By Tori Cárdenas Worn flags fall and burn / as bumper stickers / beer cans / boardshorts / truck nuts / red visors and head coverings / and hearts purple-swelling with pride / beneath twisted knuckles Paint your storm windows / with razor wire / and the blessed blood of the unborn / seal out [...]
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler In one stop- action second you spin in slow motion over the sharp edge of knowing. There was then & there is now. No scrabbling back up the cliff face. No rewind button. No cartoon-stopping on the way down. No spaceship to beam you away. No, the pressure is in the [...]
Onslaught It spins like a gyroscope, Our planet. My head. Wobbles like a promise too difficult to keep as the news comes crashing this way—space stones hurling toward us from beyond or from that hidden place we carry within— a secret darkness, unknowable, unthinkable. O disaster with a tail of flame you’re hurtling this way [...]
By Russell Hemmell Delphis—the Cheerful One—had known it since the beginning. She was going to remember the day the magic of gene editing was discovered in the multifaceted and famously riotous dolphin world. It could provide a way for the planet to survive climate change, the developers claimed. Once we upgrade, uplift and upscale, we’ll [...]
By Kathy Douglas I step over the cracks trying not to break my mother’s back while news accelerates to sideshow with Prez T as the bearded lady and Melania in the wrong place, wrong time. Time starts to taste like wormwood and rue, sour herb of grace, and climate change parodies itself in debates over how [...]
By William C. Anderson A shithole is an astronomically wealthy nation that refuses to provide healthcare for all people. A shithole is an astronomically wealthy nation that refuses to guarantee access to clean drinking water and heating for schools in the winter. A shithole is a nation that has enough wealth to end poverty, but [...]
By Lucille Ausman he is out extinguishing wild fires lost in the smoke digging lines in the ground trying to trap her behind the wall before she can reach him suffocating in her fury he's strong and brave and all American I guess but she doesn't want protecting she doesn't want to cool down and [...]
By Ruth McCole Women’s March, Boston, Massachusetts. Grim determination turns to gladness turns to awe We leave too early Afterward bells ring. Muslim Ban One, Boston, Massachusetts. A roiling, boiling storm-crowd Makes waves. A man shouts “You’re all going to hell” A sign reads “Jesus was a refugee.” Muslim Ban Two, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nighttime scholar’s vigil [...]
By H.L.M. Lee When I take my younger daughter to school, I see the rush of her first grade friends running to hug each other and share head lice (much to the chagrin of every parent). My daughter’s BFF has a father from England and a mother from Maine. Another girl’s father is Muslim and [...]
By Easton Smith I was born in 1989, the same year that Francis Fukuyama published his essay, “The End of History?” The Berlin Wall fell that year, collapsing history (such a delicate thing, after all) underneath it. It was final: Liberal democracy and global capitalism were the inevitable tide to raise all boats. My whole [...]
By Lucinda Marshall My anthem is the serenade of birds, sung without regard for map lines delineating human assumption of dominion over that which cannot be possessed, and I will not pledge allegiance to, or defend a flag of illusory freedom. As the sun greets each day, I will bravely stand up—against racism, gendered hate, [...]
