Nadya

You will find no sugarcoating here. This issue is loud. This issue has rage. This issue is unapologetic. Art is a quintessential part of expression. Expression is quintessential to protest. Put the two together and start a riot.

Brown Bag’s 12th issue has been titled Nadya. After Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, a feminist punk band known for wearing colorful ski masks and staging guerrilla protest demonstrations. Each blue tile flips to reveal the roars; all you have to do is click on them.

Villain? Hero? Which is which?

by Katie Grace

Not every villain has a story worth telling
But neither does every hero.

Sometimes the wicked witch trips over her cape
And sometimes the knight gets stuck in a tree.

Sometimes, the ‘hero’ just sits around all day,
And sometimes the ‘villain’ hangs up revenge.

Sometimes people can’t tell one party from the other
Because they’ve both selected neutrality.

And, in a villain’s mind, they will always be the hero,
And in the hero’s, the same is true.

Whether either one (out of a selection of millions)
Is worth telling is completely up to the writer.

History is written by the victors, as so many say,
And there are always views that are discarded –

Discarded in the face of the greater thing.
But how does one decide what is greater?

Playground Bullies

by Lisa Shulman

Those smug boys
with their simmering spite,
mean mouths and ready fists,
circled the playground
feeding on blood and fear.
We’d watch from the corners

of our eyes, nervous as sheep
bumping shoulders, shifting
from foot to foot in pretense of play,
jump ropes and red rubber balls
sweaty in our hands,
our voices reedy, thin.

Some slight shift of wind and they’d storm in
the whole roiling mass of them
basketballs thudding, war drums,
curses flaying the air,
scuff and skid of oversized shoes like jackboots—
they elbowed us off the court.

Most of us retreated, bleating,
but once there was a kid
who refused to leave, believed
in his right to play.
We watched as they changed his mind
their laughter cold blades as he limped away.

He wouldn’t look at us, that kid.
No one said anything.
No one told.
It’s what we had learned best
at school, every day swallowing
our pitiful lunches of fear.

We never wondered what might have happened
if we’d planted our feet on the gritty concrete
the whole pack of us
faced off against that small knot of boys—
not sharks, not wolves, not men with guns—
just kids like us.

Now I know.
It would have changed
everything.

For me, protest art is a way to spark connections with other like-minded people. If we home in on the definition of art as the use of creative skills to create something emotionally powerful, I think it's fair to say that the protest itself is an art.

Georgene Smith Goodin

A Nightmare's Dream

by Barry Green

A nightmare had a dream that he was not human,
waking to a scream that came from under his bed.
It was the voice of a child, whose eyes bespoke of
pain, of shrapnel and phosphorus burns and torn limbs, who
after staring at the sun, trying
to stop his eyes from seeing the nightmare, found that
even blindness would not stop the visions. When his sight was gone
the visions were joined by sounds,
discordant musical chords screeching
that there would be no future,
that in the end the silence of the earth
would bring no relief.
The nightmare sat up with a start and rose from his bed,
pajamas soaked with sweat,
finding that the dream was his only child,
who was now gone,
run away, trying to find a moonless night
where he would not find his father’s dream,
would not find his father,
but would find silence
and finally find sleep.

Jeremiah's Return

by Barry Green

Once the old prophet watched the burning temple
Watched as the hungry inhabitants left in long lines
Carrying what they could on their backs
Taking their tears with them to a strange land
His long beard stained with his own tears
His face contorted with anger
Cried for his people
But in the end held hope of return

He has come back to the land
Again watching long lines of hungry people
Carrying what they can on their backs
Taking their tears with them as they walk

Now he remembers the cries
From the rivers of Babylon
Where they sat and wept
As they recalled Zion

Have we forgotten when our captors
Asked us to sing and we asked, “how?”
As they sent us into exile
And we prayed for return

He hears them say once more
How can we sing a song of the Lord on foreign soil?
Should I forget you, Gaza, may my right hand wither
May my tongue cleave to my palate

Jeremiah hears them and remembers
His long beard again stained with tears
Angry that the memories of old
Have been forgotten

Creation itself is an act of resistance when those at the top say, "Don't question. Submit." Art, true art, never submits. It's purpose is to stir emotion, spark hope, and, above all, make people question everything they've been told.

Joe Coy

Fat Cat

by Robert Witmer

“From the beginning it’s been an iron hammer head with no hammer hole.” — from the Seventy-Sixth Case in The Blue Cliff Record

He was a fat cat. Born in the lap of luxury, lapping up life in the land of milk and honey. An orange tabby lording it over a ragged litter of street cats, each tom with his grimalkin slinking past the mousy rubbish bins, while every silky feline moaned for tabby’s room at the top. It was a purr-feckless pussy world. The way he saw it. But though his pampered days unrolled like a ball of yarn across a pasha’s marble floor, from chubby cherub-puss through kitchen-lickin’ kittenhood, advancing age finally fell upon him with an overfed corpulence stretching beyond the boundary of a binged obesity.

What to do when one is so opposed to restraint that his Cheshire grin puts among the pigeons a profound portliness that pushes past all borders of good sense, and starts to look like something that cat brought in? What might reverse self-subterfuge, even when the cat has slithered out of the bag and the mice are playing pizzicato in the porticoes and piazzas of Pandora’s box?

Fluffy and Fido fear not a foreboding future, for now the fattest cat of all is first to cast his gallstones at the wanton in your midst, founding the next frontier for glucagon peptide, and thereby fostering a feeling of fullness where once there was an insatiable appetite for all and sundry.

The helix felixed, the savior come, the pioneer of MEOW-1, the belly of the beauty in the beast, the pontifical proponent of all promising placeboes, the perfect pussycat.

All I know is that, throughout history, artists have always stepped up to confront and challenge abusive people and governments. It is the same now for us. We are witnesses to our own time, and we must not stay silent.

Christopher Woods

I Pledge

by Maia Martedi

… you are standing we are all standing at the kettle bell banging pitched brass by rote we.you.I stand pinocchio plucked onto a stage performing for? something invisible stands over your shoulder, palms sweat why why why pull eyes down disquiet sits undigested in the belly I pledge allegiance to commit this repetitive task every Monday, Friday- day(?) memory is hazy composite wood teeters on four legs drag skruuuh across the linoleum from 25, 30, 32 40 (?) desks wet palm to chest but the unease lingers like warm bad breath exhaled against the back of your hair Smothered

of the united states of pro fascist propaganda smeared into the crevices of our classroom

American exceptionalism makes a democracy out of an empire

cleverly divided under Dio – big D E pluribus unem smiling demurely up from quarters that can’t buy us anything it grows, irritation from the loose tag on 2 dollar t-shirts fast fashion to fill someone’s red-white-and-blue pockets as it disintegrated knuckles halfway across the word as it disintegrates on your body the unease was real, reads the tag, smudged with the pledges you wish you’d made

Protest art is the chance for expression without an apology. It's a method in building community and being able to take up space we deserve to. Protest art is what we need and crave, and what makes the world better.

Emily Eaton

the poors

by Angela Thorne

will need to work harder
to pay more for the carpenter ants

the mold scented kitchen

the waterlogged
bathroom
five people share

to provide a cushion
for our investments

a reliable stream
of passive income

Protest to me is seeing an injustice and taking action to help facilitate change

Brenda Bennetts Tonn

you will own nothing

by Angela Thorne

as the price of rent exceeds the average monthly cost of a new home you purchased eight years prior. as you cling to the feasible sum of that bill through the cost of repairing a flooding crawlspace the discomfort of avoiding the ex-Marine who lives next door who shows up unannounced offering you unwelcomed backrubs who pries the screen off your bedroom window from the outside. the crime map for your neighborhood highlighted in all green yet somehow you have stalkers. two. one stands on your front porch in the dead of night when you don’t answer, he walks around to the back door and pulls locked. you call the cops but they do nothing. so you sell the house. rent. let go of the mortgage you can afford own nothing as everything turns to a subscription— Microsoft office, Photoshop, Best Buy, Substack, Spotify, Walmart+ paid alongside gas and electric no more boxed products bought one time even paying a toll for your commute means buying a transponder. a monthly subscription a bill on top of the car note. no other way to get to work when affordable housing is all far away an hour here. an hour there. so you cancel your cable and go to the library you pool your income with a custodian, a retail clerk together you pay for a home in a walkable district mom and pop shops a train and a bus you cancel Netflix and Amazon prime frequent thrift stores to buy clothes and old compact disks you barter services one day your music student arrives to her lesson without a viola and you tune your violin strings down a fifth and hand it to her this is mine it is yours now too use it i will charge you nothing.

Rock + Chain

by Fabio Sassi

Protest art often describes change that often affects people, sometimes in a harmful way. This poem, Indiana Poem, is steeped in the history and struggles of Indiana’s working class, particularly those connected to the steel mills of Gary. The poem illustrates resistance through its remembrance of union struggles and its refusal to accept exploitation and loss as the status quo.

Michael Lee Johnson

Indiana Poem

by Michael Lee Johnson

A few tales
one of the reasons
I love Indiana.
Breaking loose from the state line
of Illinois, bursting down the Indiana
toll road near Lake Station
heading south
smelling the smoke of old
the gray steel mills
seeping out of Gary
left behind me.
Work disappeared; dreams died—
steel men, strong men
ribs of fire, the courage
of union dreamers
long gone and most laid off.
Pension plans were stolen.
Now, gas station employees
travelers of the
past, snuff chewers
labor wages and laws,
small lakes and fishing ponds
with half-sunken boats
with tips pointed sky high
and memories dripping
off the lips of clouds.
I am banging out 75 mph.
Driving in my Raspberry Geo Tracker.
When Jesus said to me:
“I tell you the truth.
Nothing ever changes in
Indiana, but the seasons
and the size of the corn ears.”

Author’s notes:
This poem was created from
all my trips from Illinois to Indiana.

Counting ai out

by James Penha

I recently had an odd encounter with AI.

Having drafted a flash fiction on my phone, I searched for a free online word counter. There are many out there, but I chose the one that popped up first on Google. I uploaded my story to justdone.com and in seconds the app reported that my story had 596 words. Brilliant!

But the webpage also noted, without my asking, that 81% of my text “shows signs of AI generation.” The app further quantified those signs, concluding that my work was only “19% Human written text.”

Not since an elementary school teacher falsely accused me of getting adult help to pen a five-paragraph essay I had worked on—by myself—for hours had I been accused of… what? Not plagiarism, but unoriginality? inhumanity?

Justdone’s news came with a dire warning: “Most academic institutions and websites will not consider this text to be unique and ready for publication. It is recommended to lower the amount of AI content.”

Of course, the site provided a solution to what it perceived as my problem: a button labeled “Remove AI.” What would be left of my writing, I wondered, were I to ask justdone to clear the traces of AI the site claimed to have discovered? I clicked.

“We removed any signs of AI in your text,” I was told and assured that what was left was “100% Human written text.”

Human text created—can there be any doubt?—by justdone’s AI.

I clicked on “Unlock Your Text” where I might find the draft that was certainly no longer mine and met a page offering me justdone’s “Best value”: an Unlimited Annual Plan for $9.99 per month.

Oh, I was tempted to see what I had never written, but I was unwilling to pay to do so even if I might have at the last preferred justdone’s all-too-fictional fiction.

Postscript: I entered the paragraphs you have just read into justdone’s page counter. How could I not?

The result: 308 words. “74% of your text shows signs of AI generation.”

I’m done. Just done.

When I start to feel alone in my fears and like injustice has no antidote, protest art reminds me there’s a record of these times. Not everyone looks away, and that gives me hope.

Angela Thorne

I think art is a major non-violent way of protest with the added advantage of adding beauty and thought. I don't trust protest art that only rages. Rage is easy and it burns out. The two poems I have sent try to do something different. "Father Mick Skate" is a litany — I borrowed the cadence of church devotion and turned it against the things that usually own that voice: the flag, the war memorial, the pews lined like cattle gates. A litany is a list of what you praise. Mine is a list of what I refuse and because the sacred has been on the wrong side too often to trust it.

Matrin Fisher

In Memoriam

by Alexandria Lacayo

Remember when it was trendy to talk to the trees?
Some embraced flora and worshipped on their knobby knees.
That summer, your cousin carved an arrow through a heart
on the dying maple at City Hall–looked like art.
We didn’t have instant entertainment, unless clouds
whimsically morphing air across the atmosphere,
occasionally outlining a flaccid phallus,
counted as such. This is not today’s social climate
because the polar bears are visiting Mexico
to get cheaper prescriptions, tequila, and Botox.
Please, don’t worry about us who remember running
barefoot through the green grass, hot pavement, and cool sprinklers;
worry about the needles, fallen on the thatch of
society, stuck in our waterways, in the nests
of our morning doves, on the donkey and elephant.

Protest tends to focus on a real or perceived injustice with the hope that someone will see in it an inhumanity that deserves attention and action. Today, there are so many officially imposed and sanctioned injustices and pure evil acts that we get lost in them. If we focus on one, the others seem to mean less. But each one adds to the degradation of individuals and communities, which in turn degrades all of us. At the same time, if protest doesn't focus attention on something we can wrap our brains around, coming up with a way to address it becomes diluted to the point where it loses its potency. And that is the genius of those who would sell their souls to the devil, if they had souls. So, if we can't direct our attention to the need for change to a thousand injustices, we can direct our attention to the need to replace the sources of those injustices, as well as to those who are willing to accept them. Protest art should call out evil for what it is and point to the fire exit door for a way out. That's my opinion, such as it is. These things overwhelm our senses, and hopelessness hands the trophy to those who, in the words of a former president, are the true evil doers.

Barry Green

While We Can

by M. Henninger-Voss

We are going to movies, swept up in the Oscars buzz,
And planning on parties with friends, and what sweets to bring,
And sending cards to our cousins with happy birthday greetings,
And using QR codes to find registries of desires for new couples
To be wed, and new babies to be christened, all to be named and seen,
At churches where we believe or disbelieve, but in any case pray for joy
and hope for relief and to be rescued from temptations to do evil,
or to let evil be done. Because
we still can.

Come with me to the state forest, still wet and green, down the well-marked trails,
Or clamber up the rocky faces of old, low mountains, maybe learn to repel
down new ones. We can wander in the desert highlands through the scrubby plants
Rejoicing in water when find it, or drive fast past cows patient on the hillsides
Of the last family farms, or dive into oceans or lakes, our whole skin cooled.
We can make love, love who you want, wear what you wish,
Nature by turns molded and free. Because
We still can.

We may dance, or learn to dance, or refuse to dance, to the music we like;
We may wag our bodies to rhythms that beat centuries ago or miles away,
Or sit beneath an arched lamp reading the books that were published
To fanfare or obscurity, but in any case appealing to us in our own silence,
Lit up by some author’s fantasy or plea to be thinking together with them.
We might travel to our most cherished and worn places, or else go for exotica,
Or prize the unusual in a topsy turvy roundabout to know the unknown,
Or say the known that is left unsaid. Because
We still can.

We could opine or argue or resist or engage in heady or stupid dialogue
With those that agree and those that do not, but anyone ready to converse,
Which is also to traverse, even if rarely does anyone now reverse or convert.
We could throw our bodies in front of the guns that aim at innocents
Or throw money at our valued causes, or lavish time on committee work,
And maintain hope for meaning, despite all the obfuscation and degradation
Of meaningfulness or of life itself, maintain that hope for the transformation
Of every evil into light. Work. Hope while
We still can.

Make a protest art sign, be unconventional, hit the streets!

Fabio Sassi

In the Time of Broken Things

by Lisa Shulman

After the porch light went dark
for the second time that week,
after the tire went flat
after the dog threw up
and the goldfish died
and bills piled up like dirty snow,
the dryer gave up the ghost
spun its sodden load for hours
without heat.

We hung clothes over chairs,
from doorknobs,
on a rickety wooden rack
until they were dry enough,
and we shuffled through the house
in damp jeans and clammy socks.

We shivered through that time of broken things,
when the news slapped us awake each morning
and the coldness of the world seeped into our bones,
when our neighbors trembled behind locked doors,
when men on rainy corners hoped for work,
and children went hungry while the rich gorged.

We shivered until our muscles warmed,
until anger sparked and caught,
smoldered in our bellies
simmered in our veins,
hot enough to melt our fears.

Like flares in the darkness
we reached out our hands
finally fired to action.

I consider myself 'oldschool' regarding protest art, so any medium or message is OK, although placards are a bit dated, but limits please for scribbled graffiti on bridges, etc. Especially admire Banksy....

Howard Osborne

You Should be On a Porch Rocking

by LH Dowless

We hung clothes over chairs,
from doorknobs,
on a rickety wooden rack
until they were dry enough,
and we shuffled through the house
in damp jeans and clammy socks.

We shivered until our muscles warmed,
until anger sparked and caught,
smoldered in our bellies
simmered in our veins,
hot enough to melt our fears.

Like flares in the darkness
we reached out our hands
finally fired to action.

Protest art creates the world we should have had from the very beginning—a world that is honest and fair. The only world worth fighting for.

Tatiana Sheehan

BATTLE CRIES

by Howard Osborne

Old men, now sitting alone on benches
A life only seeing war on the news
Recall grandfathers talking of trenches

A call to arms almost none would refuse
And even their fathers had played a part
A difficult choice as one had to choose

The message that triggered thoughts at the start
Resisting aggression, and of defence
Eventually decided by the heart

They say that war never makes any sense
Yet it seems that there are few penitents

I think protest or resistance art does more than speak out against social and political issues; by its very existence, it calls us to take action. In my own poetry I find myself coming back again and again to the strength we have when we come together to protest and resist. The strength we have in community, in the power of the people.

Lisa Shulman

Freedom is...

by Michael Smith

a loaded term. It’s the thug to those,
who dare drag their feet
to the rhythm of the whip,
who think through a circlotron.

Freedom is a renovation project
of the Bastille (or perhaps the image of it).
They held up the flag like an idol
(but unlike the sun, we were told to look at it)

Freedom is a pot to piss in,
but the choice to piss outside instead.
It is finding beauty in the streets
when the street is embargoed.

Freedom is a single syllable broke in two:
a lewd tongue whose dancing
makes the earth yield to its motion,
shaking with lustful delight.

Freedom is a dog chasing an alley cat
When neither know what an alley is,
a motorcycle that clunks – so both
of you can go your own ways.

Freedom is the universe:
Versus uni: the many “saddled with”
the one. The hanged ancestor
you now sling jokes towards.

Freedom is a flat face —
Un Mártir stretched on a poster,
without all the dimensions,
but not hiding any more.

Freedom is being able to say
You’re not free.

(Originally published by IHR Publishers in 2019)

Resistance in the Bombing Range

by Kirk Astroth

In 2020, my brother and I traveled to Tinajas Altas to explore the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range and search for ancient petroglyphs in hidden alcoves. We planned to camp as we usually did in Smuggler’s Pass–the one route through the Tinajas Altas mountains that also provides protection from the wind. The area is off the main road just far enough to avoid dust from the Border Patrol vehicles creating “drag lines” towing five tires chained together behind their trucks. Drag lines provide a fresh canvas on which the Border Patrol can see the tracks of migrants and pursue them.

What was different about this trip, though, was that since the election of Trump, construction on his “great big, beautiful wall” was in full force. What was once a narrow, rough road was now a major construction thoroughfare. The road had doubled in width and every 30 seconds a large construction truck kept passing us, headed south toward the border, carrying bollards, cement, and equipment.

This time at the junction with the Camino Del Diablo and the road to Smuggler’s Pass, we noticed that the construction crews had assembled a Trump effigy standing at the corner of the junction. The figure was creepy and resembled the Joker from the Batman movies: A red MAGA hat, orange wig, mask, sunglasses, a Border Patrol green military jacket and pants, Bud Light beer cans, and Trump campaign signs.
As we drove up the dirt road off Smuggler’s Pass, we were relieved to find that no one else was camped there. We approached the small area where we knew there was enough flat, open ground to lay out a tarp and sleeping bags. In the twilight, though, we noticed the glint of metal here and there in the area.

Disembarking from our trucks, we looked around. Since our last visit a few months ago, our favorite camping site was now littered with shrapnel from spent missiles. Gray metal tubes, twisted into horrible contortions lay scatted about the campsite, some lying close to the rock fire circle we built, while others lay at some distance and still others could be seen suspended in the creosote bushes or elephant trees.

A landscape of life was being systematically bladed, blown up, desecrated, walled, and assaulted. Thousands of years of living history was being destroyed to build an expensive and useless wall. Fragile desert ecosystems are being graded and degraded. Ancient trails and rock art sites under siege. Water sources sucked dry. A unique landscape where many desert plants are found nowhere else under attack. What’s a person to do?

Armed with matches and lighter fluid, we returned in darkness to the Trump mannequin. The road was quiet. Stars sparkled above and the Milky Way arched across the sky. An owl hooted in a nearby tree. The air smelled of dust, Mormon tea, and creosote. My brother cued up the Doors on his phone for the occasion: “Come on baby, light my fire.”

Would You Like to Play a Game

by Joe Coy

we see it through our heads up or hand held displays
it’s all so far away and can’t touch us as
we sit on couches watching it happen in
real time but it’s not quite because the risk is relative
it’s virtually out of our hands to command and
conquer other nations in the name of peace
it happens there not here and although some may
answer that call of duty for the most part we
don’t let it affect us safe in civilization
the world keeps spinning on its axis and
allies come and go but we can always buy more
extra lives exist for a reason and
we don’t have to feel it if it feels like a game
a battlefield one where we can bet on
which team will topple the other’s fort
night falls and we shut off our screens and
our minds and go to sleep

one day we might feel it but for now we’ll just
watch blockbuster ads for
war from the white house and
thank all our gods it’s just a game

In his essay “The Dyer’s Hand” the poet W. H. Auden said: “In our age, the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act. So long as artists exist . . . they remind the Management of something managers need to be reminded of, namely, that the managed are people with faces, not anonymous numbers.” Poetry has the power to speak for individuals protesting against strongmen and their obsequious allies and the repression they engender. While art may not be able to alter the circumstances it speaks of, it can channel a flow of feeling, thereby reinforcing a sense of solidarity, giving the oppressed a measure of control over their own existence. To be silent in the face of oppression is to lend it a hand. A poet should not sit quietly in awe of power but rather must find words to resist.

Robert Witmer

Untitled

by Brenda Bennetts Tonn

We Respectfully Decline to Have a Dialogue of Equals

by Bett Butler

I’m afraid we must respectfully
decline your invitation
to have a conversation on
the status of the nation
in triumphant celebration
of this tyrant’s cruel sequel.

No matter how polite and pleasant
your pontification,
to listen to your views
as you delight in contemplation
of this tyrant’s cruel sequel,
I fear we must refuse.

You may not mean to be deceitful,
but we can’t help but see
how disingenuous your plea
to have a dialogue of equals;
for according to this sequel,
we are not your equal.

You see, until you are a target
for the color of your skin,
dehumanized, detained, denied
due process, then deported,
dreams destroyed, shattered, thwarted,
we are not your equal.

Until you are decried, denied
the means to be the gender where
your soul can feel complete and whole,
until you’re forced to live a lie,
your sense of self dismembered,
we are not your equal.

Until you lose your body’s rights,
are forced to bear your rapist’s child,
or left to die of sepsis
from a pregnancy gone wrong,
as mandated by this sequel,
we are not your equal.

And until you cede your place
atop the pedestal of privilege,
until you risk your safety,
your convenience and your comfort
to resist this cruel sequel, as do we,
you are not our equal.

(Previously published in Sandy River Review.)

Protest art is art that points and magnifies a particular injustice. Sometimes it cartoons, Sometimes it lampoons, Most often it is more fun than carrying a sign on a stick back and forth in the hot sun. It goes to the heart of the matter in a way rhetoric cannot. It forces and focuses attention and refuses to let you look away unchanged. And as the only even remotely satisfying non-violent outlet for my rage,It also keeps me out of prison, at least until they come for the poets.

Emily Wharton

Disinvitation to the Dance

by Bett Butler

“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts
in programs benefiting women and children.”
—Coretta Scott King

In heels that pinch and blister,
we dance the waltz of human rights:
one step forward, two steps back.

In a cotillion rigged against us,
where the many are controlled and exploited
for the convenience of the few,
we dance.

We dance in fields and factories,
our bodies worn and sore, denied
our labor’s just reward.

We dance in offices and boardrooms,
voices ignored, contributions overlooked,
ideas disregarded, disdained,
discarded.

We dance in the echo chambers and algorithms
of propaganda and misinformation,
of social media that demands a face filtered and photoshopped
and a body impossible to attain,
so that influencers and merchants of happiness
can sell us one more product promising perfection.

We dance in the streets and all too often
bear the blame and shame for violence against us,
because we dress a certain way
or have too much to drink or simply
walk alone.

We dance in tabernacles where some would wield
the cudgel of religion to deny us agency
of our bodies, our wombs; of who and what we are and whom
we love; of the names we answer to and how we move
in this world.

We dance in courtrooms and in the halls of congress
where the fetus is venerated; but once born,
left to languish in poverty, to struggle in schools
starved for funding, stripped of art and music,
destined to join the perpetual parade of cheap labor

We dance at the border, fleeing war and famine,
denigrated, denied entry for the color of our skin,
sending our children across alone, just so
they might have a chance to survive.

We dance to the tune of moguls of murder
manufacturing machines that maim and kill,
lubricating legislators, plying pundits
with hard cash and twisted logic
to justify selling any sick, disordered soul
the weapons that slaughter our children
in their classrooms.

We are weary. We are grieving,
and we hold inside a smoldering anger,
tinder of a just and righteous flame.

Come. Stand beside me,
and we’ll shed these dancing shoes that have
squeezed and bound our feet for so long.

We’ll trade them in for trainers
and we’ll walk, and then we’ll run
down this rugged road despite the stones
and threats and hurdles thrown our way.

We’ll trade them in for boots, and we’ll
gather and we’ll march with our mothers
and our sisters and our daughters and our friends.

We’ll walk, we’ll run, we’ll march
to the one place our voices will be heard
in the most real and powerful way.

We’ll walk, we’ll run, we’ll march
to the voting booth.

And we’ll let no one stop us.

(Previously published in Voices de la Luna and an anthology by Querencia Press.)

Power to the People

by Fabio Sassi

Protest is, as it always has been in my long lifetime, proclaiming the truth in the face of lies and liars.

James Penha

Father Mick State: A Litany

by Martin Fisher

The focus must remain.

I refuse the ruffian’s flag,
the coloured rag
that grants belonging
until it doesn’t.

I refuse the battle—
red against blue,
no silver,
only sanguis honorarium.

I refuse the celebration
of the iron tides,
the killing,
the killer,
the killed.

I refuse the forgetting
of the sulfur ghosts,
the erasure of the
inconvenient,
the hobnails for the soul.

I refuse the names
scraped off the memorial wall,
the living treated
like hides on the tanner’s rack.

I refuse the invisibility
of the caritas,
the license that blesses
kindness and cruelty
with a clenched fist.

The devil is within—
a cauterisation.

I refuse the voice
that screams in the workshop din
yet marches me forward
like an ant
towards certain doom.

I refuse nostalgia:
the monotony
of ploughing,
the hardship of farming,
the lie that everything
can be done.

I refuse the pews
lined like cattle gates,
the ritual and slaughter,
the hellfire served,
the bell that demands
before dawn.

I refuse anesthesia,
a denial of your pity,
a scalding of your scars—
the filings of hope on the floor.

The simplicity of Mandelbrot
is enough.
Wonder is not found
in the past.

I refuse the lie
you just told:
that if I believe you
all will be well.

Paimon, we need to talk.

So says
Father Mick Skate.

Resistance requires the joining together of energy and intention to create a vital watershed moment. Art, whether in words or images or music, has the singular power to reach inside our hearts and draw us in unison toward that change.

Suzanne Miller

Murmuration

by Lisa Shulman

a swirl of starlings
each tiny body dark
against a slate sky

small wings beat in unison
rise, a cloud expands then twists
to a thin ribbon, pinwheels in the dusk

this great body
opens and closes, a beating heart
a breathing of birds

one is prey
but together a curving shield
turns in the dying light

earthbound though we are
songs lift from our throats
courage flies from our fingers

like winging birds
together we move as one
we too become starlings

For me, protest art does two things. (1) Protest art is like an out of body experience that takes us out of our own perspective and allows us to view the things we take for granted (social norms, daily activities, etcetera) from a different angle. (2) From there, it should also connect us to our own body, community, and the natural world in which we thrive.

Maia Martedi

Children Are Not Animals

by Christopher Woods

Protest or resistance art is imperative to understanding the authenticity and integrity of a culture.

Alexandria Lacayo

Hands Off

by Georgene Smith Goodin

I take Yasmine to the Hands Off protest, not the big one in downtown LA but a smaller one in our neighborhood. People are jammed on all four corners, sweaty but smiling. When the traffic lights change, they flood the crosswalks. Later I’ll learn a friend was here, but we missed each other in the crowd.

Yasmine’s only eleven, but she’s an experienced protester. She was only three when Rob and I took her and her sisters to the first Women’s March, my phone number written on Yasmine and Delovin’s cheeks in black Sharpie, Gini in a carrier on my chest because she wasn’t yet a year old.

Today, I’ve got a sign that says, “Hands Off Immigrants.” The kids made it, writing on the back of the box a case of Costco corn came in. Their letters are colorful but tiny and hard to read. They’ve traced their hands along the edges.
Yasmine has written, “Don’t Deport My Dad” in black marker on her white tank top, but she stands partially behind me, obscuring the words. When the media arrive, I maneuver her to a spot where they’ll see her, jerk my head towards her shirt.

A cameraman wearing a Telemundo badge notices and I chat him up, tell him about Papa. When I get to the part about having been Yasmine’s foster parent, he interrupts.

“Can you legally give consent for her to be interviewed?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “We adopted her three years ago.”

He stoops slightly to be at Yasmine’s eye level. “Can you tell me about your shirt on camera?”

Yasmine nods her agreement and he motions us away from the crowd, sets up a tripod on the sidewalk.

Yasmine has always been a quiet talker, and I encourage her to get closer to the microphone. Can anything she says be distinguished from the ambient noise? She fumbles for the words for “foster care” in Spanish.

“Familia de crianza,” I prompt only to realize too late that I gave her the words for “foster parents.” She persists, though, never-breaking eye contact with the camera. I hear the catch in her throat when she explains how the prison turned Papa over to ICE instead of releasing him on his parole date. Beads of sweat trickle down her forehead.

I remind Yasmine to drink water when the interview is over. The cameraman gives me his card. A guy who works for the local NBC affiliate also asks to interview Yasmine. I agree even though I can see how hard it is for her.

Rob’s been at baseball assessments with the other kids and now they’re arriving. Baby Brother’s made a sign that says “Poop Trump” that gets a laugh from other protestors. I tell Rob about Yasmine’s interviews.

“I’m proud of you,” he says but she doesn’t seem to hear. She sits on the curb, sips from her water bottle and folds herself over her knees.

Queerasure

by Andre Wilson

As I write these words, it is June 2025. Already this month, cities have canceled or scaled back Pride celebrations, corporations have withdrawn sponsorships, the U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ordered the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban against gender-affirming care for minors, and the administration has announced the closure of its suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth. It is not a coincidence that all these things are happening in June, Pride Month. And the month is not even over. The presidential pen that signs an executive order is like a magic wand waved in the belief that it would make queers disappear. These measures are queerasure: queer + erasure = queerasure:

Definition: a concentrated, sustained, and multiprong effort to erase queers from public and private spaces, government websites and institutions, schools and libraries, culture and history, and memory itself, using any means at its disposal to return to a fictional state in which queers never existed, i.e., Make America Straight Again.1

The forces rallied against us will not stop at queers going back in the closet. No, homophobes want to erase us from ever existing. They are trying to create a heteronormative world in which there would be no need for a metaphorical closet. No queers would need to hide because they wouldn’t exist. The closet may have worked as a survival strategy in the past (if it ever did), but it won’t work now. The closet didn’t keep me safe as a queer kid, and it is not going to keep me safe now as a lavender senior. Homophobes are coming for us in our closets. In ’93, I fled the closet in Southern California and moved in with my gay cousin and his boyfriend in the San Francisco Bay Area. But a homophobe assaulted me in my sanctuary. A summer youth employee at a day program for disabled adults fondled my nipple in front of my class and said, “See, you’re a woman who had a sex change.” I tried redirecting him to help the class play a game of Sorry. But he speculated over what gender I was, which genitalia I had, and how I used them. Finally, he said, “I bet you have sex with dogs.”

I lunged across the game table at him, grabbed him by his shirt, and said, “If you have a problem with me being gay, leave. If you can’t work with a gay teacher, leave!”

He left.

That was the first time I fought back against a homophobe.

That was thirty-two years ago. When hatred backs you into a corner and you have nowhere to hide, you have no other choice but to fight back. The 2022 mass shooting at the gay nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs ended when the patrons fought back against the assailant.

I take strength in community and allies; I take strength in drag artists and their audiences; I take strength in trans youth and their genderfluidity; I take strength in writing these words and sharing them; I take strength in the Creator who made me; I take strength in the queers who came before me; I take strength in the queers who will come after me.

1 Queer Erasure. (2027, July 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_erasure. The concept of “queer erasure” had existed long before I created and defined the portmanteau “queerasure” to describe what I was witnessing and predicting during Pride 2025. While the Wikipedia definition is more inclusive, focusing on the “to whom” queer erasure was being done, my definition and essay focus on the “by whom” to describe queerasure as being state-sponsored, structural, and sustained.

The reversal of a woman’s right to choose, June 24, 2022, was personally and globally devastating.

Sherry Shahan

Confidential

by Tatiana Sheehan

The HR manager comes to see me and deliver an update—in her staccato office language, in her tepid, tired tone. We’ve taken some action, we can’t share what but be confident that we’ve addressed the matter; now this is all confidential, no one can know, and you, you, you didn’t say no clearly enough, so from now on, please ensure that you do.

You don’t tell them that Sara already knows—you told her first, she is your friend; you don’t tell them that you still remember the smell of his mouth, that invasive, rotten peppermint stench; you don’t tell them that you’ve made up your mind, and that the thought that comes to you as you open your eyes at the first sign of sunrise will soon come true.

On the way out, you bow at their feet.

You don’t stop to watch their facial expressions, their horror at your impudence, their bewilderment and disbelief; you simply leave, and in the office, you book tickets to Hawaii, just like you wanted to, and when you’re out the door, clutching a crumpled bundle of belongings from your locker, they know it’s a no, it’s a forever no, silent and loud at once. The no you delivered clearly, your mouth shut, your mind open.

At Thirty-Five-Thousand Feet

by Tatiana Sheehan

What’s a 7-letter word for marriage? The young woman sitting next to me asks—like we know each other. Her Hemisphere is open to the New York Times Crossword. She works in ink, a confident optimist.

I say, “That’s easy. S-H-O-T-G-U-N because she didn’t have a choice.”

Thanks. Then she adds, Well, you know, everyone has a choice.

I tell her about a girl who was sixteen when her rabbit died, a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test, but that’s misleading since all rabbits tested died. A few days after the injection, they were sliced open to have their ovaries inspected, because these organs change in response to hormones secreted by pregnant women.

No one took the time to stitch up the poor bunnies. They were simply tossed out with the trash.

I drink Tito’s over ice from a plastic cup. “I suppose she did have other options. A home for unwed mothers or hitch-hiking to Tijuana.”

The young woman sips Bloody Mary Mix through a straw. I can’t think of a 5-letter word for ‘equality’? She draws extra squares on 11-Across and writes in F-A-I-R-N-E-S-S.

The cold vodka burns my throat. It hurts like everything hurts since the 6 to 3 Supreme Court ruling.

Then I start to freaking cry.

She asks, Why are you crying?

I remember the night my mother and I came together over the evening news and cocktails, adult conversation book-ended with laughter—returning to the same stories, family history relived, reorganized, rewritten.

I remember her sacred sadness when she told me about her other choice—after the shotgun wedding, after giving birth to a daughter, and five years later to a son.

There’s no reason to lie to this young woman.

So I tell her about the third pregnancy. How the 23-year-old hired a babysitter for her kids and rented a room in a rat-hole motel. I tell her about a desperate mother, alone and afraid, naked in a cold bathroom, untwisting a metal coat hanger.

She flips to the key for the puzzle and adjusts her jumble of answers.

Then she says, I hope you feel better soon.

No one said it was my job to remember these things.

I weep into my cocktail napkin and try to root my weary toes where there is no soil.

Pink is the warmest color

by Emily Eaton

If you grew up as a girl and you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that from birth, your future was painted pink. Maybe not a vibrant Barbie pink – maybe a soft blush – but pink all the same. Feminine, rosy, sweet.

And, if you were anything like me, that was your first rebellion.

I didn’t even dislike its appearance. I’m not sure I looked at pink long enough to consider the varying shades’ aesthetics – the audacity of hot pink/the warmth of salmon/the softness of cherry blossom/the vibrancy of cerise. No, my eyesight’s opinion wasn’t considered – my feelings were already dictated by what my brain thought to be true.

But how could a colour cause such a mental disturbance?

Pink was a reminder of what I was supposed to measure up to, but most likely wouldn’t. Pretty. Dainty. Pink was a lot of things, but it certainly wasn’t frizzy hair, cackling too loudly, and anxiety attacks over the word “lesbian” at 11 years old.

How could I possibly find comfort in pink when that meant being like other girls, and I felt so dramatically alien. Not in a pick-me way – just deeply insecure, head down, hidden in dark, baggy clothes.

But, as you might have guessed, I didn’t stay stuck in my teenage ways forever. Little by little, life softened.

I learnt that pink was on the bi flag, the pan flag, and the lesbian flag – maybe it was for me, after all. I saw worthiness in my body. I met brilliant girls who called me their best friend. I started to gaze at princess ball gowns; I saw a pink rose and thought it might be my favourite flower. I made a dream wedding Pinterest board in the absence of logic, and with all my heart’s desire, I pinned whimsical decor in forest green, gold, and pink.

Pink grew into my smile, my wardrobe, my cheeks as pretty girls made me blush. I took a deep breath, unlocked my brain, and pink poured out. It was unfamiliarly steady, prepossessingly patient.

Within magenta, orchid and coral, I accepted parts of myself I didn’t know I’d shunned. Life wasn’t always soft and it wasn’t always sweet, but I could still be those things.

I could touch femininity and clasp it to my chest with no guilt, no shame – I carried it with care like ballet shoes I once adored. Pink no longer screamed specific expectations. Instead, it yearned to be worn on my lips and tasted on my tongue, in a way that noticed the complexities of queerness – raspberry sugar flavour in the freedom, the power, the joy.

Candy floss clouds hung in the sunset; azaleas were planted in the soil. The Barbie movie played and I cried and laughed in the cinema, over girlhood, over everything girlhood leads to – pink washed over me like Lake Hillier.

I was warm in the rose blush. I was at home. Pink was part of me, and pink is mine.

When I first learned that Brown Bag had accepted my essay, I jogged. We live in a country where a mob of angry white men could chase and lynch Ahmaud Arbery, a jogging Black man. Forget resistance training. I am cognizant that with every step, with every breath, my public and private existence is a form of resistance.

Andre Wilson

After the Election, 2024

by Suzanne Miller

Dear Women:

I am the ghost of every woman who left this life less than she was meant to be. I haunt the world of women living still, denied and denying their true selves, their own life force and energy, lost to the world of men.

I am the ghost of every woman who suffers at the hand of an angry, jealous, frightened man unable to bear the might of her shining soul. I am the ghost of every woman who makes herself small and fragile and walks on eggshells in a despairing quest to survive in her own country. I am the ghost of every woman who must occupy a smaller and smaller room, as her husband or her father builds walls and locks doors to diminish the space where she labors to live. I am the ghost of every woman who trembles to leave her home after the sun has set, and of every woman who dares and suffers some terrible retribution for her fearlessness. I am the ghost of every woman who will bear a child she never wanted, with no means to endure except by denial of every single thing she most needs and desires.

I am the ghost who walks this earth reaching out my empty hands to every woman who is living still, to touch them with my hard-won wisdom, to shake them from complacency, to entrust this letter penned from our collective life force, before she too becomes the ghost of every woman.

Reasons to be lesbian

by Emily Eaton

Be a lesbian because when you changed your Tinder settings to all genders, every man felt like a challenge. Eventually swiping right on one seemed like something you had to do, and when he messaged, your body screamed that you would never, ever meet up with him in person.

Be a lesbian because when you kissed a guy at uni, it wasn’t out of attraction, but out of boredom – thinking you should. Be a lesbian because when you kissed another guy, and tried to feel something – you just couldn’t. You ran back to your friends at the party, and hoped he’d never look your way again. He texted that night confessing a crush and all you could think was fuck, fuck, fuck. And it wasn’t him – it was you, through and through. Be a lesbian because you couldn’t feel a bisexual bone in your body, even when you hoped to find one.

Be a lesbian because fancying the 10th Doctor from Doctor Who was never enough to include men in your sexuality. He’s a fictional character, Emily. Not even a human one, at that.

Be a lesbian because women have been all over your heart since you were old enough to make sense of them. Be a lesbian because their voices are butter and their skin is so insanely soft.

Be a lesbian because women’s words scratch your brain and then live there like cement. Be a lesbian because women write songs about women that made you cry before you knew why. Be a lesbian because women stare into your soul with eyes of blue, grey, green, brown, black, or hazel, and write novellas down your spine, with their fingers.

Be a lesbian because when women laugh, they sound like sunshine, or drizzle, or singing clouds. When women dance, they move like rivers – carrying you in their arms like you belong there.

Be a lesbian because women’s lips are magic, lip balm making your insides melt. Be a lesbian because women always look amazing, no matter what they wear. Be a lesbian because they smell like coca cola, lemon, mint, heaven. Their scent lingers when they’re gone, and you close your eyes to pretend they’re still there. You remember the parts of you they touched.

Be a lesbian because of your fascination with The L Word. Be a lesbian because of history, because of Sappho, because of dykes marching. Be a lesbian because it’s your gender and your entity, and you’re not afraid to be political. Be a lesbian because loving women is an art gods gave you a talent for – because loving women will break you, and make you. Be a lesbian because nothing else could compare.

Be a lesbian because you get to be a lesbian.

Be a lesbian, because no matter how hard you try, you can’t not be.
And one day you’ll realise –

If being a lesbian were a choice, you’d choose it. Maybe it doesn’t seem like it now, but I promise – you would. You’d choose it for them. You’d choose it for her. You’d choose it for you.
Being a lesbian is a blessing.

Cycling Anarchists

by Kirk Astroth

Ideology

by Emily Wharton

“You can’t / Lie down without turning your back / On someone.”
— James Galvin, “Testimony”

I.
We lunch pleasantly
Converse pleasantly
Drink pleasant drinks
But do not bother to smile.
at the hostess who has placed
In the middle of the table
a lovely arrangement of compromise

II.
Should we live like painters—
Right up against the canvas?
“I know there is a forest around
Here somewhere,” you laugh
But a tear breaks loose.
No one ever told you
Passion is the dormitory of the young
Most your brethren moved long ago
To their own suburban spaces
But you wake In the night burning cold
From a nightmare where you bite
your own wrist
Gnawing through ropes of compromise.

III.
You ache at the bone
Long empty words rattle
your tendons like windsocks
When someone saves your life
You are obligated to save another
But you can’t stop
Running to and fro with your net and pliers
Catching every bird that falls from the sky
Pulling every thorn from every paw lifted
In your direction wears you and builds you
Like a sea wall,
Yet you are afraid to stop looking down
Afraid you might trip over the compromise
overnighted to your door.

IV.
Can one play chess without forfeiting pieces–
Letting each pawn die in combat
Unattached to a gambit’s string?
Don’t be idealistic,
It’s the same as being naïve.
You want to throw your body in front of regulations?
This is only paper
This is only a meeting
Sit down, calm yourself
I’ll bring you some coffee
And a nice slice of compromise

I never want to be like the good Germans you read about who lived downwind from Auschwitz but claimed to have never smelled a thing.

Bett Butler

Hairspray, History, and the Wheel of Life, or Why Poetry Thrives on Discontent

by Robert Witmer

“The dead are nourished on judgment, the living on love.”
— Elias Canetti

He insisted on going his own way. In a ferry made of stone. King of the mountain, he yodeled again and again. Snow is a hoax. Goats make good cheese. Bury me in blue. Drink Clorox if you sneeze. Ice was his mirror. Dice, his middle name. Falsifying fatal flaws, he was an amber fossil, filling his pockets with greedy claws. Simpleton, noodle, fool. He was. Too big for his boots. The heavy steps of tomorrow, a Yeti in snowshoes, in search of the missing link.

Pennies from Hell

by Martin Fisher

I will throw my chains to heaven
when the poverty of thought
among our rotted masters
is burned alive
and rational fairness rips free to roam.

Their lies sit in cracked earth,
growing weak and sickly fruit—
poisoning younger minds,
leaving the sane to starve.

Swayed promises, thin and foul,
twist with every changing wind.
Their pockets burst with stolen futures,
spent recklessly on pets and vice.

I will plant my feet on scorched earth,
laughing loud as new sap rises green
while fools on the hills scramble like rats
searching high and low
for gods now drowned in sorrow.

For now, they sit with their
gossamer smiles and curated boots;
they come from us but walk above.
Their reckoning curling from the gutter.

They will be gone.
We will dance on their graves,
dance drunk on the dirt,
and flip their last blood‑soaked penny
into the flames of Hell where it belongs.