Editor – Page 3 – Writers Resist

Fog of War

By Laura Buxbaum

I’ve been in a fog before – sailing ghostly quiet,
listening for the buoy’s clang, blowing
a feeble horn to warn the ferry or the lobsterman
our small vessel is near, please don’t hurt us.

Brain fog, too – what’s the word I’m looking for? Who
are you, do I know you, did our children
go to school together? Did we make music once?
Did we go to bed together years ago?

Icy sea smoke. Dense cloud my headlights
barely pierce. Fog on a mountaintop, blue
sky on the other side. Gray-white sea through
which the blind and miraculous airplane passes.

We motored up Eggemoggin Reach through
swirling ribbons, wisps like birds or spirits.
We said there must be a thousand words
for fog, for its varied shapes and colors.

Sometimes the mists fooled us, making
distance seem closer or sounds farther
away. Never were we so confused
that we might mistake a drowning sailor

for our enemy. Never did we
sink a boat
then blow up
all of the survivors.

Laura Buxbaum (she/her) is a re-emerging poet in her sixties, living in Maine. Her pursuits include raising goats, making cheese, making music, and running on local trails. Her poems can be seen in Thimble Lit, Rat’s Ass Review, Brawl, Verse-Virtual, and Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine. Her poetry explores themes of family, loss, love, and nature. Lately, she’s working to find her sharper edges and explore ways to confront the chaos and darkness we all face.

Photo credit: Fakhri Baghirov via a Creative Commons license.

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How to Ignite Polite Fires

By Em Arata-Berkel

WARNING!
Only burn on a level, fire-resistant surface.
Burn with an extinguisher in sight.
Keep away from flammable objects.
Keep away from children, open windows, or heavily trafficked areas.

BURNING INSTRUCTIONS
Acknowledge the aspirations of a long wick, then
trim to a quarter inch before lighting.
Savor the experience.
Enjoy notes of smoke, wet concrete, pepper spray,
and what you—the rugged individual
must do to fix this.

REMEMBER!
Keep wax free of any foreign materials, which
may generate more fuel than your bell jar can handle.
Do not burn more than four hours at a time.
Cool at least two hours before lighting again.
Stop use when only a finger’s width of wax remains, then

tell yourself you know what it means to ignite trashcan bonfires, raise a barricade, hold a line, pour water into a stranger’s burning eyes, and fourteen hours later, pass along your new friend’s red vine moonshine while feeding stale corn puffs to a blaze fused with a screaming watercolor dawn.

Em Arata-Berkel is an emerging poet who’s taken root in the Pacific Northwest. They earn coin by untangling taxonomies and are seldom without a cuppa something. Their poetry can be found in the award-winning anthology I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State and the digital Washington State Queer Poetry Anthology. Find them online at erratawrites.bsky.social.

Photo credit: Filipp Romanovski via a Creative Commons license.

In the Unlikely Event

By Rebecca Watkins

“I need to buy a bat and a tourniquet,” I say to my husband as I set my bag and keys down.

“What?” he asks frowning.

I’ve just come home from a conference day, which in the education system means a day when students stay home, and teachers attend professional development. Normally, I am not a fan. Normally, PD involves learning more acronyms and the latest jargon. Today, however, it felt worthwhile.

“Oh, we had a shooter training. One of the police officers said we should buy a baseball bat for protection and a tourniquet too because most people die from bleeding out,” I explain.

I don’t realize at first that my husband is horrified. Then I see anger flash across his face; his eyes narrow as he asks, “Is the school going to buy you a bat and first aid kit for your classroom?”

“Of course not,” I laugh, “I’ll buy it.”
According to The Washington Post, since Columbine in 1999, there have been 435 school shootings in the United States, and 398,000 students have experienced some form of gun violence at school. You could fill Madison Square Garden to capacity twenty times with that number.
The school is empty of students and quiet except for the sound of teachers filing out of the auditorium. We have just watched an FBI video reenactment of a shooter in a restaurant. I noticed there weren’t any children in this video. They didn’t want to traumatize us, I think later. But as I watched it, my stomach was in knots and my hands clenched hard at my sides. The dead bodies weren’t real, but the taste of fear in my mouth is.
We’ve divided into groups of twenty; my group is on the first floor in the Science Department. Unlike the first few years of school shootings, we are seasoned and know you don’t just hide. You have choices: the Active Shooter Protocol is now Run, Hide, or Fight.

Don’t panic, a handsome young officer is saying. If you freeze, push through, and take action. It is unlikely an active shooter situation will happen. But you must be prepared if it does.

Do you know where the exits are?

We all nod our heads and point to them.

Learn them all and practice leaving by different ones.
It is unlikely this will happen.

Any given day at any school, there are 2 to 3 security guards and then hallways full of classrooms with open doors. The officer is telling us once we lock our doors, a shooter isn’t going to try to break them down. But just in case, look around for how we might barricade the door, look around for what we might be able to use as a weapon should a shooter get in. We begin listing the items: books, trophies, chairs.

It’s ideal to have a bat and go for the head. Don’t hesitate, the young officer is now telling us.Get a good first aid kit with a tourniquet and learn how to use it. If you don’t have one, use a belt.
The AR-15 semi-automatic is dubbed America’s rifle by the NRA and can fire 30 to 100 bullets in rapid succession. The police officer tells us, It’s about body count. That’s why mass shooters will use semi-automatic rifles.
An AR 15 style rifle was used at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018. At the time, I taught at an urban high school. We were reading a modern telling of Hamlet, and those who were paying attention and reading along felt a kinship with the young protagonist. He had come back home to death and betrayal. Life didn’t turn out how he expected, and these teens understood this better than most.

I looked at the clock. My students would be walking out soon. A 17-minute nation-wide protest for the seventeen people, fourteen students and three staff, killed a month ago. I had been instructed to continue teaching, so I stood on the scuffed linoleum floor and watched my students, the majority Black and Latino, stand up and walk out. Most of them already knew what it was like to fight for their lives. This was just the first time they got to acknowledge it publicly.
In May of 2022, nineteen students and two teachers were massacred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012 when twenty children and six staff were killed. Uvalde, another place like Parkland or Sandy Hook whose name will become synonymous with children being murdered.
A few days after the shooting in Uvalde, I watched on the news as they showed a recording from that day at Robb Elementary of police officers hiding in a hallway. Some even ran away while children were being gunned down in the classrooms. I felt more rage and grief than my body could hold. Without speaking to my husband, I walked out into the rain, barefoot, waiting for my heartbeat to slow down, waiting for tears that never came. I stifled a scream, one that still burns my throat. As a teacher, it is expected that I will put my body in front of my students when the bullets come. And I will, but on that video, the trained officers ran.
After our active shooter training, I shop online for first aid kits. I spend hours reading the reviews. That night, I don’t have dreams, or if I do, I don’t remember them. Maybe I am clutching a wooden bat, the texture unfamiliar in my hand, as I swing at an intruder. Maybe I’m messing up a tourniquet. Maybe someone’s bleeding out on my classroom floor.
As I write this the most recent school shooting in the United States was thirteen days ago.

Rebecca Watkins holds an MFA in poetry and an MSed from the City University of New York. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Ginosko Literary Journal, the Quartet Journal, Hole in the Head Review, the Amethyst Review and the Amaranth Journal among other literary journals. Her creative nonfiction has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards. She is the author of Field Guide to Forgiveness (Finishing Line Press 2023) and Sometimes, in These Places (Unsolicited Press 2017). More of her work can be found at rebeccawatkinswriter.com.

Photo credit: John Gateley via a Creative Commons license.

While Europe Was Burning by Tytti Heikkinen

Artist’s Statement

The creation of this work was influenced by the changed situation in Europe. It was hard to believe that a war could still break out here in the 2020s. All of that was supposed to be over, history was not meant to repeat itself anymore. The fact that it did is still difficult to believe.

Another reason behind the image was the tightening grip of rightwing political and conservative views, which from time to time rear their heads. Fortunately, at the same time, a more liberal world is also being celebrated in the colors of the rainbow. From all this emerged a vision of Classical statues coming to life, who, even in the midst of a burning Europe, focus on what truly matters to them: the encounter between two people, the desire to learn the other completely, and to share one’s life through its twists and turns. Love can make even statues move.

The figures in the image are able to block out the graffiti-stained school assembly hall, a symbol of European cultural heritage, now falling into decay, and the flames blazing through the windows, because even in the midst of fear they are willing to focus on each other.

Dance is an activity that requires both the will and the ability to act together. That is why it is such an important symbol to me. Sometimes, when I watch traditional ballroom dance, I get tears in my eyes, because partner dancing is such a powerful and beautiful art form, regardless of its rhythm.

These Classical figures are dancing traditional Argentine tango. The posture shown in the image is an authentic dance position of the genre.

Tytti Heikkinen (she/her) is a Finnish visual artist working across photography, painting, and digital media. Based in Finland, she has exhibited internationally, with work appearing in Amsterdam Review, Arkana, and Ex-Puritan, among others.

Someone Will Be Right With You

By Laura Grace Weldon

Even the book I bring is not enough
to keep me from watching the man tasked
with patient intake. He may be new to the job
or simply struggle with what’s required to
cope in a time when everyone seems angry.

Whatever mysterious power transfers emotion
is at work when I sign in at his window.
I feel myself gulp and stammer too,
his hurried keystrokes through my fingers,
his forehead sheen on my face.

The name he wears on a lanyard
is turned around and I’m glad
the angry woman across from him now
can’t use it to slice her fury
farther inside with the hissing words

we hear from our seats.
“I’m sorry” he repeats,
mantra of all of us who displease
the world’s scolders, mockers, ragers.
He finally manages what she demands,

hands over her papers
with a deference no one deserves.
I’m called up next and
notice the soft hairs at his neck,
his half smile shrug when I sympathize.

As he leans over to grab a page
from the copier I see the name
on the other side of his ID. I will not
share it in this poem as a kindness,
the only protection I can offer him.

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books.

Photo credit: Allan Rostron via a Creative Commons license.

Fruit Flies

By Deborrah Corr

They drone around the now browned bananas
I forgot to eat when they were fresh and yellow.

Air-born things with wings too tiny
to be seen, black dots that can’t

be snatched from the air or smashed
against the window, out of which I can see

the Trump flag flying from a house
down the street. I stood on a corner

last week with different neighbors,
rubbing elbows as we held up signs,

corralling our fears into a swarm of resistance.
Not so many of us on the sidewalk that day.

Just a few fruit flies, persistent, annoying,
doing what it takes to point out decay.

Deborrah Corr is the author of the chapbook Naked Rib (Finishing Line Press). A former kindergarten teacher, she decided upon retirement to dedicate her time to the art and craft of poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals and anthologies, including The Penn Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Booth, Verse Daily, The McNeese Review, Catamaran and many others. Deborrah lives in Seattle where she is inspired by gardening and morning walks with her husband. You can find her website at https://deborrahcorr.com/.

Photo credit: California Department of Fruit and Agriculture.

No Quarter

By Julie Gard

My partner and I attended a memorial service in small-town Wisconsin, and there were grayscale American flags all around us, on the hats and t-shirts of serious young men. I am familiar with the thin blue line flag, and of course the Confederate flag. But most popular now, among a crowd that isn’t mine, is this black and gray one stitched on caps and backpacks, printed on t-shirts, and pressed against pick-up truck windows.

I picture all the colors in the silky assortment of LGBTQ+ flags that young people wear like capes as I weave among them at Pride, the red orange yellow green blue purple black brown gray pink lavender mashups, and then this flag that is an X-ray, a drained-out opposite. It looks as if the American flag has rotted underwater for months in silty soil. It looks like something dug up, soaked in ink, seen faintly in the dark. It looks like lost hope.

A little online research reveals that the black and gray flag means “take no prisoners.” No quarter—no lodging—will be provided to one’s enemies They will be killed rather than held captive. According to one merchant’s website, “The phrase ‘give no quarter’ has origins as far back as the 17th century. Our shirts run a little small and are athletic fit, so if you are in-between sizes or are unsure, please order up a size.”

On Reddit, worthlesmeatbag says, “For me, it means ‘I’ll kill you if you fuck around,’” and a sub-comment reads, “I have one in my front yard. Agreed.” Someone else says to chill, that dark flags are tactical flags that identify nationality without drawing attention during combat. Anonymous describes them as “right wing, civil war coming” flags. One poster thinks they’re more stylish than the traditional red, white and blue, which look “dorky and old-fashioned because they’re so primary and bright.” Sabertooth2 agrees it’s a style choice, and also that it means if you fight, you’ll fight “until one side is completely dead.”

As we milled around at the funeral home, a man with a washed-out grayscale flag down the whole front of his t-shirt held his baby gently. He passed out tissues from a big, soft packet, including the one I cried into. After the service, my partner and I wandered down the block and into an open church. We moved among empty pews and stared up at art deco saints awash in luminescent smears of silver and pink, their bodies ending in teal and purple shoes. In the huge front window, sky blue glass was shot with light and increasingly translucent as the panes ascended, creating a sense of height and movement. By the door was a cross of red plastic roses for Mary, next to a small donation box.

Across the street was another church, smaller but with a three-story tower and double front door. Every inch of this church had been painted matte black, except for the stone foundation, and its windows covered with boards. It was a negative of a church, above ground but buried, like a church after a fire. A couple of well-used but gleaming motorcycles were parked out front, next to a leafy, raised-bed vegetable garden. People gathered there, it struck me, not to praise but to prepare.

On the drive home, collapsing barns hoisted defiant, homemade banners. There are signs going up all around us. We need to know what they mean.

Julie Gard’s prose poetry collection I Think I Know You was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book Award in Poetry, and Home Studies won the New Rivers Press Many Voices Project Competition. Julie’s essays, stories, and poems have appeared in Axion, Clackamas Literary Review, Superstition Review, Blackbox Manifold, Inside Higher Ed, and other journals and anthologies. She lives and writes in Duluth, Minnesota and is Professor of Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Visit her website at www.juliegard.com.

Photo credit: Debbie Hall, poet, photographer, author and Writers Resist editor.

Two Poems by Erin Vaughn

Birthday

Yesterday at school,
a boy touched himself in front of you
his eyes unfocused
as if he was there and not there.
He looked right through you
and then your body was not your own.

Today you turned eleven
and shrieked through a throng of friends
who threw their arms around you
as you opened all your presents.
I wanted to cry because
I don’t know how to tell you
that this will happen again: men
will see you and not see you
over and over
and it takes a lot of light
to blow out all the candles
and still burn.

Things to Bring to the Protest

Bring your phone, locked.
Granola bar. ID.
A vial of your mother’s tears
and the sharp grey stone of your rage.
Bring all the joy you can find. Ball it up
in your hands like a fist.
Gather the shreds of your compassion
from where they’ve scattered about the house–
between the pages of books,
pots on the stove–and stuff your pockets.
Bring bandages and balm,
the small sleeping sounds of your brother’s
new baby, the wounded
song in your heart and the world it has lost.
These, together, are heavy.
Do not worry, beloved;
many hands lift here.

Erin Vaughn (she/her) is a poet and educator who writes in order to understand what it means to live freely—whether in a body, a family, or a country. She lives in Maryland with her husband, young daughter, and two dogs. Her poetry has been previously published in The Basilisk Tree.

Photo credit: Jenni Konrad via a Creative Commons license

Dear Colleague:

By Shannon Frost Greenstein

Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. – U.S. Department of Education, Dear Colleague Letter: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in Light of Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard (Feb. 14, 2025).

What we mean when we start with “Dear Colleague,”
has nothing whatsoever to do with respect;
what we mean when we start with “Dear Colleague”
is that some shit is about to go down.

“Dear Colleague” is how we impugn women and blame survivors;
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter on Sexual Violence,’) (April 4, 2011)
“Dear Colleague” is how we sacrifice our young at the altar of capitalism.
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) in Title IV Aid Programs’) (March 1, 1995)

“Dear Colleague” is how we orchestrate perpetual recidivism;
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: Eligibility of Confined or Incarcerated Individuals to Receive Pell Grants’) (March 29. 2023)
“Dear Colleague” is how we exert control over the most vulnerable.
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: Updated waivers and modifications of statutory and regulatory provisions governing the FSA Programs’) (Sept. 27, 2012)

“Dear Colleague” is what you hear before we start stripping away your rights;
“Dear Colleague” is the façade of civility under the quiet veil of fascism.
“Dear Colleague” is intended to sound like we are all equals;
But “Dear Colleague” is just another way to say you must follow orders.

Now “Dear Colleague” is instructing us all
to forget the fundamental racism
that vivisects our nation like a blade;
to ignore that capitalism started on the plantation,
and that all Americans do not share the same civil rights.

“Dear Colleague” is a map
along this slippery slope to dystopia,
a world removed from its humanity
and unmoored from objective truth.

And whenever the government strays from its ethical duty
to cultivate an informed, compassionate populace,
you can bet your ass a “Dear Colleague” letter
preceded that shift like a soothsayer.

But at least the U.S. Dept. of Education
has not yet attempted to interfere
with the dangerous technology
that steals from our artists and replaces our art;
at least they are leaving counterculture alone.

What’s that?

The U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: Request for Information on Researcher and Educator Use Cases for the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (Nov. 15, 2024)?

Well, shit.

Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides near Philadelphia with her family and cats. She is the author of Through the Lens of Time (2026), a fiction collection with Thirty West Publishing, and These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things (2022), a book of poetry from Really Serious Lit. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Pithead Chapel, Nimrod Journal, and elsewhere. Shannon’s passions include Friedrich Nietzsche, anti-racism, the Seven Summits, the Hamilton Soundtrack, and acquiring more cats. Find her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com. Follow her on Bluesky @shannonfrostgre and Instagram @zarathustra_speaks.

Photo Credit: Mizuno K via a Creative Commons license.

To the League of Extraordinary Ladies

By Sarah Gane Burton

What we need now
is a woman who can tell a good story
one of those to-be-continued tales
that stretches night after night
distracting the megalomaniac
from his modus operandi
of chaos and destruction.

Send us Shahrazad
a fabled beauty telling fables
avoiding fatality
taming madness
with imagination and poise
and a bedtime story
for an overgrown man-child.

If Shahrazad is unavailable
we will settle for any of the other
indomitable women willing to deal
with our President/Dictator/Emperor
(at their discretion, of course). We might suggest
Jael, Cleopatra, Boudica, Joan. Some wise and charming
woman who knows how to wield a tent peg.

Sarah Gane Burton is a freelance writer living in Michigan with her husband, two children, and a dog. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Medical Literary Messenger, Third Wednesday, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and the South Carolina Review. She enjoys botanical gardens, thrift stores, and looking at other people’s bookshelves.

Photo credit: alameen .ng via a Creative Commons license.

They Forget

By Mandy Prell

Mandy Prell investigates the female body, sexuality, motherhood, marriage, and faith through a feminist lens. She holds a Master of Science in Education from Johns Hopkins and an IndieMFA in Advanced Poetry through Writing Workshops. Mandy lives with her daughters, spouse, and cats in a historic, haunted town in Kentucky where she works to promote educational equity.

Her poetry has appeared in Gathered Words, a Scotia Roads Books anthology, Gnashing Teeth Publishing zines and anthologies, and on Paragraph Planet. Upcoming poems will appear in Ink in Thirds, The Bloomin’ Onion, and Rawhead. Visit her website and follow her on Instagram @mandyprell.

Photo credit: Eden Kefale via a Creative Commons license.

Something So Small

By Phebe Jewell

You didn’t think twice after dropping me into the ballot box outside the library. You were busy, and I was one more item to check off your list. Return books, vote, and then on to the grocery store for a dozen eggs and a head of lettuce.

Still, I hope you felt something, a shiver as the present bent back to the past and into the future.

We’ve met before, many times. The first, waiting in line at the VFW Hall with your mother before she tugged you into a booth, pulling the curtain behind both of you. She took her time, putting on glasses, reading the ballot with the quiet attention you only saw when she played the piano after dinner. The last time, you voted in person while your son ate a donut shared by poll watchers before you walked out together into the wet November morning. Holding hands, his fingers dusted with sugar, yours tacky from unpeeling the “I Voted!” sticker before placing it on your coat.

This time, sliding me into the slot, you didn’t know it was the last time. It wasn’t a major election, like president or governor. A school levy, funding for public housing.

I fell into the box, landing on top of hundreds of other ballots before being picked up and loaded into a van by election workers. One of them whistled as he hoisted the bin up on his shoulder. The other ballots called to each other, arguing about policy and expenditures. I drifted, soothed by the debate. My favorite part of any election, so many voices jumbled together in messy piles before the counting.

But your vote will never be tallied. No one’s will, no matter which oval they filled in. The Leader declares that no one needs to vote anymore. The country will be better off if no one disagrees. You have been freed of the burden of choice, the Leader says in front of cameras, face flushed, eyes narrowed. No need to waste time or energy on something so small as a ballot.

The new military police have been ordered to destroy all ballots. For weeks we wait on shelves in warehouses. None of us know when it’ll be our turn. As we wait to be shoveled into the incinerator, we share our stories. Your stories. I learn about the single mom in Pittsburgh working two jobs, scared the rent will go up again. The imam from Detroit welcoming new members. The Portland couple staring in wonder at their newborn. I talk about you and your son, who just voted for the first time. And the last. Already the heat curls my edges.

Phebe Jewell’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in Bright Flash Literary Review, Does It Have Pockets?, SoFloPoJo, BULL, and elsewhere. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers with the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, an abolitionist nonprofit providing college courses and degrees for incarcerated students in Washington State.

Photo credit: Philip Chapman-Bell via a Creative Commons license.

The Janus of Freedom

By D. Edgar Cook

We rallied for freedom:
Freedom to speak, freedom to worship,
Freedom to read, freedom to assemble.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

We rallied for freedom:
Freedom to print the truth to power.
Freedom from unreasonable seizure.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

A nation was born.
An election was held.

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to squelch individual liberty,
Freedom to assign truth to captivity.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to down the forest green,
Freedom to drill in the wilderness pristine.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to govern by decree,
Freedom the governed to ignore.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to sludge the rivers clear.
Freedom to foul our breathing air.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to let the unqualified rule.
Freedom to the immigrants be cruel.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

For what freedoms must we rally?
For what freedoms will the bell ring?
As a nation we began in search of freedoms.
As a nation will we die by new freedoms found?
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

D. Edgar Cook is an occasional writer of poems and short fiction who tends to probe the present and future from unexpected perspectives. His work appears in recent editions of the Central Oregon Writers Guild Literary Collection.

Photo credit: Roman Janus coin by Andrew McCabe via a Creative Commons license.

To those out there with hope

By Catherine Zickgraf

keep doing that.
Take candles into the thicket.
Take lighters, make sparks.

Elder statesmen tell us to hope
but can’t promise we’ll survive
to the other side of destruction.

They see broadly,
standing above the wild, staring
down through the tangled mess.
I don’t see a way out
but want to trust they can.

Here in the war of worlds,
an axis lured us with fentanyl
and sold us back the ruins.
It was easy to stir bigotry,
turning us on each other.

But I, without hope,
pass on this message.
Don’t hide and pray it stops.
Our descendants need to know
we burned the plantations down
and didn’t surrender.

May we preserve the books that warned us.
They foresaw, we all did.
If you voted for it, admit and own it.

May there be history books in the future.
May they record that we tried.
Our Republic won’t die in silence.

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. You can find her work in Pank, Deep Water Literary Journal, and 7th-Circle Pyrite. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published by Kelsay Books. Find her socially in Bluesky and watch and read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com.

Photo Credit: Rapha Wilde on Unsplash.

Winter in Certain American Cities

By Alina Zollfrank

To reduce this season to snapshots, headshots, gunshots
does not do them—what was that word again?—
justice. Did (just-) abandon (-ice)?

What makes for cold truth?
Folded donut cartons?
Warm cups of something sweet?
Snow mounts, decorative and defensive?
Does a candle vigil, a prayer poem, an obit
mean we combine
(just-) again with (-ice)?

“It’s just ice,” my kids said when I worried
they might slip. Massive boots, fluffy scarves,
mittens collided in our safe, safe street.
Gingerly, gingerly I stepped outside. Sudden
giggle burbles rose when my arms took flight.
My heart, remembering childhood’s glitter magic,
flitted on skidding soles.
“Just ice?”—no, this winter was so much more.

Let’s rejoice, neighbors, rejoice.
Joy on slippery slope
becomes our shield in the face of weather.

Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has won the DIAJ Award and been nominated repeatedly for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. She has more upcoming in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Thimble, Reckon Review, and Sunlight Press. Alina is a grateful recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Grant, committed disability advocate, and hapless but hopeful gardener.

Photo credit: Cecilie Bomstad on Unsplash

Unbroken

A Poem by Karen Crawford

There was a dream
a welcome
a torch
a flame
A yearning to breathe free
Now a mask of men in unmarked cars
willing to bend an arm
a knee
There’s a mission
should they choose to accept it
A price
should they choose to collect it
There’s a feast at a Mexican restaurant
after dinner they’ll raid it
There’s news coverage
there’s pressure
Without fear
Without favor?
Opinions first
Alternative facts later?
Snow
Whistles
Bounties?
Saviors
Where are you from?
Show me your papers
There’s a sweep
a goal
a quota
a spin
The worst of the worst
code for color of skin
Does it feel Pretti Good to commit cardinal sin?
Snap tackle pop
Tase for the win
Where’s your nurse at
your gardener
your nanny
your cook?
Going going gone
by hook or by crook
Their status unprotected
Greener pathways rejected
This land is not made for you
Just me
Maria
last seen at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary
Miguel
last seen in the parking lot of Home Depot
Yolanda
last seen Living Más at Taco Bell
Jose
last seen running from La Migra
Maria
Miguel
Yolanda
Jose
Say their names wear it out
Maria
Miguel
Yolanda
Jose
May God shed grace on thee
Maria
Miguel
Yolanda
Jose
Unbroken in the land of dreams

Karen Crawford is a writer, with Puerto Rican roots, who lives and writes in the City of Angels. Her work has been included in Best Microfiction 2025, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, The Citron Review and elsewhere. You can find her on X @KarenCrawford_ and Bluesky @karenc.bsky.social.

Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution

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.

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.