Author: Editor

Joelle Cantrell’s Fanfiction

By Holly A. Stovall

Until the paper that Joelle Cantrell wrote made it to the top of my stack of To Kill a Mockingbird essays to grade for sophomore English at Jackson High, I had been eating clean and feeling good. I was slouching deep into the couch, a pint of Clean Cream sugar-free-non-fat frozen balanced on a dictionary by my side. Only a few more papers were left in the stack, and then I would be free to hide away upstairs to write fanfiction. I loved to teach Mockingbird, but then I read Joelle’s first sentence, and an unease creeped up around my skin, like hives.

I’ll show you what Joelle turned in, and you’ll see why I’m unnerved, but if you love Mockingbird like I do, if you voted it the best freakin’ novel ever written, like the readers in all those fancy national polls, then don’t get too involved.

 

So Close to Her Momma in Heaven

By Joelle Cantrell

Last week, Bob Ewell held a pillow on his daughter’s face until she passed out. Sometimes he puts his hands around her neck, but means only to injure her, so he doesn’t squeeze as hard as he could, and he doesn’t leave bruises in front, where people would see, not that anyone would care. Sometimes, Mayella has to leave the house to run an errand in town, and folks might hate Bob even more if they saw bruises on his grown daughter’s neck, but their hate for him doesn’t transfer to protection for her. She doubts he’ll go to jail if she dies, because he didn’t even get arrested after he knocked Mayella’s momma’s head hard against the stove. He doesn’t know Mayella was watching that night. The sheriff came to investigate, Bob said it was an accident, and there was no murder charge. Weren’t ever any drama. Weren’t ever any trial.

Today, when Bob orders Mayella to chop up a chiffarobe, she doesn’t tell him she’s too tired. If she does, he’ll hit her. But it’s like the life is spilling out of her because last night all kinds of blood had been letting down, more than the monthly, more pain, bigger clumps. She would have loved her own baby to nurse, but it’s just as well it miscarried, as she can barely take care of the kids Daddy had with Momma.

Over a year ago, the little ones started begging Mayella to take them for ice cream, so she saved up, and then, finally, when she had enough for each child, she made them wash and put their shoes on and they were about ready to leave, when Daddy ordered Mayella to do some chore. He’d done this a handful of times, and the kids were disappointed when Mayella told them “not today” after all.

So finally, now, they ask again, and Mayella is fixing to take them, the thought of it cheering her up, but her daddy tells her to chop up the chiffarobe for firewood, so she just sighs and gives the kids the nickels she’d been saving and tells them not to lick down the ice cream too fast or they’ll get a headache, and to come straight home afterwards. There’s an extra nickel, the one for Mayella’s cone, and she keeps it.

The children leave and she’s inside swinging this hatchet into the middle of the chiffarobe, trying to splinter it, but it’s tough, hard wood. The hatchet gets stuck, and she lets it hang there while she catches her breath and rests her arms. She needs a nap, but her daddy will kill her if she don’t get that thing out the door before he gets back. He means to kill her dead. If not today, then tomorrow or next week. She needs to gather her strength, so she goes to sit on the front steps a moment, and that’s when Tom Robinson comes by and tips his hat.

She calls to him, asking if he’d please loosen up the chiffarobe into small enough parts that she can carry them outside.

“My daddy kill me if it ain’t done when he get back,” she says.

Everybody knows her daddy’s mean as a junkyard bitch.

Tom Robinson nods and turns to the house. Mayella goes in first and holds the door open for him to follow. She says, “Just chop it up small enough so it fits through the door. Then be on your way. I got a nickel for you.”

“I won’t take your nickel, mam,” Tom Robinson says.

She tells him he might as well take it, seeing she has no use for it now that the kids have gone on for ice cream without her. He says to save it for next time, and her eyes water, like she’s going to cry, because not since her momma died has anyone been kind. She knows she’s not supposed to like no colored man, but his voice is warm, like sunlight in winter.

Tom Robinson turns to the chiffarobe with the hatchet still stuck in it. Mayella gets a good look at his arms, how the one hangs there and the other pulls the hatchet out of the chiffarobe, like picking wildflowers in a field. He swings the hatchet with his good arm, and the wood gives way. He circles around the chiffarobe, moving his arm, high and low, and she watches chunks of wood splinter and fall.

She doesn’t know when her daddy’s coming back, and it wouldn’t do for Tom Robinson to be there when he does, so she says, “Thank you, I can take it from here.” She’s not sure that she’ll be able to finish on her own, but she’ll do her damnedest.

She stretches her hand towards him to take the hatchet, and then it just happens. She rests her forehead on his chest. “Just let me rest my head here a moment, Tom Robinson. Just for a moment,” she says, and he lets her. She closes her eyes and cries. Tears come when you don’t expect it and can’t explain it. “My daddy, my daddy does things to me,” she says.

Suddenly, Tom Robinson bolts out the door and leaves her standing, staggering. When she looks up, her daddy’s fist meets her face, knocking her to the floor. Then he gets on top of her and squeezes her neck, front and back. While he’s squeezing, she feels so close to her momma in heaven. She sees her momma’s face in a light. Her momma is the light. She passes out and when she wakes up, Daddy’s poking her with his thing, saying, “God damn bloody bitch.”

She hasn’t escaped this life yet, and it’s just as well because she promised her mamma she’d take care of the kids and the gardenias. Her daddy gets up and disappears out the door and Mayella lies there, trying to muster a drop of strength. When he comes back, the sheriff’s with him.

“See them damn bruises all over her neck and face. That’s what that colored boy did to her,” except Bob Ewell uses the vulgar term for colored people. Mayella’s momma told her the n-word was wrong, because Jesus says to treat your neighbor as yourself.

Weeks pass, then months. Mayella gains some strength back. Bob hasn’t beat her since that day. There’s going to be a trial at the fancy courthouse. Her daddy tells her she’s going to speak to a judge in front of an audience, and all she has to say is that Tom Robinson took advantage of her. He uses the word “rape,” and she figures that it means it’s when a colored man puts his thing in you. If her daddy does it, it’s just him being a daddy, and not a crime.

Her daddy takes her to town to meet with a man in a suit, Mr. Gilmer.

“Mayella, we’ve got to rehearse. Atticus is rehearsing with Tom Robinson, and you will practice with me. Now, pretend I’m the judge, and that’s Tom Robinson in that chair.” Mr. Gilmer points to an empty chair.

Mayella nods.

“Point to the man who hit your face, strangled your neck, and raped you,” Mr. Gilmer says.

Mayella slowly raises her hand towards the empty chair.

Bob Ewell stands and stomps his foot. “Ain’t nobody believe her! Mayella, you got to show’em. You been wronged, violated. You got to get upset.”

They rehearse until Mr. Gilmer and Bob Ewell are satisfied.

The day of the trial, Mayella finally steps inside the courthouse, with its towering ceiling, polished wood, and white paint. It has a balcony upstairs, like an opera house. Folks are dressed up, like they’re there for a show. Scout Finch, Harper Lee’s little narrator, paints Mayella as entirely uncultured and illiterate, but Mayella knows more than she lets on, and she’s read about opera houses.

The courthouse is packed, colored people upstairs and the white ones below. The white ones want to hear the lie her daddy is making her tell. The white folks, she thinks, ain’t never wanted to help her or her momma, even though she’s white like them, but she’s dirt poor, living at the edge of the trash dump and next door to the colored folks. She’s invisible to the people in town, with their sidewalks and porch swings, their living rooms with couches, their kitchens with tables. But they know how mean her daddy is. They know her momma’s death was never explained, and if they didn’t care that her momma died, they won’t care if she does.

Still, she don’t like to say anything against Tom Robinson, but if she doesn’t do what her daddy says, he’ll kill her. And he means to kill her dead.

They’re calling her over to a chair by the wooden box that contains the judge. Mayella’s daddy is staring her down with his most onery face, like a rabid dog. It makes her freeze.

•   •   •

Scout wasn’t there to witness the event in Bob Ewell’s house, but she was at the courthouse and can tell it from here.

Scout sees the court paint Mayella as an oversexed hussy. Today we call it victim blaming. Well, I’m sorry, but f*ck Harper Lee, because it’s not that simple.

Court’s a place for the men and their laws and punishments. It doesn’t have anything to do with getting to the truth of the danger Mayella’s in, only with the story folks want to hear and tell.

The essay assignment asks for evidence, but what’s the point of evidence if the wrong man’s on trial?

P.S. Dear Mrs. Raulston, I know you take off points for postscripts because “they take the reader out of the narrative,” so let me just say that this is the narrative. Look up. Did you know that more than three women and girls a day die from domestic violence? That’s every day, year after year. A fourth of all girls sustain gender-based violence before age 19, and more than a third of women during their lifetimes. The World Economic Forum calls gendered violence a pandemic. Also, like, 97 percent of the people who report rape are telling the truth, but you make us read about the one who lies. Do you want us to believe the girls who report are lying? We’re not supposed to believe Mayella or any victim? Is that why the principal didn’t take Kayla seriously when she reported to him that she was sexually assaulted in the band room? Are you teaching male superiority?

 

“No,” I said, though there was nobody nearby to hear me. The word “no,” irritating and itchy, vibrated in my throat. I’d told the class not to turn in fanfiction. I started to write “Re-do” at the top of Joelle’s paper but got only as far as “R” before scratching it out. Something about Lee’s novel now nagged at me, as if I couldn’t keep reading it as I had before. A murky sense of betrayal was sinking down from my throat and into my gut, hot and awful. I needed to sooth it away, but the melted Clean Cream was bitter.

I slid Joelle’s paper under the others, padded into the kitchen, and dug around the back of the freezer until I found a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. Just one spoonful would be enough, but it soothed me so much that I wrapped my mouth around another and another. The cold sweet cream dissolved my momentary doubts about Mockingbird. I leaned on the counter, giving in, until only a puddle was left in the carton, which I then tossed in the trash.

I fished Joelle’s story out of the bottom of the pile and wrote “A” at the top, not for her, but for me, as in “A” for ancient history, meaning I didn’t have to think about it anymore, and I wouldn’t have to try to teach teenagers about domestic violence in literature. This way, Joelle wouldn’t protest her grade or complain to her mom, who would complain to me and then to the principal. The mom would write an Op Ed for the newspaper. There might be a culture war. Instead of all that craziness, I planned to go on teaching Mockingbird as I always had, not calling attention to the crimes against Mayella. It will be as if I’d never read Joelle Cantrell’s fanfiction.

 

Holly A. Stovall (she, her), a new editor at Writers Resist, is writing a thesis for her MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies. She has an MA in Women’s History and a PhD in Spanish Literature. For over a decade, she taught Women’s Studies at Western Illinois University, where she earned tenure, but her career as a feminist academic ended when a neoliberal governor starved WIU of funding. Despite being one of the most diverse and economically successful departments in the university, the Department of Women’s Studies was closed, and her position eliminated.

Since leaving academia, Holly has gone on to publish fiction and creative nonfiction in LitBreak Magazine, Writers Resist, and the Mid/South Anthology. For her MFA thesis, she’s writing a memoir about the grief of her layoff and the space she finally gave herself to fully grieve her losses. She lives in Macomb, Il, with her husband, son, and standard poodle, but visits Chicago regularly. Visit her website at HollyAWrites.com.

Photo credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM, 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.

 

Welcome to our September 2022 issue

It’s been hot. Everything’s hot. Global temperatures, national temperaments—even the bees that hover at the birdbath’s edge are plunging into its waters, only to find them warmed by an unrelenting heat dome.

What to do?

Writers Resist offers a cool escape: Don a wet t-shirt, flop before a fan, and read this issue. In it, you’ll find featured works by the following writers and artists.

Katie Avagliano

Dia Calhoun

Heather Dorn

Zoë Fay-Stindt

Howie Good

Morning-meadow Jones

Flavian Mark Lupinetti

René Marzuk

Penny Perry

Tracy Stamper

Jennifer Swallow

Laura Grace Weldon

Please also join us in saying farewell to another beloved editor, and welcoming two new editors.

Ying Wu, one of our dedicated poetry editors, is moving on and shares the following: “It has been an honor and an inspiration to be part of Writers Resist. Since I joined in 2019, our community has grown. I’ve enjoyed the privilege of experiencing voices from all walks of life and parts of the globe—voices driven by hunger for compassion and dignity; by the will to thrive in the face of increasing planetary peril; by the urge to confront the pain of exploitation, intolerance, and subjugation. I believe we can create a better world by amplifying what drives us to speak out, as our words are the bridge between thought and action. I am so grateful to Writers Resist for helping to keep this bridge strong.”

We will miss you, Ying!

René Marzuk joins us as a poetry and prose editor. Accidentally born in Ukraine to Cuban parents, he grew up in Havana, Cuba, and migrated to the United States as an adult. Read a poem by René here.

Holly A. Stovall joins us as a prose editor. Currently writing a thesis for her MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, she has an MA in Women’s History and a PhD in Spanish Literature.

Read more about our new editors on our About page.

Then, in the relative cool of the evening, join us for an online reading of the September issue’s contributing writers—Saturday 15 October at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC.

For the Zoom link, email K-B at kbgressitt@gmail.com.

 

Photo by K-B Gressitt © 2022.

A Supreme Proposal

By Katie Avagliano

 

I’m not saying cannibalism is the only option. If we’re talking animalistic magnetism—the old horizontal tango-—there are other ways to dispose of the sperm vehicles. Sure, arachnids control their own widowhood, and half of all Chinese mantises have copulations that end in the death of the male. In response, though, the male has adapted by becoming even more opportunistic in its coupling, i.e. sneaky and surprising. Perhaps hanging the threat of execution over the proceedings isn’t enough to combat bad behavior.

Powerful men seem only to look to the animal kingdom when it is convenient for explaining things like “boys will be boys.” They claim the alpha male cannot be expected to keep it in his pants when presented with the young, the fertile.

But if a man yearns to be a snarling pack animal, I will be a kangaroo. I’ll take you out in one kick. Plus, the kangaroo has two vaginas and the ability to suspend its own pregnancy. I could stop a growing fetus at its blastocyst stage. Kangaroos do this when they’re waiting for warmer weather, waiting for the rain to come, waiting to feel safe once again.

I’m not saying that, post-coitus, our only options involve my eating your innards or embryonic stasis. I’m saying it’s important for you to know that, if this door closes, I will one hundred percent open the fire exit, the one with the blaring alarm that no one remembers the code to turn off. I’m saying that, if you close this door that’s been open since my mother’s mother was getting it on, then you better be prepared for pretty grisly consequences.

Because in the end I’m no kangaroo, all downy hairs and fawny eyelashes; I’m not even a praying mantis, eating the male who dared try to get it on with me. If we do the boom-chick-a-boom-boom and, god forbid, one of your little swimmers catches on—and we live in this dystopian reality where the powers that be say the choices afforded to animals in the Outback don’t exist under our Star Bangled Banner—in that scenario, we aren’t humans or mammals or even terrestrial creatures.

We are anglerfish (like the one in Finding Nemo with the light on its head) and you are the scrappy, sperm-wielding parasite I have to support with my own food, my own beating heart. In exchange for this supposed legacy, you are nothing more than a growth on my side. It took decades for scientists to even find the male anglerfish, overlooking the unremarkable blip on the female’s body as just some other ornament picked up on her trans-oceanic travels.

And perhaps you’re okay with leeching, unwanted, shedding entire parts of yourself. Male anglerfish, once they burrow into the soft flesh of a female host, lose fins, eyes, organs. In the pursuit of fatherhood they give up everything they are, become a worm on the side of a glowing queen of the deep.

What I’m saying is, if you want to rewind us down to our base parts, then we should introduce some risk. If you try to make me nothing more than the ovaries I carry, then I will become sharp teeth, strong maw. In the end, there are still too many of us naked primates on this soft green earth. It is only good and just to root out the source of the problem.

Spiders cannibalize on the flip of a coin, so how about heads I win, tails you lose? Would you walk into my parlor?

 

Katie Avagliano (she/her) teaches college writing in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey. She earned her MFA at American University and her writing has appeared in Lunchbox, Bethesda Magazine, and elsewhere.

Photo credit: Angler fish image by Helder da Rocha 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.

Love Songs for End Times

By Zoë Fay-Stindt

 

I sing to
the green anole
in a made-up
lizard language—
fiddling tongue,
whirlwinds
and whistle-
clucks.
He curves his neck,
ear hole craned
to my porch perch.
He pinks
his bubble-throat.
For years, I saw
devil horns peeking
from each human
head. Yes,
the chemical,
the highway framed
with fields
and fields
of low metal
chicken farms,
bouncing off death
in the sun. Yes,
the river
nearly evaporated.
But on all those
superfund sites,
someone—
no, a people
—are planting
black ash trees.
Sweetgrass
grows thicker
from our harvesting
hands. Reader,
it’s not all gone up
in flames.
I say this
for you
and for me.
On a postcard
taped to my wall,
a globe as deep
pink as the lizard’s
puffed throat:
le soleil
ne se couche pas.
And it’s true:
the sun never sets.

 

Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/Z/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American South. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as RHINO, Muzzle, and Ninth Letter, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University, award-winning teacher, and co-managing editor for the environmental writing journal, Flyway.

Photo credit: Green anole image by Matthew Paulson 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.

Predators

By Laura Grace Weldon

 

If a grizzly wanders into your social media
don’t make eye contact or sudden moves.
Abandon the sandwich you were eating, leave
the small square of chocolate you saved for last.

Sharks often appear in parking garages
silent, stealthy, even as you confine
your blood’s scent under a coat pulled tight,
hurry your steps, summon your car’s refuge.

You’re warned away from boa constrictors
although their natural habitat is your manager’s office,
the statehouse, every tightly coiled corporation
crushing you bit by bit.

Predators often smile, extend a hand, act polite.
Beware, the trap may be ready to snap.
Expect the hurt, the trick, the vicious threat,
the unholy fury when you try to walk away.

 

Laura Grace Weldon served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. She works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week. Connect with her at lauragraceweldon.com.

Illustration credit: 1906 illustration of a corporate predator from Arena Magazine, Volume 35, in the public domain.

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.

America, America

By Howie Good

 

Human with a jacket pulled over their head standing in front of a weathered U.S. flag

 

Artist’s Statement

My handmade collages are intended as a rebuke to the lifeless perfection of Photoshopped images. They are also intended to provoke an authentic response by combining images in a way that challenges old habits of seeing.

Howie Good is a poet and collage artist on Cape Cod. His latest poetry books are Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).

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.

 

Sticky Singles

By Jennifer A. Swallow

 

After several dozen first dates over beer and mozzarella sticks—none of which had led to a second—I decided to change the format. I planned to meet a guy in the park for a midmorning stroll. No pressure. Just a walk and a chat. I told him we could meet at the fountain, and I’d be wearing a felt cowboy hat and Stockman boots. He responded that that was hot and he was looking forward to meeting in person.

When Byron strolled up, he looked just like his Tinder photos—floppy blonde hair and ears that stuck out cute far, not dorky far. Okay, maybe dorky far. He was slightly overweight but in a cute way, like a teddy bear. He was wearing a red t-shirt and blue jeans, like he said he would.

He circled the fountain—looking around—and his eyes skimmed over me. He stopped about twenty feet away and examined the crowd more carefully. I remained still, waiting for him to recognize me. I was dressed for work, so I didn’t exactly look like my profile photo, but when I washed the paint away I would. All my profile photos were taken in the last few months. I couldn’t stand meeting guys in person and realizing all their photos were five years old. It was immediately obvious, and their mumbled protests about not having any recent ones were a huge turnoff.

Byron’s eyes swept the space around me again, not seeming to register my presence, but then they flickered back and looked squarely into mine. I struggled to not blink. He stared. I stared back. Recognition loosened his squinted eyes, his scrunched forehead, his tightened mouth. When he took a step forward and asked “Kate?” I finally broke character.

“Yup, it’s me!” I stepped forward and held out my right hand, forgetting it was covered in gold body paint until he raised an eyebrow at it.

“Sorry. Job hazard.” I turned around and grabbed my saddle bag from the ground. It was also covered in gold paint on the outside and contained about forty dollars in ones and fives. “Theft is another hazard. Gotta be careful.”

“This is your job? Your artist job?” He scanned my outfit from top to bottom. In addition to the promised cowboy hat and boots, I wore a plaid shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps, a denim skirt held up by a leather belt with a large brass buckle, and gauntlet style gloves with leather fringe. Every inch of clothing and even my blonde, braided hair was coated with gold paint.

“Yes, well, no. I mean, I also sketch. Images of the Wild West—bison, Indians, wild horses, things like that.” I smiled. “But this living statue act brings in the easy money. You’d be surprised how many people are impressed by the simple ability to be still for a really long time. Of course, there are the shitheads who—”

“Yeah, okay, um, this—” he outlined my whole body with his hand flat, palm open toward me, “is not what I expected.” His tone was flat, and he put extra emphasis on not.

I paused and then said, “I thought it would be fun.” I twirled the end of the rope that was slung over my shoulder and grinned. I’d been certain meeting like this would make me intriguing, or memorable at the very least. Better than my standard too-tight jeans and low-cut blouse first date attire.

“What’s fun about this? I get to walk around the park with a cartoon?” He lowered his eyebrows.

I dropped the flirtatiousness from my tone. “I’m not a cartoon. I’m a living statue.”

“Which one of my friends put you up to this?”

“Put me up to what?”

“This! Pretend to be interested in me and then put on this crap and make a joke out of it.” His voice had gone up an octave and he gestured wildly with both hands at my whole body.

A woman stopped and watched us, and a family hurried their small children around the other side of the fountain.

I lowered my voice and spoke gently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t want to have this date, please leave.”

“You bitch.” He shook his head at me. He pursed his lips to the size of a raspberry. Those ears, which were absolutely not cute now, glowed bright red.

“I don’t know what your problem is or what you think is happening, but we’re done here and you should go.”

He snorted, folded his arms across his chest, and jutted out his chin.

I stepped back a few paces and set my saddlebag down with the strap looped under my right heel. I hooked one thumb under my rope and the other in my waistband. Finally, I exhaled my abdomen into a position where I could take shallow breaths with almost no movement through my core and I relaxed my jaw and eyelids into a position that was easy to hold. Byron was barely visible in my periphery. But he was audible.

“Fucking cunt.”

And then I felt the spit.

Inside, I shuddered. Outside, I didn’t even blink. I remained immobile, just like I’d trained myself to when morally deficient parents encouraged their children to kick me to see if I’d flinch. My face was hot, but I didn’t think anyone could tell beneath the gold.

Byron left. I couldn’t see where he went without turning my head, which I didn’t want to do since a crowd had gathered. I was in character again, ready to earn sticky singles from cotton candy eating tourists from Nebraska or Missouri. But maybe out of appreciation for my composure, or out of pity, they’d put something extra in my saddlebag.

 

Jennifer A Swallow is known more for writing about cybersecurity than imaginary lives, but that doesn’t stop her from filling notebook after notebook with ideas. Her creative work has appeared in The Courtship of Winds and Adelaide Literary Magazine. She lives the life of a digital nomad and finds inspiration everywhere she goes. When inspiration is lacking, she runs up mountains until it comes back.

Photo credit: Pete Ashton via a Creative Commons license.

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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.

Velocity Squared

By Flavian Mark Lupinetti

 

when the gun smoke clears
and the EMTs bring the bodies to my ER
and I ask why they bothered and they say
we need someone to pronounce them most
times I say you pronounced them just fine
but today I can’t bear to make that joke
because these aren’t so much bodies as
they are chunks of protoplasm subordinated
to the law of physics that dictates force
equals mass over two times velocity squared

when the gun smoke clears
I reflect how clever of Eugene Stoner
who shrewdly designed his AR-15
to fire rounds of a petite .223 caliber
but to propel them at 3200 feet per
second because how else to
penetrate steel plate at 500 yards or
disarticulate a leg from the pelvis
with a flesh wound below the knee
unless you rely on velocity squared

when the gun smoke clears
it still amazes me that these
headless corpses and these
exploded chests each resulted
from a single shot yet it makes
perfect sense mathematically
if you want to create an exit wound
the size of an orange with a bullet
smaller than your Bic pen
you need that velocity squared

 

Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in About Place, Barrelhouse, Bellevue Literary Review, Briar Cliff Review, Cutthroat, Sport Literate, and ZYZZYVA. Mark lives in New Mexico.

Image credit: Jasper Nance via a Creative Commons license.

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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.

 

Oratorio of Arrival

By Dia Calhoun

for Ukraine, 2022

 

Because the woman hugs a green glass bottle
yellow-wicked, and waits
by the fabric store where she once bought
the blue wool for her coat,
the scarlet gingham for the kitchen window,
coral flannel to snuggle her baby
somewhere now on the pouring road to Poland—

Veni Magna Spirita

Because the composer holds his index finger,
limber from years of black piano keys,
on the trigger of an AK-47,
a melody in B minor playing in his head—

Veni Magna Spirita

Because the music is louder, the blue brighter
than the tanks now grinding down the street—

Veni Magna Spirita

Because their eyes meet
because she lights the torch
because he pulls the trigger
singing his greatest opus—Fuck you, bastard!
because she runs out, blue coat whirling,
and throws—

Veni Magna Spirita 

Crossing a different border, their baby looks up.

 

Dia Calhoun is the author of seven young adult novels, including two verse novels, After the River the Sun and Eva of the Farm (Atheneum, 2013, 2012). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Her poems have appeared in The EcoTheo Review and MORIA Literary Magazine. An article on poetry craft, co-authored with Deborah Bacharach, is forthcoming in the Writer’s Chronicle. Calhoun is a co-founder of readergirlz, recipient of The National Book Foundation Innovations in Reading Prize. She has taught at Seattle University, Stony Brook University, and The Cornish College. Learn more at diacalhoun.com.

Image credits: The compilation is by our own Debbie Hall, poetry editor and author, and the flag image is by Nataliya Smirnova on Unsplash.

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LipStick It Couture Du Jour

Because Extraordinary Times Require Extraordinary Adornment

 

By Tracy Rose Stamper

Welcome to RevlOff’s Lip Couture Counter, where science blends with art, topped off with attitude, to bring you colors to carry you through dizzying days.

Our makeup counter’s mission is to challenge the slippery slope into post-truth society. By offering an honest line of honest products, we aim to create an oasis in this world gone off its axis. Like you, we wouldn’t have made it this far without attitude, an ingredient as important as science and art. Sometimes, attitude shows up as color play therapy. Other times, admittedly, we’re throwing shade. Because today’s many shades of fustercluck require many shades of lip armor.

With science under attack, we begin with  highlighting our Scintillating Lip Science Line. Our distinct shades—Moderna Woman, Pfizer Fly, J&J Vim&Vigor Violet, and Fully Vixenated—are recognizable, helping take the guesswork out of navigating this partially vaccinated world. Thirty-nine percent of proceeds from this line go towards public health education.

Our Levity Line is curated for comic relief: Frosted Snowflake, Commie Bastard Berry, Cashmere Coastal Elite Crème, Scintillating Socialist, Luscious Lefty Lavendar Lustre, Flaming Liberal Lilac, Bleeding Heart Burgundy, and Radical Rosé. You will be called all the above. May as well dress it up!

Our LipStick It line’s Pop Off Pink, Ragin’ Red, and Apoplectic Purple coordinate well with feeling feisty. Piehole Plum works wonders when venturing places where you’ll wish to tell folks to shut it. Warm, inviting Pumpkin Smasher Spice is popular on Wednesdays when we smash the patriarchy. Another smashing shade is Vagalante Lavender. (We’ve been asked if that’s a typo. No, it’s not.) Our newest addition, Pro-Roe, is a bold blood red. Enough said.

Lip Armor Liquid Courage Collection comes to the rescue with extra oomph! Impressive science merges a lip stain offering 8-hour staying power with a satiny liquid look. These blends have you covered across the board, from situations where it’s best to just walk away, to those times when you’ll have to say something to maintain any semblance of self-respect. Talk for 8 hours straight ‘til you’re blue in the face, with lips remaining radiant, although we don’t recommend wasting breath trying to change minds committed to closure. Red&White&True, Pink Patriot, and Coral Compass encourage standing for what is real and right. Think insurrectionist thugs eager to decapitate politicians, thus threatening our democracy’s very survival. Consider this collection your armor against gaslighting claims that what you saw didn’t happen.

Lip Armor Liquid Courage Collection mainstays are Crimson Courage and Seeing Red. These trying days require courage. Liberty Lover Lapis invites speaking the truth, because asserting individual liberties can sometimes adversely affect the collective, and empathy always matters. True Blue is for those of us who have earnestly spent six plus years trying to understand hearts of loved ones living in an entirely different world, despite residing mere miles away. Googling “cognitive dissonance” is your clue that this one’s for you. Striking shades draw foci to lips, away from puffy eyes. We’ve all had moments of dissolving into tears, leaving us looking as weary as we feel.

On Second Thought All-Out Orange is our collaboration with the common sense gun safety movement. With a nod to the Second Amendment and law-abiding citizens’ rights to own guns, this also represents the rights of our children to simply survive an America riddled with epidemic gun violence. Deep orange emboldens the user to take on stale assertions that “the government’s coming to take away your guns.”

Our Glow-Getter Glam Line celebrates bright spots with shimmering finishes. We have Yes We Candied Plum, Georgia Peach, Blunami, and V(I)P Pearlescent, in honor of our first POC and woman VP. We wish to expand this line in years to come.

Our True Colors Collection reflects the revealing of folks’ true colors. Spiraling up each tube are the words: “We’re only going to get browner and queerer and witchier and louder and stronger and prouder (author unknown).” Top-selling Browner is a rich maroon that beautifully celebrates the browning skin tone of our country’s trajectory. Black Sheep comes with a gift enclosure that reads: “For the black sheep of families dangerously close to falling off the edge of their flat earth if they lean the tiniest bit further right.” Pussy Hat Pink is quite popular. Pride gloss features rainbow sparkles. #RubySlipperRed represents the dreams of a compassionate homeland that lives up to its ideals of democracy, equity, and unity for all.

Finally, for the end of those days that last for months, we have our Lip Therapy Line. Designed as therapeutic balms to soothe and restore lips overnight, many customers reach for these around the clock. One of our regulars dubs our therapeutics as the “Homebody Cluster,” since it feels less lonely given today’s isolating climate.

Whether staying home or venturing out into these most curious times, RevlOff has you covered. Though this concludes our makeup bar tour, it is just the beginning of the important work we will do, alongside customers like you, doing right by the world.

To thank you for being part of a bright future, our complimentary gift is a tube of bRight Side of History. Apply liberally.”

 

Tracy Rose Stamper dances with words. Her recently acquired middle name is the most significant word she has written lately during these days asking us to rise. She lives in a home on a hill in St. Louis with two beloved humans, two rescue beagle boys, and two whimsical wind sculptures. She is a contributing author of Anna Linder’s ‘The Book of Emotions,’ and has had work appear in New Feathers Anthology, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts, Dime Show Review, Drunk Monkeys, and borrowed solace, among others. You can find her dancing with words at Facebook.

Photo credit: he who would be lost via a Creative Commons license.

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Tribute

By Eric Abalajon

 

My coffee tries to push back the basement chill
crawling up my legs, as I read a friend’s message.
I want to describe to you my table, Mayamor.

I remember your poem where you simply
list the towns won over by,
and sustaining, the movement.

It was, however, a security issue to publish it
in any mainstream venue, even a college folio
as it could be used as a blueprint for retaliation.

Safe to assume in this protracted fight,
our enemies read our poems as well.
The piece is an interesting rejoinder to
the image of a subversive poet, one not writing
witty metaphors against tyrants
but labors in naming of an emerging realm.

I would like to imagine, it was drafted
in folded cigarette packs during breaks
from long treks where you were
embracing fauna, seldom
acknowledged allies to armed encounters.

Another thorn of living in the
other side of the world is
the unease waking up to tributes for you.

Evenings is when we grieve our martyrs,
but I get to feel your weight of your life
on my chest, like Mount Napulak, in broad daylight.

 

Eric Abalajon is currently a lecturer at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Iloilo. His works have appeared in Ani, Katitikan: Literary Journal of the Philippine South, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, and elsewhere. Recently his poems are included in the collections Sobbing in Seafood City (Sampaguita Press, 2022) and Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). He lives near Iloilo City. You can find him on Twitter @JLaneria and on Instagram @jacob_laneria.

Image credit: “Cemetery of San Joaquin,” Iloilo, Philippines, by EdseastresD600, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Lithium & High Heels

By Heather Dorn

 

Barbie’s feet come preformed for sexiness, but the rest of us must learn to curve our arches like a playground slide. We start young, even as babies, barely able to walk, staggering up church or pageant stage steps—sparkling quarter inch heels, lace dresses, makeup bruising our eyelids blue, punching our cheeks red. This for a trophy, some money, salvation, attention.

When I’m out with women friends, sometimes men will ask to buy me drinks. I usually say no because there is an implication that if I accept a drink, I owe him attention.

Even when I say no, they often still bother me: You should sell thrift store watches to Boscov’s, one man tried to convince me after I told him I was getting my Ph.D. Sometimes I say I’m married, or have a boyfriend, or have a girlfriend. Sometimes I let someone else’s ownership of me be a reason so a man will listen to my no, when I’m tired and my no is not standing on its own. Of course, I don’t always say no.

Once a friend asked how I got some pot lollipops I’d brought to a party. Someone gave them to me, I said.

But who? she repeated. How much did they cost?

I don’t know. Someone said, ‘Do you want these’ and I said ‘Yes’ and I took them.

I hate you, she pretended to hit me.

Beauty is subjective, except my mom says it isn’t and I can see her point. I don’t have any physical reaction to that music, that poem, that mountain, that man, that woman, but I know she is considered “beautiful.” That eye matches that other eye and this is beauty. I learned it from TV and magazines and movies and pageants, and the way my mother tilted her head in the mirror and knew her light. Sometimes an imperfection is called beautiful, when it accompanies matching eyes.

Beauty is subjective, except it isn’t—like sanity. Is sanity subjective? Is sleeping in a closed, dark closet as a teen a quirk or a sign of manic depression? If you ask my mother, it’s not normal. Is vacuuming at 3 a.m. insane? My mother says that’s normal.  And my mother knows what is correct, true, normal, attractive. She tells me how to be these things. She once told me I had my Aunt Julia’s nose, thin and narrow, and she would help me get a nose job to fix it when I got old enough. To this day, I dislike my nose. I could not fix it now though because I have finally learned what I really look like and so it’s too late.

It’s hard for me to be attracted to someone who I don’t know. This chasm between my feelings of attraction and the objective standards I know I’m supposed to use to gauge attractiveness leave me feeling an outsider in conversations about beauty. When other girls were falling in love with boy bands and actors on the covers of magazines, I was pining after characters from Victorian novels or 80s teen movies. I didn’t want to kiss Molly Ringwald, I wanted to kiss Claire from The Breakfast Club. I didn’t feel like Ally Sheedy, but Allison Reynolds, right down to the makeover at the end. I didn’t want to date Judd Nelson, but John Bender, and I wanted to be and kiss Claire, and to wear one or both diamond earrings she so easily gave away to her one-day make out partner.

Girls like Claire always had the right everything. It’s not just clothes, or hair, or makeup, or nails, or shoes, or bras, or jewelry, or purses. It’s also the time and space and money to keep, use, and update these items. Makeup runs out, hair straighteners break, clothes go out of style.

When I first started making semi-regular money babysitting, I spent it on drug store makeup and the shampoo I wanted. Coconut smell. Back then I was still getting hand-me-down clothes, and curlers, and shoes. Now, almost all my shoes are new.

My ex-husband never minded me spending money on my hair, as long as I kept it long, but requested that I cut his hair so that he didn’t have to pay to get it done. More than saving money, I think he was trying to avoid people. He hated people. The small talk was probably annoying to him as well. Though he’s much better at small talk than I am.

Small talk is filling the air with noise when silence will do. He can talk to people for an hour about the weird Binghamton weather, get to know them slowly over a few years, and then still not really know them when they later move away. People will think he is a really nice guy and so cool for helping them move. They don’t know he helped them move to get them out of his life.

I will not help anyone move. It’s tedious and I’m weak and tired. I will not talk for an hour about the weather. I don’t check the weather or carry an umbrella. That’s so much planning, just to avoid water. And who remembers rain exists when the sun is out? Instead, I will run up to a new person, shake their hand, and launch a manic stream of words: My name is Heather! I’m bipolar and like Indian food! Years ago I was triggered by some PTSD and went through extensive therapy! I’m not close to my family! I’m so glad we will be teaching this course together this semester!

I want to know people all at once.

Or more correctly, I want them to know me all at once. It takes time to get to know someone—and I’ve got no time for that. But part of my bipolar brain can be not caring or caring so much that it stops me from interacting at all for fear of fucking up. Like saying fuck at the wrong time.

I was worried I was going to say fuck when I went to my ex-husband’s first work dinner.  Most of the people he worked with, including his boss, are nice, respectable, Christian people. I doubted that they cared for all my facial piercings: an eyebrow ring, tongue ring, lip ring, and nose ring at the time. I was sure that I was going to fuck up, irrationally nervous that when we prayed before the meal I’d be called on to contribute: Hey Jesus, thanks for this high-fucking-class food, thanks for fucking dying for me and shit, p.s. I don’t think your mom was a virgin, A-fucking-men.

This would not work.

I was out of practice with my high heels too. The day before the dinner, I spent hours in the shoe section of Macy’s trying on heels. I was teaching at the university, going to school full time, and had toddlers at home. I didn’t feel at all connected to the person who had once worn heels. Her body was gone and wearing heels was different now. Three pregnancies had made my foot grow a half size. Size 9 heels looked huge when the clerk put the box next to me, a green pair nestled in the paper.

I put them on and stood up, balancing on the thin pegs.

They’re not even that tall, the saleswoman anticipated my complaint.

I don’t think I can walk in them, I staggered around the department like a newborn puppy.

You’re not going to find any shorter. It had been hours and she was done with me.

I was done with me too. I knew the dress needed heels. It was that kind of dress, the shoe lady told me, the dress lady told me, magazines told me, TV told me, movies told me, my mother told me. I knew I had to wear high heels with that dress and that dress to this event. I knew I had to go to this event and to not say fuck. I knew this is what was expected. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether to do an expected thing or whether to jump out the window, my brain always teetering on the window sill.

My ex didn’t go to my work events in uncomfortable clothes and painful shoes, but I’ve never driven him to the hospital when he wouldn’t stop throwing a training wheel down the driveway or listened to him worry for hours about a sent email.

Relationships are not equal. This is mathematically impossible.

Once, shortly after moving to Binghamton, he and I were walking through the mall with our kids and his parents in tow. His mother was getting on my nerves. She had a way of slapping me in the face and making it look like a caress. I was arguing with him, instead of his mother, because arguing with her wasn’t an option. Because he never stuck up for me. His parents were not the type of people to show emotion, especially not in public. The only acceptable emotion was laughter, and even then, let’s not be rude about it. I was growing angrier and louder as we argued, until he finally asked me to quiet down.

That was when I turned around, in the middle of the mall, my children and in-laws standing behind, and yelled, “Fuck off!”

Later, recalling the Fuck off incident, we would laugh. This was once I had been on a Depakote, Seroquel, Lithium cocktail for a few years and he probably didn’t feel the weight of my altered states any longer. Sanity is subjective—except it isn’t.

But not every part of mania is bad. Some people say they wouldn’t be bipolar, if they could choose, but it affects everyone differently and some days I feel I won the neurological lottery.

I remember the times when I had sex with my ex before he went to work, called him home for sex at lunch, and then begged for sex when he walked through the door that night. I remember wearing high heels all day, catching a glimpse of my legs in the full-length mirror, my brain buzzing at the sleek shimmer of glitter lotion that made me feel like magic. It was hard to think of anything other than sex and it was never enough. But this would only last a couple of weeks.

Usually followed by a crash.

And the crashes were low. Weeks in bed. Extreme physical pain, just from being. Crying daily, all day. It’s impossible for me to remember the way it felt because I can only feel that distorted when my perception is altered. I do remember many moments when I thought everyone I knew would be better off without me around.

I also thought about driving off an overpass.

And mania could be a problem too: feeling like a god was countered with the paranoia that everyone I knew was talking about me behind my back, hated me, that my husband of over twenty years was conspiring to leave me to be with an unattractive woman with uneven eyes and a perfect nose.

Hypomania is less intense. When I was hypomanic in my Masters program, I planned my semester in a weekend. Class plans for fifteen weeks in three days. When hypomanic, I paint, I write, I even clean. I don’t need to sleep. I love the way I feel—like being high but better because I’m high on me and I’m all throughout my veins.

The medication takes this away from me.

And the depression and the mania, it takes all these away from me. It makes me more level. More like myself or less like myself, whichever way you see it.

I also take pills for attention tremors, which are caused by the Lithium. The tremors occur anytime I’m trying not to shake, which makes putting on nail polish much harder than in the past.

I try to put on new nail polish once a week, but it has been every two to three weeks lately. When I’m putting on nail polish I can’t really do anything but put on nail polish. I can watch TV, or listen to music, or have a conversation, but that’s all I can do. And sometimes I do none of this. I do my nails in silence, in nothingness.

I’m trapped in a space of open blankness and I can’t leave until the paint dries.

Some people like my nails and tell me. My lovers. A colleague. A student. I’m glad they like my nails, even though I did my nails for the reflection time, for the moments I look down typing and think they look like candy, for licking them when I’m alone, for the pictures I get of them shining on a coffee mug that make me feel like I’m a hand model, for some feeling of accomplishment, for some discovery of art.

It’s been a few years since I started my current cocktail of medication, and I sometimes wonder if I take it to make myself more comfortable or to make everyone around me more comfortable. Of course, it does both, but I wonder what my goal is. Most days, I think I take it for me, so I can wake up in the morning and get to work, so I can go the day without telling a friend to fuck off, so I can think about something other than sex.

But some days I think I take it for everyone else. The world is set up for people who don’t need to take pills.

I wonder if I could ever be cured, though no one ever has been. I decide it’s not a disorder, being bipolar. Maybe it’s okay to feel like a god. Maybe it’s okay to see colors like flavors. Maybe it’s alright to stay up all night until I fall over asleep from exhaustion, a pen still in my fingers. I don’t want to take my medication. But I must work tomorrow, so I swallow my pills.

I’m always glad I did in the morning. I argue with myself every night.

 

Heather Dorn was born with a plastic spork in her mouth. As a child her mother took her to Taco Bell so she’s Taco Bell obsessed. She grew up mostly in California and Texas, knowing Taco Bell is not Mexican food, but nostalgia is yummy. Heather’s poetry, fiction, essays, and art can be found in journals like The American Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Ragazine, and The Kentucky Review. She earned her Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton, where she is a lecturer. After work she goes home to watch true crime. On the weekends, she wishes she had a washing machine.

Photo credit: jon jordan via a Creative Commons license.

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Secrets in the Gazebo

By Penny Perry

For my Aunt Leona Heyert Tarleton
who died at age 33

 

We are looking at the mockingbird
in the lemon tree. This is the first day
of my cousin’s summer visit.
I wriggle closer to her.
“I know how my mother died,”
my cousin whispers.
The gazebo is the place for secrets.

My Aunt Leona was almost famous.
She wrote plays that were on Broadway,
did crossword puzzles in ink. On a cold
spring day when silly girls wore sundresses
and shivered, Aunt Leona wore a smart
wool suit and pinned a spring violet
on her lapel.

Wendy’s mother died when Wendy
was only seven months old.

My cousin squints at the sun shooting
off the adobe tile roof. This is the first day
of her summer visit.
The jasmine smells sweet. She is thirteen.
I am eleven.

“She had an abortion,” Wendy says.
Her eyes are bright. She loves telling me
things I’m not supposed to know.

“A-bor-tion,” I repeat. Grandpa taught us
to sound out long words.

Grandma calls my cousin an orphan
even though she  has a father.
“My mother didn’t want to have a second
baby so soon.”
“A baby?”
“It wasn’t a baby.
Your mother drove her to the bad doctor.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”
“But she did.”
I blot my wet face with my sleeve.
The excitement has left my cousin’s eyes.

Now I know why sometimes Mother
locks the bathroom door, turns the water
on full blast. She thinks I don’t hear her cries.

Wendy has long legs and her feet
touch the ground. My legs dangle
and the tie on the right sneaker has come
undone.

 

A seven time Pushcart nominee, Penny Perry has published a poetry collection, Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage (Garden Oak Press). Her novel Selling Pencils and Charlie, also from Garden Oak Press, was a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards in 2021. Her new poetry collection, Woman with Newspaper Shoes, was published June 2022 by Garden Oak Press.

Photo credit: “Polite Notice on Studded Door” is by Morning-meadow Jones, an American junior high school dropout, who later went on to realize her full potential and drop out of college too. She is a mother, migrant, and multi-media creative, practicing all manner of arts from her home in Wales, UK. She recently launched her writing career at the age of 51. Foolow her on Twitter at @Morning_meadowJ.

A note from Writers Resist

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Feeding the Goldfish

By René Marzuk

We walk to the edge of the pond at the far end
of the backyard—a pond dirty and small, slightly bigger
than a bathtub—filled with plants and fish carefully chosen
for their ability to survive off each other. “An ecosystem,”
you offer.

A grubby Eden. Colored shapes appear
and disappear within the murky waters, like spilled glass
marbles or ghosts drawn in sfumato, dodging our gifts.

Each crumb is an excess to be pondered. Kindness,
many a time, finds its way into a contract.
“How much, just how much exactly,
will this miracle cost us?”

 

René Marzuk is a poetry and prose editor at Writers Resist.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Rene is on the path to finish his English MA at the same institution and is already considering his next steps. Accidentally born in Ukraine to Cuban parents, he grew up in Havana, Cuba, and migrated to the United States as an adult.

He is currently a contributing editor of The Envious Lobster, a collection of nineteenth-century American children’s nature writing, where he focuses on rescuing the works of non-white and child authors. Overall, his research interests include Modern American literature and literary-cultural intertextuality, children’s literature, cultural studies, semiotics, code-switching practices, and articulation of marginal identities in literary works, among others.

Both inside and outside of academia, Rene has worn and continues to wear many hats. As of right now, he writes poetry, runs, takes pictures, and dabbles in drawing and illustration. He lives in High Point, North Carolina.

Photo credit: Image by Matt Artz on Unsplash.

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Welcome to our June issue, and farewell to a beloved editor

The Sun and its rays partially surrounded by clouds

The summer of 2022 is roiling with challenges.

By the time you are reading this, or soon thereafter, Roe v. Wade is likely to have been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and “states’ rights” will quash human rights. People around the globe will suffer from increasingly extreme temperatures, weather events, and food and water shortages. In the United States, there will be a damnable number of new mass shootings. Ukraine will be ever more battered by Putin’s violent imperialism. And many folks will flirt with despair.

Yet, despite the struggle, we are not without hope. Remember why we launched Writers Resist in the dark days after Trump’s election? To resist oppression, to share our fears and hopes with a kindred community. And we have.

To borrow a Nina Simone quote in the following essay by our beloved editor DW McKinney, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”

At Writers Resist, we’ve not only reflected the times, but shared visions of a more equitable future. And so we continue.

While DW’s message is one of farewell, and we will sorely miss her, she is moving on to important places where she will continue to make positive change in a challenging world—while Writers Resist continues to benefit from the enlightenment she brought to our process.

So we say goodbye to DW and welcome the opportunity to continue resisting creatively.

In the meantime, we are searching for another volunteer editor willing and able to donate some time for the love of words.

Are you interested? Contact K-B, our publisher: kbgressitt@gmail.com.

BTW: Join us for an online reading of this issue’s contributing writers on Saturday 23 July at 4:00 p.m. PACIFIC. Email K-B for the Zoom link at kbgressitt@gmail.com.

From DW McKinney

DW McKinney smiling at the camera
DW McKinney

My maternal grandfather would play Nina Simone’s records in his den on rare evenings when the air was too warm and thick. He’d leave the doors leading to the outside patios open and we’d  sit still, staring into the night as we drank in her voice. Even as a child then, I could feel the weight of her lyrics pressing heavily on us. It was probably a mercy that I didn’t hear her sing “Mississippi Goddam” until I was an adult.

In the summer of 2015, on a day that was similarly too hot to be outside and the air too thick to breathe comfortably, I took a lunch break from my job as a proofreader for the Texas Legislative Council and wandered into the Blanton Museum of Art. The oppressive heat from outside had worn me down so that by the time I entered the museum, my defenses were gone and I was raw and vulnerable to the emotional weight of the main exhibit.

The Blanton was hosting Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, an exhibit that showcased paintings, sculptures, photography, and other media and art forms created in response to the 1960s’ political and social climate. A handful of visitors and I stood in a large egg-shell white room, the whole of it swallowing us and forcing us to seek refuge in the paintings hanging on the walls. I was gazing at Barkley L. Hendricks’s “Lawdy Mama” (1969) as I let the air conditioning soothe me. In the portrait, a young Black woman with an afro held her arm as she stood against a gold leaf backdrop with an arched top. The woman’s expression shifted from resignation to acceptance to neutral the longer I stared. It was that intense focus that emptied me of every distraction and allowed me to hear the musical notes tugging on my ear.

I followed the notes into an alcove where no one else had entered. A lone bench sat in the room. A film played on the white screen tacked to the wall in front of the bench. Nine Simone sat at a piano and vigorously played its keys. Every part of me stilled, and I was transported back into the sepia tones of my grandfather’s den. When the song was over, I waited for the reel to replay so I could watch the film from the beginning. I listened again and again, sitting there for who knows how long, aware that I had not eaten. Aware that my break was crawling to its last minutes. Aware that the white museum patrons took one look at the screen before moving quickly away into the next room. Aware that it was just Nina and I for quite a long time, just the two of us ruminating on freedom, Black bodies being beaten, and Black churches burning.

“Mississippi Goddam” rolled in my head all the way back to work and for a long time afterward. I couldn’t shake Nina Simone’s righteous anger or the ugly truths in the lyrics. Over my lifetime, I’ve listened to hundreds of political songs in rap, hip-hop, trip hop, electronica, Latin pop, and rock. But “Mississippi Goddam” was the first time that I felt a song’s claws rip into me and never let go. The sting of it never faded. I have been chasing that feeling since that afternoon in the museum.

That same summer, the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? was released. The film featured archival interview footage of Nina Simone saying, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” Creatives evoked that quote ad nauseam in the days following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. I think writers and artists struggled to translate their thoughts and emotions following the election. So many of us wanted to defensively weaponize the lamentations we let loose into the new void we found ourselves in. Nina Simone became a filter for us to shape our weapons.

In the years since then, I became more closely drawn to creative works that delved into the visceral and heartbreaking but truthful variations of our lives. When I joined Writers Resist in June 2021, I looked forward to learning more about how our words create change. How our words become protestations that spur action. How we can shape a resistance on paper and through electronic waves. I was also hoping to become educated through the WR readership on how to improve my own literary activism. I am grateful to say that in my short tenure as an editor, I have done just that.

As I move on from my editorship this June, I leave with many lessons about voice, poetic form, second chances, and grace. I am thankful for the opportunities to read political commentary from writers all over the globe. I am especially thankful that our contributors have nurtured my curiosity about resistance in the literary arts.

If you’re curious about where I’m going from here, I will be expanding my current editorial role at Shenandoah and beginning a new position as a reviews editor for a small journal that debuts in 2023. But most immediately, this summer I will be leading the inaugural year of We Are The House: A Virtual Residency for Early-Career Writers through Raising Mothers. I’ve created this year-long residency to help parent-writers with almost no publications establish their nonfiction portfolio. It is the steppingstone toward my dream goal to establish a more dynamic, multi-genre residency for parent-writers.

As I leave, I can express nothing but gratitude to Writers Resist’s readership and to my generous colleagues on the masthead. I am never too far away.

Onward,
DWM

Photograph of the Sun by XoMEoX via a Creative Commons license.

Photograph of DW McKinney courtesy of the subject.

A note from Writers Resist:

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I don’t even remember his name

By Sarah Gundle

 

Something made me think of him. For days now, it has been bothering me: I can’t remember his name. I can recall many of our conversations, the gentle character of his voice, the resignation in his eyes, but not his name. I’ve wracked my brain. I saw him almost twenty years ago for almost a year in twice weekly sessions. I was a young intern working in a city hospital. He was a former prisoner who had served stints for everything from petty larceny to armed robbery.

In prison, they strip you of everything: first your name, then your identity, and finally your humanity. You become a number in a brutal system. Except I learned, for him, this process had started way before he had landed in prison at 19. And now I, who cared for him deeply, seem to have erased him too.

•   •   •

Mandated by the court to enter therapy, his chart had a red notation at the top I didn’t recognize: “Violence/aggression risk.” His diagnosis was “Schizoaffective disorder,” and the chart noted he had a long-term substance abuse problem. Reading on, I saw he had gotten out of prison two weeks earlier.

Though the notation gave me pause, I was afraid to say anything. It was the second month of my internship, the training year before getting my doctorate. I was at the very bottom of the psychiatry clinic hierarchy, and to put much faith in my own misgivings, not to mention voicing them, was more than I could risk. The first time we met, I made sure it was during daylight hours.

Eyes downcast, his large frame filled the doorway of my closet-like office. He had rich, dark skin, heavily pockmarked cheeks, and sat with a restrained intensity. I clutched my hands tightly while he began speaking so softly I had to lean closer to hear him, our knees almost touching.

“Do you have any trauma in your past?” I asked. Remaining silent, he cast his eyes around the office landing on an old globe tucked onto one of the upper shelves.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Oh, just an old globe. It’s probably very out of date.”

“Can I look at it?”

Unsure what to do, I took it down and placed it in his lap. Gently, he spun it around—his acorn-colored eyes lit up.

“That’s a gorgeous thing, huh?” he said. “The whole world—right here.” He spun the globe and landed his finger on a spot, “Vietnam?” He sounded out.

“Oh, it’s very beautiful. I was there last year.”

“What?” His head spun back toward me. “What is it like there?”

Before our session ended, I returned to my question: “Can you tell me about your trauma history?”

The light in his eyes doused; he almost whispered his response. “I’m a very bad person. I did something really terrible when I was a kid. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

I didn’t press him for details—our time was up.

After that, we began every session by spinning the globe and an exploration of the country his finger landed upon. He was always curious about the food. “Man, that sounds good,” he teased me one day after our imaginary journeys took us to a place where fried crickets were a popular street food. His trilling laugh filled the room.

When he was nine, on an unusually cold day in his small North Carolina town, he and his six-year-old brother climbed onto a frozen lake to explore. Halfway across, the ice cracked. Though he managed to scramble to safety, his brother fell in, disappearing in the pitch black water.

Afraid of being punished, he hid in a nearby forest for two days until—ragged, hungry, and numb with cold—he returned home.

“My father beat me with a switch this long.” He held his hands out to show me. “I didn’t feel a thing. I knew I was bad. I knew I killed him. I wanted him to keep beating me.”

After his brother’s funeral, his father barely spoke to him again. At 13, he was sent to live with relatives in Manhattan where, after nine months, they took him out of school, so he could work full time in their shop. His first arrest was at 19. Over three decades, he had never spent more than two years outside of prison.

“I just get a feeling, you know. I can’t take it. It builds up, and I know I need to go back.

“But why?” I asked.

“I deserve the punishment,” he said, his eyes suddenly vacant.

One of the first things I did after meeting him was call his doctor, a grizzled veteran of the psychiatry ward.

“He’s delusional,” he said, off-handedly.

“But what delusion?” I had seen no evidence of this.

“Hang on, let me look it up in his chart.” I could hear him crunching something as we spoke. “Oh, he endorses hearing voices. You understand what that means right?”

I swallowed tightly. “Of course, I do.”

I brought it up at our next session.

“He asked me if I ever hear voices. I told him I do—it’s like . . . well, these echoes in my head sometimes. Like if I get sad, I start remembering my brother’s voice.”

I stared at him. “You understand that’s not an auditory delusion—it’s a very normal reaction to having experienced a terrible trauma.”

“I didn’t experience trauma, my brother did,” he shrugged.

I called his parole officer, eager to understand the danger warning on his chart.

“Who?” I could hear the papers shuffling. “I have no idea about him—I just make sure he’s not breaking the rules, doctor.”

I began seeing him twice a week, prompting the officer to call me: “You know he’s supposed to come only once a week, right? And what is this about a job training program you have him in? You’ll see—he’ll be back in jail long before he’s ready for a job.”

At one point, I asked him about his substance abuse. “Your weekly urine tests are always clean. When did you stop using?”

“Oh, I don’t use,” he smiled ruefully. He explained that he had to snort coke to give him the courage to commit his crimes, which he pulled off using a plastic handgun. Of course, he tested positive after every arrest.

“But how can this be? Not only are you not an addict, you’re not psychotic. I’m going to change your diagnosis in your chart. And we’re getting you off these anti-psychotic meds.”

I was indignant, eager to have something to fix. I stopped mid-sentence because he was looking at me curiously.

“Why are you so worked up?” he asked.

“You shouldn’t have to live with the side effects—the dry mouth, the nausea, the headaches,” I responded, furious. “You shouldn’t have ever been on these medications!”

“It’s really ok—I swear it is. Change the chart, ok, sure, but it doesn’t change anything for me,” he replied, softly smiling, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

I changed his diagnosis to PTSD. His psychiatrist changed it back a week later.

•   •   •

He always had huge smile when I met him in the waiting room, but as soon we began down the hallway to my office it was suddenly gone. I commented on it once as we sat in my office. “You always greet me with a smile. Then when you stand up, it’s like a light goes out. Why is that?”

He waited a second. “I’ve learned to walk like I’m invisible.”

“You’re . . . crying?” He looked baffled. “About me?”

“You’ve been dropped by so many people. It isn’t fair,” I blurted. We sat together in a thick silence, his eyes on the floor. After a while, he spun the globe, this time landing on Sweden.

“Wouldn’t it be great to go there someday? I bet there are big mountains of snow.” He grinned.

I nodded, wiping away my tears. “It really would. But I hear they eat smelly fish. Yuck.”

“Yuck,” he agreed.

One day, he came in looking depressed. “I don’t want it to be a surprise to you—I’m getting that feeling again.” I knew exactly what he meant but we both pretended I didn’t.

The next week he missed his session.

•   •   •

I wanted to change his circumstances, to make an inequitable system take note of him. I look back now and wince at my frenzied efforts—all that time I should have just been listening to him better. I didn’t want to believe that a trauma he experienced at age nine could mark him indelibly, or that the world could take a vulnerable kid and rub him so raw through racist, punitive systems that the only place he thinks he belongs is in prison. He tried to tell me that is exactly the world in which he lives, but I so wanted it not to be true that I disbelieved him.

When he’d left my office the last time, nothing much had changed. His chart still held the red notation, the vocational program had failed to place him, and those charged with watching out for him—the harried parole officer, the indifferent psychiatrist—still had no idea who he really was.

But he had changed me. Gone was my naïve faith that a wise and beneficent system would catch those who tumbled into its waiting arms. Now I believed otherwise: that I couldn’t even break his fall.

A few weeks later I received a slim, slightly crumpled, letter in the mail, addressed to the clinic. The return address was a correctional facility. I waited to read it until I got home.
“Please don’t think this is your fault Dr. G. And remember: You gave me something I never thought I’d have—you gave me the world.”

Years later, his letter sits in a long-forgotten file somewhere, one of the items that has done the most to disillusion me, but also make me a better therapist. Despite his impact on me, he too has slipped from view, like a dream that dissipates upon waking. I can’t even remember his name.

 

Sarah Gundle has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and a master’s degree in International Affairs (with a concentration in human rights) from Columbia University. In addition to her private practice in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, she teaches courses on trauma and international mental health int the Mount Sinai Hospital system. She is also a member of Physicians for Human Rights and works in their Asylum network, where she evaluates the mental health of persecution survivors seeking asylum.

Photograph by Sophia D Photography via a Creative Commons license.

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Slave Cemetery

By Elizabeth Spencer Spragins

 

anguish overflows
levees lined with unbleached bones—
a channeled fury
gathers silt of centuries
and the river roars their names

 

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a fiber artist, writer, and poet who taught in North Carolina community colleges for more than a decade before returning to her home state of Virginia. Her work has appeared in 80-plus journals and anthologies in 11 countries. She is the author of three original poetry collections: Waltzing with Water and With No Bridle for the Breeze (Shanti Arts Publishing) and The Language of Bones (Kelsay Books). Visit her website.

Photograph by Gregory Monk via a Creative Commons license.

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Body Before Extinction

By Emily Hockaday

 

I sing to the water and lower my only child
into the foam, wiggling toes first. I think about
all the species the ocean held
that I don’t know the names of
that have gone extinct this past year
and focus on the sound of the waves
and all the metaphors
that the tide could cover.

I have walked this beach
and pulled balloons, broken bottles,
cracked plastic, and wristwatches
from the surf and dunes
without seeing another person
for miles. I listen for the wind
through the beach grass and
the plover and seagulls
and hand my daughter a trash bag
and gloves. I don’t even know how many
animals are left. I am afraid
to look for the answer.

 

Emily Hockaday’s first full-length collection Naming the Ghost is out with Cornerstone Press November 2022. She is the author of five prior chapbooks, most recently Beach Vocabulary from Red Bird Chaps. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, as well as the Wayfinding, Poets of Queens, and In Isolation anthologies. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.

Photograph by Aryeh Alex via a Creative Commons license.

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Throwaway

By Karen Kilcup

Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?  –Rachel Carson

 

A one-woman Revolution,
Jemima Wilkinson was stoned
for preaching the light that lives
in everyone. The Public Universal Friend
was driven north from Philadelphia
to the Finger Lakes, her movement forecasting
what would follow: women’s rights,
abolition, the Underground Railroad.

Today the monstrous trucks lumber north
with New York City’s trash, creating
a mountain baptized Seneca Meadows,
leaving a trail of sludge and garbage that leaches
slowly into the lakes, their stretched-out
digits trying to grasp what it all means,
will mean, in a moment when land and water
and history are for sale by the Town Council,
which spews the gospel of lower taxes
and buries ever deeper the women
of Seneca Falls, Seneca Lake,
and the sparkling railroad that carried
so many to fresh futures.

In this place, this time, what does clean mean?
What—or who—is dirty? Will we push
the plastic and the people underground
for good, or will the glacial hands
that hold the Haudenosaunee
send the refuse down, down,
until it returns elsewhere
in poisoned protest?

 

Poet’s note: A Quaker known by many as the Public Universal Friend, Jemima Wilkinson fled the ostensibly liberal city of Philadelphia shortly after the American Revolution, joined by devout followers who saw her as a spiritual guide. Susan Brind Morrow’s story in The Nation, “The Finger Lakes Are Being Poisoned,” ironically parallels Wilkinson’s flight to the appalling movement of diesel trucks that carry New York’s waste to the formerly pristine region that is home to centuries of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) people, as well as to some of America’s most important movements for social justice advanced by Native Americans, women, and enslaved people—all historically considered subhuman and “dirty.”

A teacher and writer for more than forty years, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Professor of American Literature, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at UNC Greensboro. She feels fortunate to work with many students of color, first-generation students, and LGBTQI+ students at this Minority-Serving Institution. Their courage and imagination inspire her and give her hope. Her forthcoming book, winner of the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, is titled The Art of Restoration.

Photograph by OwlPacino via a Creative Commons license.

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A Simple Act

By Erin Edwards

 

It is a simple act to stand in the middle of the road. Simple, but effective. A car either has to stop and wait or run you down—and it just wouldn’t do for a hearse carrying the body of a former government official to accelerate towards a woman in the middle of the street.

Making a scene wasn’t something I’d planned. I hadn’t even been paying attention when they’d announced the route for Eric Marshall’s funeral procession on the news. Events simply collided, leaving me the perfect moment. The universe implored me to do something.

The route intersected my walk to work. Barriers prohibiting pedestrian access to the road lined the pavement, except at the crossing. There, two police officers simply held up a rope, keeping us all back. We were expected to stand in silence. Once the cars passed, they’d let us through, they assured us. But Eric Marshall had never let us rest for one moment once he stepped into office. What right did he have to a peaceful forever?

I didn’t want to wait until the cars had passed.

I looked around at the people bowing their heads, waiting respectfully for the procession to drive by. But Eric Marshall had done nothing to earn my respect.

The police officer guarding the crossing looked the other way, and there was my chance. I ducked under the rope and bolted for the middle of the road.

The procession was forced to stop. The car of a prominent government official, even a dead one, hitting a woman in front of dozens of cameras was unthinkable. The funeral was being streamed to the nation, but it wasn’t Eric Marshall’s show anymore. I looked around and saw the policemen frantically discussing my presence. Tackling a woman to the ground on live television wasn’t an option either, but I knew it would only be a few moments before they had the cameras turned off so they could haul me away. I needed to make it more difficult for them, so I sat down and laid back, tucking my arms underneath me to make myself harder to grab.

The tarmac was warm, cooking in the sun. I rested my head, feeling the uneven surface through my hair, and ignored the commotion around me. No one raised their voice—this was a funeral, after all—but there was plenty of debate. It would probably only be minutes before I was dragged away.

If I’d planned it better, I would have worn a long red cloak and a white bonnet, just so my stance on Eric Marshall’s politics was clear. He had stood in the way of so many women and their health, their right to choose. He’d convinced everyone that criminalising abortion had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, but no one thought to mention the women who died as a result of the bill. Some were lost to backstreet abortions. Some took concoctions the internet promised them would end a pregnancy but wound up ending their lives. And some women just couldn’t take it.

I had heard stories of women placed under house arrest, under twenty-four-hour suicide watch, because they were deemed a risk to the foetuses they carried. Eric Marshall would turn us all into handmaids, if he had the chance. It was only right that someone stand between him and eternal rest.

The sky was cloudless and far-reaching above my head. I wondered how long it would be before I got to see it again—I knew I’d be heading to a police station rather than work when they moved me. I was contemplating whether they’d give me a chance to contact my flatmate and explain my absence at home, when I heard a yell.

“Another one!”

Before I had time to register where the shout had come from, someone skidded across the ground and stopped beside me.

“Sorry,” they said with a giggle. “I didn’t think that through.”

I turned to see another woman. She was far closer than I’d normally be comfortable with, but I appreciated the show of solidarity. From my limited vantage point, she was dressed for work, in a pencil skirt and floaty shirt with billowing sleeves. I wondered if she’d shredded them during her shaky landing. Despite any damage she might have done to her clothes or herself, she was grinning.

“Hi.” I laughed, a little manic. “You know they’ll arrest us for this?”

“Yeah, I figured. But if there’s two of us, it’s harder for them,” the woman said, shrugging. “I’m Daphne.”

“Allyson,” I introduced myself. “Thank you.”

We were at rather an awkward angle to shake hands, but instead Daphne threaded her arm through mine and linked us together. If they tried to drag one of us away, they’d have to take us both.

I didn’t ask Daphne why she hated Eric Marshall. She could have just hated the way he had knocked over the first domino—there was already talk of having women of childbearing age assigned to a guardian, whether that be a family member or partner, to ensure she “acted responsibly.” It was only getting worse. There was always the chance her hatred was personal. She could have lost a friend, a family member or a loved one. It wasn’t the kind of thing you asked someone when you’d just met and you were lying on the burning tarmac in the middle of the road in front of a funeral procession.

They must have shut off the cameras, because a police officer came to stand over us. The sun shone behind his head, backlighting him so all of his features were sunk in shadow.

“All right, ladies, you’ve had your fun. Show some respect, get moving,” he ordered, waving his hands like he could waft us away like a bad smell.

“This is a protest,” Daphne said, her voice stronger than mine would have been.

“This is a funeral,” the officer replied.

“You see a funeral; we see a celebration of the loss of our human rights,” Daphne shot back.

She tightened her grip around my arm. Despite the sun, I stared right up at the officer’s face, jaw clenched. Leaving quietly wasn’t an option.

The officer huffed and walked away. The debate on how best to pitch us out of the road was growing loud. I could hear shouting and radios, as they called for backup and argued over strategy. They didn’t want to make martyrs of us, but every second we were left there was another moment that Eric Marshall was rotting in his coffin.

I turned to look at the hearse, only feet from me. The black paint was glossy enough that I could see my face in it. There was me, there was Daphne, and there was what seemed like miles of empty road. If I had planned any of this, I would have brought handcuffs to lock myself to the grill. We likely had mere moments before we were picked up and tossed into the back of a police car.

“It was nice to meet you, Daphne, I said. “Thanks for doing something stupid with me.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s over,” she said.

I could hear a grin in her voice and when I turned to see what she could possibly be smiling about, I found her looking the other way. At the crossing where I’d originally snuck through, there was a whole group of women. There had to be twenty or thirty of them, all pushing forward against a row of police. The officers had abandoned the rope they’d been holding up and were trying to create a wall of riot shields.

Our anger had been building for so long. Layer upon layer of it, another spark added to the fire each time we felt the restraints of Eric Marshall’s policies: the men-only bars and restaurants we were banned from for our own safety, the TV adverts begging us to take care of our health to ensure thriving offspring, the poster campaign that screamed “A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOME!” It was enough to drive anyone to rage. They say that a woman can display superhuman strength to save a child, but no one ever realised that she could do it to save herself, too. She just had to be pushed far enough.

I watched, sideways and half-blocked by Daphne, as the group of women burst through the line of police. Once one had breached the blockade, they all piled through the gap before it could be closed again. Shouts of victory and glee rang out as they ran towards us. Suddenly the empty road was a sea of bodies, clustering together and grabbing on to each other so no one was left vulnerable.

Information was shared through the crowd as quickly as people could speak the words. The official broadcast had been shut down, but social media livestreams had almost immediately started up in its place, shared by onlookers from nearby buildings. The world was watching.

Any lack of a plan on my behalf was immediately rectified by the women around me. They shared the number of a protest support line, reminders to go limp if someone tried to lift you, orders not to give personal information even if arrested. No one had any doubt that we would all be taken into custody, that Eric Marshall’s funeral procession would eventually continue, and he would be laid to rest. But first, we would make our stand.

 

Erin Edwards is a dedicated Londoner and compulsive writer, most often found in an archive or at the theatre. She is committed to providing the world with more queer content and is currently working on far too many different projects to do just that. You can find her Twitter at @EEdwardsWrites.

Photograph by Victoria Pickering 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.