free speech – Writers Resist

The Ministry of Truth

By Tara Campbell

The Ministry says it’s no joke: today
I broke the law. I was too woke today.

They claim I denigrated our great land.
Its sacred trust is what I broke today.

They feel it would be harmful to allow
my words to reach the common folk today.

They say I poked too roughly at our nation’s
history, fragile as a yolk today.

My only crime was pointing out the flames:
the Constitution’s up in smoke today.

Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She teaches flash and speculative fiction, and is the author of two novels, two hybrid collections, and two short story collections. Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles (SFWP), was a finalist for the 2025 Philip K. Dick Award, and listed in Reactor Magazine’s “Best Books of 2024” and Locus and SFWA’s Recommended Reading.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk via a Creative Commons license.

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They Tell Us

By Dawn Tasaka Steffler

I

Wait until buyer’s remorse sets in
Wait until it hurts the farmers
Until it hurts the veterans
Until the social security checks stop coming
Until they take away birthright citizenship
Until they take away freedom of speech
Until they take away the vote from women
Until another pandemic rears its head and hundreds of thousands die again

Whispers circulate
But what if we don’t want to wait?
Where are the protests?
What are we so afraid of?

Actually we are very afraid
We only act brave

They tell us we are the sleeping bear
And you know what they say
You don’t want to poke a sleeping bear

And one of us asks in a clear young voice
Why don’t we want to poke the bear?
If we wake the sleeping bear won’t the nightmare end?
Everyone nods their heads in agreement

They tell us
No, we’re going to roll over and play dead

Wait, are we a sleeping bear or a dead bear?

III

They tell us wait until the midterms
If they want to hang themselves give them plenty of rope
Don’t stand in the way of the process

Perplexed we look to our left and our right
to the person standing next to us

One of us whispers
I don’t think they know what they’re doing
This has never happened before

Ah- but it has
another one of us whispers
Just not here

Dawn Tasaka Steffler (she/her) is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and was selected for both the 2024 Wigleaf Top 50 long list and 2025 Best Small Fictions. Her stories appear in Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, The Forge, JMWW, and more. She is working on a novella-in-flash that explores the challenges and joys of parenting queer kids. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com and on X, BlueSky and Instagram @dawnsteffler.

Photo credit: Ged Carroll via a Creative Commons license.

Elegy

By Bänoo Zan

For Jamal Khashoggi

I am Allah—
Al-Rahman[1]—
Al-Rahim[2]—

banished from
faith
and love

mourning—

beauty—
my Word—

censored—

I am mourning
my death—

The robe
of my Kaaba
stained with blood
of free speech

I have witnessed
Terror—

my sons beheaded
my daughters
deprived of light

I am Allah—
Beloved of
bards and prophets
Idol of rebels and Sufis

fleeing from
custodians
who desecrate
my house of
refuge

My body dismembered—
scattered over the woods—
I am seeking hearts
to take me in

They have stamped me
on their crown—
used me as cheap gold—

Bleeding
I wonder
if I will survive

Free me—

Free Allah
from despots

Free yourself
from fear

Let me live—

apostate infidel that I am—

At times like this—
with watan[3]
soaked in worshippers’ blood—

with faith soiled
and values sold—

which god do you worship?

Bänoo Zan has numerous published poems and poetry related pieces (over 170) as well as three books. Songs of Exile, her first poetry collection, was shortlisted for Gerald Lampert Award by the League of Canadian Poets. Letters to My Father, her second poetry book, was released in 2017. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Toronto’s most diverse and brave poetry reading and open mic series (inception: November 2012). Follow the poet on Facebook, Twitter @BanooZan, and Instagram.

Photo credit: TMAB2003 via a Creative Commons license.

This poem was previously published in Dissident Voice.

[1] Gracious, compassionate
[2] Merciful
[3] Homeland