Writing is an act of resistance
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The first day of cherry season,
Poetry, climate crisis, global warming, climate justice, wild fires, Emily Hockaday, climate change and health, ecopoetryBy Emily Hockaday the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors sit next to their colorful carts like the world isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now or it is just very slowly. And what…
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The Lure of Socks on Warm Feet
climate change, climate justice, Amelia Díaz Ettinger, Puerto Rico, extreme weather, FEMA failure, Hurricane Maria 2017, PoetryBy Amelia Díaz Ettinger Never forget, September 20, 2017 and Maria In my La-Z-Boy I sit, a Puerto Rican queen, feet-up admiring my knitted socks. I made these socks by knit and purl. 5,746 miles away from you it is easy to say, I worship. —And oh! How I preach this veneration, the warmth…
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Skull Fries
By Janis Butler Holm Artist Statement: Fast food, a multi-billion-dollar industry, is slowly killing Americans and others. French fries and what they accompany are not harmless. Janis Butler Holm served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal, and currently works as a writer and editor in sunny Los Angeles. Her prose, poems,…
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A Sunday in October
Ariel M. Goldenthal, gun lobby, Narrative nonfiction, gun control, NRA, school shootings, mass shootings, Tree of Life Synagogue, anti-SemitismBy Ariel M. Goldenthal The day after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, I lied to my second-grade students: You are safe at Hebrew school. You will love learning the Aleph-Bet this year. Yes, you can open the windows and feel the early fall air ripple through the gaps between your outstretched fingers. You…
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Ho’oponopono
By Kelsey D. Mahaffey “In the book of the earth, it is written: nothing can die.” – Mary Oliver The morning after it happens again—weary with all the thoughtless use of prayer, I return to the Native path— for solace, for remembrance, for release— But grief is a heavy hold. Last night, I lay…
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It’s Complicated
By Mark Williams I’m scrolling through my Facebook feed—sunsets, cats, lost dogs, cats—when I see a post from a friend I’ve known for thirty-plus years. Someone like someone you know, I bet. Your someone might roof Habitat homes, deliver meals to shut-in’s, conduct sing-a-longs at elder cares, teach kids to read. Without divulging my…
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The Mind-Plough
male gaze, health equity, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, gender roles, Christina HennemannBy Christina Hennemann We rest on this earth where they once ploughed, the sweat and laughs formed freckles under the sun and soil sloppy on shoelaces; my mother stumbled over a rock, stitches on cheek, her needle and thread that sewed my socks, my curtains, shade from the blazing truth out there, we’re invading…
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Campers Rarely Drown at the YMCA
By Janna Miller At camp, Julie told me I had to let her scratch my arms until they bled to be friends, and Julie told me to get lost in the woods or she wouldn’t talk to me, and Julie told me to do something I forget what, but I signed up for a…
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This Time, Ukraine
By Mercedes Lawry Beneath the ground a green thunder, roots weave among limbs of the fallen, so war digs and swallows and the birds still etch the smoking sky. Prayers falter, disappear. How do we watch from afar, our fingers twitching, our thoughts but ashes? Hopeless it seems as the rusty wheel of history…