Writing is an act of resistance
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When You Swim Out into the Ocean
By Claudia Wair You float on your back, your face barely above water. There’s nothing but the silence of the ocean in your ears. In the saltwater’s embrace, you drift, weightless. You stare at the clouds above, trying to empty your mind. You’re away from the beach. Not so far that the lifeguard blows…
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Vile Affections
By Soon Jones I grow up in a Florida church being warned about god-hating bull dykes and sissy fairy fags leaving the natural use of the woman, which is sex, because all a woman is good for is sex and tempting men. Yet when a woman tempts another woman somehow that is not about…
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Feeding Stray Cats in Ukraine
By Rebecca K. Leet As molecules of steel madness concussed the air and no next breath was sure a vibration in his unbowed soul prompted Sasha to step outside and feed a posse of stray cats. The offering – from one displaced in the world to others also beggared – cost Sasha his right…
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Displacement
By Antony Owen I am the fox-flame in the wood jumping through snow an ember chased to extinction by lesser beasts. I am permanent as the moth in amber its patterns decided by the white sun its fate decided by the earthlings. I am the glass-blower’s lips’ creation to consume whatever is put in…
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Beowulf
reproductive rights, Narrative nonfiction, Irene Cooper, reproductive freedom, keep abortion legal safe and accessibleBy Irene Cooper While my glamorous friend Anne underwent her abortion, I sat at a lunch counter and ate a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake before returning to the abortion clinic in the urban grid of Brooklyn. I sat in the waiting area and read Beowulf, assigned by my high school sophomore…
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“I can experience joy alone”
By Tristan Richards I meditate on this line while hiking away from the waterfall, and a doe pokes her head out of the snow, watching me, her eyes black and beady, her body sandy, the color of spring gravel turned mud. She is beautiful. I freeze, my heart in my throat. I become too…
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National Portrait Gallery
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What Is Truth?
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…
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September Together
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…