Poetry – Writers Resist

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.

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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.

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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.

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Insurance Approved

By Samantha Lucia

I said yes to permanence at 27
They called it ESSURE
They called it SAFE

Two metal coils
threaded
into fallopian tubes
like promises — like policy

market-vetted
APPROVED
No incisions
In-office procedure

Try coils
thrust raw
into tubes
unanesthetized

Women’s pain
thresholds

Twelve years of
my body screaming,
“STOP!”

And physicians saying,
“PROVE IT.”

The coils scarred over — created blockages
leaked nickel into unwilling tissue

Inflammation exploded
a language I couldn’t speak — but couldn’t stop speaking
A language of pain that
bent me,
bowed me,
made me small

Pain that doesn’t image—
So, they decide,
“You’re imagining.”

                                                                                          even after the
                                                                                          BLACK BOX
                                                                                          warning

                                                                                          even after they
                                                                                          PULLED it
                                                                                          from the
                                                                                          market

Physicians looked and declared,
“Essure doesn’t cause this.”

They KNEW

The market’s small print
had written itself into my organs
in allergy ink

Certified itself
in bedridden years of,
“We need a biological excuse.”

A woman’s pain isn’t valued enough
to remove its source

A woman’s suffering only matters
when it can be CODED
365 days
of merciless bleeding

My body performed its loudest proof —
its most monetizable symptom

Until the insurance surrendered to
a code it recognized

‘Murderous Coils’— NO
‘Diseased Uterus’— YES

INSURABLE

A hysterectomy at 39

                                                                                          becoming
                                                                                          algorithm-
                                                                                          legible

                                                                                          becoming
                                                                                          profitable
                                                                                          loss

The market sold me the device
The market cut it out

They logged it . . . TWICE

Samantha Lucia (she/her) is a queer poet and photographer living in the American South who writes from the archive of a body the record kept getting wrong. Her work has appeared in Corporeal, Poetries in English, MENACE, Witches Magazine, Twisted Tongue, Spellbinder, and January House, among others, and is forthcoming in the 1455 Books: Women Writers Anthology (2026). Follow her on Instagram @iamsamanthalulu.

Photo credit: Ittmust via a Creative Commons license.

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astomatous

By Victoria Reyes

for Mahmoud Khalil

itstartedoffanordinaryday. suddenly:accosted. handcuffed.kidnapped. withoutawarrant &with
holdingtheirnames, ICEagents tearyou fromyourdoctor wife,8monthspregnant, filmingtheordeal.
secretedtoa Louisianabunker, you’regivennopillow tolaydownyourhead, nocloak
tostaveoffthecold, missingthebirth ofyourchild. forwhat longingforaFreePalestine?
anendtogenocide? youareremindedofSyria. Werecall genocide &enslavement asU.S.origins. thereisnofreespeech—

only the rich have mouths.

Victoria Reyes (she/her) is a writer, poet, and scholar. She’s also the author of Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay Philippines and Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope. Her poetry has appeared in Feminist Formations, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Dissident Voice.

Photo credit: Henry Burrows via a Creative Commons license.

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The In-Between

By Krista Lee Hanson

For Renée Nicole Good

You said your soul lived, perhaps,
in-between your pancreas & large intestine.

My soul has been skittish,
these days, hiding, perhaps
in-between my cranium &
cervical spine, under hunched shoulders
bracing for the next disaster,

but your violent
murder,
the sudden snuffing of your life,
your mother-poet light,

the horror of it has shaken me,
rattled something loose,

and in the aftermath my soul has spread
wide as a lake on a windless day,
clear as this winter breath,
fully inhabiting my gut with the knowing:

we are many millions more than
mercenaries and despots,
we the people, who threaten the regime by loving
the things they cannot sell us: our neighbors,
friends and strangers, children and their teachers,
the ones they have insisted are other,

and, also, the migrating birds,
the coyotes and beavers,
the trees with their secret language,
their souls telling stories in the soil,

and the hope that comes,
every single sunrise, that our love
and solidarity is magnetic,
drawing more and more
people into our circles.

You wrote about sacred texts,
wondered about science and
faith meeting, asked if those religions
could be as gentle as your mother,
sliding long hairs behind your ear

and now we know your mother
is both tender and fierce,
your wife, too, speaking your name,
calling you baby—
drive, baby, drive

& now telling the world
about your Goodness.

Krista Lee Hanson (she/her) lives in Seattle, Washington, home of the Coast Salish people, with her partner and two children. Krista’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Normal School, Rad Families, A Celebration and other publications. She has been a finalist for CRAFT’s Flash Nonfiction prize, and she was nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Best of Small Presses prize. Currently, Krista is writing a memoir about disability and complex care, and organizing with her neighbors to build webs of community care. Visit her website at kristaleehanson.com.

Poet’s Note: This poem is in response to On Learning to Dissect a Fetal Pig, by Renee Good (previously Renee Nicole Macklin).

Photo credit: Diana via a Creative Commons license.

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The Law

By Anne Reiner

For Alex Pretti

we’re all under the same law
Newton’s third
where forces always come in pairs

tear gas roars at
a citizen
a citizen
roars back with an
equal and opposite force
of a protest

a knee pushes against
a neck
a neck
pushes back with an
equal and opposite force
of a movement

an agent of the state shoots
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet
a bullet

• • •

my young son tells me
a ball could pass through a bat
if all the atoms
arranged themselves
with unerring exactness

if we the people
had a rising
that was
atomic

and arranged ourselves
just

so we passed
right through them

a strike without a hit

in our unequal and opposite
reaction

to lay down
the law

Anne Reiner is a writer and biostatistician based in New York City. Visit her website at annereiner.com.

Photo credit: Jay Rembert on Unsplash.

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Fog of War

By Laura Buxbaum

I’ve been in a fog before – sailing ghostly quiet,
listening for the buoy’s clang, blowing
a feeble horn to warn the ferry or the lobsterman
our small vessel is near, please don’t hurt us.

Brain fog, too – what’s the word I’m looking for? Who
are you, do I know you, did our children
go to school together? Did we make music once?
Did we go to bed together years ago?

Icy sea smoke. Dense cloud my headlights
barely pierce. Fog on a mountaintop, blue
sky on the other side. Gray-white sea through
which the blind and miraculous airplane passes.

We motored up Eggemoggin Reach through
swirling ribbons, wisps like birds or spirits.
We said there must be a thousand words
for fog, for its varied shapes and colors.

Sometimes the mists fooled us, making
distance seem closer or sounds farther
away. Never were we so confused
that we might mistake a drowning sailor

for our enemy. Never did we
sink a boat
then blow up
all of the survivors.

Laura Buxbaum (she/her) is a re-emerging poet in her sixties, living in Maine. Her pursuits include raising goats, making cheese, making music, and running on local trails. Her poems can be seen in Thimble Lit, Rat’s Ass Review, Brawl, Verse-Virtual, and Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine. Her poetry explores themes of family, loss, love, and nature. Lately, she’s working to find her sharper edges and explore ways to confront the chaos and darkness we all face.

Photo credit: Fakhri Baghirov via a Creative Commons license.

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How to Ignite Polite Fires

By Em Arata-Berkel

WARNING!
Only burn on a level, fire-resistant surface.
Burn with an extinguisher in sight.
Keep away from flammable objects.
Keep away from children, open windows, or heavily trafficked areas.

BURNING INSTRUCTIONS
Acknowledge the aspirations of a long wick, then
trim to a quarter inch before lighting.
Savor the experience.
Enjoy notes of smoke, wet concrete, pepper spray,
and what you—the rugged individual
must do to fix this.

REMEMBER!
Keep wax free of any foreign materials, which
may generate more fuel than your bell jar can handle.
Do not burn more than four hours at a time.
Cool at least two hours before lighting again.
Stop use when only a finger’s width of wax remains, then

tell yourself you know what it means to ignite trashcan bonfires, raise a barricade, hold a line, pour water into a stranger’s burning eyes, and fourteen hours later, pass along your new friend’s red vine moonshine while feeding stale corn puffs to a blaze fused with a screaming watercolor dawn.

Em Arata-Berkel is an emerging poet who’s taken root in the Pacific Northwest. They earn coin by untangling taxonomies and are seldom without a cuppa something. Their poetry can be found in the award-winning anthology I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State and the digital Washington State Queer Poetry Anthology. Find them online at erratawrites.bsky.social.

Photo credit: Filipp Romanovski via a Creative Commons license.

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Someone Will Be Right With You

By Laura Grace Weldon

Even the book I bring is not enough
to keep me from watching the man tasked
with patient intake. He may be new to the job
or simply struggle with what’s required to
cope in a time when everyone seems angry.

Whatever mysterious power transfers emotion
is at work when I sign in at his window.
I feel myself gulp and stammer too,
his hurried keystrokes through my fingers,
his forehead sheen on my face.

The name he wears on a lanyard
is turned around and I’m glad
the angry woman across from him now
can’t use it to slice her fury
farther inside with the hissing words

we hear from our seats.
“I’m sorry” he repeats,
mantra of all of us who displease
the world’s scolders, mockers, ragers.
He finally manages what she demands,

hands over her papers
with a deference no one deserves.
I’m called up next and
notice the soft hairs at his neck,
his half smile shrug when I sympathize.

As he leans over to grab a page
from the copier I see the name
on the other side of his ID. I will not
share it in this poem as a kindness,
the only protection I can offer him.

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books.

Photo credit: Allan Rostron via a Creative Commons license.

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Fruit Flies

By Deborrah Corr

They drone around the now browned bananas
I forgot to eat when they were fresh and yellow.

Air-born things with wings too tiny
to be seen, black dots that can’t

be snatched from the air or smashed
against the window, out of which I can see

the Trump flag flying from a house
down the street. I stood on a corner

last week with different neighbors,
rubbing elbows as we held up signs,

corralling our fears into a swarm of resistance.
Not so many of us on the sidewalk that day.

Just a few fruit flies, persistent, annoying,
doing what it takes to point out decay.

Deborrah Corr is the author of the chapbook Naked Rib (Finishing Line Press). A former kindergarten teacher, she decided upon retirement to dedicate her time to the art and craft of poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals and anthologies, including The Penn Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Booth, Verse Daily, The McNeese Review, Catamaran and many others. Deborrah lives in Seattle where she is inspired by gardening and morning walks with her husband. You can find her website at https://deborrahcorr.com/.

Photo credit: California Department of Fruit and Agriculture.

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Two Poems by Erin Vaughn

Birthday

Yesterday at school,
a boy touched himself in front of you
his eyes unfocused
as if he was there and not there.
He looked right through you
and then your body was not your own.

Today you turned eleven
and shrieked through a throng of friends
who threw their arms around you
as you opened all your presents.
I wanted to cry because
I don’t know how to tell you
that this will happen again: men
will see you and not see you
over and over
and it takes a lot of light
to blow out all the candles
and still burn.

Things to Bring to the Protest

Bring your phone, locked.
Granola bar. ID.
A vial of your mother’s tears
and the sharp grey stone of your rage.
Bring all the joy you can find. Ball it up
in your hands like a fist.
Gather the shreds of your compassion
from where they’ve scattered about the house–
between the pages of books,
pots on the stove–and stuff your pockets.
Bring bandages and balm,
the small sleeping sounds of your brother’s
new baby, the wounded
song in your heart and the world it has lost.
These, together, are heavy.
Do not worry, beloved;
many hands lift here.

Erin Vaughn (she/her) is a poet and educator who writes in order to understand what it means to live freely—whether in a body, a family, or a country. She lives in Maryland with her husband, young daughter, and two dogs. Her poetry has been previously published in The Basilisk Tree.

Photo credit: Jenni Konrad via a Creative Commons license

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Dear Colleague:

By Shannon Frost Greenstein

Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. – U.S. Department of Education, Dear Colleague Letter: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in Light of Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard (Feb. 14, 2025).

What we mean when we start with “Dear Colleague,”
has nothing whatsoever to do with respect;
what we mean when we start with “Dear Colleague”
is that some shit is about to go down.

“Dear Colleague” is how we impugn women and blame survivors;
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter on Sexual Violence,’) (April 4, 2011)
“Dear Colleague” is how we sacrifice our young at the altar of capitalism.
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) in Title IV Aid Programs’) (March 1, 1995)

“Dear Colleague” is how we orchestrate perpetual recidivism;
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: Eligibility of Confined or Incarcerated Individuals to Receive Pell Grants’) (March 29. 2023)
“Dear Colleague” is how we exert control over the most vulnerable.
(U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: Updated waivers and modifications of statutory and regulatory provisions governing the FSA Programs’) (Sept. 27, 2012)

“Dear Colleague” is what you hear before we start stripping away your rights;
“Dear Colleague” is the façade of civility under the quiet veil of fascism.
“Dear Colleague” is intended to sound like we are all equals;
But “Dear Colleague” is just another way to say you must follow orders.

Now “Dear Colleague” is instructing us all
to forget the fundamental racism
that vivisects our nation like a blade;
to ignore that capitalism started on the plantation,
and that all Americans do not share the same civil rights.

“Dear Colleague” is a map
along this slippery slope to dystopia,
a world removed from its humanity
and unmoored from objective truth.

And whenever the government strays from its ethical duty
to cultivate an informed, compassionate populace,
you can bet your ass a “Dear Colleague” letter
preceded that shift like a soothsayer.

But at least the U.S. Dept. of Education
has not yet attempted to interfere
with the dangerous technology
that steals from our artists and replaces our art;
at least they are leaving counterculture alone.

What’s that?

The U.S. Dept. of Education, ‘Dear Colleague Letter: Request for Information on Researcher and Educator Use Cases for the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (Nov. 15, 2024)?

Well, shit.

Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides near Philadelphia with her family and cats. She is the author of Through the Lens of Time (2026), a fiction collection with Thirty West Publishing, and These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things (2022), a book of poetry from Really Serious Lit. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Pithead Chapel, Nimrod Journal, and elsewhere. Shannon’s passions include Friedrich Nietzsche, anti-racism, the Seven Summits, the Hamilton Soundtrack, and acquiring more cats. Find her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com. Follow her on Bluesky @shannonfrostgre and Instagram @zarathustra_speaks.

Photo Credit: Mizuno K via a Creative Commons license.

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To the League of Extraordinary Ladies

By Sarah Gane Burton

What we need now
is a woman who can tell a good story
one of those to-be-continued tales
that stretches night after night
distracting the megalomaniac
from his modus operandi
of chaos and destruction.

Send us Shahrazad
a fabled beauty telling fables
avoiding fatality
taming madness
with imagination and poise
and a bedtime story
for an overgrown man-child.

If Shahrazad is unavailable
we will settle for any of the other
indomitable women willing to deal
with our President/Dictator/Emperor
(at their discretion, of course). We might suggest
Jael, Cleopatra, Boudica, Joan. Some wise and charming
woman who knows how to wield a tent peg.

Sarah Gane Burton is a freelance writer living in Michigan with her husband, two children, and a dog. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Medical Literary Messenger, Third Wednesday, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and the South Carolina Review. She enjoys botanical gardens, thrift stores, and looking at other people’s bookshelves.

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They Forget

By Mandy Prell

Mandy Prell investigates the female body, sexuality, motherhood, marriage, and faith through a feminist lens. She holds a Master of Science in Education from Johns Hopkins and an IndieMFA in Advanced Poetry through Writing Workshops. Mandy lives with her daughters, spouse, and cats in a historic, haunted town in Kentucky where she works to promote educational equity.

Her poetry has appeared in Gathered Words, a Scotia Roads Books anthology, Gnashing Teeth Publishing zines and anthologies, and on Paragraph Planet. Upcoming poems will appear in Ink in Thirds, The Bloomin’ Onion, and Rawhead. Visit her website and follow her on Instagram @mandyprell.

Photo credit: Eden Kefale 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.

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To those out there with hope

By Catherine Zickgraf

keep doing that.
Take candles into the thicket.
Take lighters, make sparks.

Elder statesmen tell us to hope
but can’t promise we’ll survive
to the other side of destruction.

They see broadly,
standing above the wild, staring
down through the tangled mess.
I don’t see a way out
but want to trust they can.

Here in the war of worlds,
an axis lured us with fentanyl
and sold us back the ruins.
It was easy to stir bigotry,
turning us on each other.

But I, without hope,
pass on this message.
Don’t hide and pray it stops.
Our descendants need to know
we burned the plantations down
and didn’t surrender.

May we preserve the books that warned us.
They foresaw, we all did.
If you voted for it, admit and own it.

May there be history books in the future.
May they record that we tried.
Our Republic won’t die in silence.

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. You can find her work in Pank, Deep Water Literary Journal, and 7th-Circle Pyrite. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published by Kelsay Books. Find her socially in Bluesky and watch and read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com.

Photo Credit: Rapha Wilde on Unsplash.

A Note from Writers Resist
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Winter in Certain American Cities

By Alina Zollfrank

To reduce this season to snapshots, headshots, gunshots
does not do them—what was that word again?—
justice. Did (just-) abandon (-ice)?

What makes for cold truth?
Folded donut cartons?
Warm cups of something sweet?
Snow mounts, decorative and defensive?
Does a candle vigil, a prayer poem, an obit
mean we combine
(just-) again with (-ice)?

“It’s just ice,” my kids said when I worried
they might slip. Massive boots, fluffy scarves,
mittens collided in our safe, safe street.
Gingerly, gingerly I stepped outside. Sudden
giggle burbles rose when my arms took flight.
My heart, remembering childhood’s glitter magic,
flitted on skidding soles.
“Just ice?”—no, this winter was so much more.

Let’s rejoice, neighbors, rejoice.
Joy on slippery slope
becomes our shield in the face of weather.

Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has won the DIAJ Award and been nominated repeatedly for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. She has more upcoming in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Thimble, Reckon Review, and Sunlight Press. Alina is a grateful recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Grant, committed disability advocate, and hapless but hopeful gardener.

Photo credit: Cecilie Bomstad on Unsplash

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.

Unbroken

A Poem by Karen Crawford

There was a dream
a welcome
a torch
a flame
A yearning to breathe free
Now a mask of men in unmarked cars
willing to bend an arm
a knee
There’s a mission
should they choose to accept it
A price
should they choose to collect it
There’s a feast at a Mexican restaurant
after dinner they’ll raid it
There’s news coverage
there’s pressure
Without fear
Without favor?
Opinions first
Alternative facts later?
Snow
Whistles
Bounties?
Saviors
Where are you from?
Show me your papers
There’s a sweep
a goal
a quota
a spin
The worst of the worst
code for color of skin
Does it feel Pretti Good to commit cardinal sin?
Snap tackle pop
Tase for the win
Where’s your nurse at
your gardener
your nanny
your cook?
Going going gone
by hook or by crook
Their status unprotected
Greener pathways rejected
This land is not made for you
Just me
Maria
last seen at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary
Miguel
last seen in the parking lot of Home Depot
Yolanda
last seen Living Más at Taco Bell
Jose
last seen running from La Migra
Maria
Miguel
Yolanda
Jose
Say their names wear it out
Maria
Miguel
Yolanda
Jose
May God shed grace on thee
Maria
Miguel
Yolanda
Jose
Unbroken in the land of dreams

Karen Crawford is a writer, with Puerto Rican roots, who lives and writes in the City of Angels. Her work has been included in Best Microfiction 2025, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, The Citron Review and elsewhere. You can find her on X @KarenCrawford_ and Bluesky @karenc.bsky.social.

Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution

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.

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