Poetry – Writers Resist

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After Roe Was Repealed by Jennifer Karp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.

Two Poems by Marcy Rae Henry

the last poem in Spanglish

i feel somebody creeping up behind me
in English. looking for land. maybe just earrings.
maybe all the property from Park Place
to St. James. maybe just me.
i wanted to say no in their language
wanted to say: poesía.
pero poetry is just playin.
i am well aware of my privilege on paper.
that is where i work it.
so many women before me.
some sisterhoods i don’t want to belong to.
they want to tear me open para ver lo que
está adentro. separate wheat from chaff.
chicana from white. more than part oppressor
part oppressed, i am aquí and i am allá.
none of this is happening in my soul.
so the police will never know.
i’ve the scent of the dogs on me. been to a place
where la verdad es una enfermedad.
used a noun for a verb and a verb for a fork.
i’ve canceled all my subscriptions
prescriptions my condiciones and chingadera.
i’m ready for them to pull on my tongue
until it resembles a tombola.
so it stops rrrrrolling the r’s and elooongating
the vowels. so i will stop hiding pills underneath.
the princess and the pill. peel off my chemical.
tell me how to pronounce it and everything
sounds like sixty percent off. i have been
Eva, La Llorona, La Malinche, una chica
pinche loca pichinche escuincle picosa picara
cara barata ingrata graciosa grandiosa acuosa
but no one wants a poem wet with tears.
some people want a three-legged dog.
three-dollar words. pennies to put
over our dog’s eyes when they die and traverse
el Río Grande on their own. into the sticks.
over the river and through the woods to Mictlan-
tecuhtli’s house we go. i thought i was
aquí to be both. to bounce. pero ya no hay
dos bandos. there is only one coin.
one myth.
we forget when we are born
because we’d want to unbecome.
which is why they say we are unbecoming.
they say you can still paint but only in one color.
when i have decided i will come to them in a dream
and their dreams will always be
in the color of my choosing.
every day día de muertos.
sometimes you have to rise christ-like like dawn
like bread. one day i’ll be the vernacular
in their backseat. y que me ven en el espejo.
maybe the vernacular will be illegal and out on bail.
maybe i’ll just sigh loudly.
chew the fat. or suction it out.
ignore the symptoms.
the need to turn a star
into something that rhymes
with the sun. or the sun into my soul.

day in the life as sonnet

do you know color is just a trick of light?
why do we have to return to México?
why can’t México return to us?
why don’t we talk anymore?
why did you change the locks?
where is my daddy?
what are you doing here?
     what are you   do-ing    here?
          you know    youdon’tbe long?
                       where’s yur papers?
                 where the fuck you comin from?
no no no where thefuck you fromfrom?
          i said: where are fuckin your hands?

Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands who’s had motorcycle crashes in Mexican-America, Turkey and Nepal. She is the author of death is a mariachi, winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize and CHIRBY (Chicago Review of Books) finalist, (Bauhan Press), when to go to the Taj Mahal (Bottlecap Press), the body is where it all begins (Querencia Press), dream life of night owls, winner of the Open Country Chapbook Contest, (Open Country Press), and We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press). Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, four Pushcart nominations, first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest and Kaveh Akbar recently chose her fiction collection as a finalist for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. MRae is professor of English, literature and creative writing at Wright College Chicago, a Hispanic Serving Institution, where she serves as Coordinator of the Latin American Latino/x Studies Program and received Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society’s 2023-2024 Outstanding Educator Award. She is a senior editor for RHINO and a digital minimalist with no social media accounts.

Photo credits: Rio Grande River by Jonathan Saleh on Unsplash, and Handcuffs by picturexv 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.

Cost of Living

By Nana T. Baffour-Awuah

I crush my soul and sell it for less than $3,500
It costs $132 to make it across town to that job I hate
Food swallows $275 before I have tasted it
The IRS demands $839 like a thief with morals
I must cough up $1,600 for the roach-box I have stuffed my entire world into
And then $218 is sacrificed at the altar of ~~necessities~~ utilities
I can’t afford to dream of the $54 steak I serve strangers every day
The $8 lattes from the cafe next door are out of my reach
And all of the $187 I pay to insure my health can barely buy me hope
So, each month, I tally up my total:
                                                        a cent of hope I cling to
                                                        a dime of despair I cannot discard
                                                        a wallet full of fear, ravenous
                                                        a ballot of rage, waiting to be cast

Nana T. Baffour-Awuah (he/him) is a Ghanaian writer and editor currently based in New York. His poems, short stories, and essays have been published in Brittle Paper, Chronogram, Gotham Literature, North Meridian Review, HuffPost, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized, most recently in Creative Stillness (Gatekeeper Press, 2026) and Smitten with the Written (Arcana Poetry Press, 2026) and has also been longlisted for the Coppice Prize. He edits for The Hummingbird and reads for Callaloo. Nana is working on his first book. Follow him on Instagram: @whatnanawrote.

Photo credit: Photo by Anne Preble on Unsplash.

Testifying with My Daughter Against Missouri SB597*

By David Tager

My pink-haired teen’s story quivers, thins to a plea, helpless.
Senators frost like glass, pick lint from suits, render words helpless.

Bored chins cede the mic: a matronly lawmaker probes my child
on bathrooms, asks about her genitals. We suck breath, helpless.

A gavel pounds out protest, insists my child is a threat other
daughters must not imagine. Meanwhile, she clenches pee, flees helpless.

When my turn comes, I lean into my physician gravity, release
a well-honed skein of facts that fly through the hall, then fall helpless.

No matter how you ask, disdain won’t dance. It either looks away
or stuffs into closets. Child, don your hoodie, don’t reel helpless.

Marsha, Sylvia, Miss Major defied hum and hammer of worse
weather. I vow pink hair, dance with you on the steps to ditch helpless.

*Notes: Marsha P Johnson, Sylva Rivera and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy were trans women of color who led the Stonewall Uprising and remained lifelong activists for LGBTQ+ rights. The death of Miss Major (10/13/25) was on my mind when I listened to the horrific recordings of Missouri senators questioning teens who testified against SB 597, the 2025 bathroom bill. The bill would have passed but never came to a vote because of other legislative business. In 2026, three bills (HB2075, HB1893, HB2536) that would restrict bathroom use to sex assigned at birth regardless of current gender expression/identity were put forward in Missouri. Local LGBTQ+ advocates decided not to invite live testimony due to the treatment of trans individuals who testified against SB597 in 2025. However, to date none of three new bills have had a hearing in the Missouri House of Representatives, and SB 597 died in committee.

David Tager’s poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and translation have previously appeared in journals such as I-70 Review, The Kenyon Review, The Crescent Review, and Manoa: An International Journal.

Photo credit: Glendale United Methodist Church – Nashville, TN

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.

EXPO Marker

By Jennifer Elise Wang

In memory of Dr. Refaat Alareer

You say your only weapon is an EXPO marker
That you could throw in the face of your oppressors,
But those cowards could not even look at your face
When they took away your life and your family’s.
I wonder how soldiers and leaders could fear
A single person putting words on paper or a board,
But those words become bullets aimed at them,
Discharged from a heart that feels too intensely.
They scatter around the world, pierce through political lies.
The lines of your poem slash through privilege,
Producing a bloodless pain and invisible scars.
The peace following a period is not a ceasefire
But the silence before detonation.
Your story sears through the skin of your enemy to their bones
They were wrong about you:
Unlike the marker, you are not erasable.

Jennifer Elise Wang (they/she) is a nonbinary femme in STEM and a punk rock pretty boi poet from Dallas, Texas. When they’re not in the lab or writing, they enjoy action sports, cosplay, dancing, and volunteering at the animal shelter. They have been published in FERAL, just femme & dandy, Exposed Brick Literary Magazine, and Scarlet, and thehy’ve been featured in Inner Moonlight, Phynnecabulary, and Cobalt Poets. Visit Jennifer’s website at jenniferelisewang.com.

Photo credit: Originally published by Al Jazeera in 2024, under “Fair Use” for commentary and opinion.

Girl (an erasure*)

By Elizabeth Mercurio

How few centuries have let women be girls first
–Brenda Shaughnessy

One fourteen-year-old girl led police to start

investigation of Epstein in 2005 defendant paid for massage

recruiter girl was given $200 for having brought the girl to defendant

she was too emotional

girl brought a classmate to defendant’s home to perform a massage

Jeffrey Epstein engaged in sexual intercourse with Jane Doe #1

who was then a seventeen year old girl

in the presence of a Jane Doe #2 who was a

fourteen-year-old girl Alan Dershowitz tried to discredit girl

who accused Jeffrey Epstein of rape One girl I liked – very nice the only cute one

the party wasn’t that great the birthday girl was turning 18

most of her friends were VERY young defendant took nude photographs of Jane Doe

who was then a sixteen year old girl I’ll find girl for you this time I promise

Europe would be better to find little girl what do you want me to do with this girl?

I sent you these pics of Russian girl another girl had to work Sunday

Monday after school? I would like a girl for Miami to spend the winter with me

Jane Doe has suffered traumatic injuries Prince Andrew and girl 17

Epstein would want to see each girl at least two to three times she may have brought

anywhere from 20 to 50 girls so many girls now she looks pretty though…

nice only problem is she’s 30 remember I brought the girl to ur house in Palm Beach

Epstein hated one girl because she initiated liked shy and timid girls

Your littlest girl was a little naughty I have a New one she is Russian too

let me know what you think about this one a very hot girl I didn’t say anything

mean last night I was just asking questions also found you a girl as you asked.

*Note: This erasure poem was created using the Epstein files as source material. In just a small portion of the released Epstein files the word girl appears over 11,000 times.

Elizabeth Mercurio (she/her) is the author of the chapbooks Doll and Words in a Night Jar. She earned an MFA from The Solstice Low-Residency Program. Her work has appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Ample Remains, The Wild Word, Thimble Magazine, Vox Populi, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart and best of the net nominated poet and was named a finalist in the Cordella Press Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Poetry Prize.

Photo credit:

Lemonading

By Victoria Melekian

America, greed is upstream
rivering unharnessed, fast splashing

across our land uprooting centuries
of forest, marsh, and rocky outcrops.

Greed is carving a frontier of gated wealth,
leaving us a new map: river of hunger,

river of despair, river of no mercy.
America, greed is gilding the capitol.

Kids down the street are raising money
for a classmate’s rugged wheelchair—so he can go

with us to sixth grade wilderness camp, they said.
Their lemonade: so zesty, so sweet.

Victoria Melekian grew up in Los Angeles and now lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California. Her poetry collection The Accidental Courage of Our Lives is available from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Unhoused, Victoria’s novella-in-flash, won first place in the 2026 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash Awards. For more, see her website: victoriamelekian.com.

Photo credit:

Monarch

By Deanna Altomara

A long time ago (or maybe not so long),
your grandmothers boarded a ship across churning seas,
Just as we took to the yawning sky,
Full of dreams and haunted by a home that was no longer our own.

We weren’t born to fly.
In the darkness, we had no choice but to
start anew, to molt and melt
until we glowed like burning embers.
We built our wings out of scrap fabric and chitin,
armored them with scales cut from patchwork quilts.
We learned to glide on the screams of storms.

And you dare to
demand we disappear?
Go ahead.
Build your walls and watch
us fly over them.

Deanna Altomara is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. Her poetry chapbook, The Happening: Reflections on the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting, received the Edna Meudt Memorial Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She has also been recognized by the Outdoor Writers Association of America and Last Stanza Poetry Journal.

Photo credit: Photo by ZHANG BO on Unsplash.

transcription (i can’t play sport)

By olive bly

they won’t
force me to fight
in the war

being trans
is a mental
illness, yes

you can’t
fight in the war
if you’re ill

i am
mentally ill
so can’t war

i was
terrible at
sports in school

only
ever really
scored one goal

& ’cause
sport & war are
the same thing

i don’t
think i would be
good at war

olive bly (Tangata Tiriti, Pākehā) is an outer-disciplinary artist of european descent from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and currently based in Naarm, Melbourne, Australia. Her work traverses a variety of mediums, finding synaesthetic links between multitudinous reference points. She adopts playful creative philosophies that blend the naive with the theoretic, underpinned by thematic cyclicality.

Her visual art has recently been exhibited in Aotearoa by MEANWHILE & Uindō95, and her poetry has been published by various literary journals and magazines, including a fine line, bad apple, and Nine Lives. She trained in jazz piano at Te Kōki (New Zealand School of Music) and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington). Her debut poetry collection, chrysalis (d[i̶]s)section, was published in August 2025 with 5ever books. Visit her website at olivebly.art.

Photo credit: No War by hellolittlemolly via a Creative Commons license.

If Only There Were No Trans Kids

From A Humanist Devotional

By Mitch Roshannon

“Some forms of political doctrine, for instance, function religiously, reflecting the worst features of orthodoxy and authoritarianism, especially when they sacrifice individuals on the altar of Utopian promises.” – Humanist Manifesto II, 1973

If only there were no trans kids
or queers in public squares
there could be peace in America.

Somehow, the eradication of
“Adam & Steve” will repair economies
unsustainable, tenuous, and fraught.

Dad would stop hitting mom;
steak and collard greens on the table
rather than cheap ramen and regret.

God would return to us his blessings
of simple lives and un-awakened masses.
Happy to look at shadows on cave walls.

If not for those dirty letters LGB. . .
we promise, we’ll only take the one.
QIA+ devils in our midst.

Read not to love one another as He
loved us; instead that Jesus came not bearing
peace, but a sword. For what?

To carve from the alphabet; withered
hands, wrists still healing, our brothers,
sisters, siblings? Shall there not be room?

Heaven’s gates closed; Saint Peter’s
rifle sights aimed at the trans girl who dared
try to find solace in a 5k or a swim meet?

Give me one good reason, Lord—
besides You, why I should hate her transformation,
glory she herself cannot yet see. . .
one good reason to dismiss her
and still, I won’t.

Mitch Roshannon is a writer based in the coal region of Pennsylvania. He has previously (and gratefully) been published by Panoply, Santa Fe Writers Project, Interfaith America, and others. He is currently working on a Chapbook titled Humanist Devotional which writes poetry and micro-essays inspired by quotes pulled from the Secular Humanist Manifestos.

Photo credit: Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash.

Silence

By Isla Laust

I look down
And see hands
Stained not with blood
But with silence

Isla Laust is a middle school English teacher in the United States. She primarily writes poems about her experiences as a teacher functioning within the education system. Her writing is fueled by watching her students and coworkers navigate current events and societal expectations as they all learn and grow together.

Photo credit: Bizz via a Creative Commons license.

Smash, Build, Rise

By Chelsie Zuccollo

I’m no architect, but I can lift a bag of cement.
Smash the patriarchy, then build something better.

I’m no contractor, but I can see the possibilities.
Don’t break the glass ceiling—redesign the roof.

I’m no lawyer, but I use my voice for others.
Pay me the same as a man; it’s overdue justice.

I’m no tour guide, but I know how to manage an itinerary.
Feminism is fragile. Don’t leave anyone behind.

I’m no soldier, but I know when to raise my rifle.
This body is mine, not your front line or a combat zone.

I’m no astronomer, but I can use a telescope.
Use your voice as a constellation to light up the dark.

I’m no politician, but I know how to debate.
My consent is not a negotiation.

I’m no firefighter, but I extinguish forest fires every day.
Freedom tastes like fire on my lips.

I’m no seamstress, but I can thread a needle.
We stitch power into every wound we wear.

I’m no poet, but my words rise and reclaim.
The body is a poem; the mind is a riot.

Chelsie Zuccollo serves as an Assistant Professor of English, Interdisciplinary Studies Program Director, and Writing Center Director at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana. With an interest in performative gender studies, she hosts an annual event for her community: Voices of Feminism. This event showcases the work of local feminists, poetry, and art.

Photo credit: Rise Up by Patrick Emerson via a Creative Commons license.

“There Will Be Casualties”

—President Donald J. Trump (2/28/26)

By Ashley Mace Havird

I saw it from the top of the hill.
Hoped it was not a dead anything,
only a weird hump in the street.
(It was, after all, street-colored,
the same variations of gray.)
Cycled nearer. Dog? Too loaf-like.
Cat? No cat was ever that fat.
Possum it was,
I saw as my bike raced past.
Curled to die just inches
from its mother’s unbreathing snout,
a fetal joey (the offspring’s proper name).
Crawled or else flung from the pouch.
Old story, wrong place wrong time,
car gunning like a missile in the night.
Were there more young ones?
I could not look down to count.

It would have been dangerous.
I was going too fast, you see,
an old woman on an old bike,
dodging the pavement’s pocks and cracks
on my way to the gym and Pilates class,
flying almost, downhill. . . .
Opossum. I should use the proper name,
give it that much respect.
I confess that I could not stop
thinking of the little ones
in that school. Not the ones
who keep getting gunned down over here
in the US of A, but the bombed ones far away.
Girls in their bright headscarves,
with their bright dark eyes.
How could anyone look to count
the crayons and books and little shoes?

Ashley Mace Havird is a poet and novelist whose most recent collection, Wild Juice (LSU Press), appeared in 2021. The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press) won the X. J. Kennedy Prize. She has also published two chapbooks. Her debut novel, Lightningstruck (Mercer University Press), won the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction. Swimmer, her second novel, is scheduled for publication (NatureCulture Press) in early 2027. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and in anthologies such as The Southern Poetry Anthology, IV: Louisiana; and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. Ashley lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, with her husband, the poet David Havird, and their own best dog in the world.

Photo credit: Casualties of War by James via a Creative Commons license.

To my father, whose mother tongue is a village dialect

By Anonymous

When you rebuild yourself
from remnants now old
in a country where you are
not a citizen you are an alien,
how many times do you
mention how lucky you were
to rebuild yourself when
broken in college because of your dialect
in Botswana because of your
language in South Carolina and Georgia,
how many times were you told
the alphabet your mouth formed
was wrong. How does it feel to
rebuild yourself for
the fifth time in this
one life you’ve lived here for
decades and you always say
how lucky you were
to be the one in your family
of six siblings to make it
out of China alive.
How does it feel
to be frayed
into pieces again scared
again that everything
is going to fall apart
scared again that your race
is an arms race
tossed around by
politicians of all colors,
that your race
is a rifle
pointed at your face
if you don’t
“go back to where you came from.”
Make it the sixth.
Because the day
before your birthday
in 1989 bullets rip
past your face and
you run, you ran
for your life a day
away from 25, because
when you woke the next
morning your gift was
a door a square a
sky of bloody bodies.
China China China we are not
China he says
in tariffs and
deportations of Asian immigrants
and we are not China
but somehow after
decades of living here
your birthday
gift this year was
yet another herd
of youth
sent away
in the violence of
silence because the
silencers are elected
here by silent
power, of silent
promises, of silent
purging our yellow bodies from the
silent white Gulf of America,
because silence hides
between beats of your heart
as you run for your life.
How does it feel to
put more time and energy
and money into politics
than your citizen wife
and three American
daughters, combined,
how does it feel
when our
democracy only
bites you back
in executive orders
and cases from
the Supreme Court
of Injustice? Father, how does it
feel to be cracked
by news of youth
like you
denied Green hope and
Green opportunity
after walking life so far for a
Green Statue of Liberty
when only a Statue of
Oppression and Denial of Life
remains, her torch
toppled by greed
of men, and
supporters, toppled
into pieces
like you.

Father, teach me your language
because maybe I will learn to produce nectar,

sweet with stickiness that
I may piece your home of a body

half-whole again. And I’ll ask
in the words of your village,

how does it feel to be falling apart
and half-whole again. And you’ll laugh

and respond; And I know
it is our tongue you will respond in.

The poet is a young writer living in the United States. They are an editor for their school’s literary magazine. Outside of writing, they enjoy spending time with family and friends.

Photo credit: Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash.

Two Poems by Susanna Lang

Hiatus

in memoriam Renee Good

We are a field
untilled, an empty

echoing well, a trellis
winter’s stripped of its vine,

a bell held still,

a river muzzled
by ice, a widow

bewildered

by the abrupt bark
of a gun

•

No one knows
when river ice

will break up –
it rots from inside

then jams, erects
a barricade

•

Listen – the river
groans

the bellringer
pulls on the rope

On the Blue Line

Chicago, January 2026

Sunday afternoon, snow driven by wind. We weren’t surprised to find two seats together. Who goes out in this weather?

But at the next stop, and the stop after that, the car filled up, puffy coats, scarves pulled up, hats pulled down. Signs in their mittened hands, Estoy aquí por los que no pueden venir, ICE OFF OUR STREETS, Silverio Villegas González, Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti. Justice for, justice for, when will this end? Drawing of a blue hat worn by a five-year-old standing in the snow, held by a man who isn’t his father.

The train grew warm.
We had nothing in our hands.

Susanna Lang divides her time between Chicago and Uzès, France. Her most recent chapbook, Like This, was released in 2023 (Unsolicited Books), along with her translations of poems by Souad Labbize, My Soul Has No Corners (Diálogos Books). A new collection of Souad Labbize’s poems, Unfasten the Silk of Your Silence, was published in 2025 by Éditions des Lisières, and her translation of My Forests by Hélène Dorion is forthcoming from Book*Hug Press. Her fourth full-length collection of poems, This Spangled Dark, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. Her poems, translations and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Common, Asymptote, Tupelo Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, Rhino Reviews, Mayday and The Slowdown. Her translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, and she is now working with Hélène Dorion and Christine Guinard on new translations. More information is available at www.susannalang.com.

Photo credit: A La Plage TX.

Invasives

By Danita Dodson

Better the autumn olive growing wild, the kudzu dragging
barns back into earth, the honeysuckle choking
fenceposts—than the fever of a nation shuttering its gates to
human dreams. Better the Johnson grass towering over
barbed wire, the Hungarian brome in ditches, the Nepalese
browntop flaring through fallow fields—than the metal
mouths of B-2s dropped by a madman. Better the red fire
ants swarming, the hairy-tailed mole tunneling beneath the
garden, the sirex woodwasp needling into oaks—than the
muzzling of laughter that once lit living rooms. Better the
foul-sweet blossoms of the Bradford pear, the empress tree
with its fake royalty, the tree of heaven cracking
foundations—than the boots on the ground overtaking cities.
Better the deadnettle carpeting lawns, the spotted knapweed
sprawling, the Chinese lespedeza colonizing
roadsides—than the gerrymandered erasure of communities.
Better the ornamental burning bush gone rogue, the winter
creeper winding tight, the gall wasp swelling branches—than
the whitewashing of history in national museums. Better the
starling’s dark flash at dusk, the gecko skittering glass, the
Cuban treefrog calling from a drain—than the children
counting bodies instead of stars. Let the marmorated stink
bug clatter at window-screens. Let the spotted-wing
drosophila turn sweet fruit sour. Let the fire ant decapitating
fly do its clean work. I will not spend time and money on
pesticides. There are far more critical plagues to name, to
fight, to root out.

Danita Dodson is an educator, literary scholar, and the author of three poetry
collections, Trailing the Azimuth (2021), The Medicine Woods (2022), and Between
Gone and Everlasting (2024), all published by Wipf and Stock. Her poems have
appeared in Salvation South, Tennessee Voices, Braided Way, Women Speak,
Untelling, and elsewhere. She is a native of the Cumberland Gap region of East
Tennessee, where she hikes and explores local history connected to the wilderness. For
more, visit www.danitadodson.com.

Photo credit: Neal Wellons via a Creative Commons license.

A Note from Writers Resist
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Deliverance

By Phyllis Wax

Where is the angel
who will save us?

            Not in masked thugs
            who descend on ordinary people
            and whisk them away in unmarked cars

            Not in civil servants
            who, to keep their jobs,
            bend to the boss’s demands

            Not in political appointees
            who think any law
            can be broken

            Not in judges
            who ignore the harm they do
            when they allow fists on the scales

            Not in educators
            who rewrite history, consider
            facts malleable

Not in politicians
who place office above country

No
There is no angel
to save us

Our deliverance will come from ordinary people
chanting their outrage
in the streets And from voters
marching to the polls
to restore democracy

We have to save ourselves

Phyllis Wax lives near Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. She grew up in the Washington, DC, area, which might be why social justice issues push their way into much of her work. Also inspired by nature and human nature, as well as by music of all sorts, her poetry has appeared in many publications, including Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Spillway, Peacock Journal, Wordpeace, New Verse News, Your Daily Poem, Mobius.

Photo credit: Bogdan Krupin via a Creative Commons license.

13 Ways of Looking at Wicked

By Suzanne Edison

All words in italics come from at least one federal agency’s list of
“woke” terms that need to be avoided—NYTimes, 11 March 2025

I.
Born in the garden, a sanctuary. No barriers and all beings had a sense of belonging.

II.
Assigned at birth, her gender, female. Though perhaps transgender . . . you know, Adam’s rib, etc.

III.
Her name, Eve, on the cusp of . . . with Hebrew roots, signified life. Oh, but the trauma

IV.
of knowledge, as if pregnant with privilege, was deemed a disability

V.
warranting exclusion.

VI.
Her clean energy sex with Adam, i.e. people + uterus = key populations + a brimming bag of pronouns

VII.
increased diversity. She wandered. An immigrant. Was she Black or brown?

VIII.
Racial identity indeterminate. Equal opportunity victims declare her cultural heritage colorless, as this page.

IX.
(From a scientific perspective, white (light) is all-inclusive of the diverse colors of the visible spectrum.)

X.
Science, expendable, as the Gulf of Mexico—a victim of brain disparity

XI.
from undervalued, biologically male, stereotypes, prolific as climate crises.

XII.
These systemic prostitutes advocate

XIII.
altars to oppression.

Suzanne Edison’s book, Since the House Is Burning, was published by MoonPath Press in 2022. Her poetry can be found in The Missouri Review, Verse Daily, Whale Road Review, Lily Poetry Review, MER, and SWWIM Daily. Her poetry had also been recognized as finalists in Naugatuck River Review and RockPaperPoems. She lives in Seattle, and her website is at www.seedison.com.

Photo credit: Terence Faircloth via a Creative Commons license.

Welcome to Writers Resist Fall 2026

Two Poems by Marcy Rae Henry

the last poem in Spanglish

day in the life as sonnet

Cost of Living

Testifying with My Daughter Against Missouri SB597*

After Roe Was Repealed

EXPO Marker

Girl (an erasure*)

Lemonading

Monarch

transcription (i can’t play sport)

If Only There Were No Trans Kids

Silence

Two poems by Mia Leonin

Smash, Build, Rise

“There Will Be Casualties”

To my father, whose mother tongue is a village dialect

Two Poems by Susanna Lang

Invasives

Deliverance

13 Ways of Looking at Wicked