Writing is an act of resistance
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For Four Years, At Least
By Mark J. Mitchell For Lyle Grosjean and those of us who walk None shall kill when all are completed. —Kenneth Patchen Our boots— brown, heavy and clunky as gray cinderblocks— can rest at the backs of our cluttered closets unless bright wild flower hills call us by name. The green…
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The Safety of Stairs
By Sue Katz No one could explain why she kept falling down their flight of stairs. Her mother and father couldn’t remember when it started, but Lynne would never forget that night when her sister Brenda was five and she herself was four. While their father was saying good night—as he did every night—Brenda…
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Apartheid
By Rebecca Ruth Gould “We don’t serve Arabs,” says the man behind the counter. He fixes his eyes on me & awaits my consent. My Arab taxi driver is unfazed. Racism is an old story in the land of David. Politeness took over. We head for the car. The road is a silent witness…
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Passion Play
By Jose A. Alcantara The men in white collars worship the crucified Christ or what passes for it – a soft-fleshed boy on a bed stripped naked, arms spread, ankles crossed. They shoot polaroids to share with other men of God, those not lucky enough to be there that day, on Golgotha, when the…
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On the President’s Announcement of Our Hashtag
By John Linstrom The President announced we need to keep some carbon in the ground; he sounded sure, his raised and lowered index finger maybe mimicking an oil rig I’ve seen on my computer screen. I caught his talk distilled at first, a single image meme, hashtagged to my cell phone’s glowing face, the…
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Street Folk
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler Disembodied. Disenfranchised. Disconnected. Disassociated. Disowned. Disliked. Distained. Disrespected. Disregarded. Disparaged. Disgraced. Dismissed. Discarded. Disavowed. Disqualified. Disappointed. Disheartened. Distanced. Disbarred. Dislocated to: Dis City, The Inferno, Sixth Circle of Hell, Not in My Backyard, Planet Earth 00000 (Do not forward. Do not return.) Disappeared. Called “a timely and powerful selection…
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The President Signs the Criminal Justice Reform Act
prison industrial complex, prison reform, criminal justice reform, end mass incarceration, Poetry, Jack MackeyBy Jack Mackey In the Oval Office dripping in rehearsed applause from the full-pocketed and the bloated paid to do a job by corporate wardens enriched by a three-strike law that scooped up traffic violators like escaped farm animals surrounded by billionaire brothers who bought a conscience on closeout after years of dictating to…
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Abortion Stories from Writers Resist
reproductive rights are human rights, abortion poem, abortion stories, abortion essay, abortion is still legal, reproductive justice, Writers Resist newsUnlike the statistics above, our stories help humanize the theme of abortion, and this week we are sharing five of them, in poetry and prose, by Mileva Anastasiadou, Andrea England, Vicki Cohen, Heather Mydosh, and Penny Perry. Like every piece in the issue, each abortion decision is unique and intimate, and it is owned by only one…
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How to Disappear Completely
reproductive justice, Fiction, reproductive rights are human rights, Mileva Anastasiadou, abortion story, abortion is still legalBy Mileva Anastasiadou She’s not that young, already in her mid-twenties, when the double lines appear on the test. She is careful enough most of the time, yet that’s how it goes; life happens and spoils all plans. At first, she’ll panic. That doesn’t mean much, her boyfriend will say; everybody panics at the…