freedom – Writers Resist

Flying Free

By Marc Audet

Lake Whitney shivers as the winter wind descends upon us from the Canadian Arctic. I pause my walk and search for the Canada Geese that visit these waters. They are back this morning, floating some distance away in composed tranquility, hardly noticing me. To think that they dare to cross our northern frontier in contempt of our politics, mocking our insolence to even suggest that we could tell them what to do. They care not for borders, more concerned about that sheet of ice that formed overnight, nudging them to seek shelter in the warmer waters nearer shore, by the clustered rushes where last spring, I saw a mating pair of swans nesting. On this frigid morning, I rest my spirit from the over repeated news cycle and take solace in the calmness of the lakeview before me. The geese are content to wait in the shallows for the seasons to turn. We are creatures less patient, our collective angst seething. We ache to scream, to be heard over sound bites of prevarication, to spread wings and be free again.

Marc Audet lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where he is self-employed as a web application developer. He has traveled and lived in Canada, England, France, and Ireland. His short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Across the Margin, Flash Fiction Magazine, Uppagus, Rappahannock Review, The Prose Poem, The Gilded Weathervane, and elsewhere.

Photo credit: Tim Rains via a Creative Commons license.

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The Janus of Freedom

By D. Edgar Cook

We rallied for freedom:
Freedom to speak, freedom to worship,
Freedom to read, freedom to assemble.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

We rallied for freedom:
Freedom to print the truth to power.
Freedom from unreasonable seizure.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

A nation was born.
An election was held.

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to squelch individual liberty,
Freedom to assign truth to captivity.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to down the forest green,
Freedom to drill in the wilderness pristine.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to govern by decree,
Freedom the governed to ignore.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to sludge the rivers clear.
Freedom to foul our breathing air.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

They rally for freedom:
Freedom to let the unqualified rule.
Freedom to the immigrants be cruel.
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

For what freedoms must we rally?
For what freedoms will the bell ring?
As a nation we began in search of freedoms.
As a nation will we die by new freedoms found?
Let the bell ring! Let freedom ring!
Clang the gong banging for freedom!

D. Edgar Cook is an occasional writer of poems and short fiction who tends to probe the present and future from unexpected perspectives. His work appears in recent editions of the Central Oregon Writers Guild Literary Collection.

Photo credit: Roman Janus coin by Andrew McCabe via a Creative Commons license.

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.

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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.

Birthday Wishes

By Phoenix Ning

Sixteen-year-old person of color desires escape from this inferno
where dark-skinned individuals burn, and alabaster spectators
cheer from the sidelines, popping confetti guns and feeding
oil to ancient flames while claiming to be long-awaited saviors.

Eighteen-year-old student desires world history classes with curriculums
that celebrate African kingdoms, Indigenous empires, and South Asian cultures;
textbooks that condemn armor-clad imperialists stripping gowns of freedom;
articles that honor revolutionaries whose empty pockets did not silence their shouting.

Twenty-three-year-old woman desires to shatter the chains created
by men who think all girls are moons trapped by their gravity,
males who believe themselves to be suns instilling life into
fragile females who must offer their bodies as tokens of gratitude.

Twenty-year-old lesbian desires to taste the sweet wine of love
and cavort in inebriated glory with the woman whose gentle touch
sparks wildfires in her heart frozen by acerbic remarks fired by toxic relatives
when she turns her head away from men and smiles at her rough-hewn ladylove.

Phoenix Ning is a twenty-year-old Chinese writer of sapphic antiheroines and queer found families. She is currently a senior studying human-computer interaction. When not writing, she can be found watching C-Dramas and penning raps. A fierce advocate of diversity in media, she hopes that her audience will feel empowered after reading her words or listening to her songs. Learn more at ladyphoenixning.com.

Image credit: Jennifer Rakoczy via a Creative Common 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 from our Give a Sawbuck page.