Writing is an act of resistance
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Uprooted/Planted
By Ash Reynolds Today I learned the word “ecocide”murder of the environmentIntentional destruction of the soil, airof olive trees, strawberry fieldsMourn for all that is lostthe homeless animals, the rootless treesDon’t cry over spilled oilor plastic crowding the oceanColonizers raping an open woundhands stained copper-tongue carmineDear planet, look what they’ve done to you Today I…
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About Those Census Checkboxes
By Beulah Vega To those who do not lookshe looks nothing like mebut we share that look the slow ashen gaze that says I’m tired of these forms that push messy spheresinto uniform squares. She/ I/ we are tired. Tiredin the marrow of our bonesthat share color and structure but not marrow matches tired of…
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mmiwg
By Amritha York for now the red maple in the cloth flag remains the stain of a history attempting to come undone,but the other day i said bye to my friend and wasn’t sure if i’d ever see her again.the other day, a waste management person told me they were scared of what they’d find…
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Gen X Girls Ghazal
By M.R. Mandell after Patricia Smith We woke ourselves up, brushed our own hair, cooked our own dinners, tuckedour sisters into bed. We were thirty at the age of thirteen. We needed nobody. Vogued to Madonna. Leather jackets, tattooed midriffs, clove cigarettes slippingoff our lips, kissing girls under neon, electrifying every part of our…
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kaala; kala
By Ria Raj my mother traces her fingers along my mahogany-skinand calls me kaala,hindi for black. my mother traces her fingers along a film photograph of her homeland,and calls it kala,hindi for art. i find it particularly lovelythat artis intrinsicto Blacknessin the hindi language ka(a)la the ubiquity of theenglish languageis contingent upon Black destruction and…
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Upon Learning, in a Report on the Footage of a Sheriff’s Deputy Shooting Sonya Massey to Death in Her Kitchen, of Massey’s First Words to the Deputy
By Jennifer L. Freed I, too, have felt myself to be prey. What woman has not? But I livein a white body. If ever Idialed 911, afraid of a manprowling around my home,I would not need to say, when the officers cameto my door— no—let me rephrase: it would neveroccur to methat my very first words…
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In This Version, Cancer Is a Woman
By Salena Casha If we were really there for the battle of Hydra and Hercules, we’d remember the crab. Monstrous, the size of two buildings, difficult to miss with its burnt orange shell. As Hydra’s heads fell again and again to Hercules’ sword, the crab leapt from the murky water and wrapped herself around Hercules…
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Judged
By Sheree Shatsky Artist Statement This collage reflects the connection of women past with women present and future, faced with the loss of civil rights fought for and won by previous generations. We must stand on the shoulders of those who came before, who struggled for the rights we have very much taken for granted…
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Election Day Facebook Exchange
By Laura Grace Weldon I post a thank you to the four pound bag of garbanzo flourwhich threw itself off a high shelf. It burst open in a spectaculardisplay of organic bean dust, coating my face and sweater.I’d been festering with worries about which waythe vote might go, but explain that snort-laughing helps. To whatever…