Writing is an act of resistance
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Make a Splash
By Ell Cee Artist statement As a queer person and artist, I’ve been struggling with the constant legislative attacks against the queer community echoing across America. So what’s at the heart of my piece, Make A Splash? Honestly? This is me looking into the eyes of homophobic politicians, homophobic people, and those who just sit neutrally…
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Miss Suzie Had a Baby, She Named Him Tiny Tim
Laura Grace Weldon, women’s rights, pollution, organizing for change, collaboration, reproductive rights, PoetryBy Laura Grace Weldon Outrage drives me outside, a choice a woman can still make. I clamber close to our muddy creek collecting trash caught in fallen branches. I empty water from a Stroh’s bottle and battered jug of Cheer detergent. Pull out blue plastic bags and an honest-to-God wire hanger. Untangle a multicolored…
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2020
By Zhihua Wang 1 It’s October now, I am still listening to the song “Beautiful Springtime.” It seems the spring of 2020 never came. 2 The moon must love my daughter’s window more as it often has songs flying out of it. 3 I am in love with my bed now. Every time I…
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Suburban Survival
By Myna Chang My sleeping bag’s nestled in the drainage ditch where I used to play hide and seek. The new people living in our house don’t have any kids, so they don’t know the neighborhood’s good hiding places like I do. I see them in our kitchen. Mom’s curtains are gone. The walls…
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Come Mourn with Me
Poetry, climate change, environmental degradation, global warming, pollution, Elizabeth Birch, climate anxietyBy Elizabeth Birch Come mourn with me. Pour your aching hearts into the endless hole we dug to house Mother Nature’s empty self. Come throw your smashed cans, stretched plastic, burnt oil, and dung on her hollow body below. Come cry for all the ifs, buts, and whys we should’ve asked ourselves decades ago…
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Shukran
By Eduardo Ramos Thank you for sharing your world and helping me connect with mine. For speaking words unfamiliar to my ears stirring memories in my tongue. Usted reacquainted me with Al-Andalus and the road across Africa to Al-Mashriq, reaffirmed that my barrio is a rich mix of cultures, where we eat arroz and…
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Death Equals Silence
By Micaela Kaibni Raen Artist statement I am my grandmothers’ dream, and she is mine. We exist together through Tatreez, Indigenous Palestinian textiles and embroidery. We share cultural memory and wisdom traditionally handed down, Palestinian female to Palestinian female. As a Palestinian lesbian artist, I feel Tatreez patterns hold a deep connectivity to ancestral Indigenous…
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Numbers
By Michal Rubin Mohammed, Wadia, two brothers Ala Asous, Hazaa, Rami, Ahmed, four brothers six cousins Rizkallah, seventh cousin, one missile, hundred shards of glass, one ambulance, one mass funeral, one village, one sleepless night at Muthalath al-Shuhada I wish my body moved, shook the numbers off, 22452600 my passport number, two, Yehoshua and…
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Baptism
By Shieva Salehnia The fountain in the middle of Washington Square Park has not always been there, just as I have not always been here standing next to it. In the middle of the park, I climb inside the edge of the fountain’s lips. I lean back against them, cool slick stone. The bubbling…