racism

/Tag:racism

Birthday Wishes

By | 2023-07-04T08:57:37-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , |

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 [...]

Twin Pandemics, Twin Cities

By | 2023-06-02T14:02:05-07:00 June 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 140: June 2023|Tags: , , , , , |

By AJ Donley   They warn you about the dangers that you’ll be feverish that your throat will hurt that it’s contagious that you won’t be able to breathe they try to scare you away from action with the risk of symptoms that have always been there because COVID is new but racism is not I [...]

When You Swim Out into the Ocean

By | 2023-03-09T12:43:04-08:00 March 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 139: 16 March 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Claudia Wair   You float on your back, your face barely above water. There’s nothing but the silence of the ocean in your ears. In the saltwater’s embrace, you drift, weightless. You stare at the clouds above, trying to empty your mind. You’re away from the beach. Not so far that the lifeguard blows her [...]

Two Poems by Renee McClellan

By | 2022-12-06T13:43:41-08:00 December 7th, 2022|Categories: Issue 138: 08 December 2022|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |

Black Listopia I feel like an idiom that drips from Baldwin’s pen “that” angry Black woman negotiating sin I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO! A thing to be had Thick lips, curvaceous hips, or a fashion fad You can’t set me like diamonds Or string me like pearls Pick on my afro, then appropriate my curls I [...]

Two Poems by Ron Dowell

By | 2022-06-18T12:10:18-07:00 June 23rd, 2022|Categories: Issue 136: 23 June 2022|Tags: , , , , , |

We Are What We Shine after J. Venters and M. Barajas   Bright as a jewel, we are what we shine. A gang's red-blue color-coded word clash Compton's graffitied not-so "Welcome" sign. Compton Court obliterates the blue skyline, Angeles Abbey minarets, brown grass, like burnished silver, we are what we shine. We suffer potholed streets silent [...]

And They Lived Happily Ever After

By | 2020-12-26T11:07:25-08:00 December 24th, 2020|Categories: Issue 125: 24 December 2020|Tags: , , , |

By Myna Chang   Myna Chang writes flash fiction and short stories. Recent work has been featured in Flash Flood Journal, Atlas & Alice, Reflex Fiction, Writers Resist, and Daily Science Fiction. Anthologies featuring her stories include the Grace & Gravity collection Furious Gravity IX; and the forthcoming This is What America Looks Like anthology by [...]

An Accounting

By | 2020-12-22T15:58:50-08:00 December 24th, 2020|Categories: Issue 125: 24 December 2020|Tags: , , , , |

By Dianne Wright “What is poetry which does not save nations or people” – Czeslaw Milosz   of the knowns: 25 years, the age of Ahmaud Arbery, gunned down by 2 white men. 1 white man filmed the assault. 2 prosecutors recused themselves. 1 recused prosecutor recommended no charges. 0 charges brought against the shooters for [...]

Here in the Future

By | 2020-12-08T17:29:39-08:00 December 10th, 2020|Categories: Issue 124: 10 December 2020|Tags: , , , , , , , |

By Keith Welch The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be. –Yogi Berra   We were promised flying cars, and condos on the moon, even racial equality: all those great sci-fi gags. Those were the glory days, the Future. Everything polished smooth and covered in chrome. In the fifties, we had the scent of unlimited progress [...]

The Right Hat

By | 2020-12-08T17:48:48-08:00 December 10th, 2020|Categories: Issue 124: 10 December 2020|Tags: , , , , , |

By Luke Walters   The little girl’s teal hat is what caught my eye. She and a woman were hugging the bottom of a gravel drainage ditch, hidden from sight—except to me, perched high in my rig. I’d just passed dozens more like them sitting cross-legged along the highway next to green-striped border patrol trucks. Their [...]

Lynched

By | 2020-12-15T09:46:34-08:00 December 10th, 2020|Categories: Issue 124: 10 December 2020|Tags: , , , |

By Julie Weiss Editor's warning: violence, racism   —For Robert Fuller   There's a body hanging from a branch outside City Hall & nobody is talking. The sky cowers under its predawn cloak. The tree holds its breath. This is not a Discovery Channel documentary set in the Antebellum South or an antique postcard from the [...]

Contingency Plans

By | 2020-10-27T21:18:03-07:00 October 29th, 2020|Categories: Issue 121: 29 October 2020|Tags: , , , , , , |

By Sara Marchant   My husband recently retired. His anxiety had increased over the last four years (whose hasn’t, right?) and a few months ago he was having a bad day at work, when he abruptly stood up, announced, “I retire,” and walked out the door. It’s been an adjustment. At first, he didn’t know what [...]

These Poems Don’t Come Out Right

By | 2020-10-27T21:21:00-07:00 October 29th, 2020|Categories: Issue 121: 29 October 2020|Tags: , , , , , |

By Bunkong Tuon   The virus breathes like fire over city streets and farmland, across oceans and mountains, over YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. The president suggests injecting the body with disinfectant to kill it. Maybe he could go first; it’s his idea after all. I’ve become a hack, ranting as if the world will heed my [...]

¡Despierta!

By | 2020-09-02T12:01:55-07:00 September 3rd, 2020|Categories: Issue 117: 03 September 2020|Tags: , , , , |

By Ada Ardére    She lies rotting in saltwater that thrashes about white resorts that in their time and in their place drown out her voice as it would otherwise be heard begging, pleading, screaming for the lives of her children as they sit in wards without power, diabetic comas consuming the elderly and children equally [...]

Apartheid

By | 2019-09-17T17:23:38-07:00 September 19th, 2019|Categories: Issue 95: 19 September 2019|Tags: , , , |

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 to [...]

Storm Front

By | 2018-10-04T10:29:50-07:00 September 20th, 2018|Categories: Issue 71: 20 September 2018|Tags: , , , , , |

  By Judith Skillman Artist Statement In “Storm Front,” oil and cold wax on canvas,  12” x  12”, the artist used a rag in equal measure to paint and wax. A paint scraper was employed to etch out the trees at the bottom left. Nature provides solace during times of affliction, whether that affliction be physical [...]