Category: Women’s Issues + Awareness

don’t you dare (pop), boy

Samantha Rose

did someone burst your bubble, boy? or did you just have too much to drink? get your lies drunk and high as you? coat them in effervescence until your lungs fly you away? you were always ready, boy, ready to pop. and you know you’ll never get it back, get Read more

Samantha Rose

Samantha Rose resides in Portland, OR. She loves using poetry as a form of social commentary, and such writing is often inspired by her degree in sociology and philosophy. She enjoys art of all forms and her work has been featured or is forthcoming by Nightingale & Sparrow, Mohave He[art] Review, Down in the Dirt, Quail Bell, and more. You can often find her painting with coffee when she's not drinking it with her nose in a book.

For the Man Harassing Women Outside an Abortion Clinic during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Donatella du Plessis

Pleasant it is to risk all for one’s faith To stand joyfully in pathogenic rain To Typhoid Mary the sinning world And know that God will wink. Pleasant it is to proclaim one’s faith To thrust words into the bodies of others To look upon one’s bloody fists And know Read more

Donatella du Plessis

Donatella du Plessis is a micropoet from Durban, South Africa. Her poetry has appeared in "The Write Launch", "Idle Ink" and "Dust Poetry Magazine".

It’s True/ Untrue/ Partial Truth

Sara Dutilly

You’re brown, I’d say, but some say black, or African-American. I don’t know what to say. When Girl drew a picture in class, and brought it home, and showed you: curly hair, purple skin, you, depicted. When you said, “What color is my skin?” She said, “You black.” You said, Read more

Sara Dutilly

Sara Dutilly studied creative writing at High Point University and today she stays at home with her three children, writing and wrangling and finding countless surprises along both paths. Her work has appeared in r.k.v.ry., Quarterly Journal, Mothers Always Write, and PopSugar. A few years ago her husband purchased her a website for Mother's Day and she's been writing her mothering stories at www.haikuthedayaway.com.

Black Women’s Acts of Resistance and Resilience to Trauma

Lourdes Dolores Follins

Dineen skillfully dug her purple latex-swathed fingers into my bare left shoulder blade, and I yelped, “O-o-o-uch!” “Sor-ry!” Dineen cheerfully apologized. If I didn’t know better, I would think that she enjoyed torturing me. But this wasn’t that kind of relationship. Dineen is a petite, dark-haired, twenty-something Filipina physical therapist Read more

Lourdes Dolores Follins

Lourdes Dolores Follins is a Black queer woman who comes from a long line of intrepid women and working-class strivers. She comfortably straddles the worlds of academic and creative nonfiction. When Lourdes Dolores isn’t writing, she’s working as a psychotherapist with QTIPOC and kinky people in New York City.

Pandemic

Emily Algar

My stomach ties itself in knots. I spend ages sitting in the bathroom as I empty every worry, fear and stress I have accumulated And then I go back downstairs and fill up on some more. It’s flight or fight and I have chosen the in-between Because the flights are Read more

Emily Algar

Emily Frances Algar is a journalist and writer. She has experience in the music industry working as the A&R on the Grammy Nominated Album (Best Folk Album) Front Porch by artist Joy Williams. Emily has been published in a number of print and digital publications including Atwood Magazine, American Songwriter, and Record Collector magazine. She specializes in both long and short-form features as well as interviews and reviews. She has written pieces ranging from the commercialization of feminism and feminism in popular culture, critiques surrounding freedom of speech and the #MeToo movement as well as recently interviewing refugees from Iran. Emily has a Masters in International Security from Oxford Brookes University. Her thesis looked at the extent to which the media shaped public opinion during the Vietnam and Iraq (2003) wars.

You are like these slippers

Amy Lee

This is what my pa told me – You are like these slippers You are a guest You think this is your country But it is not your home You are just a guest Don’t commit a crime They might deport you Don’t make mistakes They might jail you But Read more

Amy Lee

Amy Lee is a lawyer, emerging writer and poet based in Seattle. Her work was published in Thrive Global, HR.Com, The F-Word, Cicerone and FemAsia. She holds a BA/LLB from the University of Queensland and LLM from the Melbourne University. She has worked in-house for major corporations on LNG projects and now lives in Seattle where she volunteers as a career coach for Hopelink and at the Seattle Repertory Theatre Shop.

They Could Guillotine a Baby’s Hand: A Foster Mother’s Story

Sara Mesa Wright

The narrow wooden bench creaks and bows every time someone sits next to me. It arcs so deeply when a heavy man sits in the very middle, two feet away from my tight clasp of the built-in armrest at the end, that I fear the old wooden fibers are spreading Read more

Sara Mesa Wright

Sara Mesa Wright lives with her husband and five children in central Michigan. She writes about the dark reality of foster care and adoption because she’s been called a ‘saint’, and her children ‘lucky’, one time too many. She writes and blogs under a pseudonym to protect the privacy of her children at fosterfurther.blogspot.com.

Souvenirs of a rape victim

Kashiana Singh

left behind in broken bits her scattered shadows dribble into eerie crevices spider webs and souvenirs of your violated presence henna palm stains as you pushed scratched on walls ankle bell trinkets unhinged scattered in shock rusty red patches as you scavenged of flesh that dripped into his stale breath Read more

Kashiana Singh

Kashiana Singh is a management professional by job classification and a work practitioner by personal preference. Kashiana’s TEDx talk was dedicated to Work as Worship. Her poetry collection, Shelling Peanuts and Stringing Words presents her voice as a participant and an observer. She dips into very vulnerable and personal contexts but also explores the shifting tectonic plates of the world around her. She is from India, now lives in Chicago and bridges the miles by regularly etching her thoughts. She is a regular contributor to different poetry platforms like OnMogul, Literary Yard, Best Poems, Narrow Mag, Modern Literature, SikhNet, Women’s Web, Tuck Magazine, Spillwords, Visual Verse. She is in the process of gathering her second collection of poems. Facebook: KashianaSinghAuthor/facebook Twitter: @Kashianasingh