Tag: Jennifer Karp

Welcome to Writers Resist Fall 2026

This issue was hard to build. Hard, because the works herein are such powerful representations of the brutal conflicts through which we are slogging, seemingly ever increasing. Still, such vivid reminders are sometimes gifts.

These works reflect 27 saviors distributing words as lifesavers.

From our own Debbie Hall’s conflicted photograph, “Found Art,” to the many pieces demanding trans justice to the exultation of calls to action, they lend hope. Hope, rage, love, humor. We need them all to sustain the resistance. And, perhaps, we might receive some resolution when U.S. voters cast their values on 03 November.

In the meantime, as the image above demands, borrowed from Chelsie Zuccollo’s excellent call to action in “Smash, Build, Rise,” we must—and we will continue to—RISE UP.

On Saturday 14 November at 5:00 pm PACIFIC, we will host this issue’s virtual reading, Writers Resist Reads, at which we envision a bit of celebrating. Please email us at writersresist@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

And so, we welcome you to our hard and powerful Writers Resist Fall 2026. Please read and share your thoughts with these brilliant resisters.

Found Art by Debbie Hall

Two Poems by Marcy Rae Henry

Cost of Living by Nana T. Baffour-Awuah

Testifying with My Daughter Against Missouri SB597 by David Tager

After Roe Was Repealed by Jennifer Karp

Cherry Blossoms by Beck O’Leary

EXPO Marker by Jennifer Elise Wang

Girl (an erasure) by Elizabeth Mercurio

My Rape Wasn’t a Choice by Alberto Lau-Chang

Lemonading by Victoria Melekian

Letter to Self by Joycelyn Zhang

Monarch by Deanna Altomara

transcription by olive bly

On Viewing the Porn Trading Cards Catalogue (1925–2025) by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff

If Only There Were No Trans Kids by Mitch Roshannon

Silence by Isla Laust

Three Poems by Tushar Sen

Coincidence by Minnie Bartlett

Two Poems by Mia Leonin

The Shirt by Elizabeth B. Morse

Smash, Build, Rise by Chelsie Zuccollo

Aunt Annie’s Recipe for the Resistance by Jane Frances Gilles

“There Will Be Casualties” by Ashley Mace Havird

Static Between the Folding Tables by Fendy S. Tulodo

To my father, whose mother tongue is a village dialect by Anonymous

The Most Radical Protest Right Now Is Handmade by Amanda Jackson

Two Poems by Susanna Lang

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.

After Roe Was Repealed

By Jennifer Karp

Breasts —as if syllables of flesh
          rewrote the law, a pulse hammered
in DNA scrawled in an alphabet

that cannot be read. Our drums
          go forth, persist. We spit teeth
into the ballot box, heels cracking

on broken regulations, carry on, fall,
          marrow pounding, lineage cheering under skin.
As if policy bent around a body

too curved for their angles,
          hips detonating committee chambers
with a sway and swing, air forced

into rooms starved for it. We stretch new ink,
          no need for a branch to land on;
the line items didn’t remember our skin,

supple and warm. We answer with daughters,
          through a checkbox too soft to hold
an ache that won’t stay in ( )

Jennifer Karp is a disabled writer, and was short-listed in the 2025 Bridport Poetry contest, won first prize, runner up, and honorable mention in the 2025 International Memoir Association’s inaugural poetry contest, won honorable mention in the 2023 and 2025 Kowit poetry contest, and was a winner of the 2022 San Diego Reader poetry contest. Her work had been published abroad and domestically. She lives in San Diego.

Photo credit: Handmaid by Julie Blair 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.

Postcards from the Valley of the Moon

By Jennifer Karp

The car shows 94 degrees after our dry desert hike. I write political postcards to Swing States while you drive. Dust in our boots, our clothes, the cracks around our eyes. They’re called crow’s feet, but you call them smile lines. I don’t know crows from blackbirds from ravens. Volcan Mountain, Iron Mountain, Cowles Mountain, everything is and has been open, you say. I’m not a fan of walking on sand—I do agree it’s cushioned and offers great resistance, but I’ll walk on rocks all day before sand. We pull off the highway to watch the Vice-Presidential debate again on YouTube. Dirt hangs in the air. This is becoming too big of a metaphor, you say. I’ve got a blister on my toe but I don’t tell you. We climb up a nearby boulder, you with ear pods, me with postcards and a black pen, hoping each line makes a difference.

Jennifer Karp began her love of writing at the age of eight. She earned recognition as a finalist in the 2023-24 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize and as a winner of the San Diego Reader Poetry Contest. Jennifer’s work appears in numerous journals, anthologies, and international magazines, touching hearts and minds around the world.

Photograph by Master Steve Rapport 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 from our Give a Sawbuck page.