Tag: Laura Ann Reed

Welcome to Writers Resist Spring 2026 Issue

Welcome to the vibrant words and images of spring, celebrating the memory of Marsha P. Johnson, beloved and befamed transgender LGBTQ rights activist and Stonewall Inn heroine.

If you’d like the link to the virtual reading for this issue, 18 April at 5:00 pm PACIFIC, please email us at writersresist@gmail.com.

Now, join us and our contributing resisters, while we flip the flaming bird at the antis and revere all that proclaims our identities.

Why does a tranny cross a yellow brick road? by Mx. Asher

To David Lehman by Waverly Vernon

Run by JL Smither

Ahead of the Storm by Laura Ann Reed

Absent Hills by Johanna Haas

This Is the Way Our Words End— by Dennis Humphrey

Doomscrolling isn’t solidarity by Maxochitl Cortez

Warning by John L. Holgerson

Two Poems by Robin Michel

Trashy by M.R. Mandell

Duality of Dogma by Nardien Sadik

No Vacation by Raymond A. Mazurek

On the Road to Samarra by Marissa Glover

planning the ballroom by Alexis Rhodes

Pledge by Dion O’Reilly

When Should We Senior Women Not? by Ann Grogan

Choices by Alice Benson

Ahead of the Storm

By Laura Ann Reed

                                  after Osip Mandelstam

In the aluminum light pooling
on the juniper
the tendrils appear to compress
and contract, the blue-green needles to flatten
as though made by dread alone
into a beaten weight.
At the same time, no one can believe
the expansive passion of the roots.
It takes a tractor to extract them.
We think it’s theirs: such fear,
such love.
But in the temple of our dreams
there it is in ourselves.
There it is.

Laura Ann Reed is the author of the chapbook Homage to Kafka (Poetry Box, 2025). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in ten anthologies, including Poetry of Presence (Grayson Books, 2023) and The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023). Visit her website.

Photo credit: Konrad Glogowski via a Creative Commons License.

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