This issue was hard to build. Hard, because the works herein are such powerful representations of the brutal conflicts through which we are slogging, seemingly ever increasing. Still, such vivid reminders are sometimes gifts. These works reflect 27 saviors distributing words as lifesavers. From our own Debbie Hall’s conflicted photograph, “Found Art,” to the many […]
Artist’s Statement My twin creative passions are poetry and photography. Both pursuits involve close attention and discovery—new ways of seeing and understanding. I’ve always been fond of juxtaposition in my writing and in the visual art of photography. In this photo of the back of a heavily etched restroom stall door, I was struck by the seemingly […]
the last poem in Spanglish i feel somebody creeping up behind mein English. looking for land. maybe just earrings.maybe all the property from Park Placeto St. James. maybe just me.i wanted to say no in their languagewanted to say: poesía.pero poetry is just playin.i am well aware of my privilege on paper.that is where i […]
By Nana T. Baffour-Awuah I crush my soul and sell it for less than $3,500It costs $132 to make it across town to that job I hateFood swallows $275 before I have tasted itThe IRS demands $839 like a thief with moralsI must cough up $1,600 for the roach-box I have stuffed my entire world […]
By David Tager My pink-haired teen’s story quivers, thins to a plea, helpless.Senators frost like glass, pick lint from suits, render words helpless. Bored chins cede the mic: a matronly lawmaker probes my childon bathrooms, asks about her genitals. We suck breath, helpless. A gavel pounds out protest, insists my child is a threat otherdaughters […]
By Jennifer Karp Breasts —as if syllables of flesh rewrote the law, a pulse hammeredin DNA scrawled in an alphabet that cannot be read. Our drums go forth, persist. We spit teethinto the ballot box, heels cracking on broken regulations, carry on, fall, marrow pounding, lineage cheering under skin.As if policy bent around a body too curved for […]
By Beck O’Leary (CW: Contains significant transphobia and gun violence in a school setting) The dress had a sweetheart neckline and delicate satiny sleeves that rested just off the mannequin’s shoulders. The bodice was white and fitted, and the skirt was padded by at least two layers of ruffled lining. Little pink flowers decorated the […]
By Jennifer Elise Wang In memory of Dr. Refaat Alareer You say your only weapon is an EXPO markerThat you could throw in the face of your oppressors,But those cowards could not even look at your faceWhen they took away your life and your family’s.I wonder how soldiers and leaders could fearA single person putting […]
By Elizabeth Mercurio How few centuries have let women be girls first –Brenda Shaughnessy One fourteen-year-old girl led police to start investigation of Epstein in 2005 defendant paid for massage recruiter girl was given $200 for having brought the girl to defendant she was too emotional girl brought a classmate to defendant’s home to perform […]
Artist’s Statement I took this picture on May 14, 2022, in San Diego, California, during a Women’s March to protest the leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion that eventually overturned Roe v. Wade. More than four years later, the message the photograph conveys is still relevant. We all—men, women, and people who choose to identify […]
By Victoria Melekian America, greed is upstreamrivering unharnessed, fast splashing across our land uprooting centuriesof forest, marsh, and rocky outcrops. Greed is carving a frontier of gated wealth,leaving us a new map: river of hunger, river of despair, river of no mercy.America, greed is gilding the capitol. Kids down the street are raising moneyfor a […]
By Joycelyn Zhang It was the day of your school’s 5K. Sweltering. You ran until your lungs wheezed. Your shorts were green, like everyone else’s, and together you were a forest from the waist down. You forced yourself to drink the sludgy fountain water and ignored the way it stung your convulsing throat. You ignored […]
By Deanna Altomara A long time ago (or maybe not so long),your grandmothers boarded a ship across churning seas,Just as we took to the yawning sky,Full of dreams and haunted by a home that was no longer our own. We weren’t born to fly.In the darkness, we had no choice but tostart anew, to molt […]
By olive bly they won’tforce me to fightin the war being transis a mentalillness, yes you can’tfight in the warif you’re ill i ammentally illso can’t war i wasterrible atsports in school onlyever reallyscored one goal & ’causesport & war arethe same thing i don’tthink i would begood at war olive bly (Tangata Tiriti, Pākehā) […]
By Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff Braid your hair. Pin your hair. Set your hair. Curl your hair. Spray your hair. Color your hair. Cut your hair. Blow your hair. Center your part. Left your part. Right your part. Lose your part. Cut your bangs. Flip your bangs. Feather your bangs. Grow your bangs. Pluck your brows. […]
From A Humanist Devotional By Mitch Roshannon If only there were no trans kidsor queers in public squaresthere could be peace in America. Somehow, the eradication of“Adam & Steve” will repair economiesunsustainable, tenuous, and fraught. Dad would stop hitting mom;steak and collard greens on the tablerather than cheap ramen and regret. God would return to […]
By Isla Laust I look downAnd see handsStained not with bloodBut with silence Isla Laust is a middle school English teacher in the United States. She primarily writes poems about her experiences as a teacher functioning within the education system. Her writing is fueled by watching her students and coworkers navigate current events and societal […]
The Last Tree Standing A lone banyan waitsto be cut down,until the block officer signsthe contractto his brother-in-lawin the timber business. Samples have been collected.A local student earned his thesisstudying the therapeutic effectsof any/every banyan tree. His brothers were uprootedfor godowns assembling ORGANIC vegetablesand factories mass-producing HERBAL remedies. “Too much land locked by treesthat produce […]
By Minnie Bartlett On the first day of winter, when it rained so hard I thought it might snow, I got in my car and drove fifteen minutes to the shopping mall. I walked into the hiking store I’d rarely had a reason to go past, though my penchant for practical flannel and worn-out boots […]
Poet’s note: These “still life” poems are based on oral histories I conducted with the permission of women who wanted to speak anonymously about their reproductive lives. Mia Leonin is the author of four poetry collections: Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), which won an International Latino Book Award. Anhinga Press published her books […]
