Writing is an act of resistance
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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…
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Women Wearing White
By Carol Sadtler not just for purity but justice as suffragettes wore white for the vote, as Hillary’s white pantsuit honors them, as all the women of every color in the House wear white one night and the Speaker claps back to power, as on the day Madame Speaker, in white bespoke pantsuit, begins…
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Sonnet for the Woman in Walgreens
By Diane Elayne Dees It’s been a week or two since our encounter, yet your voice haunts me, and I see your face in waking dreams. There, at the checkout counter, you yelled and gestured as you made your case: “It’s all a hoax!” you shouted, while the clerk delivered a lecture on government…
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I Do Not Wait
By Trish Hopkinson —for Walt Whitman nor am I dismissed. I set myself apart, do not tremble beneath terms—cold manly, butch, ball-breaker bitch—do not determine my worth by whom I am kept. I ratchet skyward take my place at the sun’s table lifted by turquoise bone & bladed wings. My scarab shell snubs…
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Good Night
By Angela Costi In 1993, I walked the night through Alma Park, St Kilda, from 10 pm to 4 am, no chaperone, no iPhone, the poetry gig would end I would leave take the tram no taxi, no text-talk, no self-talk, and walk for blocks through city lanes, urban parks, industrial streets half a…
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Letters Then and Now
By Patricia McTiernan A few weeks after a stay-at-home advisory was issued in Massachusetts, I turned 60. As someone with a chronic illness, I felt I had jumped head first into the high-risk pool. With a long-planned vacation cancelled, I reconciled to staying home a lot and tackling projects I had long put off.…
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Humanity
By Steven Croft Wants to believe kindness, its namesake, can still a morning rain of bombs, calm the lightning strike of artillery shells on cratered streets scorched hot and unlivable as the surface of the sun Wants to believe foresight will quiet the chainsaws’ outcry against ancient trees in the last remaining rainforests, make…