By Ashton Applewhite Ageism is discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age. We experience it anytime someone assumes we're too old for something, instead of finding out who we are and what we're capable of, or too young. Ageism cuts both ways. All -isms are socially constructed ideas—racism, sexism, homophobia—and that means we make them up, and they can change over time. [...]
By Yazmin Navarro There was always an ache. A pain that filled the inside of my belly. A pain that engulfed me. Of missing something. Of missing someone. Of missing my mother. It was the times. It was the need. It was seeing the hunger in her children’s eyes. It was the fear of watching her [...]
By Howard Richard Debs "We are entering upon a life and death struggle” —Mahatma Gandhi The oldest, Gandhi himself, then 61 the youngest among those at the start, 18. There were but 80 in all to begin. It took 24 days, 240 miles on foot to reach the coast. 2500 would next march on the [...]
By Lucille Ausman he is out extinguishing wild fires lost in the smoke digging lines in the ground trying to trap her behind the wall before she can reach him suffocating in her fury he's strong and brave and all American I guess but she doesn't want protecting she doesn't want to cool down and [...]
Psychologists detect pre-existing conditions. A spokesman for the silent majority replies. By Andy Blumenthal Bunk. What crap. Another pathetic dig at our elected president. At least make it credible, the way normal fake news spins around real events like a murder or WMDs. Though he could probably easily fabricate ecstasy, it’s a bizarre slur that [...]
By Brenda Birenbaum You raise your hands to hush the crowd, you raise your hands america america, you raise your hands palms out to hush the crowd to give it voice, translate primordial hoots and jeers and lewd youtubes—flip off the camera, yeah, thrust that pelvis forward, yeah—the gun swells in your pants and you [...]
By Jackleen Holton Hookway wears knifepoint stilettos that she fashioned from the skin of water moccasins that slide underneath the dark slip of brackish floodwater when she takes them off and wades in up to her neck as the twin snakes slither ahead guiding her through a maze of underwater suburbs where she shatters windows [...]
By Stephanie Williams I didn't shave all month Quiet, itchy rebellion. A silent wind-chime Should at least look the part. They marched I had prior commitments. I connected my daughter’s brows Put flowers in her hair. I posted pictures They asked if we’re Mexican. This year she’ll be a princess $40 on a pink tulle [...]
from Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC 3/21/16 By Douglas Wood The bomb clock doesn’t require a number but zero, No matter, The wiped face of the earth What kind of minds write in twisted missiles and the swirling terms imposed by disaster— disaster repeated in the hope it didn’t happen? But it’s precisely the [...]
By Jonathan May A found poem from: FBI Guantanamo Bay Inquiry // The Night Journey, Sura 17, The Koran // Department of Defense Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual – 1983 The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to [...]
Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes From the Underground, a chapbook, is my collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin. I matched quotes from many of history’s most infamous tyrants to Amy’s funereal sculptural portraits to produce spins by DJ Trump surrogates from Genghis Khan to the Koch Brothers. Each [...]
By Jennifer Stein Black birds the size I dream dinosaurs would be Cloud-cutting straight flying unflapping arms Like if you asked a kid to draw a bird Who never saw a bird, and threw his bulky crayoned visions to the clouds and here they are in soundless flight. Black birds, black and ominous as octopus ink [...]
By Penny Perry “Make up should be for your husband only,” my mother says in my head. In real life, she is home in her apartment, blowing cool air on her second cup of tea, filling out her grocery list. “You don’t need a clock, you can tell time by the tasks she performs,” my father [...]
By Gigi Wagg You, Paul Ryan, who imagine yourself an emerging monarch, are really a moth—bat food, with the base, serviceable body of a military cargo plane: dusty, dull and fueled by heavy diesel. You circle the towers of Trump power, crashing your dumb head into pane after pane of trash-TV limelight, dutifully peddling disaster for [...]
By Ruth McCole Women’s March, Boston, Massachusetts. Grim determination turns to gladness turns to awe We leave too early Afterward bells ring. Muslim Ban One, Boston, Massachusetts. A roiling, boiling storm-crowd Makes waves. A man shouts “You’re all going to hell” A sign reads “Jesus was a refugee.” Muslim Ban Two, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nighttime scholar’s vigil [...]
