Avra Margariti
A Dog Like a Ghost

Avra Margariti - A Dog Like a Ghost

Fiction
Avra Margariti is a Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in… Read more »
David Urbina
Canta y no llores

David Urbina - Canta y no llores

Fiction
David Urbina is a writer and software developer from the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County. He attended Mt. San Antonio College and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a… Read more »
Glen Pourciau
Encroach

Glen Pourciau - Encroach

Fiction
Glen Pourciau’s third collection of stories is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2021. His second collection, View, was published in 2017 by Four Way Books. His first story collection, Invite, won… Read more »
Naomi Cohn
Entries from the Braille Encyclopedia

Naomi Cohn - Entries from the Braille Encyclopedia

Creative Nonfiction
Naomi Cohn is a poet and teaching artist who works with older adults and people living with disabilities. She’s also worked as a community organizer, encyclopedia copy editor, and grant writer. Her… Read more »
Shevaun Brannigan
Frank Learns to Juggle During Quarantine

Shevaun Brannigan - Frank Learns to Juggle During Quarantine

Poetry
Shevaun Brannigan’s work has appeared in such journals as Best New Poets, AGNI, and Slice. She is a recipient of a Barbara J. Deming Fund grant and holds an MFA from Bennington College. Read more »
Ellen Skirvin
How to Say Tomatoes

Ellen Skirvin - How to Say Tomatoes

Fiction
Ellen Skirvin was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She recently received her MFA degree from West Virginia University. Her fiction appears in The Matador Review and the Anthology of Appalachian… Read more »
Matthew E. Henry
mannish water

Matthew E. Henry - mannish water

Poetry
MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet. The author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), he has recent and forthcoming works in The Amethyst Review,… Read more »
M. Drew Williams
Pike

M. Drew Williams - Pike

Poetry
M. Drew Williams is from Western New York. His poems have appeared in publications such as Harpur Palate, Hobart, The New Territory, and Poetry South. He holds an MFA from Creighton University. Read more »
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Planting Camellias as an Act of Resistance

Jeannine Hall Gailey - Planting Camellias as an Act of Resistance

Poetry
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She's the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained… Read more »
Rita Mookerjee
Rooh Afzah

Rita Mookerjee - Rooh Afzah

Poetry
Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Iowa State University. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Cosmonauts Avenue, New Orleans Review, Sinister… Read more »
Yume Kitasei
Sara’s City

Yume Kitasei - Sara’s City

Fiction
Yume Kitasei (www.yumekitasei.com) lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Filibuster and Boondoggle. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in publications including Room Magazine and Forge… Read more »
R Dean Johnson
The Boys of Midsummer

R Dean Johnson - The Boys of Midsummer

Creative Nonfiction
R Dean Johnson is the author of Californium: A Novel of Punk Rock, Growing Up, and Other Dangerous Things (Plume) and a story collection, Delicate Men (Alternative Book). “The Boys of Midsummer”… Read more »
John Blair
The Floods of May

John Blair - The Floods of May

Poetry
John Blair has published six books, the most recent of which is Playful Song Called Beautiful (U. of Iowa Press, 2016), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize, and he has a seventh book, The Art of… Read more »
Katherine Gekker
The Root Cellar

Katherine Gekker - The Root Cellar

Poetry
Katherine Gekker is the author of In Search of Warm Breathing Things (Glass Lyre Press, 2019). Her poems have been published in Delmarva Review, Little Patuxent Review, Broadkill Review, Poetry South,… Read more »
Andrew Kozma
Transplant

Andrew Kozma - Transplant

Poetry
Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Believer, Redactions, and Bennington Review. His first book of poems, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press, 2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award. Read more »

Planting Camellias as an Act of Resistance

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Bright March morning after snow. News headlines about rising sea lines, starving orcas, droughts. Early spring brings bomb cyclones. Everyone at the top’s a criminal. Cesium in the sunflowers, strontium-90 in the dust. This morning I dig in the dirt and plant flowers, unnecessary, flagrant: a pink camellia, jonquils, primroses. The blue jays a tinnitus in the air, the little juncos jittering. The resistance a wall of flowers rising against the poison, against the screaming, the satellites, wars and newsrooms. I don’t like feeling helpless, silent in the face of so much terror, so today I make plum jam. The doctors say my nerves are getting thinner. No wonder, shrinking against the agitation, atoms vibrating together with the supermoon. My brain has blank spaces now, illumined by inflammation. They say we will bring change, the moon and me. Listen: every breath in this air is an amplification, every petal a protest.
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