Writing is an act of resistance
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Welcome to our June issue, and farewell to a beloved editor
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…
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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…
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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…
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Body Before Extinction
Poetry, environmental degradation, climate crisis, climate justice, species extinction, Emily Hockaday, litterBy 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…
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Throwaway
environmental degradation, women’s rights, Karen Kilcup, pollution, abolition, Underground Railroad, garbage, PoetryBy 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…
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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…
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What I Learn
By Lorna Rose I listen to the sweaty silence, his throbbing presence as he stares at my developing chest. I learn to calculate the tides. Learn his breath smells like mints when he’s offering me up. Men’s gazes have teeth. Pivot and scan for the response he wants at the appropriate time. You’re pretty.…
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Everyone Tells Me
By Alma A. Everyone tells me It wasn’t my fault, That karma will get him, Will leave him to rot. Everyone tells me I should have fought harder, And why did I wear that, I was asking for trouble. Everyone tells me, That ‘no’ isn’t binding, It’s fluid, it’s blurred, I am overreacting. Filthy,…
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Fury
By Skye Wilson I want to break his bones for what he did. No metaphors, just snap against my skin; pain blooming in his eyes like burns on flesh. I’ll scorch all of the skin he touched me with. I want to grow to twice my usual size, drink in the pain and terror…