Writing is an act of resistance
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1962
By Ruth Hoberman Memorial Day, we wore white gloves to hold the flag. Songs fluttered in our lungs like helium: we were pilgrim and witch, Crockett and Quaker, the slave, the raft, the shore. We were eleven, rich in Sousaphones and common wealth, so sure of where the river went, we’d beg our teachers
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Anger Management in a Time of COVID-19 Pandemic and Riotous Grief
Ron L. Dowell, Los Angeles riot, Georgia Stone Mountain, Latasha Harlins, Marquette Frye, Watts Rebellion, Watts Uprising, Stacy Koon, Laurence Powell, Rodney King, Reginald Denny, Poetry, Empire LiquorBy Ron L. Dowell I First, understand what you call a riot was the Watts rebellion ending our 1965 Little League season. No last inning strikeout, but choking smoke, thick of burning rubber, no walk-off homerun, but smoldering wood, no game-winning catch, but chemicals scorching our throats, chest, lungs, interrupting me & Gerald’s sunrise
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Duende and The Great Matter of Life-and-Death
#BLM, police brutality, Karen Morris, Garcia Lorca, life and death, Black Lives Matter, duende, Poetry, State violence, George Floyd, Terrance Bridges, Ahmaud Arbery, Lloyd Stevenson, Breonna TaylorBy Karen Morris Garcia Lorca called me last night (Before you get in a twist, he called you too. You didn’t pick up.) He said, “Disappearance and Death are real.” I suggested he text but, texting’s too flat for the poetics of death. “Sure,” you said to no one out loud, ridding yourself of
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After the Splat
By Kate LaDew In 1867, the first instance of a hero saving their sweetheart from an oncoming train after a dastardly villain tied them to the tracks debuted in the last scene of a New York stage play. The hero’s sweetheart calls for help, while the hero, locked inside the train station, watches from a barred window, searching
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Toads and Maidens
By Carol Casey Don’t assume, because some creature rests in your palm, that it is safe. It knows it’s not. A toad, dry, rough, bumpy texture like braille—read the message: I’m better free. My biochemical language is telling you something vital in the only way I have: I want to be free. I can
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America likes to ask
By Emily Knapp Are you like me? or not like me? Are you normal? or not normal? Are you human? or not human? Are you a boy? or a girl? Are you a woman? or a man? America likes to say: We are right. You are wrong. We are normal. You are not. Fit
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Gravity Ungrateful
By Mark Blickley Yes, I am dressed in mourning. Dark clothes for a dark time. Yet I yearn to escape pandemic imprisonment with the germ of an idea that will allow me to soar above my confinement in an airborne threat against complacency and boredom as I reach up to a blue heaven that
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The everyday
Poetry, COVID-19, social distancing, pandemic, Ronna Magy, sequester, physical distance, wear a maskBy Ronna Magy Here, another day, another morning, another hour, another moment. Mantle clock refusing to turn even half round the dial. She is, he is, they are, the country is, waiting. For TV anchors, doctors, government officials to discuss, divulge, to declare in words, phrases, sentences, in passages clearly anchored to the land,
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tell me you’re open
By A. Martine Editor’s warning: sexual violence i wake from the dream with gashes in my chest snakes turning warm on my blood half-interred in the wounds while i go maybe it was me surely it was me, surely it was me athena would have torn them from me and slung them at my