Editor – Page 4 – Writers Resist

Incubator

By Bethany Bruno

You were twenty-four
when your brain went silent.
No dreams.
No waking.

But still they kept you warm
beneath the weight of wires,
your skin bathed in fluorescent blue,
your breath machine-fed.

Not for you.
For the small, curled possibility inside.
They called it life,
but what they meant was labor.

They turned your body
into a hushed room
without windows,
without voice.

A vessel.
A holding cell.
Your name was Adriana.
Say it aloud.
Adriana Smith.

Not “the mother.”
Not “the miracle.”
Not “the body.”

A woman.
A daughter.
Gone.

One pound, they said.
A child barely bigger than a fist,
lungs like damp paper,
skin still translucent.

And yet they carved her out of you
as if hope could be harvested
from a still-warm grave.

Only a flatline,
a hum in the room,
the smell of bleach and latex
masking what was taken.

This is what they do.
They drape it in reverence.
Call it holy.

But watch how they hollow you.
Make a mother
from a body
already gone,
then dress it up
as a gift.

To the women watching,
this is the cost.

They are counting your worth
in ounces,
in gestational time,
in how long your heart can be coaxed to beat
after you have stopped being.

Stay alive long enough
and you, too,
can be used.

Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author whose writing echoes the language, history, and quiet beauty of her home state. Born in Hollywood and raised in Port St. Lucie, she earned a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has been featured in over sixty literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, The MacGuffin, and The Louisville Review. When she’s not writing or chasing down forgotten corners of history, Bethany enjoys laughter-filled moments with her husband and silly daughters. Visit www.bethanybrunowriter.com for more.

Photo of a baby incubator created by Tampa Joey via a Creative Commons license.

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The Price of Standing Still

By Melissa Moschitto

Marianne went out for a walk in a smart men’s suit of houndstooth print, so they arrested her. A woman must not look too masculine, too modern, too severe. The arrest was meant to deter us, but it only tantalized. It was 1850 and there were those of us who wanted to wrench ourselves free of the corset and hoop skirt, those of us who were tired of being constrained by clothing and opinion. We had started wearing bloomers under our skirts. We merely wanted to ride bicycles without getting caught in the spokes, we said. Hemlines were raised by an inch or two. Half man, half woman! the men cried out after us in the streets, to those of us who dared to wear pantaloons. With our legs wrapped in voluminous fabric, we were indecent. You belong to neither sex! the men in the streets accused and they invented new names for us: inverts, she-males, hybrid species, public women.

A woman wandering in public without a predetermined path was not permitted. A woman wandering the streets was immoral. We were tired of the crunch of the corset, the sweat under the stays, the breath trapped in the chest, the permanent choke. At covert meetings, some of us used dolls to demonstrate how to wear modern underwear, helping women dress for freedom. “We must own ourselves under the law first,” said Frances Gage, and we believed her. We invented new names for ourselves: suffragists and women’s rights activists. Even if some of us weren’t brave enough to use those names, the fire had been lit.

It was 1872 and a woman had run for president. Ms. Victoria Woodhull’s defeat was bitterly recounted. Although some women insisted on forgetting, her loss followed us like vinegar. Most men laughed it off while dusting their hands on pant knees; they were privately worried, but publicly cavalier. They reminded themselves, relieved, that women could not vote.

It was 1874 and a woman took off on foot from Kansas City straight through to Sacramento, California, looking for her husband. With no other income but his, she was tracking him down, an act of pure need. Why not take the railroad, it being naturally faster? asked the reporters. I’m not stupid, she replied. Being cornered into the back seat of a car, a mouth smothered with a hand smelling of tobacco—those things happened on a train. We understood. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asserted that if women wore trousers, that would surely thwart criminal attacks. Let us walk, we insisted.

We were determined to be freed from the drawing room and the kitchen, the nursery and the wash. If we could not move with leisure, perhaps we could move as sport? A new breed emerged: the pedestrienne! Women started walking competitively around sawdust rings in stadiums. A track was the perfect solution: an endless loop to contain a woman! But we knew better. To walk on a track unencumbered by our daily burdens was not boring nor repetitive; rather, without insistent voices interrupting us with mundane queries, our thoughts belonged to ourselves. When it was suggested that we could not handle the physical toll of such exertion, we politely reminded them that we were well-accustomed to lugging baskets of food and buckets of water, balancing packages and carrying children, all against the constant ricochet of the hoop skirt. In fact, we had already walked the equivalent of Earth to Moon.

It was 1875 and Mademoiselle Lola arrived in New York City, sleek as a cat. Twisting across the sky, the trapeze artist dropped to the ground to walk in P.T. Barnum’s grand Roman Hippodrome. Under its vast tented ceiling and before rows upon rows of seats, Mademoiselle Lola was to race a man. Stretching by the side of the sawdust ring in blue breeches that cut off at the knee, her calves encased in blue striped stockings, she was quite aware of all the eyes set upon her. She nodded to us in her saucy little cap and flicked a riding whip as she prepared to compete. We smiled back, astonished and enamored. We imagined ourselves to be so confident. Despite starting thirty-one minutes after Mr. William E. Harding, it was Lola who crossed the finish line first.

It was 1876 and Chicago was the first city brave enough to host a six-day walking competition for women. Bertha Von Hillern and Mary Marshall were going to compete for a prize of five hundred dollars—more than a year’s salary. Now that was something worth walking for. The race was held at the Second Regiment Armory Building around an oval ten laps to the mile. Tickets were set at twenty-five cents. Organizers kept the price low, to ensure that the public would not be twice scandalized—once by the cost and again by the shock of women walking. But everyone from lawyers to mechanics were buying tickets. And everyone was placing bets. On January 31st, the petticoated pedestrians were off, kicking up sawdust as spectators gasped and gagged. By day two, blisters had appeared and the two women were numb from the cold. On Day three, the papers reported their breakfasts to breathless readers: rare steak, raw eggs, freshly squeezed lemon juice. On day four, with only twelve hours to go, the crowds grew to fill all three thousand seats, engulfing the stadium with a deafening roar. Endurance made it exciting and what else do women possess but endurance! Bertha and Mary vaulted ahead of each other, one mile at a time, looping in and out of ties. The crowds elbowed each other for a view, the police struggled to keep spectators off the track. After one hundred and thirty-two hours, Mary Marshall, in her costume of red, white, and blue, had won.

Several newspapers asserted that as soon as women were permitted to walk, the next thing we’d do was try to vote, a prediction which only made us walk faster. New York City considered an ordinance banning women walkers outright, lest we would have walked from the ring all the way to the ballot box. It failed. Sadie, Theresa, Flora and Ellen signed up straightaway, walking in Toledo, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Let them watch us, we thought, our feet pounding the dirt track, raising dust and hell.

It was 1879 and twenty-year old Exilda La Chapelle went to Madison Square Garden determined to win. At thirteen, she had begun her career as nighttime entertainment, sauntering through taverns and theaters. At fifteen, she took the only other choice available to her: marriage. By seventeen she was a mother; a year later was bereft, her son having died in infancy. All this she endured. But at the garden, after two hundred and seven miles, she suddenly stopped. It was not the pain that stilled her, nor the exhaustion, nor even the blisters on her feet which needed to be lanced and drained. What she could not abide was her husband, drunk in the stands and flirting with women spectators. What she could not abide were the insults, slurs, and abuse that he shouted. How much was a woman supposed to endure?

It was 1895 and we were going to walk right into the next century and get things started. The hard leather of our shoes cut into our feet, but we walked anyway. Anything to feel like we were going forward, progressing instead of retreating. Police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt permitted a woman to ride on horseback in Central Park! This must be proof, we thought, that something more was available to us.

It was 1912 and we left the sawdust circles to march up Fifth Avenue in white dresses, as if going to a picnic. Ten thousand of us had taken to the streets, demanding the vote. At the front was Mabel Lee astride a sinewy white horse. Mabel, who had moved from China to Chinatown at age nine, where she bloomed. Now at sixteen she wore the white stripe of the Suffragist sash, emblazoned with “Votes for Women!” Later that year, in the chill of autumn, we marched at night so that we could walk with the factory girls, maids and messengers, the working girls and tax-paying women. Linking arms, we lifted five thousand paper lanterns to dispel the darkness, fueling our steps with the insults, slurs, and abuse shouted from the sidelines.

It was 1917 and Fifth Avenue was filled only with the sound of feet on pavement, the sound of a slow-moving current of Black men and women walking in silence, bearing banners against brutality. Ten thousand heartbeats pounding against lynching.

It was 1920 and the newspapers were ablaze: the vote for women had been won! Not for all, but many. Imperfectly, we sought to unbind ourselves.

It was 1956 and in the early September sun, Sallie Edwards and Esther Wise and Lurline White dabbed the sweat from their foreheads with handkerchiefs. In nicely pressed skirts that came to the knee, they held their signs high, urging their brothers and sisters to Please, register to vote! Sallie and Esther and Lurline were well aware of which eyes would be on them. By not moving, by standing still, they spoke volumes.

It was 1972 and a woman had again run for president. Shirley Chisholm fought to unbind herself from womanhood’s expectations, only to be betrayed by those who claimed the same. Her loss hit us, sour and sharp like vinegar.

It was the end of the 20th century; we were elasticized and allowed to stretch. We held meetings, sitting in secret circles disguised as Tupperware parties and knitting clubs, schemes to set us free. We were thinking of what it would mean to own our own selves. But the old laws still corseted us to the past.

It is the 21st century and women are running their races across the nation, attired in menswear. They have tired of hearing that they should not appear too masculine, too modern, too severe. We join them in the streets, unconstrained and righteous, and when they lose, can you blame us for our fury? And when the century turns one quarter old, it is as if the track underneath us has turned from sawdust to quicksand. We are in a perpetual loop, yet we keep walking, keep enduring—anything to keep moving, forward.

Melissa Moschitto (she/her) is a fiction writer and an investigative theatre maker, lifting up feminist narratives to catalyze conversation and change. Her fiction has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, Macrame Literary Journal, and The Avalon Literary Review. She is the author of two published plays: Artemisia’s Intent and Give Us Bread. The mother of two dramatic children, she resides with her family in New York City. Visit her website at www.melissamoschitto.com.

Photograph of Lurline White, Sallie Edwards, Lulu Carter, Illa Buckner, Beulah Staton, Eddye Keaton Williams, Margaret Buford, Cathryn Williams, Esther Wise, Dola Miller II, and Frances M. Albrier of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Council of Negro Women, 1956, courtesy of The Smithsonian.

Louder than Silence

By Rabia Akhtar

I was raised in patriarchy.
Not an idea—
a weight.
It sat on my shoulders,
pressed into my lungs.
Silence was law.
Obedience—oxygen.

I cracked it open.
Spoke when I wasn’t meant to.
Walked where I wasn’t welcome.
Burned their script,
page by page.

Crossed borders,
thought the fight would end.
It didn’t.
It just got dressed up—
new clothes, better manners.

Racism at the table.
Sexism in a grin.
Bias wrapped in clean grammar.
Walls made of glass.
Chains you can’t see.

Intersectionality means this:
not one thing or another—
but the collision of all I am.
A name that signals faith I no longer claim,
a passport that shuts doors before I arrive,
brown skin at boardroom tables,
a woman’s voice in rooms built for men.

Each identity a thread,
woven tight,
patterns of exclusion
hidden in plain sight.
Carrying double the weight,
earning half the credit.
Always too much.
Never enough.

But listen.
I am not fragile.
Not a guest.
Not a mistake.

I am the crack in their system.
The fire they can’t contain.
The voice they wanted hushed—
still rising.
Still louder.
Louder than silence.

Rabia Akhtar is a human rights defender focusing on gender and identities in contexts of conflict and war, currently based in Singapore. Her poetry explores themes of identity, gender-based crimes, and resilience, drawing on her experiences as a woman of color navigating complex forms of belonging and exclusion while championing others’ rights. Her work seeks to give voice to stories often left untold.

Photo by Joe Yates on Unsplash.

Burn This Book

By Odette Kelada

When I first saw them outside our little suburban library, I thought it must be a festival or civic event. There was noise, movement, and chanting. It was only when they came closer to the windows, and I saw their faces. A man with a cap too small for his large forehead, eyes cramped under a high furrowed brow. Spittle came out of the stretched mouth of a woman next to him. The morphing of their expressions as they came into focus had the quality of a dream state. Slowly realising something is ugly. Not a festival after all.

A child was standing beneath the woman’s flailing fists, trying to avoid being knocked by the knees of the crowd. Knee height is vulnerable for kids in careless crowds of this kind. Despite all the care for children. This kid wore a navy striped dress and had the most blank expression I had seen on someone so young. She appeared totally detached, even from the woman who was likely her mother if one was to surmise from the shape of their chins and matching blonde razor cut bangs. Then I saw the child gaze through the glass, and I was sure she was looking straight at me. But there were so many books on the shelves that it was unlikely she would single me out. She was likely taking in the reflection of the flags and fury mirrored in the windows. Or perhaps, was watching somewhere else entirely. She looked a little familiar, perhaps one of those romping around the beanbags in the costume of a wood elf? That might be it.

The crowd bloated with more bodies as it travelled the path to our doors. We were locked today for some reason but that did not appear to stop them. They had almost come to the steps, and it dawned on me that locked doors might not stop them after all.

A short compact woman cut across the lawn and spliced in front of the crowd. She walked up the steps and stood facing out. Blocking the pathway to our library entrance, she adjusted her silver framed glasses and put her faux leather handbag down at her shoes. It appeared she was prepared to stay a while. To be honest, I had not noticed her much before this day. She tended to blend in her shades of grey and olive. A wall flower as they would dismissively describe such a woman. I suspect she usually made an art out of disappearing. An invisibility cloak of a sort, this ability to camouflage, ensuring eyes skim through and over one’s body. A handy trick. I did not expect this part-time librarian to be the one to stand up to much of anything. But here she was. One small boned and cardigan wrapped protector.

The crowd seemed bemused. This singular person was unexpected. To those that had bothered to notice her existence, she was a shy unassuming sort. They waited for her to speak. She said nothing while clearly obstructing their path. The abuse began. It started mildly enough.

“What do you think you’re doing Mzzz Parks?” Long drawn out hissing of MS to make the point she was an unmarried woman. Alone in this world. Unwanted apparently. Undefended.

“How much do we pay you to corrupt our children?”

“Filth and trash, that’s what you teach them now days.”

“No shame, no shame have you?”

“Who gave you the right. I’m their parent. I tell them what to think.”

As she stayed silent, the tone degraded with remarks on her character, to insulting her intelligence and then her figure. Soon she went from librarian to sinful whore. That slippery slope never takes much time to descend when cursing a woman. Highly unoriginal. Her calm was uncanny, no flinching, no wavering of her steady gaze through the thin lens of her spectacles.

It was infuriating to the crowd, the temerity—a taunt, a tease, a traitor.

In truth, they could have pushed past her with ease. She was hardly an obstacle of any significance. It was odd how they didn’t. How something in the way she stood, her complete ease and stillness so concrete and somehow infinite, stopped them.

As I began to fear for her safety, one by one the children came out from the crowd. The first was the navy striped girl. No longer detached but looking up at the librarian.

“Hello, Ms Parks.” As she came forward, her mother gasped and reached to grab her child’s elbow. Navy stripe slipped out of her grasp, elegant as an eel. Practiced in avoiding adults.

Then a boy with flushed cheeks, no older than ten squeezed out from the nest of knees to join them.

“Johnny, you come back here.” A hand grabbed air as Johnny weaved his way through the flanks.

And one by one, more children started to wriggle free. Not all succeeded, some were clamped shut under a sweaty palm on their heads. Others didn’t attempt to move but watched on like miniature mirrors of the righteous bigger version of themselves at their side.

“We’ll get you fired Parks,” Navy’s mother spat out. “Look what you’ve done to our kids.”

Chants of ‘shame’ began but soon died away. Something had shifted. Legs shuffled and they started to avert their eyes from the steady gaze of Ms Parks. To have their own offspring turn on them. Who predicted it had gone so far? It was a surprise manoeuvre they did not foresee. Now they knew without doubt, she had poisoned their tiny sacred minds.

“We’ll be back tomorrow.” Man with the small cap pointed his finger at Ms Parks. “And we’re bringing the school board.”

He had no child with him but that didn’t appear to dampen his fervour to save the children. “Tomorrow.”

Navy was at last caught by her mother who gave Ms Parks one final spray of invective. Humiliated as she was by her own flesh’n blood.

•

I had survived today but the future was grim if counting on the School Board. Strategic, hostile takeovers had left them stacked with Mothers for God, National Patriots and Friends of Freedom. Such beautiful names they had, stuffed with warmth and comfort.

As the crowd backed away from the steps and dissolved into the streets and chamomile lawns, the librarian picked up her handbag. She unlocked the library door, adjusted the “Everyone is Welcome Here” sign hanging directly facing the entrance, and walked across to the reading area festooned with rainbow posters. She sat for a long while, letting the colours wash over her.

•

The next day they returned. There was a meeting called in the school auditorium. The Board of Mothers, Patriots and Friends were a tight sorority, adept at killing dissent with their newly tweeted policies. The innocence of Johnnys and Navy Stripes gave licence to those searching for their god in an age of godlessness. They stalked one by one in front of the lectern as if their fantasies of life as an apex predator were now realised. Their time to shine.

•

Who knows who lit the fire? It was not an official book burning as one might imagine. No masses lobbing us into the flames. It was a discreet act of arson, as befitted this nice neighbourhood. But even as fire alarms screamed from the ceilings pockmarked with tape from the torn down rainbows, no one appeared to rush to our rescue. No fast response time. All I saw through the smoke was that small-boned figure. Witness to our banning and burning. A middle-aged part-time librarian. She was by nature a highly organised creature. After the crowd had left the day before, the printer churned out lists of our names and makers. Before her staff card was declined, she had combed our shelves and made sure every one of us was noted. Promising us in that quiet voice of a library, we were not so easy to destroy.

•

Now the heat simmers around me and the smell of wet smoking wood is getting stronger. Not much time left. Soon it will reach me and given how combustible I am, it will be over very quickly. What does it take to burn a book? What does a book have to do to get burned? How many people have I offended simply by existing?

The times when we books are the culprits are the times to fear the most. That is what books tell you. If you read us to learn something that is. But fear is not much into reading. Though fear does love a good tale to tell. And each time the tale gets taller. Libraries, the refuge for loners and introverts, are now the loci of evil. I had thought if I was innocuous enough, perhaps I might stay out of harm’s way. Eventually though, as the saying goes, they would come for me.

Would you want to hand me to your child? Well, that all depends on what you want your child to know and whose child we are talking about. And as happens in these moments, it becomes all about the children. Even from people who never gave a thought to a child, who can’t stand a child screaming in a café or blocking the isles in an epic tantrum as you reach for your multigrain seven seeds. Nothing fires up a conversation or a war like talking about the babies. If there is doubt or dissent, just repeat again and again the homespun recipe. Nothing so sweet, vulnerable and in need as our children. Not theirs so much. But definitely ours.

It is telling what makes humans scared. Anything that might transform and change. The alchemy of curiosity is the target. Anything that can open the mind into new spaces. This is the first time I personally have faced an angry mob. But as I have full access to the archives (as all books do), I know how many of us have burned before. The scenes cut into our collective memories. We float across language and time. We are far more powerful than even those who might love us realise. That is why even as I linger now on the line between paper and ashes, there is still a little hope. The stories of those that survived and fought, do not die silently. Our pile of burning letters is loud.

Southeast Elementary Inferno. Who would have thought this library would be so interesting? Usually, there are huddles on bean bags for story time. Sometimes with puppets. No cake though. No crumbs in the library. But there are board games, puzzles and crosswords. For those, too young or too tired for anything like literature. The choose your own adventures are having a resurgence. The current batch of kids like options. And having some agency in the stories they are told. Perhaps that is where this library went a little too far. Reading marathons and glittering gatherings to dress up as whatever character you might want to be. Windows of possibility. So much colour. A little too much colour…

This town was a neat town. Wide tree lined streets. Statues to great white men who conquered the place towering over our public spaces. Water fountains at handy distances. Considerate. Even drinking bowls for dogs placed outside wholefood cafes. I had travelled through a few libraries, and this was the most ordered and clipped lawn place I had seen. Maybe that should have been the clue that this was a place with so much to defend and protect. Nice places made for a certain kind of comfort are the ones to watch. The families swinging on the orange plastic recycled swings in the park, the ‘save the greyhounds’ stalls at the local farmers market, the lord’s prayer hung in a banner across the town hall. These are the signs to note when assessing what is real and what is buried in any place. This calm had that oceanic impermanence to it. Carefully curated and resting on so many bones. Polite society at its most fearsome. These are the thoughts that came up in the days before the fires began. Sweet scents of magnolia and star jasmine as the humid spring made everything steam. Floral tones to the smoke and cinder falling through the air.

I did not expect that in this age of internet, we would still be seen as having such importance. For a long time, I heard books are dead. It is the end of our era. Time over. But here we are. As dangerous as ever. Even as the heat starts to creep up my spine, there is a surprising satisfaction that we still apparently matter so much. So much human energy. Attention.

Author’s Note: This short fiction is inspired by the rising numbers of book bannings including a children’s story of Rosa Parks’ life, marginalised voices telling truths on critical facts such as race history, colonisation, and LGBTQI+ voices. A documentary, “The ABC’s of Book Banning,” in which children share their perspectives on these book bannings, and the censure of a teacher who refused to take down an “Everyone is Welcome Here” poster were also sources of inspiration. Emulating the U.S, this is now happening in Australia. We are infected by divisive politics, seeing riots at book shops and protests at schools and libraries, and storytelling events closing down, silencing those that have only recently been able to have a voice.

Dr. Odette Kelada is a Lecturer in Creative Writing and also teaches in Race Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has a PhD in literature on researching the lives of Australian women writers and the politics of nationhood. She facilitates racial literacy workshops for community and government organisations and has hosted numerous panels and presented conference papers on themes of feminism, the racial imaginary and creative activism. Her research and writing focuses on marginalised voices, gender and anti-racism, and has appeared in numerous publications including Overland, The Australian Cultural History Journal, Outskirts feminism journal, Postcolonial Studies, Hecate, Intercultural Studies and the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Her novel, Drawing Sybylla: the real and imagined lives of Australian women writers, won the Dorothy Hewett Award in 2017. It spans a century and imagines women fighting oppressive forces to have their voices heard.

Photo by Phil Venditti, via a Creative Commons license, of a political cartoon by Clay Bennet

Welcome to Writers Resist the Fall 2025 Issue

With autumn upon us, many have been on the streets peacefully rioting against the man who would be king and keeping the intersections clear, while many others have been waxing wonderful, proclaiming our right to say mean stuff about others and hold board seats in our regional Antifa chapters, treading in the anti-fascist footprints of such heroes as Raoul Wallenberg, Maj. Charity Adams Early, Col. Jose Arturo Castellanos Contreras, Lt. Susan Ahn Cuddy, PFC. Thomas Begay, Col. Oveta Culp Hobby, and many, many more.

Apologies for the long sentence—wanted to get in as many digs and kudos as possible.

More immediate kudos to the writers and artists who’ve contributed their resistance to this issue. We are honored to share their creations with our readers.

But first, a special welcome to our new poetry editor, Candice Louisa Daquin. She brings extraordinary experience, passion and heart to Writers Resist, and we are equally honored to have her join our little tribe.

I am very grateful to Kit-Bacon Gressitt, my co-poetry editor Debbie Hall and all at Writers Resist, for the opportunity to join their team. I have long known Writers Resist as a necessary site of literary activism and resistance, with many of the writers I have worked with over the years being published through Writers Resist, which continues to be a platform for dissension, outrage and truth. My goals in the literary world align closely with those at Writers Resist and my respect for these activists runs deep. I’m honored to contribute anything I can bring to the table, to help support and continue the original mission the organization began with.

My background working in activism, both personally and professionally, is one of the ways I can be a useful editor to a diverse activist publication. Aside from working as a trauma-therapist in the trenches, including many crisis centers and with immigrants like myself, I have also worked in activism in publishing. When I went back to publishing, I deliberately avoided the experiences I had before, working for blue-chip companies that were often the problem, not the solution. I started at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press, whose goal from the outset was activism, spreading awareness and representation of underrepresented minority and erased voices. We published many anthologies and stand-alone-authors on subjects like: #BlackLivesMatter and institutionalized racism and prejudice; #me too, rape culture and the lack of equity for survivors; the disadvantages of uneven wealth distribution and growing up in poverty or experiencing poverty due to racism, sexism or migration; an outcry against the imperialism of politics and the lack of justice for those outside the elite minority who rule; invisible illness; anti-LGBTQIA+ histories, and mental health disparity.

I work to support and promote others in gaining equality and equity. That’s why I love editing. I can promote work people need to experience, to help highlight previously erased or ignored voices, having direct personal experience of how damaging this can be. Writers Resist shines a literary light passionately, and I’m really honored to be part of such a dedicated team. Personally, I can say, I have already learned so much and hope to be a useful addition to an incredible group of people who seek to be part of the ongoing resistance against tyranny.

Thank you,
Candice Louisa Daquin

Now, enjoy our Fall 2025 Issue!

And, join us for the issue’s virtual reading, Saturday 18 October at 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Email WritersResist@gmail.com for the login.

Two Poems by Margaret Bleichman

Refugees by Leah Mueller

Ancient Alien Tour by Wendy Vidlak

Photography by M.R. Mandell

Divertissement by Candice M. Kelsey

Week One by Christine Junge

The Ministry of Truth by Tara Campbell

The Revolution Will Wear Sneakers by Sabyasachi Roy

Two Poems by Maryam, Illustrated by Narwan

I’m Afraid There’s Something Wrong with Mr. Prescott by Ron Burch

They Tell Us by Dawn Tasaka Steffler

Nope by Alina Zollfrank

Now Your True Life Begins by Claudia Wair

The Moment by Zoey Knowlton

Mad Libs Drinking Game by Anna Kiggins

Mask Gleaners by Donald Patten

The Heron by Sam Rafferty

Equality: In Memoriam by Joani Reese

Worry by Malavika Rajesh

What True Crime Podcasts Have Taught Me by Esha Khimji

Gathering by Maureen Kane

Two Poems by Margaret Bleichman

A Fresh Take on Historic Integrity

Boone Hall Plantation and partnering architects
are proud to share that the Cotton Gin House

built in the 1850s for cotton processing

will keep its original brick exterior
to maintain its historic integrity

but will be completely renovated inside

The remodeled Cotton Gin House features
a new visitor center, gift shop, event space

a museum highlighting centuries of history
The finished product will add

to the continued history of Boone Hall

Boone Hall Historic Gin House
newly restored, a fresh take on history
provides any event a timeless backdrop

With views overlooking award-winning gardens

The Gin House, perfectly perched

in the center of the action of Boone Hall

Perfect for a party of 80 with sit down

up to 100 standing

We require an insurance policy

$1,000,000 worth of general liability

Take the Boone Hall experience to the next level

Or: How to White-Wash History

the corporate descendants of Boone Hall enslavers
where enslaved labor toiled to enrich Charleston County
with thousands of bricks made by unpaid enslaved hands
as we are the original experts of polite façade
according to our unassailable definition of integrity
we’ve removed inconvenient and unpleasant reminders

ghosts of kidnapped Africans and their children
to earn a generous profit on our “Lost Cause” mythology
designed for the comfort of the white visitor
daily and continuing violations to centuries of harm
and ensure the continued erasure of Black history

a house of deprivation, starvation and violence
as the actual history is too much of a downer
perfect for revisionist “Tara” fantasies

where barefoot children picked cotton dawn to dusk
like spiked iron collars placed upon enslaved shoulders
that was slapping, kicking, punching and whipping

on newly polished floors covering blood-stained ground
for a true fake experience, stand 14 hours without break
much as our forebears insured their human property
tho’ we accept no accountability for our past brutality
help us help you put as many levels as possible

between Boone Hall and its true history

Note: The left column contains direct quotes from local news and Boone Hall Plantation websites.

Etymology of the Erased

with deep respect to the Nipmuc Nation

Nipmuc: nippe– ‘fresh water’, amaug– ‘fish taken by the hook’   ̶  Algonquian
            Fresh water people flourish
            call Nippenet home for twelve thousand years
            cherish the lion, black birch and white pine

            thank Manitoo for abundant waters
            for largemouth bass and rainbow trout
            and pray for all living creatures

reservare: ‘to keep back’   ̶  Latin
            Wash ashores seep inland, ghostly,
            convert forest to property
            extinguish the lion

            convert Nipmuc people to Christian
            ‘Praying Indians’ (pray or die)
            then enslave or slaughter them, anyway

            and imprison the rest on Deer Island, Boston
            no water, no food, no shelter, in winter
            Few survive, some escape

Quaben: ‘place where many waters meet’   ̶  Nipmuc
            Snow-melt rivers tumble down
            a ring of mountainsides, sustain
            a fertile valley, fill a modest lake

            Boston dwellers thirst for more, claim the basin
            as their own, dam the rivers, flood and drown
            settler farms and four whole towns a hundred miles away

Qunnonoo: ‘mountain lion’ ̶  Nipmuc
            Fresh qunnonoo scat confirms
            Dakota lion’s eastward trek
            from Black Hills to the Quabbin rim

Waban: ‘the wind, the spirit’; a Nipmuc elder of the 1600’s; a suburb of Boston ̶  Nipmuc
            Mystery figure glides long and low
            through Waban yards, and lopes
            past bikes and sand toys, sleek and muscled

            its three-foot black-tipped tail
            distinctive in the pre-dawn mist
            cub or prey dangling from its jaws

Margaret Bleichman is an emerging poet, queer activist and educator with writing in, or forthcoming in, Gyroscope Review, Poets Reading the News, Kitchen Table Quarterly, Fifth Wheel, Fauxmoir, The Dewdrop, and Between Us. Their poetry has won awards in two Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry contests. A software engineer and professor, they helped establish LGBTQ+ health benefits and STEM programs to engage underrepresented students.

“Erased” by Rob Williams via a Creative Commons license.

Refugees

By Leah Mueller

for Basel Adra

Each morning, he awakens
to the same gunfire, the same pain.

He sees the enemy’s
implacable face: square body
bundled into a gray flak vest,
weapon clutched inside an outstretched glove.
His home once more reduced to rubble.

He moves his possessions
to a different structure,
and then to another, each
more remedial than the last.

Water is scarce, food almost nonexistent.
Loaf of bread, spoonful of white rice.
Sometimes, a few vegetables.

The young eat first.
Parents devour whatever remains.

Elders know when airstrikes are coming,
sense the impact deep within their bones.
Still, they laugh. They nap. They play with the children.
They cover their wounds with strips of cloth.

Each afternoon, he hits the road:
trudging through dust, demanding freedom
that he may never live to see.
Townspeople cluster around him, chanting
as they clutch handmade signs.

Their slogans dream of a home
where Palestinians belong at last—
a land that lies right in front of them,
and yet seems as distant as sleep.

Leah Mueller’s work is published in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. One of her short stories appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her fourteenth book, Stealing Buddha was published by Anxiety Press in 2024. Website: www.leahmueller.org.

Photograph by Dale Spencer via a Creative Commons license.

Ancient Alien Tour

By Wendy Vidlak

The tour guide wears a freshly starched uniform of a popular blue zhongshan. She quickly assembles the group and starts the presentation from outside the building.

“The 10th wonder of the ancient world is a 663-foot tower made of windows and a gold-colored metal. At one time, a giant sign with the name ‘Trump’ sat on top of the building. Found in what used to be the East Coast of the North American continent, is now in the country known as 那些被貪婪征服的人.[1]

“Trump, once known as a god to his people, led with complete authority and deconstructed the government at the time with another fabled archangel named Musk. Together they sought to build a nation separated from the world at large, led by the corporate elite.”

A man in the group shuffles then raises his hand.

“Yes, you have a question?”

A well-dressed man in his late forties asks, “What do you mean by a corporation?”

“Excellent question. In ancient times, instead of robots and computers that do most of the work for us as a community, they had an organization made up of senior officials and many working slaves. There were many corporations that focused on certain areas of development. For example, one type of corporation made food out of chemicals. We have since outlawed many of the items they used to put in food because unfortunately many were carcinogenic. Chemicals combined with the aggressiveness of the humans of the time, led to very short lifespans found around the continent.”

The tourists looked askance at each other not believing what they just heard.

“In this glass case, you will find an ancient pin artifact. The remains of the red, white and blue enamel wore off with time. However, next to the artifact is a replica picture of what we believe it used to look like. Frequently found in the burials from that time, we believe they used to worship this symbol as a physical representation of their god. Providing it in the burial coffin allowed them to seek heaven in the afterlife. They believed in an afterlife where only the chosen few found the reward of monetary riches beyond their dreams.”

A young girl wearing a tradition qipao with amazing embroidery of flowers raises her hand.

“Yes, young lady?”

“What is ‘monetary’?”

“Ah yes, relating to money. Money was an ancient system based on metal and paper that they would trade for goods. You can find some good replicas down the hall to the left.”

“You mean they had to trade for things? The robots did not give you what you need when you need it?”

“There were only very primitive robots with the most advanced being used by the military for war. The helpful robots we depend on every day were only getting a start at the end of the United States era.”

The tour guide leads the group to a spot on the far wall.

“Over here is a gold encased body. We believe this is the ancient ruler named Trump. We think he wanted to live forever in the afterlife. The myth at the time said covering your body in gold was the easiest way to make it to heaven. There were many others at the time that followed suit. From the ancient texts we have recovered, this religion believed gold was the ultimate resource, followed closely by an artificial contrivance by the name of cryptocurrency. We are not sure what cryptocurrency was, but it occurs a lot in ancient texts surrounding this period. We know some people used it to purchase goods and others simply reacted to it when it went up and down in value. Apparently, it was a tool the supposed god of Trump used to keep people in line and control emotional states.”

The guide points to the wall above the golden body.

“Up above the gold body, you can see a tile mural of the orange man the people worshiped. According to ancient alien theorists, he was not really a god, but an alien. Sent from another planet to infiltrate humanity. Unfortunately, the aliens, being color blind, got his coloring a bit off. The primitive people at the time accepted him as an actual human sent by god, regardless of his skin color. We believe they felt orange was the very best color possible. There were hierarchies based on skin color at the time and people’s place in society was based on that color. Now many conventional archaeologists disagree with this assertion and thought it was just a case of weird cosmetics that were popular back then. I will let you guys decide who was right.”

The young girl pipes up, “How could they not understand skin color of all kinds is beautiful? It makes the world an interesting place to live.”

“They were a primitive people. They viewed oppression as progress.”

[1] Those who are conquered by greed

Wendy Vidlak is a writer from the land of lakes who enjoys exploring the great outdoors and hopes to continue to breathe outside as long as possible. She has previously published in the White Bear Press and has an upcoming short story in the Galactic Mindsea Empire Anthology.

Illustration created by AI.

Photography by M.R. Mandell

Upper photograph: “America”

Lower photograph: “Bus Stop”

M.R. Mandell is a poet based in Los Angeles. You can find her words in SWWIM, The McNeese Review, HAD, Writers Resist, and others. She is the author of two chapbooks, “Don’t Worry About Me” (Bottlecap Press) and “The Last Girl” (Finishing Line Press). She is a 2024 Pushcart nominee.

Divertissement

By Candice M. Kelsey

I run the country and the world. –Donald Trump

Not only able to make guards bend
to her will, she also brings Creon slow madness
with one swoop of her wand. A seduction
at the end of Act IV from Charpentier’s opera,
triumphant scene from Eurpides’ Medea
where royal henchmen fall to a woman, powerful
and no longer pleading. Creon’s loyal guards
transformed into female dancers seizing the king, Médée
premiered in Paris as trials for witchcraft
raged across the Atlantic. On stage, the actress
makes a costume change, slips off her gown and stands
in Sorceress black, hair and make-up primed
for vengeance. More enchantment than distraction.
A banished woman never loses everything,
but dark waters of the Styx always betray a king.

Candice M. Kelsey (she/her) is a poet and educator living in both L.A. and Georgia. She’s developed a taste for life’s absurd glow, long skirts, and juicy opera podcasts. She roasts vegetables like it’s a sacred ritual and wears mostly black because her late father-in-law said it’s not her color. Somehow her work has received Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominations, and she woke up one day as the author of eight books. Please acknowledge her existence @Feed_Me_Poetry or www.candicemkelseypoet.com.

Photo by Chema via a Creative Commons license.

Week One

By Christine Junge

A rally the night before the inauguration is “laced with exaggerations and outright falsehoods.”*

I come home from a weekend away to find water leaking out the side of our house. Inside, water is pooling beneath the dishwasher. One more thing that’s falling apart.

An executive order instructs the government to end birthright citizenship. This constitutionally protected right says that children who are born on U.S. soil are citizens, even if their parents are not. The order is an attempt to rewrite our country’s founding document. I can only assume it won’t be the last.

I get a massage. Even though they have been prescribed to me for chronic pain, spa services feel indulgent at the best of times. Now? I spend the whole time thinking about the Mexican-American family I used to volunteer with. I have no idea about their immigration status.

How one of the police officers attacked on January sixth describes the pardoning of 1,600 January 6 rioters: “A miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy.”*

My four-year-old son gets sent home from school with a fever. I have to cancel my doctor’s appointment, a lunch with a dear friend, my writing time, and the hour I would have spent scouring various newspapers and listening to NPR. Maybe this last piece isn’t a bad thing? I’m exhausted. It’s still day one.

“Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, now has full command of the federal cost-cutting effort, which Mr. Trump has hailed as ‘potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.’”*

A handyman diagnoses our dishwasher leak as a faulty valve. Turns out the part is on backorder for months. A few weeks ago, I would have complained about this inconvenience. Now, I research McCarthyism, Nixon.

“Federal workers ordered to report on colleagues over D.E.I. crackdown.”*

I come to enjoy washing dishes, the warm water on my hands, the smell of soap, the ping of the water as it drips out of the drainboard into the sink. I guess I can get used to anything. Well, hopefully not.

“Even more than in his first term, President Trump has mounted a fundamental challenge to the norms and expectations of what a president can and should do. . . He intends to test the outer limits of what he can get away with.”*

I get trained to teach ESL. When I signed up, it felt like it would be a rewarding volunteer project. Now, doing something, anything, to help others feels urgent.

“No matter how small, quiet, or private the expression, art can move the needle in fighting for our collective freedom.”*

I read about art as resistance. I write this poem.

*Quoted from the New York Times

Christine Junge is a writer living in California, by way of Massachusetts and New York. She is currently working on a novel about grief, art, and the question of how well we really know those we love.

Photo credit: Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash.

The Ministry of Truth

By Tara Campbell

The Ministry says it’s no joke: today
I broke the law. I was too woke today.

They claim I denigrated our great land.
Its sacred trust is what I broke today.

They feel it would be harmful to allow
my words to reach the common folk today.

They say I poked too roughly at our nation’s
history, fragile as a yolk today.

My only crime was pointing out the flames:
the Constitution’s up in smoke today.

Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She teaches flash and speculative fiction, and is the author of two novels, two hybrid collections, and two short story collections. Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles (SFWP), was a finalist for the 2025 Philip K. Dick Award, and listed in Reactor Magazine’s “Best Books of 2024” and Locus and SFWA’s Recommended Reading.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk via a Creative Commons license.

The Revolution Will Wear Sneakers

By Sabyasachi Roy

they said revolution
would thunder in cavalry boots—
epic, unmissable, majestic.

we’ll come instead in well-worn sneakers,
laces neon against cracked pavement,
soles worn skinny from marching
every forgotten block.

our plans won’t fit in tidy briefs—
they’ll be scrawled on café napkins,
between kombucha sips and sideways glances,
doodles of fists, flowers, flame.

we’ll scent the barricades with jasmine,
our battle-cries a rising laughter
that shatters the sleep of tyrants.

they’ll wait for cannon fire—
we’ll greet them with tomorrow’s dawn
in shoes built for the long haul,
ready to outwalk their fear.

this is how we win:
one bold step, one shared grin,
one sneaker-stamp echo
that outlasts their thunder.

Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Matador here and his photography and paintings here.

Photo credit: Jason Tester via a Creative Common license

Two Poems by Maryam, Illustrated by Narwan

More Than a Thousand Days Without School

For the last time,I heard my school’s ring,
the melody that runs us toward growth.
For the last time, I sat in its chair,
the chair that helps me achieve my goals.
For the last time, I travelled by my teacher’s teaching
to discover the wonders of the earth and the sky.
For the last time, I sang on its stage,
for freedom and peace.

Since then, I’ve been caged in four walls of my home,
for more than a thousand days.
I gaze at my school’s uniform
hanging on my bed,
not putting it in the closet,
hoping one day I could go to school.
I remember the last day
at my school.
Everyone congratulated me for upgrading to 7th grade.
My scores shone on my result sheet,
but my eyes had blood crying.
Instead of being happy and celebrating my upgrade,
I mourned for it, wished to be failed,
so, one more time, I could go to the dream world.
The monsters had banned the dreams
for girls beyond the sixth grade.

They could close the doors of dreams,
but not those of my mind.
They are frightened of my pen,
because it’s stronger than their guns.
My pen is my weapon
against their guns.

Dear World, Dear Humans, Why Are You Silent?

We are collapsing in the unfairness of their ignorance.
We are locked in the cage of their selfishness.
They bury us while we are alive.
We are dying under the stone of their torture.
Our wings are clipped, our pens are broken,
our freedom is lost, our dreams are burnt. . .
In the quiet stillness, the world watches our gradual death.

Dear world, could you hear our plea?
Could you tell me where human rights are?
Or are we the exceptions to that?
Dear world, is it too much we ask for?
Our classroom symbolized our hope,
the blackboard, the chalk that whispers our dreams
Our uniform: black dress and white scarf that express our piety.
Dear humans, is it too much we ask for?
To not clip our wings, not break our pens?
To not bury, to live; is it too much we ask for?
Dear world, dear humans, why are you silent?

Maryam is a young Afghan poet and writer who weaves words into resistance. Her voice rises from a land where silence is survival, yet she dares to speak of lost childhoods, of girls without schools, of the unheard. Through her poetry, Maryam carries grief and hope, and creates light where darkness insists.

Narwan, creator of “Girls Not Permitted,” is a 13-year-old Afghan artist who speaks through her pencil what many cannot say out loud. Her drawing reflects hidden pains, quiet strength, resilience, and unshakable dreams of girls in a world that silences them. With simple lines, she tells powerful stories.

I’m Afraid There’s Something Wrong with Mr. Prescott

By Ron Burch

He started wearing 18^th century clothing, donning a coat, waistcoat, and breeches. The breeches, with buttons down the side, went over his silk stockings. His shoes were rounded at the toes with low heels, the tongues fastened with large buckles. He had adopted a long riding duster that cut low past his knees, and around his shoulders sat a triple cape. Ruffles of lace appeared from under his coat at his wrists, along with a jabot on the front of his white shirt. Adorning his wrinkled head, for Mr. Prescott was in his 70s and bald, perched a powdered white wig, the back bound in a pigtail. On top of that, when he ventured out he wore a round-crown felt hat with a broad brim. In his right hand, he carried a heavy ornate cane, which he shook at people when he was annoyed.

He also sold his car and purchased a large brown horse and saddle. He stabled the stallion in his garage against the HOA rules for our neighborhood, a suburb built in the 1960s, and his adjoining neighbor threatened to call the city and complain.

Mr. Prescott waved his cane at Gary, promising to thrash him.

Several of the neighbors were annoyed because his horse, which he named Privilege, had shit all over the streets where the kids usually played, and it was, honestly, everywhere.

Last Saturday, while our neighbor Dr. Lowry mowed his front yard, Mr. Prescott emerged from his house, wig intact but with no coat or waist coat, and demanded the doctor, a person of color, mow Prescott’s yard and repaint his house “as was his duty.”

Luckily, I was able to intercede before Dr. Lowry—beloved neighbor, well-known heart surgeon, and former college football line tackle—physically removed Mr. Prescott from his front yard. At the next HOA meeting, a petition signed by almost all the homeowners was submitted requesting that the Prescotts move out of our neighborhood due to the inappropriate behavior with Dr. Lowry. From the back of the room, Mr. Prescott stood, in full regalia, and accused the rest of us of “TYRANNY!” and ignorant of “the natural order of the world.”

After he stormed out—attempting to break a chair on the way, but being plastic, it only bounced—the HOA approached Dr. Doris Hinshaw, the therapist who lived the next block over, and offered to pay for her for a session with Mr. Prescott. Dr. Hinshaw declined saying that last week Prescott verbally assaulted her as a “whore and slattern” because she was not covering her head while at the grocery store and was not accompanied by a male guardian.

Mr. Prescott filed a lawsuit against our suburban community, Wind Hollows, claiming that since he was one of the original and still living purchasers of land in our neighborhood, the suburb belonged to him, “given his God-given right as a white male in our country.” His lawsuit also stated that the rest of us, his neighbors, were really his indentured servants who should be working the land at his behest, and he added two sheep to his garage barn.

The sheep took to wandering the neighborhood. They ate Mrs. Jenkins’s roses, and when she said she was going to sue him, Mr. Prescott threatened to have stocks built at the empty corner of Solace Street and Happy Drive to incarcerate her for public shame.

After Mr. Prescott rode Privilege to work (his office building is only a few blocks away where he is an accountant), my wife, Polly, visited Mrs. Prescott, who had been notably absent from the goings-on. She had been reduced to wearing a bodice and skirt with wooden clogs and her gray hair powdered white and covered by a cloth. Forced by her husband to give up her job—she had been the manager of our local library branch—she now gardened and fretting how poorly their plants were coming up. Even more worrisome, her husband expected her to turn their sheep into dinner courses.

Polly said Mrs. Prescott cried almost the entire visit, and my wife noticed that the tears washed away her white make-up, revealing a large bruise on her face, which she claimed an accident from walking into a door. She offered Polly some homemade jelly Mr. Prescott insisted she make from berries he’d found near their pool. When Mrs. Prescott could not name the type of berries, Polly politely passed and returned home.

Concerned about Mrs. Prescott’s safety, she called the police who came out but didn’t do anything, even after all the complaints, the threats Mr. Prescott had made, his wandering farm animals, and the concern that his mental faculties might be impaired. They said he was probably having a bad couple of weeks, and, even with Mrs. Prescott’s bruise, they declined to take any action.

Things were quiet for about a week. Mr. Prescott wasn’t seen riding Privilege to the office, and all the horse shit on the street was old. Then one night after supper, there was a tremendous crash outside, which brought out all the neighbors. Mr. Prescott’s horse had kicked his way out of the closed garage, breaking the door, freeing both him and the sheep. We discovered that the animals had no food or water as evidenced by the three of them simultaneously drinking out of Mrs. Jenkins’s birdbath. It was decided to try the authorities again, and the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Prescott were discovered at their dining table, the remnants of Mrs. Prescott’s half-eaten berry jelly staining both their dinner plates and their stiff mouths.

The house sold to a nice family, after the Prescott’s kids removed everything except the historical clothing—put out front with the garbage.

Ron Burch’s fiction has been published in numerous literary journals including South Dakota Review, Fiction International, Mississippi Review, and New Flash Fiction, and it has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other awards. His last novel, JDP, was published by BlazeVOX Books. He earned his MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.

Photo credit: Photo by Shahabudin Ibragimov on Unsplash.

They Tell Us

By Dawn Tasaka Steffler

I

Wait until buyer’s remorse sets in
Wait until it hurts the farmers
Until it hurts the veterans
Until the social security checks stop coming
Until they take away birthright citizenship
Until they take away freedom of speech
Until they take away the vote from women
Until another pandemic rears its head and hundreds of thousands die again

Whispers circulate
But what if we don’t want to wait?
Where are the protests?
What are we so afraid of?

Actually we are very afraid
We only act brave

They tell us we are the sleeping bear
And you know what they say
You don’t want to poke a sleeping bear

And one of us asks in a clear young voice
Why don’t we want to poke the bear?
If we wake the sleeping bear won’t the nightmare end?
Everyone nods their heads in agreement

They tell us
No, we’re going to roll over and play dead

Wait, are we a sleeping bear or a dead bear?

III

They tell us wait until the midterms
If they want to hang themselves give them plenty of rope
Don’t stand in the way of the process

Perplexed we look to our left and our right
to the person standing next to us

One of us whispers
I don’t think they know what they’re doing
This has never happened before

Ah- but it has
another one of us whispers
Just not here

Dawn Tasaka Steffler (she/her) is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and was selected for both the 2024 Wigleaf Top 50 long list and 2025 Best Small Fictions. Her stories appear in Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, The Forge, JMWW, and more. She is working on a novella-in-flash that explores the challenges and joys of parenting queer kids. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com and on X, BlueSky and Instagram @dawnsteffler.

Photo credit: Ged Carroll via a Creative Commons license.

NOPE

By Alina Zollfrank

I’m an app balker. Proof?
            You can do this on your cell phone,
eager salespeople soothe
                        and I, I refuse –
            Just check in on your screen,
the medical clinic suggests
            and I, I walk right in and demand
                        the eye contact that’s owed –
            It’s easy to transfer funds this way,
pesters my credit union,
            and I, I stash wadded cash
            to the tune of no one –
                        But that’s how we do attendance,
school staff bristle
            and I ink-scribble my autograph –

My rebel smile so wide
I can taste the earwax.

The willful ocean wave has one job to do
and so do I. An orca in a clownfish-
schooled sea. An app balker in this,
this land of feigned connect – I forge
communion. Drummed lone morse code
washes away the unnecessary –

My smacking flukes d/i/s/r/u/p/t

Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. She believes artists and writers are humanity’s true pulse, social media might just kill our essence, and produce should be shared with neighbors. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize and recently appeared in Orchards Poetry Journal, Heimat Review, SAND, Eastern Iowa Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Comstock Review, The Braided Way, and others. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.

Photo credit: Amit Gupta via a Creative Commons license.

Now Your True Life Begins

By Claudia Wair

It’s dark early morning when they take you out of your cell at the county jail. They lead you to a waiting bus, full of other prisoners. The detainees are all Black, like you. Everyone here has been charged with the same crime: taking a white man’s job.

The people on the bus are quiet. Some sleep, others stare with frightened eyes out the windows. Your destination is the State Re-education Camp.

At your trial, you argued that your job as a writer was unique. No white man could write the same words. But the judge laughed and said, Your words don’t matter. Then he banned your books, made you watch as they burned.

It’s late morning when you arrive at the camp and the sun is already hot on your skin. The guards separate the women from the men. You join the line of women and are led to a bunkhouse that smells of old sweat. When the guards leave, everyone introduces themselves: doctors, lawyers, college professors. You feel insignificant with your master’s degree in English literature. When it’s your turn, you say I’m a writer. They burned my books, scrubbed me from the internet. The women shake their heads, suck their teeth in sympathy.

Silence descends when your Instructor enters, a white woman with a cruel sneer. Forget your past lives, she says. Now, your true lives begin. The lives you should have always led.

You’re told that here you will learn to be subservient to white people. That you will learn to love serving them. You know this isn’t true.

During the months of your incarceration, you endure beatings, forced labor, sleep deprivation. You survive it all. Not everyone does.

They humiliate you. They try to make you believe you are less.

They fail.

One day, without explanation, they release you to a halfway house in a strange city. You vow to never lift a finger to serve them. This will lead to prison—or worse—so you run.

You pass yourself off as an Unemployable. You sleep in a hard-to-find corner of an abandoned building, get donations of food and supplies from church basements. You trade secondhand clothes for basic survival gear. You buy information with fresh fruit. Then you set off for the mountains.

You’re chasing whispers and rumors. You follow hand-drawn maps. You stop at secret safehouses, get help from unlikely sources.

By some miracle, you evade the Race Police and the Nazi militias. A Black truck driver stops along the highway and gives you a ride out of the state. You could both go to prison for this. He accepts the risk and muses about following you one day.

After weeks of hiking in the mountains alone, you find the Free People. Your joy at seeing healthy Black and brown faces nearly breaks you. After you recover from your journey, you join the others growing food on the community’s farm. You teach the children using banned literature and history books.

Soon, you are almost yourself again.

The Free People remember your writing. They give you pen and paper and ask you to tell your story. You tell your story. You tell all the stories. One day, you swear, the world will read them.

The community is growing. White allies bring supplies when they can. Clothes, tools, guns.

You learn how to defend your new home. Cradling your rifle, you scan the shadowy forest for intruders. You wonder how you’d acquit yourself if faced with the people who deny your humanity. The people who tried to break you. The people who took your old life away.

A grim smile crosses your face. Because you know what you’ve lost. Because you know what the world has lost.

Your jaw tightens, your blood burns, and part of you aches for the chance to make someone pay. You are fueled by rage and sorrow and just enough hope to keep going. Enough to aim the rifle and pull the trigger.

Claudia Wair is a Black writer living in Virginia. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Astrolabe, Writers Resist, JMWW, and elsewhere. She can be found at claudiawair.com or on Bluesky @CWTellsTales.bsky.social.

Mural by Ashley Cathey, at Hartford Hall, Jefferson Technical and Community College, Louisville, Kentucky.

Photo credit: Don Sniegowski via a Creative Commons license.

The Moment

By Zoey Knowlton

I followed you to your car
he says
To tell you that I think you’re hot
beautiful
he corrects

A stammer of thanks

Inside, I am
            beaming
            validated female
            affirmed trans woman

Later, the what if
            creeps,
      slinking through
                        the euphoria

What if
            he hurt
            he grabbed
            he         persisted

I tell my story to
            a room full of
                        women
They nod, understanding
            too well

Welcome to us
            to the sisterhood
            to femininity
            to existence

Zoey Knowlton (she/her) is a transgender author who lives amidst the redwoods in the Pacific Northwest. By day, she is a Health Educator who works with at-risk teenagers and young adults. By night, she reads, she writes, and she spends time with her wife and children. As a woman in recovery and transitioning, Zoey enjoys exploring the themes of change, progress, and uncertainty in her writing.

Photo credit: Photo by Nicolas Spehler on Unsplash.

Mad Libs Drinking Game

By Anna Kiggins

Game rules: replace nouns with alcoholic beverages in Trump’s infamous January 6th speech à la the classic children’s game.

Media will not show the magnitude
of this Kentucky bourbon. Even I
when I turned today, I looked, and I
saw thousands of Kentucky bourbons
here. But you don’t see hundreds of thousands
of Kentucky bourbons behind you because
they don’t want to show that!

All of us here today do not want to see
our moonshine stolen by emboldened radical left
Democrats, which is what they’re doing.
And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done
and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never
concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede
when there’s moonshine involved.

We will not let them silence
your old fashioned. We’re not
going to let it happen, I’m
not going to let it happen.
(Audience chants: “fight for old fashioned!”)

We’re gathered together in the heart
of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic
and simple reason: to save our Moscow mules.
We want to go back and we want to get this right
because we’re going to have somebody in there
that should not be in there and our Moscow mules
will be destroyed and we’re not going to stand for that!

The weak whiskey, and that’s it. I really believe it.
I think I’m going to use the term, the weak whiskey.
You’ve got a lot of them. And you got a lot of great ones.
But you got a lot of weak ones.

And then late in the evening
or early in the morning, boom
these explosions of hot toddies!
And all of a sudden,
all of a sudden it started
to happen.
(Audience chants: “hot toddies!”)

And you know what else?
We don’t have a free and fair gimlet.
Our gimlet is not free,
it’s not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech
and it’s become the enemy of the people.
It’s the biggest problem we have in this country.

And after this, we’re going to walk down,
and I’ll be there with you,
we’re going to walk down,
we’re going to walk down

because you’ll never take back our White Russians
with weakness. You have to show strength,
and you have to be strong.

I’d fight, they’d fight. Pop pop. You’d believe me,
you’d believe them. Margaritas come out.
You know, margaritas had their point of view,
I had my point of view, but you’d have
an argument.

I now realize how good it was
if you go back ten years, I realized
how good, even though I didn’t necessarily love
them, I realized how good.
It was like a cleansing shot of Everclear, right?

You will have an illegitimate screwdriver.
That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.

With your help over the last four years,
we built the greatest mint julep in the history
of our country and nobody even challenges that.

And again, most people would stand there
at 9 o’clock in the evening and say
I want to thank you very much,
and they go off
to some other life.
But I said something’s wrong here,
something is really wrong,

and we fight—we fight like hell.
And if you don’t fight like hell,
you’re not going to have tequila sunrises anymore.

I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless
sex on the beach.

Anna Kiggins writes poems, essays, and hybrid works. She recently earned an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. Her poetry can be found in Puerto del Sol, The Basilisk Tree, AvantAppalachia, and The Brussels Review. Her reviews can be found in The Hollins Critic. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and works in behavioral health.

Photo credit: Steven Miller via a Creative Commons license.