By Wells Burgess Deep in the South, men gather. First among equals, the Kingfish, upstage, and it is only he whose face you see; his minions – that includes me, Markie – have their backs to you. The Boss plays solitaire; the cards slap the table. “Markie,” he says, where we gon’ put that road?” [...]
By Elizabeth Shack Last September, we hiked the forest beside the fog-drenched sea. Followed a swift stream bridged with salmon spawning, returning from gray Pacific homes. Switchbacked beside a waterfall sparkling down steep granite. Emerged into sunlight with a view of lichen-painted rock and the blue-white ice that once sculpted this verdant valley. Is still [...]
By Nikki Blakely It is a universal truth that a man of good fortune must be in want of a wife, and Jayne set her sights on Edward, despite his reputation for being of a most disagreeable character. On their first date, they went to Possum Pond. Jayne had always been told the way to [...]
By Bex Hainsworth A nymph unburdened by beauty is a nightmare. My barnacle flesh scratches against stone as I curl up in my cave, full of octopus cunning; folding many limbs around myself, cruel, content. This was Circe’s gift: to make me a monster, a maneater. The distant roar of Charybdis rocks me to an [...]
By Ada Ardére We give them our children to fight in jungles and deserts, we give them our taxes to pave their roads, we give them our land to build their businesses, we give them our coasts to moor their battleships, we give them our waters to test nuclear weapons, and we have received nothing. [...]
TW: SA By Frances Koziar He speaks of his reputation while I think of fates worse than death, his name, when I would gladly give up mine for a good night’s sleep, to see those nightmares shaped like ordinary men slain before their groping hands reach me; he speaks of having a life ruined, not [...]
Join us on Saturday 28 January at 5:00 pm Pacific for a virtual reading by the contributing creators of the December 2022 issue of Writers Resist. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88356614245?pwd=a1FRMndJYzI3VzE1Ym9yZUU2ODhHdz09 Meeting ID: 883 5661 4245 Passcode: 247349 Read the current issue here. Contributors include: Christina Bagni Lisa Brand Tara Campbell Jacqueline Jules Karen Kilcup Livvy Krakower [...]
In case you didn't know Writers Resist celebrates each quarterly issue with a virtual reading, and you are invited to join us for this issue's gathering. Writers Resist Reads • Saturday 28 January 2023 • 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC Zoom information: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88356614245?pwd=a1FRMndJYzI3VzE1Ym9yZUU2ODhHdz09 Meeting ID: 883 5661 4245 Passcode: 247349 In the meantime, we know the world is [...]
By Christina Bagni after William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the ice box and which you were probably relying on forever Forgive me you didn’t deserve them they were always mine to take Forgive me but the icebox was always meant to be empty it came that way and that’s [...]
By Jacqueline Jules “Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.” —The North Wind and the Sun, Aesop The woman seated next to me on the plane, sees the star around my neck and begins asking questions. How can I be happy without eating ham? she wants to know. Or [...]
Black Listopia I feel like an idiom that drips from Baldwin’s pen “that” angry Black woman negotiating sin I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO! A thing to be had Thick lips, curvaceous hips, or a fashion fad You can’t set me like diamonds Or string me like pearls Pick on my afro, then appropriate my curls I [...]
By the Maenad There are four children playing on the playground below my office window. (The same one that was the target of a drive-by shooting a few weeks ago.) I heard the recognizable sounds of a familiar script being shouted and went to my window. No cops but The four children down there are [...]
By Tara Campbell The uterus is tired. The uterus is sorry but it can’t seem to stay in one place anymore, which isn’t surprising considering how often it’s been poked and prodded and pricked by congressmen’s pens. The uterus would like to get in a word of its own, just one, even edgewise just one [...]
By Yvonne Patterson bookended with blood, The Reaving Era births in the conflagration of Origin Crusades, subjugates the populace and banishes science, ending in funeral pyres of anti-pogrom riots: The Reclamation Years. closing scenes, unlike the exuberance of symphonic finales, manifest in discordant notes. bright allegros falter. sonorous glissades collapse in coarse staccato. dark notation [...]
By Karen Kilcup How do they do it— lift a heavy head and place the bomb beneath an ear? Slide the metal disc under a shoulder or thigh? Or worse: do they slice the swollen long-dead chest, flies fluttering, the stink unbearable, nearly? Do they carve a red-rimmed cavity large enough to implant the device, [...]
