Ashley Mace Havird – Writers Resist

Welcome to Writers Resist Fall 2026

This issue was hard to build. Hard, because the works herein are such powerful representations of the brutal conflicts through which we are slogging, seemingly ever increasing. Still, such vivid reminders are sometimes gifts.

These works reflect 27 saviors distributing words as lifesavers.

From our own Debbie Hall’s conflicted photograph, “Found Art,” to the many pieces demanding trans justice to the exultation of calls to action, they lend hope. Hope, rage, love, humor. We need them all to sustain the resistance. And, perhaps, we might receive some resolution when U.S. voters cast their values on 03 November.

In the meantime, as the image above demands, borrowed from Chelsie Zuccollo’s excellent call to action in “Smash, Build, Rise,” we must—and we will continue to—RISE UP.

On Saturday 14 November at 5:00 pm PACIFIC, we will host this issue’s virtual reading, Writers Resist Reads, at which we envision a bit of celebrating. Please email us at writersresist@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

And so, we welcome you to our hard and powerful Writers Resist Fall 2026. Please read and share your thoughts with these brilliant resisters.

Found Art by Debbie Hall

Two Poems by Marcy Rae Henry

Cost of Living by Nana T. Baffour-Awuah

Testifying with My Daughter Against Missouri SB597 by David Tager

After Roe Was Repealed by Jennifer Karp

Cherry Blossoms by Beck O’Leary

EXPO Marker by Jennifer Elise Wang

Girl (an erasure) by Elizabeth Mercurio

My Rape Wasn’t a Choice by Alberto Lau-Chang

Lemonading by Victoria Melekian

Letter to Self by Joycelyn Zhang

Monarch by Deanna Altomara

transcription by olive bly

On Viewing the Porn Trading Cards Catalogue (1925–2025) by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff

If Only There Were No Trans Kids by Mitch Roshannon

Silence by Isla Laust

Three Poems by Tushar Sen

Coincidence by Minnie Bartlett

Two Poems by Mia Leonin

The Shirt by Elizabeth B. Morse

Smash, Build, Rise by Chelsie Zuccollo

Aunt Annie’s Recipe for the Resistance by Jane Frances Gilles

“There Will Be Casualties” by Ashley Mace Havird

Static Between the Folding Tables by Fendy S. Tulodo

To my father, whose mother tongue is a village dialect by Anonymous

The Most Radical Protest Right Now Is Handmade by Amanda Jackson

Two Poems by Susanna Lang

A Note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

“There Will Be Casualties”

—President Donald J. Trump (2/28/26)

By Ashley Mace Havird

I saw it from the top of the hill.
Hoped it was not a dead anything,
only a weird hump in the street.
(It was, after all, street-colored,
the same variations of gray.)
Cycled nearer. Dog? Too loaf-like.
Cat? No cat was ever that fat.
Possum it was,
I saw as my bike raced past.
Curled to die just inches
from its mother’s unbreathing snout,
a fetal joey (the offspring’s proper name).
Crawled or else flung from the pouch.
Old story, wrong place wrong time,
car gunning like a missile in the night.
Were there more young ones?
I could not look down to count.

It would have been dangerous.
I was going too fast, you see,
an old woman on an old bike,
dodging the pavement’s pocks and cracks
on my way to the gym and Pilates class,
flying almost, downhill. . . .
Opossum. I should use the proper name,
give it that much respect.
I confess that I could not stop
thinking of the little ones
in that school. Not the ones
who keep getting gunned down over here
in the US of A, but the bombed ones far away.
Girls in their bright headscarves,
with their bright dark eyes.
How could anyone look to count
the crayons and books and little shoes?

Ashley Mace Havird is a poet and novelist whose most recent collection, Wild Juice (LSU Press), appeared in 2021. The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press) won the X. J. Kennedy Prize. She has also published two chapbooks. Her debut novel, Lightningstruck (Mercer University Press), won the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction. Swimmer, her second novel, is scheduled for publication (NatureCulture Press) in early 2027. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and in anthologies such as The Southern Poetry Anthology, IV: Louisiana; and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. Ashley lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, with her husband, the poet David Havird, and their own best dog in the world.

Photo credit: Casualties of War by James via a Creative Commons license.

A Note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.