social justice – Writers Resist

Doomscrolling isn’t solidarity

By Maxochitl Cortez

I too doomscroll
scroll a screen of California fires
Texas floods
protests for black and brown kin
the news it flows too easy on the screen

I see
police brutality
LA resisting protecting people
picked up
piece

piece

off
the

streets
our streets

stories seep out of me
my language is documentation
not the kind of documents they want
to see

how do you document a people
carved from this land
back when my tiabuela’s cheekbones spoke
of revolution

she reveals to me the stories
in banned books
banned // barred // black // brown // bars
our stories must be told

written down carved even
into our skin
like they have been carved
into our DNA

our people are not trends
hash tagging their #names
is not enough
what is the liberation they
yearned for
burned for

SAY THEIR NAME
repeat

#repeat

REPEAT
repeat

#repeat

#LONGLIVETORTUGUITA

say her name
your abuela, your tiabuela, your vis abuela. . .

what stories do they have stored
                                                          frozen
                                                                      cold
                                                                                old
will the pages sit
                        in your freezer too?
preserved to serve
or lay severed in the scorching sun
that demands our salty sweat

Maxochitl Cortez is Chichimekah and Coahuiltecan from the lands of Aridoamerica. They are a two spirit Indigenous Resistance Artist, Educator, and Community Organizer—using storytelling as a pathway for collective liberation. They are a host with every.Word poetry, a Black and Indigenous led spoken word organization in so called Austin, Texas. The seeds of their storytelling ask what liberation means, what we will do to get there for all people, and what narratives we honor during our path to healing. Find them on instagram @raya.maxochitl.

Photo credit: Felton Davis 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.

Pledge

By Dion O’Reilly

At Mountain School, the white-faced,
clock clicked eight. I stood, right hand to left breast,
recited rhythm, felt safety in meter,
felt—like a door flown open—the final
for all, which I took

to mean four-legged beasts, bugs, clouds,
geese, moons, planets, billions of suns.
For all meant us—pinafored girls in cotton socks
& patent leather, hemlines to knee,
legs pimpled with cold, meant kids with pinworms
and drippy nostrils, meant Barbara who bought
the best clothes, who’d one day get a Beemer and a new nose.

For all, we said in unison, then sat like little robots
in wooden chairs, began our numbers,
our Dick and Janes, our in-line art,
while under my chalky thoughts, as I hopscotched
and foursquared, I savored . . . for all, for all . . .

Time crashed. Kennedy was picked off in a Lincoln,
next the Reverend, the second Kennedy, Malcolm X;
a war ate our brothers, the president was a crook.

Nearly old enough to vote, we refused
to drone the old words, stood silent,
hand over heart, pale defiance on our faces.

The teachers didn’t care,
but I, for one, missed for all, heard it
in the whispered undersides of leaves, the lit-flame
of a single wick, the creak of crows.

Not under God, not for which it stands, not the accurate,
misspoken invisible—not the flag, its stripes
like strips of wounded bandages,
just for all. Final trochee:
Two words—a universe inside them.

Dion O’Reilly’s third book, Limerence, was finalist for The Floating Bridge Press John Pierce Chapbook Competition for Washington State Poets. She is the author of Sadness of the Apex Predator (Cornerstone Press 2024) and Ghost Dogs (Terrapin 2020). Her work appears in Tar Poetry Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Sun, and Rattle. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads private poetry workshops, and is co-editor of En•Trance Journal. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

Photo credit: Arthur Reis on Unsplash.

GAZA

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 through.
You cannot say a country’s name over and over until it is
reduced to the last bitter syllable. You cannot condense a million lives
and strain them and slice them and dice them and season them.
You cannot fit every angle into the words you say.
You cannot hold the beating love story of every citizen
and move the camera to their feet and catch
the smirk when they turn the alleyway onto the main road.
You cannot capture the slap of their soles
or the bend of their ankles as they run. If you could grab
a pitcher full of water but the pitcher was as big and impossible
as the moon and you poured it all onto the page until
the water became an ocean and the faces of every
loved thing resurfaced, maybe then
you could approach the entirety of things—
the young boy splashing his face with water,
standing beside the others as prayer begins,
thinking about the girl he loves,
and the girl in the waiting room of a clinic
tapping her foot against the floor,
and the wind outside, rearranging dust,
carrying footprints to sea.

Kiran Masroor is a rising junior at Yale University where she studies Neuroscience and Evolutionary Biology under the pre-medical track. On campus, she is involved in TEETH Slam Poetry, Timmy Global Health, and Yalies for Pakistan. Her poetry appears in such publications such as the New York Quarterly, the Connecticut Literary Anthology, and the Yale Global Health Review.

Photo credit: Peter Tkac via a Creative Commons license.

Note from Writers Resist: If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.