Writing is an act of resistance
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Border Children on the News
By Laura Grace Weldon Frantic families send their children past drug runners and thieves, through deserts, on tops of freight trains, over 1,700 miles seeking refuge at our border. Tonight, we tweeze sushi into our mouths under a blast of chilled Happy Hour air. Screens broadcast dark-eyed children behind chain link fences while protestors chant…
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Attitude
By Brigitte Goetze The alternative ways are in stark opposition, but if she works patiently through her difficulties, trusting herself to life, living each day as fully and as truly as possible, seeking through sincerity of living to solve the problem of their opposition, she may perhaps find a way to a reconciliation. …
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Nevertheless, She Persisted
By Carolyn Norr I followed her to the sea, she placed ripe pineapples in the frothing waves that had swallowed her ancestors and were still swallowing. The river led to the sea and was laced with mine tailings that silenced the frogs and swelled her son’s bones till he burst. I followed her to the…
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The Violence of Ageism
By Margaret Morganroth Gullette As the entire world now knows, Dr. David Dao is the passenger who was dragged off a United Airlines Flight on April 9th by Chicago police who broke his nose, gave him a concussion and smashed two of his teeth. He may need restorative surgery. Some media have treated this…
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Vandals Desecrate Jewish Cemetery
By Laura Budofsky Wisniewski Not that it’s such a fancy graveyard, just a hill, a mess, stones leaning on each other like the fathers of the bride and groom after the wedding. Our names are almost gone, covered by a weeping moss. I begged my son before I went, just burn me. Do they listen?…
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Something There Is That Doesn’t Love
By Olga Livshin …people like me. Does not like our sweatshirts, pilled, our backpacks, full of bric-a-brac, us, detained, on the floor, airport animals. Something has claimed that my adopted country’s autobiography of openness is finished. Something opens the mouths of my Jewish immigrant family to mutter: good for those terrorists to wait, hope their…
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I Still Am
By David Martinez I’m reading Open Veins of Latin America—because I’m writing my South-American book—when the woman in the parking lot starts to scream. The man’s screaming, too, and it’s violent screaming and I can’t see them. But I know they’re both red-faced and she’s crying. She’s shrieking. They’ve both been shrieking for a lifetime, but I…
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Alt-Majority Nursery Rhymes
By Marvin Lurie Every time I think I’ve gone too far, I read the paper and realize I haven’t gone far enough. Baa Baa Donny have you any money? Yes sir. Yes Sir, full banks many. Some for my gold door, some for my pompadour none for the little boy stranded on the shore. Donny…
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Some Poems
By Nancy Dunlop Brutal Things Must Be Said –James Baldwin Some poems reside in oven mitts, opening the stove and reaching for the pan with the leavened bread flowing over its edges, the mitts pull it out, piping hot. A safe and soothing thing. We are okay. Some poems are like an arrow in…