By AJ Donley They warn you about the dangers that you’ll be feverish that your throat will hurt that it’s contagious that you won’t be able to breathe they try to scare you away from action with the risk of symptoms that have always been there because COVID is new but racism is not I [...]
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler After you pay your poll tax, Boy, I’ll ask you how many jellybeans are in the big jar I keep on my Registrar’s desk? How many bubbles are in this bar of soap? How many seeds are in a watermelon, any watermelon? (An answer you should naturally know.) How many drops [...]
By Angel T. Dionne “But you don’t look bipolar,” as if bipolar is screaming at cars from the sidewalk as if bipolar is hopping up on tables to proclaim that I’m the Messiah as if bipolar is no career and no relationships. “But you don’t look bipolar,” as if being happily married means I can’t [...]
By Christie M. Buchovecky An old friend messaged today. Told me “Got a funny story if ya have time . . .” and sent a clip: riding by an old Colonial I recognized, despite a view obscured by rain and the barred windows he’d had to film behind. “Nothing like riding down your old street [...]
By David Icenogle They tell me the copay for my medication is only a hundred and fifty dollars. The best way to measure privilege is the way people use the word “only.” They tell me I should be relieved because without insurance it would’ve been eight-hundred. Why not make it a million? They tell me [...]
By Angelica Whitehorne (found poem from Emma’s interviews for the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) It’s challenging to be nude at 62. The age that I am. Nothing has changed. Can’t stand in front of a mirror, always pulling something, judging it. The neural pathways of eight-year-olds going, “I hate my thighs.” I was [...]
By Maureen Fielding “KOREAN WOMEN STRIPPED, TORTURED BY JAPANESE. Oriental brutality at Seoul… American missionaries take no part.” So reads the 70-year-old headline of a Los Angeles Daily Times cutting, yellowing, displayed behind glass in the Museum of Korean Contemporary History. My question is this: Did the missionaries take no part in the stripping, the [...]
