Writing is an act of resistance
-
Citizen
Susan Arthur, Lost Canadian law, Immigrate to Canada, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion, EssayBy Susan Arthur The day, as I write this, is November 9, 2016. Yep, the day half of us in America wander about in nearly lobotomized shock at Trump’s win. We look for solace from each other, wonder what to do. There have been whispers for some time about moving to Canada. I hear the…
-
To do list
By Daniell Cohen Get out of bed Brush teeth Get dressed Breathe Apply for citizenship Confront your male friend for claiming your sexuality is “a waste” because you fit his “ideal partner criteria” Confront a cisgender white woman in class about why “we can’t just accept that we have different opinions,” Reply with “what do…
-
Turns Out
By Sam Sax all the holocaust books we read in grade school weren’t enough. the class outraged, youth shouting never again. in the texts i became brave, resistance child, stalking the night’s antique shadows, disproving a devil’s arithmetic, lettering every star. easy to be righteous in the face of tyranny so dead, the terror’s just…
-
Nightmare on Elm Street
Cassandra Lane, Nightmare on Elm Street, Dylann Storm Roof, Emanuel AME Church Charleston, Narrative nonfictionBy Cassandra Lane Dylann Storm Roof invades my dream space in the days after he murders nine African Americans at a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina. His spirit travels 2,480 miles to reach the interior of my imagination in Los Angeles. Like a bloodhound, he finds my Southern black body hiding out in the desert.…
-
Peace Dreams
By Pattie Palmer-Baker Teacher: Stop hissing orders. Streamline your body into a fish shape, float with your students in a sound-stilled ocean, flash love notes with your sequined eyes. Stockbroker: See the half-dressed man crumpled on the trash-littered sidewalk? Brake your black Mercedes, carry him to your car, rest him on the leather backseat beneath…
-
Radio Jockey
By Carl Dimitri Carl Dimitri, a Providence, Rhode Island-based artist, is committed to drawing one cartoon a day until the Trump era is over. Carl has received fellowships in painting from the Vermont Studio Center and the…
-
Tornado
By Eve Lyons This is me: protected but trapped while the industry twists around me. This is a factory: churning out medications and patients on assembly lines but leaving them scattered like a devastated trailer park, they must conform to a list of behavioral criteria in the DSM-V and they must have problems that can…
-
Flimflam and Uncle Sam
By Neil Ellman Don’t try me, no condescension. please, no more, it’s over, kaput. there is no certainty in this life: neither truth nor validity: the blue jay isn’t blue except for a certain trick of light nor is the earth as seen from space a shade of verdant green but bluer than a turquoise…
-
Left For Dead Barbie Visits the Capitol
By Susan Arthur Susan Arthur is a photographer, sculptor and writer, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She hides out in the very blue wilds of Massachusetts. Her work is shown nationally, and she’s a member of the artist co-op Brickbottom Artists Association, in Somerville, Massachusetts. On art as a form of…