Writing is an act of resistance
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Call for Submissions
Writers Resist is seeking poetry, fiction, narrative nonfiction, and digital images for a special March 2024 issue. Guest edited by former Writers Resist editor DW McKinney, “Amplified Voices” will honor creative works by writers and artists affected by violent conflict around the globe. Deadline: February 8, 2024 Please read our Amplified Voices submission guidelines.
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Welcome to Writers Resist, the September 2023 Issue
As Mercedes Lawry writes in the closing poem of this issue, “This Time, Ukraine,” how do we watch from afar? How do we watch the countless ravages and failures that populate mass media, our devices, even over-the-fence gossips? The impulse to look away is strong, but the need to maintain the focus—long enough, at least,…
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Two Poems by Nancy Squires
sea level rise, Poetry, extreme weather, homophobia, Ron DeSantis, climate crisis, don’t say gay law, global warming, HB 1557, wild fires, LGBTQ rights, heterosexism, Gay Pride, species extinction, transphobia, Nancy SquiresAs the Waters Rise O God, look down On all our drowned. Hear us, we beg— We’re on our knees. Sorry, so sorry About the trees, The polar bears, the birds, The bees; the icebergs Gone, the thirsty lawns, Plastic gyres, redwood Pyres and all the many, many cars. The eclipsed stars We never…
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Crying in Texas
Poetry, SCOTUS Dobbs decision, M.R. Mandell, Texas abortion ban Senate Bill 8, Bans off our bodies, SCOTUS Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson ruling, reproductive rights, abortion, reproductive justiceBy M.R. Mandell after “Kissing” by Dorianne Laux Crying as they hope for blood, crying as they flush the strips, crying as they hide their bumps. They are crying in bathroom stalls, behind Sugarland’s Kroger store. They are crying on Houston corners, outside the boarded-up laundromat. They are crying in each other’s arms,…
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Amendments
6 week ban, 15 week ban, reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, Amy Cook, Florida Senate Bill 300, abortions rightsBy Amy Cook We hadn’t had a proper winter, but spring arrived anyway, confoundingly on time. Whatever you might have read about autumn in New York, the first morning the rows of tulips open on Park Avenue, or when the purple hyacinth spirals up through a neighborhood garden, or that cloudless April morning when…
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Montana
Zooey Zephyr, Montano anti-trans legislation, Poetry, Jeremy Nathan Marks, transgender rights, transphobiaBy Jeremy Nathan Marks For Zooey Zephyr The big sky fifty-mile vistas where the Greasy Grass runs willowed valleys sweeping memory from the water to the sky an arrow long ago fired but whose arc is heard surely this land can contain one woman who says of our laws that while we pray to…
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The first day of cherry season,
ecopoetry, Poetry, climate crisis, global warming, climate justice, wild fires, Emily Hockaday, climate change and healthBy Emily Hockaday the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors sit next to their colorful carts like the world isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now or it is just very slowly. And what…
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The Lure of Socks on Warm Feet
Poetry, climate change, climate justice, Amelia Díaz Ettinger, Puerto Rico, extreme weather, FEMA failure, Hurricane Maria 2017By Amelia Díaz Ettinger Never forget, September 20, 2017 and Maria In my La-Z-Boy I sit, a Puerto Rican queen, feet-up admiring my knitted socks. I made these socks by knit and purl. 5,746 miles away from you it is easy to say, I worship. —And oh! How I preach this veneration, the warmth…
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Skull Fries
By Janis Butler Holm Artist Statement: Fast food, a multi-billion-dollar industry, is slowly killing Americans and others. French fries and what they accompany are not harmless. Janis Butler Holm served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal, and currently works as a writer and editor in sunny Los Angeles. Her prose, poems,…