By Debasish Mishra Dear daughter, this is a dark world Light is a mere plaything and if you were present here it’d diffract through the window and fall on your orange cheeks like petals of the sun But darkness is real How do I define it? Wherever you go, it'll follow in the stares of [...]
By Kai Coggin a praise poem, after JP Howard, for my Sisters praise you Black Woman because you never be praised enough let me lift your collective name here let me strip you of all your forced-on shame here praise you for the stars that unfold when you smile praise you for the way moons [...]
By Avra Margariti A lullaby—seductive, hypnopaedic—slinks through the high security ward of the women’s prison. Morrigan, the phantom queen whistling between sharp teeth her very own Cell Block Tango, banshee call to arms. The doors all open wide locks broken, passwords hacked, guard uniforms painted red with life, never to be washed clean again. The [...]
By Jane Muschenetz To Skyler and the Diversionary Theatre, who stand proud and help all of us stand together. They’re studying the effects of gendering on language and cultural norms — how the moon is feminine in Spanish and Russian, but masculine in German how this alters our perception of its qualifications — whether we [...]
By Suzanne O'Connell This morning I found a meatloaf in a basket. When you look, there are always things to find. The only time you can find a fraudulent ballot for example, is when you look. We have statisticians willing to testify that there is a big coordinated Thing. It lurks in every city. It’s [...]
Summer 2021 By Erin Murphy Everything is free, it seems: parking, treats for dogs whose owners browse free-range brown eggs. Last month scores of documents were found in a nearby attic, dry rotted and tattered. One offered 30 dollars for the capture of a Negro man named Amos with coarse trousers, a tolerable good felt hat, [...]
By Julie A Dickson Cotton familiarity, certainly, reparation absent, disparity of races, apparent then, in lack of mule plus 40 acres promised, disconcerted, hired workers of color, tried to transcend past inequity, berated frequently, repeatedly as subservient, un- respected and mostly suspected crime, intrusion, caucasian collusion to diminish pride, worth taken from generations passed, freed [...]
By Kiran Masroor Gaza did not destruct for us to watch. The way the word Gaza stays in the back of the throat. I didn’t know I loved Gaza until it became so small. Small as a word in a sentence. We fit such enormous things into our mouths and expect that the meaning still comes [...]
By Lea Page The photograph: Vice-President Kamala Harris (let’s just say that one more time: Vice-President Kamala Harris)—a woman, a brown woman, a black woman, an Asian-American woman, a woman born of immigrants, a powerful woman, a fierce woman, a joyful woman—swears in a man whose husband—partner, third-gentleman (?), the love of the man’s life, [...]
Thoughts on walking by rippling grey water under a darkened sky In the days before stretch marks, second husbands, morning stiffness, encore careers. In the days when we couldn’t imagine finding weed and condoms secreted under our teenagers’ beds. Or knowing the location of every hidden bathroom in innumerable coffee shops, Whole Foods, Farmers’ Markets. [...]
By Jesse Mavro Diamond For LGBT Rights Activist Dick Leitsch Carpenters, bankers, bricklayers, undertakers. Why gay bars? Because we could only be gay In gay bars. The N.Y. State Liquor Authority CEO: no discrimination in bars. Why? because bars had the right to refuse customers not acting suitably. Therefore, disorderly. Bankers, bricklayers, undertakers, carpenters. [...]
By Sarah Sheppeck "I want to hear all of you.” "Do I have to tell it in order?" "However you’d like." She takes a cigarette, lights it, hands me the pack. "The only condition is that you have to tell it all." “Okay.” I exhale a thick plume of smoke. “All right. Here goes.” • [...]
By Sherry Stuart Berman when they are ants world is colony is home is superorganism single-file, no ears they feel vibrations with their feet rely on scent for instruction they are trash-handlers, excavators, swarm when called to and when their king corrupts their wings and rots the wood and steals their eggs they carry him [...]
By Suzanne O’Connell The past four years have been like having a dad who sells all the furniture while I sleep, breaks the windows over the sink, throws out my stuffed bunny and lava lamp, then promises to take me to the Ferris wheel. He’s so loveable, until he isn’t. Like when he shoves me, [...]
by conney d. williams the hope of this people, like tectonics, quake under the abusive weight of impostors sitting upon its collective breath still engulfed in protest dissenting to comply with its own extinction and these impostors or parasites would pillage even the safety from victims even as they disintegrated in obscurity human waste inside [...]
