authoritarianism – Writers Resist

Deliverance

By Phyllis Wax

Where is the angel
who will save us?

            Not in masked thugs
            who descend on ordinary people
            and whisk them away in unmarked cars

            Not in civil servants
            who, to keep their jobs,
            bend to the boss’s demands

            Not in political appointees
            who think any law
            can be broken

            Not in judges
            who ignore the harm they do
            when they allow fists on the scales

            Not in educators
            who rewrite history, consider
            facts malleable

Not in politicians
who place office above country

No
There is no angel
to save us

Our deliverance will come from ordinary people
chanting their outrage
in the streets And from voters
marching to the polls
to restore democracy

We have to save ourselves

Phyllis Wax lives near Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. She grew up in the Washington, DC, area, which might be why social justice issues push their way into much of her work. Also inspired by nature and human nature, as well as by music of all sorts, her poetry has appeared in many publications, including Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Spillway, Peacock Journal, Wordpeace, New Verse News, Your Daily Poem, Mobius.

Photo credit: Bogdan Krupin via a Creative Commons license.

A Note from Writers Resist
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Graffiti Artists

By Andrea L. Fry

The authorities will start with shame—the lecture on personal property
as if it would reform. But not even close—the claim of ownership is as alien
to ghost writers, as the acceptance of defacement is to those who own.

But how persistent, how alive the calling card! Yesterday, the overpass
was grey and mournful in the sleet. Today it’s neon orange, bedazzled
in fun fonts, spiky electric blue shapes like speech bubbles in comics.

It’s hard not to smile at exuberance. That treacherous cliff behind
Friendly’s? They washed it in purple, then sent a red zigzag down
the rockface, chubby letters cartwheeling into a vermillion pool of LOVE.

But who are these stealthy anarchists? How do they shimmy up with cans,
spray billows of perfect clouds while dangling like spiders from a thread?
I can only dream of such courage. I’ve spent my life trying to get a mortgage.

If I ever do, I wonder if I’ll join the owners, put up a fence of cypress trees,
install a rumbling garage door capable of decapitating trespassers?
When “Stoney Creek Road” was changed to “Stoned Creek Road,”

my father used it as a teaching moment on vandalism—he must have heard
us chuckling in the back. I can’t help but root for these mischief artists.
And how injurious is their havoc, when governments dispense with lives

as casually as these sprayers paint a rock? They say King Charles III
owns 1/6 the surface area of the planet. Imagine waking up in a London
fog to a golden dispatch stretched across Westminster Bridge:

Andrea Fry has published two collections of poetry, The Bottle Diggers, in 2017 (Turning Point Press) and Poisons & Antidotes (Deerbrook Editions) in 2021. Her poems have appeared or will appear in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Annals of Internal Medicine,Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Stanford Literary Review, The Sun, and Women’s Review of Books among others. She has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Andrea is freshly retired from her career as an oncology nurse practitioner and lives in Brookline, MA with her husband and two comical felines. Visit her website at andrealfry.com.

Photo quisnovus 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.

The No-Knock State

By Jemshed Khan

Upon hearing that Barrett Brown was jailed (again)

SWAT teams rumble streets.
Men in black smash down doors.

No one bothered to knock
65,000 times last year:

Hinges ripped from the jamb
with a battering ram or breach grenade.

My friend murmurs,
We live in a Police State,

but I still write and say and read
as I will, as we wait.

He points and whispers,
Someone’s listening at the door.

I hiss back, Surely. Enough. Already.
Though I turn and look to be sure.

Jemshed Khan lives and works in the Kansas City area. Born overseas of immigrant parents, he has experienced American culture both as an outsider and as a participant. He relishes the opportunity that the American dream and society have offered him, but also is alarmed by the rising authoritarian encroachment on privacy and freedom.

Photo credit: Steven Roy via a Creative Commons license.