By Alma Ariaz Everyone tells me It wasn’t my fault, That karma will get him, Will leave him to rot. Everyone tells me I should have fought harder, And why did I wear that, I was asking for trouble. Everyone tells me, That ‘no’ isn’t binding, It’s fluid, it’s blurred, I am overreacting. Filthy, contaminated, [...]
By Skye Wilson I want to break his bones for what he did. No metaphors, just snap against my skin; pain blooming in his eyes like burns on flesh. I’ll scorch all of the skin he touched me with. I want to grow to twice my usual size, drink in the pain and terror in [...]
We Are What We Shine after J. Venters and M. Barajas Bright as a jewel, we are what we shine. A gang's red-blue color-coded word clash Compton's graffitied not-so "Welcome" sign. Compton Court obliterates the blue skyline, Angeles Abbey minarets, brown grass, like burnished silver, we are what we shine. We suffer potholed streets silent [...]
By Ololade Akinlabi Ige After Salawu Olajide Dedicated to my country, Nigeria What greets you when you get here? Walls of broken spines? Fences of bleeding bruises? Burnt roofs that open mouths? Windows with wounded hearts? Your father was a victim of the last bomb explosion and his grave grows mushroom flowers. Your mother [...]
By Linda Laderman Again, we witness panicked people fleeing war. You tell me, people don’t care, it’s Ukraine’s war. Sitting in an Ann Arbor bistro, we order baked Turkish eggs, & I mumble, even Turkey opposes this war. One booth over, a woman applies siren red lipstick, then gestures at the screen over the bar. [...]
A Cosmic Dirty Story —from the New York Times, 9 August 1945 From an open door in the sky, the threshold of a new industrial art. To the earth, an explosion of red: the new and terrifying weapon. In the morning newspaper, images arrive: an imagination-sweeping experiment. As we read the story, we learn— The [...]
By Phyllis Wax Fly the flag at half-mast all the time because every day, someone kills himself or someone else or a bunch of someones with a gun. Fly the flag at half-mast because America loves guns more than she loves people. Social issues are a major focus of Milwaukee poet Phyllis Wax. Among [...]
By Erica Goss I’m sixteen. School thinks I have the flu. I tell the doctor to knock me out. In the alley behind the clinic, men wait in cars. They leave their engines rumbling. Backseat speakers vibrate. My mother drives me home. I’m thirty-seven. Work thinks I had a miscarriage. I tell the doctor to [...]
Brown-Headed Cowbird Molothrus ater I know what it’s said about me that I am a bad mother a brood parasite —no I know I relinquish my eggs to the care of others but notice; I take my time watching in torture-wait until I find her, the perfect host a serious, smaller, caring female in this [...]
By Dotty LeMieux Where are the birds of spring? I see bees—are there enough? Black carpenter ants—we never had them before— emerge from some dusky damp place beneath the foundation. We live in a house of cards. Even a bear takes exception to exceptional times and climbs a backyard tree he must have crossed mountains [...]
Mendocino, California By Frederick Livingston after how many years does “drought” erode into expected weather? and then what name when the rains do come startling the hard earth the exhausted aquifers? we’ll sing to the deep wells the quieted fire and clean sky “winter” brittle in our mouths holding vigil for rivers elders insects lovers [...]
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler Heat buffets us seaward. Sunburn sends us home. We trail wakes of bags & butts clamshell packages & coffee cups. Styrofoam seeds sprout like alien plants neoprene petals band aid leaves. Straws take root in tangled kelp. Saltwater & sun degrade. Waves & currents take away. Great Garbage Patch. Undersea pyre. [...]
By Remy Dambron Imagine instead if we incentivized our citizens to stalk and spy on to report and incriminate those among us preparing for an assault, purchasing pistols brandishing rifles and boasting bump stocks customizing scopes and fastening silencers loading up on boxes of bullets intended to pierce our flesh to break our bones to end [...]
By Katherine West Equity is something that is dealt with in D.C. or not dealt with in those red states that still use the "n" word or in big cities with big crime . . . where is the white channel on this police radio? not in this small town in this blue state where the [...]
By Kathleen Minor The dude who refused to denounce white supremacy, tried to nuke a hurricane and our democracy, puts kids in cages and promotes segregation. That dude? Rewrote the Declaration. We hold these truths to be self-evident: If you ain’t white, you must be irrelevant. Listen. There seems to be some confusion. We’ve been called [...]
