By Mark Blickley Yes, I am dressed in mourning. Dark clothes for a dark time. Yet I yearn to escape pandemic imprisonment with the germ of an idea that will allow me to soar above my confinement in an airborne threat against complacency and boredom as I reach up to a blue heaven that promises [...]
By Ronna Magy Here, another day, another morning, another hour, another moment. Mantle clock refusing to turn even half round the dial. She is, he is, they are, the country is, waiting. For TV anchors, doctors, government officials to discuss, divulge, to declare in words, phrases, sentences, in passages clearly anchored to the land, stone [...]
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt 24 October 2020 Uncle Jack died this morning. The stroke, the collapse, the surprise mass on his brain? Whichever or all, at least he went faster than Aunt Peggy and Mother. Not as fast as Father—the gift of a heart attack. The comparison? I don’t know, perhaps it’s a futile attempt to lend [...]
By Bunkong Tuon The virus breathes like fire over city streets and farmland, across oceans and mountains, over YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. The president suggests injecting the body with disinfectant to kill it. Maybe he could go first; it’s his idea after all. I’ve become a hack, ranting as if the world will heed my [...]
By Christie Valentin-Bati “It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.” –Nick Estes They said close down everything non-essential: The coffee shop, blue trimmed with a green porch, white-potted flowers that hung down from the awning, closed – so I roasted my own coffee. The outlet mall with high-waisted jeans, gold-plated, pearl earrings [...]
By D.A. Gray We’d grown thin during the pandemic. I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and lock [...]
By Jennifer Shneiderman Slipping into Cadillac One Gliding on lies and half-truths Trump greets supporters waving off warnings and all that is humane. He is the clear and present danger. The SUV a mobile panic room used for political theatre could be the Secret Service Presidential seal of death. The truth is a ghost a [...]
By Diane Elayne Dees It’s been a week or two since our encounter, yet your voice haunts me, and I see your face in waking dreams. There, at the checkout counter, you yelled and gestured as you made your case: “It’s all a hoax!” you shouted, while the clerk delivered a lecture on government regulations, [...]
By Marcy Rae Henry In Himalayan India we used leaves buckets of water and our hands Best-selling tampons have applicators because Americans are afraid to touch themselves In Himalayan India we didn’t have tampons We used rags and pads but didn’t touch each other’s hands to say hello When wiping with leaves [...]
Hello, Dear Readers, Welcome to our Viral Resistance Issue, a gift with something for as close to everyone as we can get—while maintaining proper social distancing. This 107th issue of Writers Resist has fiction, poetry, and an essay, that offer satire and sorrow, fear and humor, and a good dose of introspection. Now, go sit by [...]
By Summer Awad what does empire look like in slow motion what of nine-to-fives stripped of their ticking clocks shelves - aching from stock and restock - baring us their bones? - what do you make of shuttered cafes laptops and coffees on the couch - recalibrated reality the comfortable uncomfortable but immune - really - [...]
By Shawn Aveningo-Sanders ~ after Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” When brazen towers fell, we wept in disbelief— our great nation attacked upon her own shore. We obeyed our leaders who hailed, “Shop More! That’s how we’ll heal.” And we found some relief in the stuff we hoarded, albeit the feeling brief. We shop-till-we-drop, as [...]
By Terry Sanville Douglas climbed the outside stairs two at a time to his second-floor apartment over Tuck’s Liquor. He keyed the front door and slipped inside. Fugem dropped onto the carpet from her window perch and yowled, then purred when he filled her bowl with kibble. Outside, the noise died back, only a few [...]
By John Linstrom Sixteen Oaks Grove, Queens, NY Sixteen oaks in two rows planted down an island in the street: school is closed, kids transplanted, benches here are empty, clean and neat. Auto shops still rollicking with laughter, a boy walks by, dribbles his ball alone. A bird keeps trilling, and will after; [...]
By Nancy Dunlop It is my first day in— what are they calling it? Self-quarantine? Social distancing? Shelter-in-place? I suppose, for me, it’s isolation. But unlike many others my age, I’ve been in isolation for almost a decade, due to a disability. Today is really no different than any other day for me. Except that [...]
