Issue 120: 15 October 2020

Your vote is your voice. Su voto es su voz.

Be loud—vote!   We are often told that our votes don’t matter. But if our votes held no power, no one would try to silence us. That’s why we partnered with artists and MoveOn to create “Your Vote is Power,” an art-centered initiative to inspire young people and people of color to register and vote in November. We […]

Stringing Them

By William Palmer   He catches them each day, stringing them through their gills, his trumpeteers trailing in dark water, mouths drawn open, eyes puckered shut.   William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in J Journal, Poetry East, and Salamander. He has published two chapbooks—A String of Blue Lights and Humble—and has been interviewed by Grace Cavalieri for The Poet and the […]

Unknowns

By Robin Q. Malin   There’s a lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know who I love. All I know right now is that when I look into her eyes I long to trace her cheekbones, to touch her lips, to stroke her cherry colored hair under […]

Welfare Check East of Downtown

By Christie Valentin-Bati “It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.” –Nick Estes   They said close down everything non-essential: The coffee shop, blue trimmed with a green porch, white-potted flowers that hung down from the awning, closed – so I roasted my own coffee. The outlet mall with high-waisted jeans, gold-plated, pearl […]

The Spectators

By D.A. Gray   We’d grown thin during the pandemic. I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and […]

What Gnaws My Bone

By Ronda Broatch “Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.” […]

O Captain! Some Captain!

By Mark Williams after Walt Whitman  O Captain! Some Captain! Our fearful trip’s not done, The ship is foundering, front to back, the prize we sought’s not won. The port is far, the chants I hear, the people all protesting, While follow eyes the unsteady keel, the vessel grim and shaking; But O heartless, heartless heart! […]

Presidential Seal

By Jennifer Shneiderman   Slipping into Cadillac One Gliding on lies and half-truths Trump greets supporters waving off warnings and all that is humane. He is the clear and present danger. The SUV a mobile panic room used for political theatre could be the Secret Service Presidential seal of death. The truth is a ghost […]