Issue 95: 19 September 2019

The Safety of Stairs

By Sue Katz   No one could explain why she kept falling down their flight of stairs. Her mother and father couldn’t remember when it started, but Lynne would never forget that night when her sister Brenda was five and she herself was four. While their father was saying good night—as he did every night—Brenda […]

Apartheid

By Rebecca Ruth Gould   “We don’t serve Arabs,” says the man behind the counter. He fixes his eyes on me & awaits my consent. My Arab taxi driver is unfazed. Racism is an old story in the land of David. Politeness took over. We head for the car. The road is a silent witness […]

Passion Play

By Jose A. Alcantara   The men in white collars worship the crucified Christ or what passes for it – a soft-fleshed boy on a bed stripped naked, arms spread, ankles crossed. They shoot polaroids to share with other men of God, those not lucky enough to be there that day, on Golgotha, when the […]

On the President’s Announcement of Our Hashtag

By John Linstrom   The President announced we need to keep some carbon in the ground; he sounded sure, his raised and lowered index finger maybe mimicking an oil rig I’ve seen on my computer screen. I caught his talk distilled at first, a single image meme, hashtagged to my cell phone’s glowing face, the […]

Street Folk

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler   Disembodied. Disenfranchised. Disconnected. Disassociated. Disowned. Disliked. Distained. Disrespected. Disregarded. Disparaged. Disgraced. Dismissed. Discarded. Disavowed. Disqualified. Disappointed. Disheartened. Distanced. Disbarred. Dislocated to: Dis City, The Inferno, Sixth Circle of Hell, Not in My Backyard, Planet Earth 00000 (Do not forward. Do not return.) Disappeared.   Called “a timely and powerful selection […]

The President Signs the Criminal Justice Reform Act

By Jack Mackey   In the Oval Office dripping in rehearsed applause from the full-pocketed and the bloated paid to do a job by corporate wardens enriched by a three-strike law that scooped up traffic violators like escaped farm animals surrounded by billionaire brothers who bought a conscience on closeout after years of dictating to […]