Writing is an act of resistance
-
the arrogance of illusion
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
-
The Hold
Atatiana Jefferson, police violence, Kathryn Johnston, Eric Garner, Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones, George Floyd, choke hold, Breonna Taylor, #BLM, Pat Andrus, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter, Dante Parker, PoetryBy 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
-
Stop Light
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
-
The Wizard of Roz
Mar-a-Lago, roach motel, Fiction, Marleen S. Barr, science fiction, speculative fiction, Donald Trump 2024By 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,
-
Passing On Fire
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
-
Election Day
Richard Nixon, voter supression, Poetry, Vietnam War, climate change, climate crisis, Elizabeth Edelglass, polio, right to voteBy 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
-
Work
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
-
We Must Resist
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
-
REMINDER: Writers Resist Call for Submissions
Current Call for Submissions We’ll be publishing a special Writers Resist issue on 19 June 2021 to acknowledge Juneteenth and the first 150 days of the Biden-Harris administration. We all see things—politics, justice, history, the future, even flowers—differently. What are you seeing these days? Send us your words, in poetry or prose, and your images,