume
(which he stitched himself),
perfection and his makeup,
animated glam. That woman on the Harley
who dyed her mohawk rainbow
every year, and the time
Sally spotted her coworker
coming down the route—
she was surprised to see him
in a wine-colored corset.
No beads
from Lansing, Michigan,
my first Pride—not
a parade but a march
and what got thrown
at us were insults, curses, glares
from people holding signs
that said God hated us.
So let’s say gay
and everything else
there is to say.
I should’ve kept that pile
of shiny plastic beads—
not sure if it was joy
they sparked but something—
Kevin reclining up there
amongst the other Disney folk
his shimmery mermaid tail
sparkling in the morning sun.
Say it: gay.
All the livelong day.
She and he and them
and they: we
aren’t going back
inside the boxes.

Nancy Squires is a writer, lawyer, and freelance copy editor. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Dunes Review, Split Rock Review, and Blueline Magazine. She grew up, and currently resides, in Michigan.

Photo credit: Linda De Volder via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Crying in Texas

By M.R. Mandell

after “Kissing” by Dorianne Laux

Crying as they hope for blood,
crying as they flush the strips,
crying as they hide their bumps.
They are crying in bathroom stalls,
behind Sugarland’s Kroger store.
They are crying on Houston corners,
outside the boarded-up laundromat.
They are crying in each other’s arms,
at the Hampton Inn off Highway 10.
They are crying in their Walmart
uniforms, and their Ann Taylor
suits, in their Wrangler jeans,
and Zara boots. They are crying
alone, on the edge, salt burning
their skin. They are crying as doctors
turn them away. They are crying
harder than before,
before the pious Robes lied.
Crying as they hope for blood.

M.R. Mandell (she/her) is a poet living in Los Angeles. A transplant from Katy, Texas, she now lives by the beach with her muse, a Golden Retriever named Chester Blue (at her feet), and her longtime partner (by her side). You can find her work in Chill Subs, Boats Against the Current, The Final Girl Bulletin Board, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Bloom, JAKE, Roi Fainéant, sage cigarettes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stanchion Zine, Fine Print and others. She has works forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, unstamatic (photo), and Olney Magazine (photos)

Photo credit: Ernesto Andrade via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.