Writing is an act of resistance
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He Comes at Night
By J.M. Lasley Editor’s warning: assault, self-harm, mental illness He comes at night, when no one is watching. The soles of his white shoes squeak on the shiny white floors, reflecting white lights above, humming and buzzing through night and day. The keys jingle-jangle and the door swings open, screaming. He smells of sweat…
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Here in the Future
inequality, American exceptionalism, racial equality, racism, Poetry, Keith Welch, police brutality, flying carsBy Keith Welch The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be. –Yogi Berra We were promised flying cars, and condos on the moon, even racial equality: all those great sci-fi gags. Those were the glory days, the Future. Everything polished smooth and covered in chrome. In the fifties, we had the scent of unlimited…
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With great haste, but still too late
By Laura Mazza-Dixon Evidence accumulates as one by one, those who suffered while the truth was silenced begin to find the courage to speak. Congress tells us that all will be done with care, new revelations investigated, whistleblowers protected. On another channel, others deny all wrongdoing, again and again, mounting their defense in louder…
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Honduran Refugees in My Classroom 2
Alexander P. Garza, Honduran refugees, Honduras, murder, violence against women, Poetry, sexual assaultBy Alexander P. Garza Editor’s warning: assault, violence against women “Mira a mi tia.” Look at my aunt. “La mataron.” They killed her. She shows me a photo on her phone: a black honduran woman, motionless, face down, half-naked, ass exposed, top torn. The girl tells me her aunt’s just been raped and murdered,…
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The Right Hat
By Luke Walters The little girl’s teal hat is what caught my eye. She and a woman were hugging the bottom of a gravel drainage ditch, hidden from sight—except to me, perched high in my rig. I’d just passed dozens more like them sitting cross-legged along the highway next to green-striped border patrol trucks.…
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Lynched
By Julie Weiss Editor’s warning: violence, racism —For Robert Fuller There’s a body hanging from a branch outside City Hall & nobody is talking. The sky cowers under its predawn cloak. The tree holds its breath. This is not a Discovery Channel documentary set in the Antebellum South or an antique postcard from…
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An Implausibility of Wildebeests
remote learning, Fiction, terms of venery, social distancing, Elizabeth Edelglass, COVID-19 pandemic, distance learning, online learning, physical distancing, hybrid learningBy Elizabeth Edelglass “A pride of lions. A pod of whales. A wisdom of wombats.” Henry is rattling off something he learned from the zoo—not the zoo zoo, the online zoo, somewhere, Seattle? Omaha?—Isabel forgot which one today. If it’s Tuesday, there are pandas; if it’s Thursday, dolphins. Pandas are bears, Henry likes to…
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Encomium for the First Truly Epic Poem
By M. J. Lewis This is the best poem you have ever read. Everybody is saying it. Everyone. Other poems have tried to be as wonderful, tried to be honored with the best aesthetics, struggled to be as tremendous as this and to get away with things like that—believe me— but they don’t know…
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in memory of the coptic bus martyrs
who were murdered on their way to st. samuel the confessor monastery may 26, 2017 By Sister Lou Ella Hickman the wheels of the buses that went round and round came to a stop who was the first one to descend stepping into the hot sand then signed the most ancient of signs…