Disappearing Into the Flesh Market VII

By Mary Stebbins Taitt

 


Repeating image of a child, distorted with each repeat



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 ReviewLivina 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 

An illustrated poem with text, image of a gun, and charts with gun violence statistics


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.


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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.


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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.


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Amendments

By Amy Cook

 

We hadn’t had a proper winter, but spring arrived anyway, confoundingly on time. Whatever you might have read about autumn in New York, the first morning the rows of tulips open on Park Avenue, or when the purple hyacinth spirals up through a neighborhood garden, or that cloudless April morning when the cherry trees first spill with the glut of blossom, those are the days I wish would linger. I turned forty-three in late March, right before the weather turned.

Filed: March 7, 2023. Florida Senate Bill 300, Pregnancy and Parenting Support: “prohibiting physicians from knowingly performing or inducing a termination of pregnancy after the gestational age of the fetus is determined to be more than 6 weeks, rather than 15 weeks.”

On the morning of Thursday, April 13, 2023, a week after it had been passed by the Florida Senate, the Florida House of Representatives took up the bill.

That day, in New York, the Central Park weather station measured a high of 90 degrees, breaking a record set in 1977. Old and potbellied men loitered by the Hudson River, shirtless, broiling. I took off my shoes and sipped greedily at a raspberry Arnold Palmer. The café at the pier is seasonal, but, like Brigadoon, miraculously opens on days that call people to the water.

At the river, I’m streaming the House of Representatives on my phone, and they race through nearly fifty amendments, all proposed by civil servants seeking to dull the law’s vicious scythe. Each amendment is allowed consideration for two and a half minutes.

“Will the sergeant secure the balcony please?”[1]

It is certain the abortion ban will pass. The Florida House of Representatives has one hundred and ten voting members present on this day, and they will vote for the bill by a nearly two to one margin. Still, as is their right, ordinary Floridians have come to Tallahassee to protest the ban, which has exceptions for rape, incest, and human trafficking—provided you can prove it. With documentation.

I live in a building that is two blocks from the Hudson, less than a mile from Bethesda Fountain, and a mile and half from the reservoir. And still, I often feel parched. This particular Thursday, the water is desperately choppy, as if at war with the summer vibes the sun is trying to gift. A week from now, I will be lying in a hospital, a female radiologist swiping the ultrasound thingie (instrument? wand? scepter?) across my right breast where an unidentified mass waits to be named. The screen displays charcoal and ivory waves that undulate, tip and teeter. I stare at them, feeling sticky and warmed by the ultrasound gel. The radiologist gives me a cursory glance, every now and then.

“Black women and birthing people will be most affected by this abortion ban.”

We have become careful, of late, to say the things that go without saying, because it is worth it to have them said aloud. We waste time and capital sparring over the substitution of words, while the Slenderman creeps at the edge of the forest, leering at his prey. And prey are everywhere. My friend, who has six-year-old twin boys, recently asked them what their active shooter drills are like. They go to an elite private school that can afford security, and still, they prepare. Attention is paid.

The heat will last just a few days, before pulling us back, making us glad that we hadn’t installed the air conditioners just yet. I will still go down to the water to read and write, in the chill and mist, not wanting to be wasteful of the hours. Above me, vehicles fly up the Hudson River Parkway, heading out of town.

“Sergeant, will you secure the chamber and remove the gallery?”

It is impossible to tell how many protestors have filled the statehouse, but I can hear them being removed, one by one. Two days ago, an organization called Equality Florida issued a travel advisory, warning fellow Americans that Florida is no longer a safe place to be, especially if you are a person of color or queer or perhaps just unprepared to become the victim of random gun violence.

“Please [accept] this amendment so we don’t re-traumatize sexual assault victims.”

“I understand we’re banning books, so y’all might not have read all of that.”

“We are thinking of situations that have not been contemplated by this bill.”          

Not a one of the amendments passes, of course. I play with my pink strappy sandals, on the ground, next to my chair. At some point this summer, I’ll get a pedicure, but today my feet are repulsive. My mind wanders. The amendment people are wasting their time, I think, and their breath. Going down with the ship. But history is filled with truth-tellers on the Titanic.

“This is a friendly amendment.”

“Read the next amendment!”

“Any . . .  further outburst and the sergeant will remove you, and we can proceed with our business.”

When my youngest niece was born, just after midnight on August 12, 2021, she was almost two weeks late. Every day past her due date, I teased my brother that the baby was waiting for our late grandmother’s birthday; that Grandma Barbara was somehow orchestrating the delay. Hannah Rose was a perfectly average-sized newborn (indeed, born on the day that she now shares with a great-grandmother she never knew), but it stands to reason she wasn’t actually late. Rather, a physician had perhaps miscalculated how far along my sister-in-law actually was. It’s not an exact science.

So how do the doctors in Florida know when six weeks are up?

How do the legislators know?

Still, they prattle on. Behind me, a group of young women searches for a place to sit. Most of

the good spots are gone. It’s really very hot out.

“Have all members voted? Have all members voted?”

“We have a brief introduction and announcement from Representative Caruso.”

Between the amendments, Representative Caruso, who will actually vote “no” on the six-week abortion ban, takes the time to introduce a sergeant from the Delray Beach Police Department, who is visiting their chamber today. The officer had previously been convicted of a felony, for having stolen some money from a mall in Orlando. Governor DeSantis, who will sign this bill into law at 10:45 this evening, had pardoned the man, and now the officer is applauded as a “hometown hero.”

There will be six hours of debate, after all of the amendments go down in flames. None of it means a thing. The climb is too great, the gulf too wide.  I put my sandals back on, and when I get up, the group of girls looking for a seat are pleased. They have frozen drinks in hand. I head to my apartment, where I will insist we wait for the next heat wave to install the air conditioning, but where I am still free.

“Please show that the amendment does not pass. Read the next amendment, please.”

 

[1] Each quote in italics was spoken by a member of the Florida House of Representatives on April 13, 2023.


Amy Cook (she/they): MFA candidate, Rainier Writing Workshop, 2021 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Amy’s work has appeared in The Advocate, Queer Families: An LGBTQ+ True Stories Anthology and fifteen literary journals. Affiliations: BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop (Advanced), New York City Gay Men’s Chorus alum.

Photo credit: Rebecca Cruz via a Creative Commons license.


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Montana

By Jeremy Nathan Marks

For Zooey Zephyr

 

The big sky fifty-mile
vistas where the Greasy Grass runs
willowed valleys sweeping memory
from the water to the sky an arrow long
ago fired but whose arc is heard
surely this land can contain one woman
who says of our laws that while we pray
to remain humbled that blood in our palms
is a great glacier melting as though we were
the sun.

 


Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. He is the author of the collection, Of Fat Dogs & Amorous Insects (Alien Buddha, 2021). He holds two passports and does not maintain a social media presence.

Photo credit: Michael Bourgault on Unsplash.


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The first day of cherry season,

By Emily Hockaday

 

the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is
wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick
my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors
sit next to their colorful carts like the world
isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now
or it is just very slowly. And what did
the vendors do at Pompeii? Skewer meat
and sling it under an eerie sky. I bring home
3 lbs of the jeweled fruits. The sun
is the same bright pink behind the haze—
a Rainier cherry hanging above us.
My daughter is studying wildfires
at school, or perhaps just the lifecycles
of trees. She tells me forest fires can be good
for the Earth, right? Because redwood seeds
need fire to grow. Our hallway smells
of smoke from the skylight. We move inside
a yellow cloud. Even as the air quality
outside becomes a disaster, we make plans
to cap our stove’s gas line. I think of
my daughter’s new pink lungs.
I was reckless with mine, but hers
are pristine, and I want to preserve them.
I imagine her serotinous redwood cones
cracking in the heat. I hope that’s
what humanity will do too. Crack
so that seeds release. At night
I roll a towel against her window.
The fires can only burn for so long.

 


Emily Hockaday’s second collection, In a Body, an ecopoetry collection with themes of parenting, chronic illness, and grief, is coming out in October 2023 with Harbor Editions. Her debut, Naming the Ghost, was released with Cornerstone Press in 2022. She has received grants from the City Artists Corp, Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, the De Groot Foundation, and the NYFA Queens Art Fund. She is a fellow with the Office Hours Poetry workshop and was a 2022 resident at Bethany Arts Community.

Photo credit: Denise Kitagawa 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.

The Lure of Socks on Warm Feet

By Amelia Díaz Ettinger

Never forget, September 20, 2017 and Maria

 

In my La-Z-Boy I sit, a Puerto Rican queen,
feet-up admiring my knitted socks.
I made these socks by knit and purl.
5,746 miles away from you
it is easy to say, I worship.

—And oh! How I preach this veneration,

the warmth of pale green light
the whiteness of sand
the contrast of ocean currents
the dwarf forest, and the crowded towns

Yet, the truth can’t be changed—I left.
Abandon your Central Cordillera for the Blues,
an exchange of choice, not necessity.

I saw the hurricane while wearing star-banded socks,
glued to a television where electricity is constant,
three hot meals a day, sitting at home.
There were no cold cuts day after bloody day,

no Samaritan truck around the corner,
no spoils of mud, and expiring life
no kitchens without a roof
no bottled water in locked warehouses
the trees bare of leaves, not a single flower
petals can’t contain the hurts.

That September, out my window,
the meadow was full of lupines.
Purple or gold,
their curious heads sat one on top of another
a soft pyramid greening gently in the breeze.
The sight of those flowers,
a hurricane of shame.

 


Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a  la Vez by Redbat Press, and a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, and she has an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Oregon University. Presently, she and her partner reside in Summerville, Oregon, with two dogs, two cats, and too many chickens.

Photo credit: Carissa Bonham 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.

Skull Fries

By Janis Butler Holm

Photograph of a sinister human skull filled with bright yellow French fries

 

Artist Statement: Fast food, a multi-billion-dollar industry, is slowly killing Americans and others. French fries and what they accompany are not harmless.


Janis Butler Holm served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal, and currently works as a writer and editor in sunny Los Angeles. Her prose, poems, art, and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, Russia, and the U.K. Learn more at www.janisbutlerholm.com and www.laplaywrights.org/member/Janis-Butler-Holm, and follow her on Facebook.


A note from Writers Resist

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A Sunday in October

By Ariel M. Goldenthal

 

The day after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, I lied to my second-grade students: You are safe at Hebrew school. You will love learning the Aleph-Bet this year. Yes, you can open the windows and feel the early fall air ripple through the gaps between your outstretched fingers. You can have recess outside next week. Your teachers don’t need to be trained to apply a tourniquet. There’s nothing wrong with our classroom’s tall glass windows that look right into the front garden. I’m closing the blinds because it’s so sunny out. Let’s start with our usual morning activity. Today we’re learning about praying to God, which isn’t related at all to the reason your mom’s eyes looked red this morning and your dad whispered, “Maybe he should stay home today.” This happened in a synagogue very far away—not like where we live at all. No, this isn’t something that happens often.

I don’t tell them how the education director called all the teachers on Shabbat, a day when work is forbidden and rest is required, to tell us that despite, or perhaps because of, the horrific loss that day, religious school would still take place the next day; how the doors to synagogue, usually propped open on Sunday mornings to accommodate the flood of parents holding half-eaten bagels and their children’s hands, were locked; how we had to show our photo I.D.s to the officers in the main lobby who told us that we would collect our students and bring them to the classroom—parents wouldn’t be permitted inside; how Rabbis passed around handouts hastily adapted from the ones secular teachers received after the first school shooting this year, but didn’t need because they, like us, are used to the terror by now.

 


Ariel M. Goldenthal is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. Her work has appeared in The Citron ReviewFlash FrontierMoonPark Review, and others. Read more at www.arielmgoldenthal.com.

Photo credit: Sharon Pazner 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.