Writing is an act of resistance
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Stringing Them
By William Palmer He catches them each day, stringing them through their gills, his trumpeteers trailing in dark water, mouths drawn open, eyes puckered shut. William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in J Journal, Poetry East, and Salamander. He has published two chapbooks—A String of Blue Lights and Humble—and has been interviewed by Grace Cavalieri for The Poet and the…
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Unknowns
By Robin Q. Malin There’s a lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know who I love. All I know right now is that when I look into her eyes I long to trace her cheekbones, to touch her lips, to stroke her cherry colored hair under…
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Welfare Check East of Downtown
By Christie Valentin-Bati “It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.” –Nick Estes They said close down everything non-essential: The coffee shop, blue trimmed with a green porch, white-potted flowers that hung down from the awning, closed – so I roasted my own coffee. The outlet mall with high-waisted jeans, gold-plated, pearl…
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The Spectators
By D.A. Gray We’d grown thin during the pandemic. I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and…
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What Gnaws My Bone
By Ronda Broatch “Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”…
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O Captain! Some Captain!
By Mark Williams after Walt Whitman O Captain! Some Captain! Our fearful trip’s not done, The ship is foundering, front to back, the prize we sought’s not won. The port is far, the chants I hear, the people all protesting, While follow eyes the unsteady keel, the vessel grim and shaking; But O heartless, heartless heart!…
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Presidential Seal
By Jennifer Shneiderman Slipping into Cadillac One Gliding on lies and half-truths Trump greets supporters waving off warnings and all that is humane. He is the clear and present danger. The SUV a mobile panic room used for political theatre could be the Secret Service Presidential seal of death. The truth is a ghost…
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When I Am Asked to Be More Like the Good Women of Sparta in the Movie ‘300’
By Abby E. Murray The colonel sends a letter to the families of Tiger Battalion at the onset of global pandemic. I am a Tiger spouse now, which means I am dignified, according to the colonel. The tigers in the zoo closest to us have paced so long in their habitat they communicate in…
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For E.G.
By Matt Barnsley there’s a drip drip drip that comes with being american it soaks DuBois’ veil and smothers the mouth the nose a personalized waterboarding half dead, half alive there’s a gasping gasp gasp that echoes in our ears it drowns out the cries the gunshots the standby videos and a man who…