Writing is an act of resistance
-
Street Folk
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler Disembodied. Disenfranchised. Disconnected. Disassociated. Disowned. Disliked. Distained. Disrespected. Disregarded. Disparaged. Disgraced. Dismissed. Discarded. Disavowed. Disqualified. Disappointed. Disheartened. Distanced. Disbarred. Dislocated to: Dis City, The Inferno, Sixth Circle of Hell, Not in My Backyard, Planet Earth 00000 (Do not forward. Do not return.) Disappeared. Called “a timely and powerful selection…
-
The President Signs the Criminal Justice Reform Act
Poetry, Jack Mackey, prison industrial complex, prison reform, criminal justice reform, end mass incarcerationBy Jack Mackey In the Oval Office dripping in rehearsed applause from the full-pocketed and the bloated paid to do a job by corporate wardens enriched by a three-strike law that scooped up traffic violators like escaped farm animals surrounded by billionaire brothers who bought a conscience on closeout after years of dictating to…
-
Abortion Stories from Writers Resist
reproductive rights are human rights, abortion poem, abortion stories, abortion essay, abortion is still legal, reproductive justice, Writers Resist newsUnlike the statistics above, our stories help humanize the theme of abortion, and this week we are sharing five of them, in poetry and prose, by Mileva Anastasiadou, Andrea England, Vicki Cohen, Heather Mydosh, and Penny Perry. Like every piece in the issue, each abortion decision is unique and intimate, and it is owned by only one…
-
How to Disappear Completely
Mileva Anastasiadou, abortion story, abortion is still legal, reproductive justice, Fiction, reproductive rights are human rightsBy Mileva Anastasiadou She’s not that young, already in her mid-twenties, when the double lines appear on the test. She is careful enough most of the time, yet that’s how it goes; life happens and spoils all plans. At first, she’ll panic. That doesn’t mean much, her boyfriend will say; everybody panics at the…
-
Coat Hanger Song
reproductive justice, Poetry, reproductive rights are human rights, Andrea England, abortion poem, abortion is still legalBy Andrea England The baby born into a subway toilet between Harvard and Porter Baby with the too-big head and ears that flap in the wind from a smack Baby addicted to crack turned blue as a bruise in his birthday suit Baby unwanted and doesn’t know why His father raped his mother Baby…
-
On Abortion
reproductive justice, Essay, reproductive rights are human rights, Vicki Cohen, abortion is still legalBy Vicki Cohen I am a nurse-midwife. For over thirty years, I provided prenatal care for pregnant women and welcomed new life. It was mostly happy work, but sometimes I’d find myself worrying about the women who lived in poverty or suffered from substance abuse, the thirteen-year-old who didn’t know she was pregnant until…
-
Dark Spaces
reproductive rights are human rights, abortion poem, abortion is still legal, reproductive justice, Poetry, Heather MydoshBy Heather Mydosh For Indiana HEA 1337 Eve is a common punch line in the joke against women with her penchant for the forked tongue and listening to more than one authority figure, but if we peel it back a little further to rectilinear Pandora, bless her, created first among women by temperamental adolescent…
-
Floating
reproductive justice, Poetry, Penny Perry, reproductive rights are human rights, abortion poem, abortion is still legalBy Penny Perry Mother couldn’t have known what to do. She was only twenty-five, drove her big sister, Leona, six weeks pregnant to the doctor’s in L.A. Leona squinted at California bungalows, backyards with orange trees. She thought about her husband home worrying, her baby waiting for her. She told my mother about her…
-
Mamichu
By Robert Walton “Mamichu, it’s cold!” I looked at Ivar. I looked at his knobby lump of a head, at his lips lying beneath his broken nose like twin dead slugs, at his eyes glistening beneath his granite ledge of a brow, eyes so small I never knew their color. There was no pleasure…