An Illustrated Poem by Jane Muschenetz MIT grad and former Bain Management Consultant, Jane Muschenetz arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She is a 2023 City of Encinitas Exhibiting Artist and winner of The Good Life Review 2022 Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian [...]
By Lorraine Schein The Last Revolution was yesterday. It was so successful, that all future revolutions were cancelled forever. A lesbian and her lover were elected President and Vice-President. Their lovemaking is televised nationally as part of the inaugural proceedings and greeted with applause by an appreciative at-home audience. Poets have been elected to Congress. [...]
As the Waters Rise O God, look down On all our drowned. Hear us, we beg— We’re on our knees. Sorry, so sorry About the trees, The polar bears, the birds, The bees; the icebergs Gone, the thirsty lawns, Plastic gyres, redwood Pyres and all the many, many cars. The eclipsed stars We never see. [...]
By M.R. Mandell after “Kissing” by Dorianne Laux Crying as they hope for blood, crying as they flush the strips, crying as they hide their bumps. They are crying in bathroom stalls, behind Sugarland’s Kroger store. They are crying on Houston corners, outside the boarded-up laundromat. They are crying in each other’s arms, at [...]
By Jeremy Nathan Marks For Zooey Zephyr The big sky fifty-mile vistas where the Greasy Grass runs willowed valleys sweeping memory from the water to the sky an arrow long ago fired but whose arc is heard surely this land can contain one woman who says of our laws that while we pray to remain [...]
By Emily Hockaday the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors sit next to their colorful carts like the world isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now or it is just very slowly. And what did [...]
By Amelia Díaz Ettinger Never forget, September 20, 2017 and Maria In my La-Z-Boy I sit, a Puerto Rican queen, feet-up admiring my knitted socks. I made these socks by knit and purl. 5,746 miles away from you it is easy to say, I worship. —And oh! How I preach this veneration, the warmth of [...]
By Kelsey D. Mahaffey “In the book of the earth, it is written: nothing can die.” – Mary Oliver The morning after it happens again—weary with all the thoughtless use of prayer, I return to the Native path— for solace, for remembrance, for release— But grief is a heavy hold. Last night, I lay awake [...]
By Camille Lebel The First Time, Reclaimed I choose the boy who calls every night to discuss a million nothings, our voices hushing when my mother picks up the line. Sitting behind me in history, watching footage of the earth imploding, his finger traces the one-inch ribbon of skin exposed between low-rise [...]
By Bänoo Zan For Nika Shakarami 1 At your memorial 2 the Luri 3 song echoed on speakers: “Mother, mother, it’s time for war . . .” 4 Today would have been your birthday Forty days before on the streets of Tehran dead girl—living God— burning your hijab— darkness on fire— your Derafsh-e Kavian 5— [...]
By Andrea Dulanto I. Yes, I wore the thrift store T-shirts, the torn fishnets, but I was no riot grrrl. I was already in my twenties when I read about riot grrrls in Newsweek, too old to write manifestoes on my body. No, it was more like I was too afraid of music that gets into [...]
By Phoenix Ning Sixteen-year-old person of color desires escape from this inferno where dark-skinned individuals burn, and alabaster spectators cheer from the sidelines, popping confetti guns and feeding oil to ancient flames while claiming to be long-awaited saviors. Eighteen-year-old student desires world history classes with curriculums that celebrate African kingdoms, Indigenous empires, and South Asian [...]
By Emma Goldman-Sherman After being done to by the pack of men after she collapsed at the threshold of the old man's shack after her master discovered her there unresponsive he cut her up with his sharpened axe not for nothing, not for hate, to get everyone's attention crying the way men cry when they [...]
By Larry Needham “Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice!” —Bertolt Brecht, “To Posterity” Before the jar the anecdote and Tennessee, wilderness. Forests primeval, grim and awful— extravagant as first growth imaginings. The Dark Ages. Then dominion bleaker [...]
By Sarah Waldner Sharp U-turn on the language around fossil fuels. The text now includes a reference to "low emission and renewable energy.” New funding arrangement on loss and damage. Phase-down of unabated coal power. Concrete demonstration that we really are all in this together. No one will be left behind. Sharp concern on the [...]
