Editor – Writers Resist

Welcome to Writers Resist Spring 2026 Issue

Welcome to the vibrant words and images of spring, celebrating the memory of Marsha P. Johnson, beloved and befamed transgender LGBTQ rights activist and Stonewall Inn heroine.

If you’d like the link to the virtual reading for this issue, 18 April at 5:00 pm PACIFIC, please email us at writersresist@gmail.com.

Now, join us and our contributing resisters, while we flip the flaming bird at the antis and revere all that proclaims our identities.

Why does a tranny cross a yellow brick road? by Mx. Asher

To David Lehman by Waverly Vernon

Run by JL Smither

Ahead of the Storm by Laura Ann Reed

Absent Hills by Johanna Haas

This Is the Way Our Words End— by Dennis Humphrey

Doomscrolling isn’t solidarity by Maxochitl Cortez

Warning by John L. Holgerson

Two Poems by Robin Michel

Trashy by M.R. Mandell

Duality of Dogma by Nardien Sadik

No Vacation by Raymond A. Mazurek

On the Road to Samarra by Marissa Glover

planning the ballroom by Alexis Rhodes

Pledge by Dion O’Reilly

When Should We Senior Women Not? by Ann Grogan

Choices by Alice Benson

Why does a tranny cross a yellow brick road?

By Mx. Asher

Everything ends.
My five minutes behind a microphone.
The vileness of Presidential pedophiles.
The bad habit of saying I love you from a youthful after-sex brain.
Red hats and alligator crowns.
Our tears after cuddling dogs. . .
the cuddles end, too.

Everything ends,
our joy, our pain, our harm, our hope,

our lives.

But death only plays after lungs open by screaming.
A long-life greets us in the form of frail bones and a failing heart.
A phoenix meets rebirth by journeying through its own dust.
Ideas of liberation fly
when a Black trans sex worker’s
fed-up fingertips caress a brick
ripped from the foundation
of a communal stone wall.

We’re in this space together.
To get to you,
I spent a decade starving
to build the queer history
that’s about to be obliterated.

I’d be pissed but,
I’m
    choosing
         deep
             breaths,
because everything,
ends.

I wrote it all down-
wage theft,
rejection,
heartbreak.
I shared it as pain,
yelling at open mics.
But the performance ended,
and someone pointed out “there’s hope in your anger.”
I traded spewing for songs.

Who I am feels wet on my fingertips now,
like holding a rotating globe pushed through a waterfall,
threads of blood
broken by droplets grinding
coal into beauty,
diamonds into ash,
rubies into fields of grass.

When this poem ends,
I’d like to saunter
amongst the kisses of your calluses,
the odor of daylilies
littered throughout the origin story
of how you came to be
here with me.

But please-
don’t flip to your last page yet.
I want to touch the hesitation of dashes-
admiring your semicolons;
those red-herring ending of lines. . .
on mountaintops of graceful motions.

Don’t skip to an unsatisfying end
either/
Write love notes in the margins
so those who burn books
are haunted by a charred soul
alchemized into the gentle giggle
of a trans child.
She’ll get to scratch syllables,
her earnest innocence
dedicating her work
“to my dead cat.”
Rest in peace, Rufus.

Don’t get me wrong.
My character isn’t afraid of conclusions.

I fear your impact,
laughter, grace, smile.
Our connection
reveals fear as grief.
I already miss
not being here
in community
with you.

So let’s take our time;
to lovingly cradle the dead conscience of relatives,
pour lakes from our community urns into the infinite free hugs of oceans,
host dance parties on graves,
steal-the-blanket, sashay, pontificate, fuck, hyperfocus, flip tarot cards, rest,
spill our guts out writing and repeat,

and before it all ends:

Why not
scream at some dictators,
expose the frailty of failing hearts,
burn it down,
throw bricks,
and feel the hope
in what it means to be
trans and alive.

Mx. Asher (they/them) is a trans and neurodivergent spoken word artist, poet, memoirist, sexual assault survivor, and former sex worker. Having worked professionally in government, advocacy, and elections for the past twenty years, they focus on vulnerable storytelling and personal experience to transform current events into emotionally resonant work. They have performed at numerous events and are a teaching artist at LitArts RI, the leading support network for the community of Rhode Island writers.

Photo credit: Photo by Karly Jones on Unsplash.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

To David Lehman

By Waverly Vernon

David,
you say poetry is not political,
as if Gaza is a metaphor
and not a place where children
fold themselves into rubble.

On my television,
the anchors call it a war.
I count the seconds between bombs.
Your voice is nowhere in the smoke.
You are busy arranging flowers.

I want to be like those poets
who care about the moon.
But every time I look up,

I hear sirens
through someone else’s ceiling.

David,
you call it complicated.
The screen shows
a father
carrying half his son.
Complicated is your word for silence.
Complicated is how you hide your hands.

I know I am American because
I can mute the channel
and make the massacre vanish.
When I turn off the TV
someone still dies.

Metaphors about peace
are for poets who mistake
neutrality
for virtue.
—I do not write peace.

I write children
throwing stones at tanks,
seconds before
they become numbers
you will never name.

David—

                                          the flowers you love
                                          are growing in Gaza.
                                          They grow in craters.
                                          They will not forgive you.

Waverly Vernon (they/them) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, focusing on writing and ceramics. Their work explores femininity, sexuality, resilience, religious deprogramming, and trauma, transforming personal experience into connection and dialogue. Their poetry appears in Moonstone Arts Center, WIA Magazine, Wildscape Literary Journal, Assignment Literary Magazine, Creation Magazine, and Arcana Poetry Press.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash.

A Note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

Run

By JL Smither

People will tell you they run toward things—a thinner body, a stronger heart, their girlfriend’s house. But most people run from things—their own fat ass, their addictions, their girlfriend. Me, I run from voices, from anything that’s out to get me, from everything that could go wrong, from the chaos of the indifferent universe.

I’m the only person I know who doesn’t wear earphones during my run. No music, podcasts, books. Nothing asking me to pay attention or learn. Just the calming shift-shift of my sneakers on the sidewalk, a steady beat I can focus on, and the background noise of cars and people around me. It’s safer, in theory, for a woman running alone, and I know my wife appreciates my caution. Shift-shift-shift-shift. But sometimes, I get so focused on the sound of my feet that I miss my turn on this familiar route. Once, I tripped over a big dog and scraped my elbows up. Shift-shift-shift.

I don’t think about my job while I run, and to discuss why would be so banal. It’s because I’m held accountable for things outside my control. Because I have lots of responsibility and no authority. Because I’m never certain when the business strategy will change, or when it should, or how I’ll be ready. Because I take all this much too seriously, probably, and much too personally, definitely.

I don’t think about my parents, who voted twice for Trump, and who currently roll around in their giant, empty house, bouncing off the polished granite and tile and gargling acid every night, the vine of accumulated hate and mutual abuse hanging thick over the sliding glass doors. They live in Florida anyway, so I don’t have to deal with them much outside my own head.

Shift-shift-shift-shift. Shift-shift-shift-shift. Shift-shift-shift-shift.

Until it’s not even a sound anymore. Until it’s the beating of my heart, of every muscle in my body. Until the grey and white sneaker toes that appear and disappear so easily become the only thing standing still while the world spins recklessly beneath them. Shift-shift-shift-shift. Shift-shift-shift-shift.

I don’t think about Meredith, my wife, who has been crying silently during the day, on and off. I’ll come into a room, and she’ll wipe her eyes and smile at me. And when I ask her what’s wrong, she shrugs and says, “Nothing new. How’s your day been?” I don’t tell her I’m also anxious and scared, I try to come up with something positive, distracting. But I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how to help either of us.

I don’t think about the uncertainty of life—timing for the next tornado to flatten a neighborhood, the next bridge to collapse, the next social program to lose funding, the next child to go unvaccinated, the next insurance claim to be denied, how many people will starve or overdose or die preventable deaths in the next week.

Shift-shift. My left shoelace starts to loosen. By the third step, it’s undone. Shift-shift, crunch crunch crunch. I step off the sidewalk to retie it.

As I straighten up, I lengthen my neck, raise my eyes, and look around. I’m in front of a house I don’t recognize, which is confusing because I don’t think I’ve missed a turn. I swivel. Next door, that house I know, with the big stone archway. The sycamores lining the streets, leaves brown and falling, trunks white. Across the street, the big Italianate with the blue and purple trim, and there, the statue of the Roman water nymph in the front yard. The street signs, High and King.

My feet feel more solidly on the ground once I’ve oriented myself. I turn back to the unfamiliar house. Small, just one story, narrow. Low roof and faded tan siding. How odd that I’ve been running this way nearly every day for years, and I just noticed it. Had I seen it before and forgotten?

One more glance, and I leap back into the shift-shift-shift-shift. I’ll tell Meredith about this when I get home, and we’ll laugh about it together. I start rehearsing the story to get the pacing and details right. A car thumps loudly over a steel plate in the road.

I don’t think about guns. I don’t think about where the next shooting will be, a school, a daycare, an office building, a church, a festival, a summer camp, a post office, a parade. We’ve seen it all just in my lifetime, and there’s no way to stop it, no way to predict it.

I don’t think about the police, shooting people in their own front yards, killing fathers holding threatening sandwiches, killing mothers sleeping in their own beds, beating people to death for riding the subway. I don’t think about how there’s no one left to keep me and my family safe.

Shift-shift-shift. Shift-shift-shift-shift-shift. I come to a corner and look up for traffic before crossing.

I’m startled to see another house I don’t recognize. In front of it, a man I don’t know is walking a dog I’ve never seen. He pauses at the front gate, unlatches it, and heads up the walk. I stare, breathing heavily, as he pulls a key from his pocket and opens a bright green door I’ve never noticed.

King and Third now, according to the street signs. A major intersection. What used to be here? When did they build that one? I look around. There’s the brick house with the corner turret, where it should be. And over here?

What the hell is that? A stick-construction, modern apartment building, painted grey. Just a handful of units—three floors, one lot. How did that get past the historical council? There’s a well-worn dirt path across grass, running from the sidewalk corner to the glass front door, where I can see a handful of Amazon packages stacked up inside.

I check the signs again. King and Third. I drive through this intersection to get to work. How have I never. . .?

OK, I must be tired. Maybe I’m fighting something off, and this run has taken more out of me than I realized. I check my watch, just for a feeling of security. I’ve been gone 20 minutes, which is about right for this corner. I know where I am, I just don’t know where those houses came from. I should head home—the direct route instead of weaving through the neighborhood like usual.

I turn back and shift-shift-shift-shift away from the house with the unfamiliar dog.

I don’t think about the worsening rash across my belly and legs, about the terrible headaches I’ve been getting on Saturdays, about how many months I have to wait to see my doctor, and how my insurance rarely covers the drugs he recommends.

I don’t think about flying, only about running away. I used to never care about flying. There used to be people I didn’t think about whose job was to keep me safe. But now there are more planes and fewer humans to guide them. The planes started exploding. They started running into each other. One got lost in the tundra. Another landed upside down. A door fell off. People have been dying. Not most, but not zero. And what a stupid decision. Can you imagine being alone on a work trip and the last thing you see before making your wife a widow is LaGuardia? On a connection? What a waste.

Shift, shift, shift, shift, shift, shift.

I raise my eyes while still running, and everything looks OK, where it’s supposed to be. I trip over an uneven sidewalk slab, do a ridiculous dance of flailing limbs in all directions, and catch myself before falling.

I watch my feet again. Shift-shift-shift.

I don’t think about money. Meredith just lost the arts grant she had, covering a year of supplies as well as conference and show fees. She paints, and paint isn’t cheap. Beyond that, the grant was a huge honor, recognition on a national level for her work to date, with the promise of creating much more now that she didn’t have to worry about the expense of creativity. After 145 years, the organization that funded it was gone with the stroke of a pen by someone ignorant and uninterested in art and its value. What an unexpected, unprovoked, devastating blow.

I don’t think about what this faceless attack did to my wife. Her art will never be the same, will never offer the same fearless optimism that I’ve always treasured in her, puzzled how she could convey so much in a brush stroke. She’s been trying to work with pieces of trash now, more sculpture on canvas, although I remind her that we can still afford paint on my salary. The trash sculptures are angry and violent. One night, I dreamed that a creature with cheese wrapper eyes and a zipper mouth came to life and chased us through the house. But I didn’t tell her that.

Shift-shift-shift. I come to the last corner and prepare to turn down my street. I realize I’ve gotten distracted and missed the turn; these aren’t my neighbors’ houses. These aren’t… how far did I miss it by? I check the street sign and feel the blood drain from my head, my sweat turn cold. King and 11th Street. It’s ours. It’s my street.

I turn down 11th and notice the numbers on these ticky-tacky stucco monsters, striving and failing to reach the prestigious status of McMansions. Number 301, no longer the butter brick two-story with the stained glass and the rotting porch railing, now a blue painted archway over a leaded glass door purchased at Lowes. Number 303 has green shutters bolted into the wall, with no attempt made to even feign hinges, when it should have wide navy blue wooden siding with a meticulous hedge. Number 305 used to have a magnificent cherry tree in front, but now there’s an inflatable Jesus swinging his arms out and in.

And where number 307 should be—where my house, 307 East 11th Street, should be—there’s a split-level with fake bricks on the bottom, peach paint on the top, and a three-car garage that takes up most of the curb view.

My mouth fills with spit the way it does when I’m about to vomit. I lean against a tree in the apron to steady myself. Oddly, it’s my tree. It’s the oak that’s always been there. I look up and see the fresh cut from the limb I trimmed off only last week. I hug the tree, hug as if it alone can keep me from floating away. I look back at the house, which is still a split-level dwarfed by a garage, and notice every eyeless window closed with horizontal miniblinds.

I collapse onto the ground, my back pressed into the tree trunk, and my knees pulled up close. There’s dirt and a fresh scrape on my left knee, and I’m not sure if I remember why. I don’t try to remember, but I rest my head on my right knee and close my eyes. I don’t know if I cry, but I no longer trust anything to be the way I expect.

I don’t know how to survive in this world, and I don’t know who to ask for help.

“Janey?” the voice floats from so far away that I think I imagine it. “Janey, honey? Are you hurt?” I hear a gate slam and have a Pavlovian response of “Home.”

I look up, and there’s Meredith, coming down the walk—our walk, the old bricks we found buried in the garden and re-laid ourselves. She’s coming toward me from our red brick Victorian with the huge window and the front porch. She’s by my side crouching, and I’ve grabbed her close to me. She starts to help me up, and I stumble, scraping my knee against a tree root. She’s speaking kindly to me, and I can’t find the words to tell her that each of my tears is made of pure joy and gratitude.

Photo by Tim Photoguy on Unsplash.

JL Smither grew up in Florida, and that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t leave you no matter how long you’ve lived in Ohio, held a job, created a family, and lived an otherwise functional life. She has previously published in Lowestoft Chronicle, Gay City 5, and other venues.

Ahead of the Storm

By Laura Ann Reed

after Osip Mandelstam

In the aluminum light pooling
on the juniper
the tendrils appear to compress
and contract, the blue-green needles to flatten
as though made by dread alone
into a beaten weight.
At the same time, no one can believe
the expansive passion of the roots.
It takes a tractor to extract them.
We think it’s theirs: such fear,
such love.
But in the temple of our dreams
there it is in ourselves.
There it is.

Laura Ann Reed is the author of the chapbook Homage to Kafka (Poetry Box, 2025). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in ten anthologies, including Poetry of Presence (Grayson Books, 2023) and The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023). Visit her website.

Photo credit: Konrad Glogowski via a Creative Commons License.

Absent Hills

By Johanna Haas

In 1980, West Virginia had green hills of magic.
The sky was small and the land wide.
Others saw only coal.
Others saw black diamonds.
Fireflies lit dark July skies,
A child could chase them forever.
My place of Hillbillies.
My place without luxury.
People say little girls should be quiet,
Fed upon sugarplums and restraint.
I cannot stay silent.
I cannot return home.
They blasted away what I knew.
I will raise my voice about our silences.
Silent rock, sitting open.
Silent women, keeping peace.
I will shout the things that matter,
Even if I’m the only one who hears.
Shouting, stop removing the mountains.
Shouting, stop removing us, too.

Johanna Haas lives in the middle of the U.S., in a cottage with four lions. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, focussing on speculative work. She is neurospicy, disabled, a former professor, and the publisher of Cicada Song Press. Her work has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Young Raven’s Literary Review, *82 Review, and Star*Line. Her poem “Absent Hills” won first place in the Wilda Morris Award from the Illinois State Poetry Society, and you can find her playing with plants and animals or tying a long string into many knots. Visit her website and read more of her writing at her Substack.

Photo credit: David Hoffman via a Creative Commons license.

This Is the Way Our Words End—

By Dennis Humphrey

So, as I teeter on the dizzying brink of retirement, I am thrilled with a tingling anticipation of a life I have dreamed of since I was a teenager—the life of a full-time writer. For the first time in a lifetime of doing what had to be done to pay the bills, to get good performance ratings, or to improve my credit score, I will soon be free to liberate all of the time once fettered to such noisome drudgery, free to do the things I always wanted to do—writing short stories, novels, and poems. Well, and essays. Obviously.

In preparation for this monumental and pivotal transition, I have spent over four decades contributing to retirement funds instead of owning fancy things like boats, sports cars, or vacation properties. I shall soon be free to delve into seas of unbound creativity, without the distraction of answering fifty emails by lunch (on a good day). I will have time to weave a complex and intricate tapestry of creative expressions in addition to my writing—playing guitar, performing in theater, and drawing in my sketch pad. I will be empowered to thrive as an artist, unburdened by the ceaseless demands of a weary, work-a-day world.

But alas!

It seems another aspiring writer is dead set on taking my dream job, just when it is within reach—that sinister fiend, AI. That would be bad enough. I mean, we’ve been to the movies. We all know how this ends, but before my technological nemesis could stop hallucinating long enough to master the vagaries of irony, I was blindsided by something all too human—panicked overreaction. So great is our fear of a robot rebellion that we have set upon each other with wild accusations of collusion with the enemy. AI writing witch hunters scour the digitally-enhanced noosphere to root out this fell being called AI, and as any astute student of witch-hunting could tell you, when you hunt for witches, you find them everywhere. As that abyss stares also into us, what monsters may we become? Look again at the first two paragraphs of this essay. The inquisitors of rogue writing technology will already have condemned my humble lines before I can even raise an objection:

“Look ye at the writing before your very eyes! See the tell-tale use of words like ‘delve’ and ‘intricate!’ Mark the parallel structures in occult groups of three including, and I shudder to say it, Oxford commas! Harken to such phrases as ‘to thrive!’ And the em dashes! Angels and ministers of grammar defend us from the em dashes!”

A free online AI detector judged the purple prose of the first two paragraphs—which, by the way, had no AI assistance whatsoever—and found it to be 90% AI generated. (To be fair, another found 0%). See, here’s the thing. I have already protested the ways in which AI “suggested text” is insidiously homogenizing the rich tapestry (argh!) of cultural meaning in the dappling play of folksy colloquialisms and local color above the fruited plain of our literary landscape. (Okay, enough of that, but notice how I didn’t use any naughty words like “diversity” here?) Down with suggested text! In case you didn’t know, every time you take the suggestion of one of these AI helpers, a baby metaphor dies.

This is not the first time technology has encroached on creativity. In a 1906 article in Appleton’s Magazine, march king John Philip Sousa lamented the invention of the phonograph. In his essay, alliteratively titled “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” Sousa sounded the alarm, fearing that it would mean the end of musicianship among the huddled masses and strip music of its living humanity. Who would put in all the hours of practice it takes to learn and maintain proficiency in a musical instrument, when music may be had at the push of a button? Well, in 2025, we can see it wasn’t the end, but it certainly was a change. According to the built-in AI Mode in Google® and a dash of confirmation bias and the availability heuristic, some estimates of the percentage of Americans who could play musical instruments go as high as 90% before the advent of the phonograph. That seems a tad high, but the consensus is that it was rather a lot. Now, only 66% of Americans learn to play a musical instrument at some point in their lives—usually when young and in school. Well, Mr. Sousa, “two out of three ain’t bad” (according to recording artist, Mr. Meatloaf), but wait, our AI assistant also says that number falls to about 11% in adulthood. Ruh roh. All of this comes at a time when AI and AI-assisted musical “artists” are topping the music charts, with millions of downloads, even in the allegedly conservative market of country music. Yee Haw. The last line of defense against AI “artists” was that the human consumers of that art would insist on the real thing. So much for that. When Alan Turing devised his famous test, that we would have achieved true artificial intelligence when a computer could fool humans into thinking they were conversing with another human, it seems good Dr. Turing assumed a level of intelligence on the part of the human that we cannot actually take for granted. Is this to be the fate of writing? Will we force students to learn it in school, only to have almost 90% of them lose proficiency in adulthood, preferring to let machines do it for them, especially once no one really cares anymore anyway? (Cue the canned “dun dun DUNNN” sound effect).

As cosmically horrifying as these dreaded prospects may be to a lifelong scribbler like me, the AI is only one of the evils in play here. AI apologists will say: “AIs don’t kill originality of expression. People who misuse AIs kill originality of expression.” These same apologists do, however, offer their thoughts and prayers as consolation. It is also interesting how fastidiously online platforms guard their own trademarks as they mass-distribute AI content made with LLMs trained without permission from copyrighted content. Here again, our AI witch-hunters might agree to hate the sinner and not the sin, as they seem less concerned with confronting the actual AIs and their creators and more concerned with pointing their morally-superior fingers at their fellow humans who they just know are abusing it. I must concede, fear of persecution has been keeping people in line since ancient times. But look at the result! Our students are afraid to write freely. Paranoid, they turn to other AIs to make their non-AI, 100% human writing, look less like AI writing. There hasn’t been such a serious a threat to freedom of writing style since Strunk & White’s once-ubiquitous style guide was mistaken for a set of inviolable grammar rules. Now, we have the internet for disseminating such wanton exercises of brutal linguistic hegemony—on a massive, global scale. I have just watched a YouTube® and used Google® to peruse several algorithm-prioritized websites that profess to know the red flags for identifying AI writing in an instant. An instant, mind you! Step right this way! Here are some of the red flags to look for:

> Em dashes. Prior to the AI writing boom and the subsequent AI writing detection counter-offensive, many casual users of the English language could be excused for not even knowing what an em dash is—or was—or what it might be used for. It is this thing—this thing right here—longer than a hyphen, used to set off text in ways similar to commas or semicolons (two more punctuation marks that have historically mystified generations of writing students). Sometimes they provide that wee little bit of extra emphasis or panache a writer wishes to employ. Sometimes, it clarifies sentence structure, especially, that is, in sentences already overladen with commas due to lists, asides, or parallel structures—like this one. Ah, but now, this paragon of emphatic transports, once revered among poets and comma haters alike, is a hallmark of heresy—a scarlet letter of authorial fraud and grammatical shame. Someone should go back in time right now and tell Emily Dickinson to lay off the suspicious use of em dashes before she gets herself ruthlessly edited by “respectable” publishers, those vaunted gatekeepers of “proper” modes of expression. Oh, right—too late.

> Parallel sentence structures. So much for chastising students for faulty parallelism when grading their writing. This is triply true when those parallel structures come in threes. Again, so much for the old writing concept of the rule of three, an ancient rhetorical concept derived from the human mind’s apparent fascination with that magic number. Vini, vidi, vici? Nope, nope, and especially nope. Back across the Rubicon with you, Mr. Julius Caesar. I can see this aversion to threes morphing into a new superstition already. “No threes! No threes! Now let them be! And weave a circle round them twice (not thrice), for they on LLMs hath fed, and drunk the milk of paired AIs.”

> Repetition. So much for anaphora. “I have a dream?” Eight times? Dr. King, get thee to a thesaurus. Let’s change it up a bit, huh? How about a vision? A figment? A fancy? So much for alliteration and assonance, too. Walt Whitman, who in the wide, wide world did you think you were? There are a lot more rhetorical forms of repetition with cool-sounding Greek names (seriously, a lot more), but I do not wish to be overly, um, repetitious. I have a (recurring) dream, or rather nightmare, of a world where even dreams are edited and rejected for repeating themselves. So much for dreams then, too. Now, what is it that is supposed to happen to those things when they are deferred? (Those of you googling—sorry, “using Google® to find”— the phrase “a dream deferred” right now, please do note the em dashes in the Langston Hughes poem, “Harlem”).

> Atypically correct grammar, usage, and editing—I love this red flag. I may get a t-shirt made bearing this solid gold nugget of AI-sleuthing wisdom. I’m not sure if they caught the irony that their hint was expressed in a list of three, complete with Oxford comma, but how dare people display actual mastery of English grammar? It is the devil’s work, I say!

I could go on, listing enough red flags to outfit a full-sized Scottish golf course—complete with armored presidential golf cart—but my point is this. It wasn’t bad enough that AI (actually LLMs) had begun homogenizing our distinctive voices one style-norming suggestion at a time. It wasn’t bad enough that AI came after my dream job, offering to work 24/7 for no pay at lightning speed. Now the backlash against AI is driving us to change the way we write in the first place, just to avoid being accused of AI use—even when we are innocent of any such charges. That’s just great. Now, not only do I have to obsessively empty my pockets before going into a store to avoid my fear of being falsely accused of shoplifting, but I have to empty my writing of my own voice and style. Caught between an AI rock and an AI-backlash hard place. Well, my voice is mine, I tell you! Mine! I have the receipts! I’ve spent over three decades cultivating my writing voice and accumulating vast stores of literary and pop culture references. I have three degrees in English—BA, MA, and PhD (Aaah! More threes!). What’s that you say, officer? Do I use grammar, capitalization, and punctuation even when I text? Why, yes—I most certainly do. Do I use curly quotation marks? Well, heh, I mean, those aren’t my curly quotation marks; they belong to a friend—Mr. Times New Roman®. Do I use the Oxford comma? Yes, officer. I do confess’t, I pray you pardon me, but. . .

Easy now, officer. I’m just reaching for my wallet to show you my poetic license. No longer valid, you say? Might I see your ID and badge? No? All right. Might you pull down your mask so I can see your face? No again? Oh, dear. Might I at least call my literary agent? I see. Look, I don’t mean to be a bother, but do you think you could tell me what this “AI Alcatraz” of which you speak may be? Might I—wait, what are you doing? You can’t do this to me! Unhand me, you brute! I’m an American! I have a right to free—oof! Mmph. Mmmrmph! Mmmr Mmmr!

TikTok® Jessie voice (voice-over): This essay is over. Please disperse and resume mindless consumption of AI-assisted mass media and algorithm-selected advertisements. Enjoy!

P.S. Admit it. You heard that last bit in the TikTok® Jessie voice, didn’t you?

P.P.S. If you didn’t, you’re googling—sorry, “using Google® to find”—the term “TikTok® Jessie” right now, aren’t you?

Dennis Humphrey teaches writing and literature at Prince William Sound College in Valdez, Alaska, and has a PhD in English with Creative Writing emphasis from the University of Louisiana Lafayette. His nonfiction publications include essays in Collateral, Cahoodaloodaling, and Blood Letters.

Photo credit: Artificial Intelligence

Doomscrolling isn’t solidarity

By Maxochitl Cortez

I too doomscroll
scroll a screen of California fires
Texas floods
protests for black and brown kin
the news it flows too easy on the screen

I see
police brutality
LA resisting protecting people
picked up
piece

piece

off
the

streets
our streets

stories seep out of me
my language is documentation
not the kind of documents they want
to see

how do you document a people
carved from this land
back when my tiabuela’s cheekbones spoke
of revolution

she reveals to me the stories
in banned books
banned // barred // black // brown // bars
our stories must be told

written down carved even
into our skin
like they have been carved
into our DNA

our people are not trends
hash tagging their #names
is not enough
what is the liberation they
yearned for
burned for

SAY THEIR NAME
repeat

#repeat

REPEAT
repeat

#repeat

#LONGLIVETORTUGUITA

say her name
your abuela, your tiabuela, your vis abuela. . .

what stories do they have stored
                                                          frozen
                                                                      cold
                                                                                old
will the pages sit
                        in your freezer too?
preserved to serve
or lay severed in the scorching sun
that demands our salty sweat

Maxochitl Cortez is Chichimekah and Coahuiltecan from the lands of Aridoamerica. They are a two spirit Indigenous Resistance Artist, Educator, and Community Organizer—using storytelling as a pathway for collective liberation. They are a host with every.Word poetry, a Black and Indigenous led spoken word organization in so called Austin, Texas. The seeds of their storytelling ask what liberation means, what we will do to get there for all people, and what narratives we honor during our path to healing. Find them on instagram @raya.maxochitl.

Photo credit: Felton Davis via a Creative Commons license.

Warning

By John L. Holgerson

after the poem Warning by Leonard Cohen

If your neighbor disappears
Oh if your neighbor disappears

The Hispanic man from Venezuela
who helped you paint your house
or the young woman who babysat
your children while dressed proudly
in that rainbow-colored blouse

If your neighbor disappears
Oh if your neighbor disappears

Don’t ask what happened
to the multi-tatted Black man
who lived on your block
or the foreign college student
with whom you liked to talk

Beware of the men wearing balaclavas
who cruise our streets each day
They have plans you can’t ignore
or else there’ll come a tapping,
rapping, pounding on your door

When your neighbor disappears
Oh when your neighbor disappears.

John L. Holgerson is the author of three books of poetry, Convictions of the Heart (In Case of Emergency Press 2021), Unnecessary Tattoo and Other Stains on a Stainless Steel Heart (Finishing Line Press 2016) and Broken Borders (Wasteland Press 2012). He has published poems in small literary journals, both in print and online. He is listed in the Poets & Writers’ Directory of Poets and Writers; is one of three MassPoetry representatives for Bristol County, Massachusetts; and is co-host of For the Love of Words, airing on Easton Community Access Television in North Easton, Massachusetts. The monthly program showcases performances of local, regional, national and international poets and musicians. For more than three decades, he was a criminal defense attorney with The Massachusetts Defenders Committee. Visit his web s ite.

Photo credit: Prachatai via a Creative Commons license.

Two Poems by Robin Michel

The Grand Staircase Railing is Rotted

The frayed red carpet a trip hazard.
Proceed with caution.

Inside the oval office, no light.
The thick coat of grime on bay windows
heavier than drapes.

Drapes now replaced with lace curtains.
On closer inspection, the lace is sticky.
Tatted cobwebs. Dead flies. Busted sills.

Gold sconces above the white mantel
where unlit tallow candles droop, ashamed
of their betrayals.

On the fireplace hearth cold as an icebox,
abandoned poker & tongs.
Ashes scattered like snow.

Two built-in bookcases recessed
in the western wall emptied of books
banned long ago.

Doors warped & splintered,
rusted hinges. One opens out
to what was a rose garden.

Now a concrete slab.

The once stately partners desk,
the Resolute, carved from reclaimed
oak timbers. A gift from former allies.

On its scratched & boogered surface,
plastic sunflowers in a cracked vase.
A blank journal. A broken pencil.

A pen emptied of ink.

Your Breath Moves Like a Bellows in Your Ribcage

After Kimberly Satterfield

Some days, no matter how bright the sun,
the sun’s rays will not ease the chill—as if
tranquil California is transmuting into
Russia’s frozen Siberia.

You read the news              until you can’t
Doom scroll                        until you can’t
Hide under the covers        until you can’t

And so you seek refuge in a friend’s poem:
             feel how your own breath
                          moves in your body
             like a bellows
                          in the cage of your ribs

You remember another beloved friend
who died one week before
the 2017 Presidential Inauguration.
How, when you had a stressful situation,
she would put the tea kettle on
and listen to whistles of your rant.
“Breathe in anger,” she counseled.
“Then blow it out.”

Your friend played harmonica and sang.
She knew about breath and how best to use it.
You think about last week’s Emergency Town Hall
where someone said, “What our resistance needs is a song.”

You breathe in, feel your own breath gather fire in your belly.

Note: Italicized lines from “It Takes Only Moments” by Kimberly Satterfield and used with permission.

Robin Michel (she, her, hers) is a former educator, an activist, poet, and writer whose work has appeared in Cloudbank, Gordon Square Review, Boudin, Sport Literate, Twin Bill, Naugatuck River Review, Wordpeace and elsewhere. She is the author of Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press, 2023) and Things Will Be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review, 2024). She lives, writes, and resists in San Francisco.

Photo Credit: Sebastian Schuster on Unsplash.

Trashy

By M.R. Mandell

Artist’s Statement: I am interested in what surrounds me when I step out of my box and into the streets. What I see while taking a walk, sitting in a café, waiting at a corner. The moments of city life that make us stop, reflect, think, dream, cry. That pull us into the present yet teach us about the past.

M.R. Mandell is a poet and photographer whose work can be found in Hayden’s Ferry Review, SWWIM, The McNeese Review, Door Is A Jar, Writers Resist, HAD, and others. She is the author of two chapbooks, Don’t Worry About Me, (Bottlecap Press) and The Last Girl (Finishing Line Press). She lives in West Hollywood with her husband and two Golden Retrievers.

Duality of Dogma

By Nardien Sadik

In the church of lights,
where the nuns pray faithfully each morning,
beating even the sun in rising.
There is undeniable spirituality in every crevice,
every knee bowed a testimony to our God’s authority
and a defiant expression of faith in a country that would rather see
a Copt shot dead than alive and evangelize.

The invasion was only the beginning of a lifetime of tribulations,
but the blood of the Coptic people never ran dry,
despite many an attempt at erasure.

Presently, in anaphora,
a symphony of hymns sung by simple saints,
interrupted by the stubborn reminders of our captors
every day.

In a language forced down our throats, or having a tongue cut out completely,
we swallowed blood
and spat out Arabic coercively.

The sisters, unbothered by this they continue their melodies with a smile.
The act of defiance is small but powerful.

I learn what it means to fight peacefully,
turning the other cheek to
sing our next psalmody.

Nardien Sadik is a Coptic American spoken word poet and Georgetown Law student living in Washington, D.C. She has been writing since she was fourteen, weaving together themes of identity, justice, and belonging.

Photo credit: PF Anderson via a Creative Commons license.

No Vacation

By Raymond A. Mazurek

I. Remembering

Towers of brown concrete and steel
line the beach and reflect the morning sun,
each with a balcony that is private,
a capitalist’s dream of peace.

Thinking how you, father, would have loved this Vacasa,
the vacation you could never afford.
But every summer you took us to the beach
on day trips, and you would stand at the water’s edge,
smiling and gazing out to sea
while my sister and I frolicked in the waves.

I knew nothing
of what sixty-hour weeks in the factory meant,
with two weeks off each July when the mill was shut.

The ocean does not know poverty or wealth,
and is free to those with the time and means.
Money and time, which no poor man takes for granted,
for nothing is free.

II. The Present

I walk with delight at the water’s edge,
surrounded by happy groups of children.
The father pauses, two small girls clinging,
they run together, fall into the waves,
suspended laughing in the long arms of love.

All this will end, the climate will reverse,
oceans will live when humans are no more,
and spit out other life and start again.
The ocean knows, and waits.

III. No Vacation from the News

I was once poor, but there are those
who have less than nothing.
The visible ribs of children starved in Gaza,
in the arms of desperate fathers.
The men kept alive in cages in Florida,
dehumanized for the crime of wanting work
and dignity, to find better lives for children.
This is not the United States
of the imagination.
This is reality,
brutal beyond words.

Raymond A. Mazurek grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and attended Colby College with various forms of financial aid. He wrote poetry extensively as a young man, but more or less stopped in graduate school. In the past year, he has returned to writing poetry after a long hiatus. His poems have been published in The Blue Collar Review and The Eunoia Review. He has also published many essays on literature and on working-class studies, and has taught at Purdue, Southern Illinois, Penn State, and Alvernia.

Photo credit: James Thornett via a Creative Commons license.

On the Road to Samarra

By Marissa Glover

“I shall ride like the wind to Samarra . . . and Death will not find me there.”
—from the ancient fable The Appointment in Samarra

I met a man in Utah
with a bullet in his neck,
shot from a rooftop —
a coward’s distance
not like the lady in Minnesota,
killed up close by a ~~gun~~
by the ~~finger that pulled the trigger~~
by a person who didn’t know her:
dog lover, Girl Scout leader,
part-time worker in her dad’s
auto parts store

shot from a rooftop—
a coward’s distance
like the D.C. sniper
like a desert drone drop
like the Devil of Ramadi
long-range equipment
with records over 10,000 feet
still no match for Boeing 767s
or 757s striking from the sky:
25,000 feet in a power dive

I met 3,000 people in New York,
20 children in Connecticut,
14 teenagers in Parkland, Florida
I met a man in Utah who died
never knowing he’d been hit,
and I met a man in Memphis
briefly conscious of it
I saw the dead already dead
riding in a convertible in Dallas
back in 1963—all travelers
in this one mad world, just people
on the road to Samarra,
same as you, same as me

Marissa Glover lives in Florida, where she’s busy swatting bugs and dodging storms. Her work has been featured in journals and anthologies around the world. Marissa’s poetry collections are published by Mercer University Press: Let Go of the Hands You Hold (2021) and Box Office Gospel (2023). Her third book of poetry, Some Intangible Mercy, will be released by MUP in early 2027. Follow Marissa on Instagram.

Photo credit: Wasfi Akab via a Creative Commons license.

planning the ballroom

By Alexis Rhodes

i watched him stroll the roof:
Queen of Hearts with a croquet mallet
surveying his kingdom.
placing
six hundred and fifty seats
in a ballroom yet to be built.

twirling ladies and
caviar truffle burgers danced
across his pupils
as he tossed cake to the crowd below.
Eat Me
it read.

a cheer, a crown
a light game of croquet on the
lawn he’ll cover in
gold tile.

servers poured a spiked Kool Aid cocktail
Drink Me
into the gaping maws of the thirsty throng
as he sipped Diet Coke.

and from his perch
he smiled.
did not hear the drums.

the crowd had come
to celebrate
Bastille Day.

Alexis Rhodes (she/her) is a queer, polyamorous poet, playwright, performer, and strategist based in North Carolina. Her poetry has been described as raw and confessional, with just enough humor to lighten the mood. Alexis has been published with Drip Lit Magazine, Orange Rose Literary Magazine, The Words Faire, Blood+Honey, and Wayfarer Magazine, and has forthcoming publications with Action, Spectacle, Ghost Light Lit, Phylum Press, and Half and One. She has completed five anthologies: Notes on a Narcissist, LONGING, Goddess, Spiked Crowns, and lex, your poetry’s grotesque, and is submitting to presses. Alexis lives with her husband, two kids, and a hedgehog named Hedge. Follow her on Instagram.

Photo Credit: Dennis Jarvis via a Creative Commons license.

Pledge

By Dion O’Reilly

At Mountain School, the white-faced,
clock clicked eight. I stood, right hand to left breast,
recited rhythm, felt safety in meter,
felt—like a door flown open—the final
for all, which I took

to mean four-legged beasts, bugs, clouds,
geese, moons, planets, billions of suns.
For all meant us—pinafored girls in cotton socks
& patent leather, hemlines to knee,
legs pimpled with cold, meant kids with pinworms
and drippy nostrils, meant Barbara who bought
the best clothes, who’d one day get a Beemer and a new nose.

For all, we said in unison, then sat like little robots
in wooden chairs, began our numbers,
our Dick and Janes, our in-line art,
while under my chalky thoughts, as I hopscotched
and foursquared, I savored . . . for all, for all . . .

Time crashed. Kennedy was picked off in a Lincoln,
next the Reverend, the second Kennedy, Malcolm X;
a war ate our brothers, the president was a crook.

Nearly old enough to vote, we refused
to drone the old words, stood silent,
hand over heart, pale defiance on our faces.

The teachers didn’t care,
but I, for one, missed for all, heard it
in the whispered undersides of leaves, the lit-flame
of a single wick, the creak of crows.

Not under God, not for which it stands, not the accurate,
misspoken invisible—not the flag, its stripes
like strips of wounded bandages,
just for all. Final trochee:
Two words—a universe inside them.

Dion O’Reilly’s third book, Limerence, was finalist for The Floating Bridge Press John Pierce Chapbook Competition for Washington State Poets. She is the author of Sadness of the Apex Predator (Cornerstone Press 2024) and Ghost Dogs (Terrapin 2020). Her work appears in Tar Poetry Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Sun, and Rattle. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads private poetry workshops, and is co-editor of En•Trance Journal. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

Photo credit: Arthur Reis on Unsplash.

When Should We Senior Women Not?

By Ann Grogan

after former First Lady Michelle Obama at a Kamala Harris for President rally at Kalamazoo, MI on October 27, 2024

“You look amazing” Michelle Obama said
to a lady sitting front and center.
When should we senior women not look good?
What is amazing about a woman age one hundred?

Inherent in what Obama said, a sense of injustice:
should this lady a zombie be
of skeleton bones and bloody rags of dragging skin?
Should she limp along, cane in hand at a rally

of ghoulish gals who sally forth
through ragged fields of grass to protest?
Should men be locked and loaded
one man/one gun against the hoards of

vixen vermin descending for our Final Supper?
Should I preserve my leftovers in Tupperwear?
Plait draggle-strands of hair—what’s left of it,
and with bloody handprints on the railing of the stairs,

drag myself to bed? Should one care how words are used,
like “she’s still pretty” or “she still has sex”—
as if I should be dead at eighty?
Should we do what they expect?

Should I give up lipstick, lie down midst daisies
in the field, beyond my expiration date?
Retire at 50 or perhaps next year before
my life runs out, to be no more?

Who set the age (against which I rage)
for giving up? Who held that clue,
or as a piano teacher said, at 80 I should be
proud to be playing as well as you do.

How terribly should I play at “my age”?
What’s surprising if love and skill break through
at my stage, not ready for my final rest—
and by some miracle, I play my best?

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, retired lawyer, and emerging poet who lives in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age. Her poems have appeared in Querencia, Ameythst Review, Shot Glass Journal, Little Old Lady, The Prairie Review, Dissent Voice, New Verse News, Oddball Journal, Vistas & Byways, and the University of Vermont’s Continuing Education Newsletter. She’s the author of two volumes of poetry, Poetic Musings on Pianos, Music & Life. Her music and poetry website is rhapsodydmb.com.

Photo credit: Photoscarce via a Creative Commons license.

Choices

By Alice Benson

“Watch me, Gram,” Tammy yelled, waving her arms and leaping into the air.

Janet smiled, watching her granddaughter bounce on the trampolines. At ten years old, Tammy was athletic and graceful and loved nothing more than playing physically active games.

Janet took out her phone, set it on record, and tried to catch Tammy’s graceful arcs. What a lovely girl. Then Janet snapped a few photos and sent one to her son to show him how happy Tammy was.

Because Richard had tried to stop her from being with Tammy. He almost hadn’t allowed them to see each other. She remembered their hard conversation.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for Tammy to spend time with you.” His mouth was set in a firm line, but his eyes looked sad. “You hold a lot of beliefs that will have a harmful effect on her life.”

“I don’t.” Janet was adamant. “I only want good things for Tammy.”

“You support our current president. He’s building a horrible culture for girls.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Janet’s frustration rose. Even as a little boy, Richard had been too serious for his own good. “I’m not crazy about everything he says or does, but he doesn’t mean all that stuff. He’s like a performer. You just have to ignore the parts you don’t like. He’ll bring inflation down. I can barely afford to buy groceries anymore.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t believe he’ll bring down prices, but even if I did, I wouldn’t trade cheaper bread for my daughter’s safety.”

“I’m not doing anything to hurt Tammy. You worry too much; you always did. Your daughter will be fine. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.” Janet was positive she was speaking the truth. “The only ones who have anything to worry about are the criminals. He’ll take care of them.”

“Mom, he bragged about assaulting women. Those were his actual words. He was recorded.”

“That was just locker room talk. All men joke around like that.”

“I don’t joke around like that.” Richard paused. “Would you like it if someone grabbed Tammy?”

“Don’t be silly. You know how the other side likes to exaggerate. They’re always picking on him and making stuff up. It’s not fair for you to keep my only granddaughter from me because you and I don’t agree on politics.”

“This is so much more than politics,” Richard said. “This is about supporting someone who is actively working to make the world less safe for your granddaughter.” Richard’s voice rose and he stopped. His eyes closed briefly. “Have you listened to any of his supporters—all those young men who say such hateful things? They want total control over women, including women’s bodies.”

“He can’t help what people say.”

“Mom, he encourages them. He repeats their disgusting words, and it’s all over the internet. People talking like that puts Tammy in danger.”

As usual, Richard was getting upset over nothing. Janet blinked back tears; she just wanted to have a nice time with her granddaughter, but this conversation was hurtful for both her and Richard.

Two days later, Richard called to relent. “Tammy really wants to see you, Mom. She misses you. But don’t say anything about politics. I mean it, nothing at all.”

Janet agreed, just happy to spend time with her girl. They went to lunch at Perkins, Tammy’s favorite restaurant, because she could get hashbrowns made just the way she liked. They went shopping, and Janet bought her a new dress and some cozy pajamas. Their last stop was Adventureland, an indoor trampoline and play park, where Tammy could run and jump to her heart’s content.

“Let’s go over here, Gram.”

Janet followed Tammy and watched as she went into an area enclosed by nets hanging from the ceiling. The trampolines were about a foot off the ground, with kids jumping on either side, tossing balls at each other. “Gotcha,” Tammy yelled as she picked up a ball and threw it at a boy, hitting him in the chest. He caught it, laughed, and turning full circle, took aim at someone else.

Janet recognized the game was dodgeball, but the kids were bounding, shouting, and throwing balls at each other in a generally chaotic way.

One bigger kid, he looked to be about fifteen, started throwing harder, appearing to aim for people’s heads and faces. Then he walked over to a smaller boy and just grabbed the ball out of his hands.

“Hey,” Tammy shouted. “Stop that.”

Tammy was a strong believer in fairness and kindness, and she always stood up for the underdog. Janet admired that, but she mostly wished that Tammy would just mind her own business and look the other way. That’s what Janet did.

The bigger kid turned, dropped the little kid’s ball, walked over to Tammy and snatched her ball out of her hands.

“Give that back,” Tammy yelled.

Janet was about to call Tammy out of the play area, when the boy turned and grinned. “You’ll get this back when I say. Haven’t you heard? It’s your body, my choice.” He drew his arm back and hurled the ball, hitting Tammy full in the face. She stumbled and fell backwards.

Janet ran over and knelt beside her. Tammy sat up, tears running down her face, and Janet pulled her into a hug. “Are you okay?”

After a moment, Janet could feel Tammy’s head nod against her chest. “I’m all right. I just lost my balance. It didn’t hurt that much, but what a mean boy.”

“Yes, he is.” Janet looked around, but the kid was gone. The other children were focused on their own games.

“I’m ready to leave.” Tammy stood and walked out of the dodgeball area.

Janet followed close behind. “How about some ice cream before I take you home?”

“No thanks, Gram. I just want to get going.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” A prickle of anxiety poked at Janet. It wasn’t like Tammy to turn down sweet treats.

Tammy nodded, but she paused. “I guess ice cream would be all right.”

They walked over to the refreshment stand, got two chocolate cones, and found an unoccupied table.

“That boy said he got to make choices about my body,” Tammy said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Janet took a small bite of ice cream and shivered. She was hoping that Tammy hadn’t understood what that stupid kid said.

“My mom and dad always say that no one can touch me without my permission.” Tammy gazed at Janet. “Isn’t that true?”

“Of course, it’s true.” Janet’s stomach twisted with discomfort. She wanted Tammy to stop talking about this whole subject. What was the point?

“Then why did that boy say he could do what he wanted with my body?”

“I don’t know.” But Janet was lying, and for the first time in many years, she wondered if maybe her son wasn’t overreacting.

The chocolate suddenly scorched her tongue and became pure bitterness in her mouth.

Alice Benson (she/her) lives in Wisconsin with her wife and their dog. She recently retired from a job in a human services field; previously she spent over thirteen years working with a domestic violence program. Her short work has appeared in a variety of publications. Both Alice’s novels, Her Life is Showing and A Year in Her Life were published by Black Rose Writing. She wrote a middle-grade novel with her granddaughter, Trapped in a Tablet, which was published in May 2025 by Watchful Wizard Press. For more information, visit Alice’s website.

Photo credit: Rita Hogan via a Creative Commons license.

Welcome to Writers Resist Winter 2025-26 Issue

It’s been, hmm . . . a year.

Enough said. Let’s read some creative resistance instead. To get you all started, we’re excited to announce publications by two of our editors.

Poetry Editor Candice Louisa Daquin’s novel, The Cruelty, was released by Flowersong Press in November 2025.

Cover The Cruelty

The Cruelty focuses on the legacy of abuse. What learned behaviors from extreme abuse and mental illness can set individuals up to be controlled and manipulated to unimaginable levels. Daquin’s debut novel highlights connections between sexual abuse, sadism, extreme pornography and domestic violence. This fictional story posits the question: What if you lost everything and someone controlled your entire existence, how would you survive?

Available from the publisher, Bookshop.org, your independent bookseller, and the evil one.

Poetry Editor Debbie Hall’s collection of poems, Mixtape: Marginal State, was released by The Poetry Box in December 2025.

Cover art of Mixtape: Marginal States

The poems in Mixtape: Marginal States bear witness to members of our human family who exist just outside the mainstream of society. In these portrayals, we see individuals struggling with homelessness, those uprooted from their native countries, asylum seekers, and others dealing with altered or challenging psychological states—states that anyone of us might occupy at some time in our lives. The hope of bearing witness is to foster compassion and inclusion, human needs shared by all.

Available from the publisher, Bookshop.org, your independent bookseller, and the evil one.

Now, we are delighted to present the following writers and artists’ representations of resistance—join them for a virtual reading of this issue on Saturday 31 January 2026 at 5:00 pm PACIFIC. Email WritersResist@gmail.com for the link.

Self-Congratulation by M. M. Adjarian

A One-Way Correspondence with Fruit by Christine Strickland

Two Poems by Nnadi Samuel

Anarchists Unite by Kirsty Nottage

Skin by Frances Koziar

Bone China by Robert L. Reece

Graffiti Artists by Andrea L. Fry

Photograph and essay by Nina Pak

I visited Gaza in my sleep by Sophia Carroll

What Did You Wish For? by Myna Chang

Secret Light by Marianne Xenos

I’m Not Happy, the Therapy Client Says by Suzanne O’Connell

Don’t Talk About It by J.L. Scott

Incubator by Bethany Bruno

The Price of Standing Still by Melissa Moschitto

Louder then Silence by Rabia Akhtar

Burn This Book by Odette Kelada

Self-Congratulation

By M. M. Adjarian

Texas women love and curse with fatal bless your hearts. Sun burned plains enclose them, their multi-colored bodies corralled in

branded jeans. Tender cuts on man-sized platters piled high to heaven with heaping sides of disrespect, they live to be consumed and then discarded

like Porsha Ngumezi. Doctors wouldn’t scrape her womb and she bled out, screaming, young and black. No charity for her, she left this world in Houston

just like Josseli Barnica, who died while Catholic and brown. The green card in her purse meant life but not liberty because heartbeats from a dying fetus mean a one-way

trip to glory. Nevaeh Crain, pretty white girl with a butterfly tattoo in a sundown town could tell you that if sepsis hadn’t starved the pink from all her organs.

Meanwhile hypocrites under Hippocratic Oath cull women’s bones to pick their teeth in self-congratulation because in Texas, praise Jesus, the right to life abides.

M. M. Adjarian has been published in such journals as the Baltimore Review, Verdad, South 85, Grub Street, The Ekphrastic Review, Eclectica, Crack the Spine, Across the Margin, The Courtship of Winds and North Dakota Quarterly. She is currently working on a collection of semi-autobiographical poems based in the Major Arcana of the tarot, and she lives in Austin.

Photo by Matt Brown via a Creative Commons license.