For the Girl in Row 5

It’s easy money. Walk slowly, hands behind your back, checking no one is cheating. Up and down the rows of desks, quietly handing out tissues, pens. For a teacher of 5 year olds, exam invigilation with 16 year olds is a breeze. Some children look anxious, one girl is biting Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

LEGISLATING SEX 

Teenagers in Texas can no longer get birth control on their own.  The logic of this escapes me just as it did when I was a teenager and my step-father stole my birth control pills out of my purse.  He did not want the shame of a pregnant teenage daughter, Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

Stare

Your lips said “Ciao bella,” but your eyes penetrated me, licking every inch of my skin with your leer. Your sultry silhouette catches the corner of my eye before moving on… yet you linger. I briefly see the sides of your mouth curl up as you pass, a reaction to Read more

Eloisa Perez-Lozano

Eloísa Pérez-Lozano writes poems and essays about Mexican-American identity, women’s issues, and motherhood. She graduated from Iowa State University with a B.S. in psychology and an M.S. in journalism and mass communications. A 2016 Sundress Publications Best of the Net nominee, her work has been featured in “The Texas Observer,” “Houston Chronicle,” and “Poets Reading the News,” among others. She lives with her family in Houston, Texas.

Thermage

Lying on the thin white cotton pillow of the procedure room / the nurse hands me the stress ball / swaddled in a blue latex glove / a nod to the virus still rampaging through the unvaccinated / The ball is for me to mash in my clenched fist / Read more

Rebecca Lee

Rebecca Lee is a public interest lawyer by day and writer of poetry and prose by night. A queer writer of color, she is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Senior Articles Editor of the California Law Review and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice. Her poetry is forthcoming in Dispatches from Quarantine. She lives in San Francisco with her fiancé and their Goldendoodle, Justice.

Birdwatcher

Why does our new house always feel dark? Some nights, the darkness steals my sleep, seeping from the corners of my bedroom. Is the house gloomy, or the people inside? The backyard looks so light, so bright, but it’s merely the snow’s reflection. My mother has a new bird book, Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

Gypsy Goddess

You’re a gypsy when it comes to life and love… what with your crazed desires your lofty ideas your wild push and pull ~ your wandering essence knows no rest. Your feet are forever on the ground, ensconced in the finery that suits you best, be it stilettos or sneakers Read more

Katherine Silke

Katherine Silke has been a writer and stay-at-home mother since 1996, working in local journalism on a part-time and freelance basis while raising her two daughters. Prior to having her children, she taught middle-school English at an alternative school in Spring, Texas. A resident of Florida for the past 20 years, Katherine is a breast cancer survivor who collaborates with her hometown hospital in educating women on breast health and self care. She has just completed her first novel and is working on her second, in addition to dipping her toes in poetry writing.

Kiss Them For Me

My body is a temple, which I will not desecrate. The phrase “virgin blood” is misleading. It means blood that has not previously been used in a sacrifice, not the blood of a virgin. Even that explanation is misleading because isn’t sex a sacrifice? Do you not open up yourself Read more

Lydia A. Cyrus

Lydia A. Cyrus is a creative writer from Huntington, West Virginia. She has non-fiction work featured in several journals, including Luna Luna Magazine where she serves as a staff writer. Her poems can found in places like Quail Bell Magazine and Moonchild Mag. She is a proud Mountain Woman and loves her dog.

I am a Mother

sick of this shit, white men and their bible blather, pathetic tough talk, grinning chins lifted as if they float above the scum they swim in. I am a mother listening to mournful sobs of a thousand children and more with bellies empty, these babies, their cries of pain and Read more

Marsha Owens

Marsha is a retired educator who lives and writes in Richmond VA. Her favorite quote for these troubled times: “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.” (Meryl Streep) Her work has been published at NewVerseNews, The Wild Word, and Life in 10 Minutes. #Resist