Writing is an act of resistance
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The Failed Real Estate Caper
By Sue Katz The first thing Miriam noticed when the taxi dropped her off at Ruby’s house was the For Sale sign on the lawn. She took a magic marker out of her handbag and wrote “NOT” in capital letters, but it turned out too faint to be easily seen. “It’s the thought that…
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Two Poems by Ron Dowell
We Are What We Shine after J. Venters and M. Barajas Bright as a jewel, we are what we shine. A gang’s red-blue color-coded word clash Compton’s graffitied not-so “Welcome” sign. Compton Court obliterates the blue skyline, Angeles Abbey minarets, brown grass, like burnished silver, we are what we shine. We suffer potholed streets…
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Search Terms
By Holly Stovall I opened the search bar, typed in “middle-aged women support Black Lives Matter” and narrowed the results to “images.” Google spit out a white couple, on the stairway in front of their mansion, pointing guns at protesters marching by. It’s not what I was looking for, but Google taunted me—Aren’t you…
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Letter to Aminu
By Ololade Akinlabi Ige After Salawu Olajide Dedicated to my country, Nigeria What greets you when you get here? Walls of broken spines? Fences of bleeding bruises? Burnt roofs that open mouths? Windows with wounded hearts? Your father was a victim of the last bomb explosion and his grave grows mushroom flowers. Your…
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War Ghazal
Volodymyr Zelensky, Poetry, a war ghazal, Linda Laderman, Russia war against Ukraine, Russian aggressionBy Linda Laderman Again, we witness panicked people fleeing war. You tell me, people don’t care, it’s Ukraine’s war. Sitting in an Ann Arbor bistro, we order baked Turkish eggs, & I mumble, even Turkey opposes this war. One booth over, a woman applies siren red lipstick, then gestures at the screen over the…
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Seeking solace?
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Two Poems by Victoria Barnes
A Cosmic Dirty Story —from the New York Times, 9 August 1945 From an open door in the sky, the threshold of a new industrial art. To the earth, an explosion of red: the new and terrifying weapon. In the morning newspaper, images arrive: an imagination-sweeping experiment. As we read the story, we learn—…
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America Cares . . . Thoughts & Prayers
By Phyllis Wax Fly the flag at half-mast all the time because every day, someone kills himself or someone else or a bunch of someones with a gun. Fly the flag at half-mast because America loves guns more than she loves people. Social issues are a major focus of Milwaukee poet Phyllis Wax.…
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Choice
By Erica Goss I’m sixteen. School thinks I have the flu. I tell the doctor to knock me out. In the alley behind the clinic, men wait in cars. They leave their engines rumbling. Backseat speakers vibrate. My mother drives me home. I’m thirty-seven. Work thinks I had a miscarriage. I tell the doctor…