Writing is an act of resistance
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Hope and Furies
By Shana Ross When vengeance descends in a collective noun with feathers: do we expect a murmuration or a murder? Shana Ross is a writer, mother, muse, sometime wallflower, middle-aged ambivert with a BA and MBA from Yale. Since resuming her writing career in 2018, she has accumulated over 20 publication credits. She…
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A Moment of Silence
By Rebecca Lee The bus station smells like stale cigarettes and something milky mixed with a sour aftertaste. Babies and homeless people. They are completely opposite from each another. One has lived too much and the other, not enough. Together, they sit in the row of blue plastic seats in front of and behind…
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Crime Scene
Image, Mark Blickley, Nancy A. Kiel, immigration rights, incarcerated children, U.S. concentration campsBy Mark Blickley and Nancy A. Kiel Mark Blickley is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams. Nancy A. Kiel lives in Sydney, Australia, where she’s an award-winning musician, songwriter, writer, and founding member…
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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…