a daggerpoint & what is salvation if not how we give our body to beauty to the memory of what does not rust —Othuke Umukoro the Sunday before this one, the catechist warned about hellfire and its odor of smoky taste. he said it would come unto us like the clouds, breaking off whatever remains [...]
By J.D. Harlock caught in the crossfire of a madding crowd, the child runs into the arms of her mother and nestles herself 'neath a limp arm drenched in blood, dreading the glare of the machine that scans the corpses of the agitators that dared to disturb the order it was programmed to maintain, and [...]
By Lisa Suhair Majaj when you learn that “gauze” comes from Gaza you will begin to understand how light passing through translucent fabric illuminates the delicate porous openings between threads that interweave to allow molecules of air and light to flow from one place to another without blockade or border, and you will learn how [...]
By Jordan Alejandro Rivera Tier I: Inframundo Poppy and cempasúchil petals Intermingled as our destinies Blood, bones, and stems Obsidian spearheads And shattered sugar skulls Tier II: Tierra Tomatoes, white sapotes, and olives Laid out on a lattice-patterned scarf Ten thousand and forty-three Candles flicker in harmony Guiding us here together Wax binds our food [...]
By Maira Faisal “You ask: What is the meaning of ‘homeland’? "They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread, and the first sky. "You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?” — from In the [...]
To Refaat Alareer, who became a kite Brother, you looked so loving, holding very gently that box of strawberries, and behind your home, not yet, not again, but incessantly in ruins. You were not a number, you were, an educator, a cheerful poet, settler’s boogeyman, and now that you’re dead, English is also [...]
By Abdulrazaq Salihu 3’ [...]
By Amy L. Bernstein “Because when it comes to truly explaining racial injustice in this country, the table should never be set quickly” – Nikole Hannah-Jones, "What is Owed," New York Times Magazine, 2020 I stand on the far shore of the fast-moving Combahee River, opposite the Collective, afforded a distant glimpse through a [...]
By Kerry Loughman never budged becalmed she was bleached by sun & beached on relentless rise of blue water liquid leeched from her eyes her orifices her great mouth agape her lungs did evaporate Climate-changed her wishes drowned in sand Kerry Loughman is a retired educator and photographer living in the Boston area. [...]
How a Woman Becomes Herself When the neighbor’s weed tree drapes over the power lines and shades her garden, she contemplates going out by moonlight to dump salt on the roots—but that could backfire and flow instead into the garden, be its ruination. These good neighbors invite her over for fine smoked brisket and can’t even [...]
By Tim Murphy What if trees could talk? No. Of course they do. What if we could hear them speak just beneath our feet? What if birds of all feathers who lift the sky with song and frame it with flight told us what names to call them? What if we could simply bathe in wonder [...]
By L. Acadia Describing our droomhuis for Dutch class, my worksheet filled with my dream house’s garden: Hollyhocks, hydrangea higher than I, wrought iron table for morning coffee, serenading birds, frogs ringing a pond. My love wrote an interior my mind couldn’t fit: puppy-claw impervious tile floors, dormer bedroom, dinner-party primed kitchen, postprandial dancing space. [...]
Congregation of Ibis “A barrage of storms has resurrected what was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River, setting the stage for a disaster this spring.” – from “Tulare Lake Was Drained Off the Map. Nature Would Like a Word," Soumya Karlamangla and Shawn Hubler, New York Times, April 2, [...]
By Bryana Joy for God’s sake no more games she said setting the last set of lace panties in the trash i am befuddled by all this rigmarole this muddle this hullabaloo she threw a negligee out the door and all of her lipstick tubes i am i the only one you are you the [...]
By William Palmer tide in— imagine waves scraping away that name and the lies upon lies that feed off it, dissolving them in foam imagine the mugshot gone the blue suits gone the long red ties around our country’s neck gone William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in JAMA, J Journal, One Art, On [...]
![Hand-lettered sign reading: [Aid workers in Gaza] are bringing their children to work with them so that if they die they die together —Juliette Touma, UNRWA Director of Communications](https://i0.wp.com/www.writersresist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/aidworkers.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=1)
