Welcome to the Writers Resist Juneteenth and Biden-Harris First 150 Days Issue In this issue we celebrate, resist, and envision better things, along with pronouncing some serious condemnation when warranted. But before you plunge into the issue, please consider these Juneteenth resources: "What Is Juneteenth?" by Henry Louis Gates, The Root, 2013 "Making Juneteenth Great Again: [...]
By Lea Page The photograph: Vice-President Kamala Harris (let’s just say that one more time: Vice-President Kamala Harris)—a woman, a brown woman, a black woman, an Asian-American woman, a woman born of immigrants, a powerful woman, a fierce woman, a joyful woman—swears in a man whose husband—partner, third-gentleman (?), the love of the man’s life, [...]
Thoughts on walking by rippling grey water under a darkened sky In the days before stretch marks, second husbands, morning stiffness, encore careers. In the days when we couldn’t imagine finding weed and condoms secreted under our teenagers’ beds. Or knowing the location of every hidden bathroom in innumerable coffee shops, Whole Foods, Farmers’ Markets. [...]
By Jesse Mavro Diamond For LGBT Rights Activist Dick Leitsch Carpenters, bankers, bricklayers, undertakers. Why gay bars? Because we could only be gay In gay bars. The N.Y. State Liquor Authority CEO: no discrimination in bars. Why? because bars had the right to refuse customers not acting suitably. Therefore, disorderly. Bankers, bricklayers, undertakers, carpenters. [...]
By Sarah Sheppeck "I want to hear all of you.” "Do I have to tell it in order?" "However you’d like." She takes a cigarette, lights it, hands me the pack. "The only condition is that you have to tell it all." “Okay.” I exhale a thick plume of smoke. “All right. Here goes.” • [...]
By Sherry Stuart Berman when they are ants world is colony is home is superorganism single-file, no ears they feel vibrations with their feet rely on scent for instruction they are trash-handlers, excavators, swarm when called to and when their king corrupts their wings and rots the wood and steals their eggs they carry him [...]
By Suzanne O’Connell The past four years have been like having a dad who sells all the furniture while I sleep, breaks the windows over the sink, throws out my stuffed bunny and lava lamp, then promises to take me to the Ferris wheel. He’s so loveable, until he isn’t. Like when he shoves me, [...]
by conney d. williams the hope of this people, like tectonics, quake under the abusive weight of impostors sitting upon its collective breath still engulfed in protest dissenting to comply with its own extinction and these impostors or parasites would pillage even the safety from victims even as they disintegrated in obscurity human waste inside [...]
By Pat Andrus For Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, George Floyd, seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones, Eric Garner, Dante Parker, Atatiana Jefferson, ninety-two-year-old Kathryn Johnston . . . A broken baton a dead rat 5 jailers with guns. How the life loses its state of pure being. How a bone breaks and one rose falls. [...]
By D.A. Gray “Embrace diversity. Unite — Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed By those that see you as prey. Embrace diversity or be destroyed.” ― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower The light works for now. We’re stopped at an intersection beside the Walgreens and its half-full parking lot, safely in our lanes, [...]
By Marleen S. Barr "I thought the Donald would evaporate in a poof of orange smoke, ending a supremely screwed-up period of history. But the loudest mouth is not shutting up. And Republicans continue to listen, clinging to the idea that the dinosaur is the future." – Maureen Dowd, New York Times, May 9, 2021 [...]
By Joyce Frohn My grandmother called herself a "tomboy." She bragged that she could chop wood and bale hay as fast as the men. And then they sat down and read the paper while she baked fine biscuits and pie. She loved hunting, motorcycles and gardening. She raised four children in a boxcar, teaching the [...]
By Elizabeth Edelglass We stand in line beside our mothers’ stockinged legs, line snaking through the gymnasium, where yesterday we’d also snaked through same gymnasium, mouths agape for the healing cube, sugar our mothers said, but bitter, live virus, our parents had said, to save us from the deadly virus, their voices husky with fear, [...]
By Mary Leary Please stop writing about nothing. The light from your lawn chairs. Berries you savored or didn’t, bodies massed for gatherings on back summer lawns. Nice usually means smiling; at least pretending to listen. Maybe keeping it light. No politics at New Year’s Day dinner, you say and I wonder why I came [...]
By Laura Martinez Everything has changed Nothing has changed He is gone Does that mean we no longer resist? It “takes time” to undo what he has done Does that mean we no longer resist? As long as elected officials state “America is not a racist country” We must resist As long as there is [...]
