December 3, 2025
Quilts are Pieces
By Lyn Ford
It’s a special kind of broken,
a tattering, feeling so unwanted that
you don’t even want to know yourself.
It’s a lonely recess, invisibility,
when no one sees you and no one wants to,
when you’ve been told you’re too everything—
too dark, too light, too smart, too dumb,
too thin, too fat, too clumsy, too lost,
too everything and still not enough,
too young, then too old,
too fast, then too slow,
too dulled and shredded to be of value
except, maybe, to some wounded someone
who is watching as you pick up
what’s been broken and torn
and, making your own pattern,
finding your own threads,
measuring your own stitches,
mend yourself.
For that one who watches,
you are a patchwork of wonderful,
offering that one a vision, a chance to become
a work of heart.
Quilts are rough pieces made whole
by the beautiful, ministering tension
of strength of mind and determination,
of being lovingly pulled together.
Lyn Ford is a fourth-generation Black Appalachian storyteller and writer who became a published poet at the age of 72. Lyn is an Ohio Arts Council teaching artist and a Thurber House mentor for young authors. She also is a two-time recipient of the National Storytelling Network’s ORACLE Circle of Excellence award and a 2023 recipient of the National Association of Black Storytellers’ Black Appalachian Storytelling Fellowship as well as NABS’ prestigious Zora Neale Hurston Award. Lyn is a member of the Writers Council of the National Writing Project and the National Association of Black Storytellers’ Brother Blue Circle of Elders.
Editors’ Note: Lyn Ford read “Quilts Are Pieces” during In This Together 2025, as part of PARH USA’s annual program marking the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and addressing systemic racism. View the video on the PARH USA YouTube channel here.
November 9, 2025
Grieve as you Perceive
By Bob McNeil
Look thru these deliverance-denied eyes:
You are now a child
from a land
beyond this land.
All you need is an altruistic hand.
What you get instead
is a jail bereft of a bed.
Look thru these deliverance-denied eyes:
You are now a cis woman
who demands autonomy
over your chosen decision
that never needs a politician’s
Iron-maiden-restrictive opinion.
Look thru these deliverance-denied eyes:
You are now a trans woman
who does not want to be seen
as a sexual suspect,
but all you get is the hard fists
of the phobic bigots in your midst.
Look thru these deliverance-denied eyes:
You are now non-white.
No matter the shade
DNA made,
racists in brigades
want an antebellum system
at the behest of a demagogue’s dictum.
Look thru these deliverance-denied eyes
and ask yourself how
a human heart does not
feel for the oppressed now.
Bob McNeil is a writer, editor, cartoonist, and spoken word artist. Flexible Press published his book composed of essays, illustrations, poems, and stories titled Compositions on Compassion and Other Emotions. Proceeds from this work fund the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
October 21, 2025
Muted
By Jane MacKinlay McCartney
Sitting in the back
against the wall,
known to no one
(yet seen by all).
Hoping to move
to the front of the pack,
wanting to be heard,
get ahead, not back.
Words of the mind
need somewhere to go
but what can be said
clear back in last row?
Those in the rear
have cause for concern.
How long will it be
until it’s their turn?
How long will it be
til ALL voices are heard,
regardless of what or where
they have learned?
To speak and to give
one’s point of view
is the right of all people
not just a few.
Jane MacKinlay McCartney’s work has been published in various anthologies, the most recent being Volume 1 of Erie County Poetry Anthology (2022). Others include Celebrate: A Collection of Life’s Celebrations, compiled by Debra R. Sanchez (2019); The Picture This Anthology (2018), edited by 2016–2018 Erie County Poet Laureate Marisa Moks-Unger; and Poetry Quarterly (Spring 2018). A regular participant in various local poetry events, Jane resides with her husband, Mike, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Jane’s awards include Pennwriters Area 1 Annual Writer’s Road Trip Billboard Writing Contest, 2nd place—2018 and 2019, 3rd place—2022 and 2023.
October 7, 2025
Judeophobia*
By Rikki Santer
*Dr. Leon Pinsker, who coined the word in 1882 in his
argument for a Zionist state, explained the term this way:
As a psychic aberration, it is hereditary, and as disease
transmitted for two thousand years, it is incurable.
squall of thorns \ flood of rotting teeth \ cabinet of lost lungs \
shuttle-cock bloodied \ womb imploded \ serpents in the
waters \ tattoo drenched with saliva \ bird wing wrenched
from its socket \ salt-caked flesh \ ulcer in fault line \ punchline
trapdoors \ assembly line for iron muzzles \ wishbone jagged \
glass splinters in the stew \ headlines impotent \ footnotes
spider-webbed with sorrow \ lemon-sick scent of bleach \
hard mathematics \ terrorist snake burrows \ dance party
death trap \ gleeful snuff footage \ fossilized cures lodged
in riverbeds \ exile exiled \ two-headed, victim|persecutor \
petition petition the ghosts
Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors, including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year. She has served as vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association and as a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council. Her collection Resurrection Letter was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and her most recent collection, Shepherd’s Hour (in which “Judeophobia” appears), won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books. Contact her through her website: https://rikkisanter.com.
September 10, 2025
The Great Conjunction
By Dawn Marar
It’s said the Telstar communications satellite
launched in ’62 on a Thor-Delta rocket
no longer functions. My sister and I were kids,
then. But might that be where her voice came from
when she uttered, Wwwwooooaaaahhhh?
Into the longest night of the year,
the deep space interjection propelled me.
Where was she going with that?
Whatever it was, it was coming for me.
I had told her our estranged older sister boasted
about being part of the Aryan race. Do you know—
before she finished, I understood my lapse
had little to do with knowing, and everything
to do with remembering—where that came from?
I had not thought about where the idea came from.
Suddenly, I felt sick. It was clear I hadn’t been
a good Scout, not prepared. She said,
Our father. Of course. Our father. Long dead.
Nothing heavenly in the stars that night,
despite the auspicious alignment of Jupiter and
Saturn, 400 years in the making. Coincident
with the anniversary of the arrival
of enslaved people in our country.
I don’t think it’s right to say silent satellites
no longer function when they continue
to orbit the earth.
Dawn Marar is the founder of “Moving Beyond Bloc-Whiteness,” a writing workshop. Her chapbook, Efflorescence, published by Finishing Line Press, focuses on connections to the Middle East. A finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Orison Anthology of Poetry Awards, she has a master’s from Columbia University and has worked as a community organizer and planner. Her website is http://www.dawnmarar.weebly.com. Dawn is currently writing about whiteness from an anti-racist stance. A poem from that series was published by Barzakh: A Literary Magazine.
August 12, 2025
Fighting Firehose with Fire Poems
Our Featured Poem entry published August 12, 2025, was a special collection of work generated during our Spring 2025 workshop Fighting Firehose with Fire: Writing Epistolary Poetry in Response to the Political Maelstrom. The workshop was led by poets Pauletta Hansel and Tabassam Shah. The resulting collection, written by multiple participants, can be found here.
July 31, 2025
View From Mount Rushmore
By Christian Skoorsmith
It is quivering how far into the sacred hills the white man pushed
to carve his likeness into stone, a graven image if ever there was one,
unblinking eyes never wrinkled by joy, fear, hope.
Impossible for them to turn around and look
behind themselves. How forceful a monument can speak.
How true, when tongues are stilled.
The fireworks and fanfare weak drums to waken
the old men of the mountain. We sing their songs but we do not believe them.
Sing louder. At their throats thirteen million uncounted stone tears. No rain can reach them,
seedlings lost to rocky soil, no soft home for roots, perish in the sun.
A story told by another long-nosed wise man who wandered all over
still could not find the entrance to Jackson’s heart.
The Old Indian-Fighter brought back elephant skulls to molder
in museums alongside stolen bones, hides, hair
heaped in piles and burned in school yards.
Some hands on display—shriveled, under glass, pinned with inventory numbers.
The graves of children unmarked rest easier now, finally
free to listen to the wind in unmown grass above them, to sing their spirit songs.
Hair keeps growing after death. For a while, until
it finds rest somewhere blown back over the sea.
At Little Bighorn they still remember every warrior’s name. They have to
for every uncounted fingernail at Wounded Knee, black
with dark earth from desperate clawing at Why. All of it
at the heart of our nation, carved in stone (lest we forget)
facing us. What we cannot see
stacked in bleachers, drenched in flags; what they see
over our heads: a horizon where the sun sets on America.
Christian Skoorsmith is a (cis-, het-, White, masculine-socialized, middle-aged) writer and mental health professional in Seattle, Washington. Much of his recent work has focused on acknowledging, understanding, and dismantling implicit and embodied white supremacy in masculine experience. Learn more about him at www.skoorsmith.com.
“View From Mount Rushmore” was previously published in the ezine Breathe (March 2023). Used by permission of the author.
July 2, 2025
Hematuria
By Jonie McIntire
A cranberry-seeking awareness always precedes
the not yet painful pinch easy enough to ignore.
But it nags like the Daughters of Confederacy statue
staining a spring break trip to St. Louis with the kids.
Cast in 1913 of bronze by women wearing
black clothes and white skin, almost a hundred years
after Missouri was compromised to placate a
granite base. Now another hundred years later,
we take it as part of the land it stands on,
as some immovable history until finally
red paint covers it like the hate it grew from.
Like blood in urine, bright evidence of old infection.
Jonie McIntire is the first female poet laureate of Lucas County, Ohio. Her most recent chapbook, Semidomesticated (rereleased by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), won Red Flag Poetry’s 2020 chapbook contest. Her prior chapbooks are Beyond the Sidewalk (NightBallet Press, 2017) and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She is poetry editor at Of Rust and Glass and treasurer at Ohio Poetry Association. Her poems—published in print journals and anthologies, online, and even in cement—have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. McIntire hosts the monthly reading series Uncloistered Poetry from Toledo, Ohio.
June 6, 2025
Samaritan
By Dee Allen.
Anyone else
Would’ve left that Far Right
Reactionary sprawled on the concrete
To bleed out, suffer in his
Paroxysms of serious hurt, receive
Disaster of the steel-toed kind.
But not you.
The Good Samaritan
Reflex kicked in,
Wouldn’t let you
Abandon someone in need of help.
Distinctions such as
“Friend” and “foe” didn’t matter.
Whom you saw laying at your feet
Wasn’t an “enemy.”
Just an injured man.
So you lifted him in your arms,
Slung him over your shoulder
Like a heavy sack of laundry,
Carried him in a firefighter’s hold
With a cordon of protection around you,
Your four comrades had your back,
Moving past a raging crowd
And riot-cops
With the boisterous sounds
Of the inner-city battleground
In both of your ears—
Football songs, national anthem,
Protest chants, flares and smoke grenades—
Maybe you thought
One dead
White man
Wasn’t going to bring back
One dead
Black man
In Minneapolis,
One dead
Black woman
In Louisville,
One dead
Black man
In a Wendy’s© parking lot in Atlanta,
Martyrs from American
Racial flashpoints—
Maybe you thought
That injured man’s
Life was more worthy of salvation
Than stone monuments to previous wars,
Winston Churchill’s statue
And the Cenotaph.
Descriptions such as
“Hero” didn’t matter either.
You’re just a man protecting
A neck that wasn’t your own
And you wanted
Equality, right that minute,
For your children,
For your grandchildren,
For the generations ahead,
For England and troubled America,
If we can get past
Misunderstanding and factions. Brother,
I wish I had
Your Good Samaritan
Resolve.
[For Patrick Hutchinson]
[Inspired by a photograph by Dylan Martinez from the international news service Reuters.]
Dee Allen. is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. He has been active in creative writing and spoken word since the early 1990s. Dee is the author of seven books: Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press; Elohi Unitsi [pronounced: Ell-oh-ee Oo-nee-chee] from Conviction 2 Change Publishing; Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate from Vagabond Books; and Plans from Nomadic Press. He also has multitudes of anthology appearances under his figurative belt.
May 14, 2025
Synesthesia
By Maureen P. Medina
The beauty of seeing colors in music or music as colors. The perception of togetherness, for there is no one without the other. So why is it that when you see color, you don’t see me? The sun beams down on us, reminds us of its power, but you won’t be humbled. You cling to the shadows and that is darkness I won’t tolerate
because souls fade into a gradient sorted by rose-colored glasses and they’ll burn you to ashes with their pointy hats and sticks or batons and tell you color is wrong, well. The only time white is right is when it’s a blank canvas, a clean slate unstained by your dirty mind.
Maureen P. Medina, a Filipina American, is the author of My Fears Out Loud and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She leads writing workshops, such as a virtual workshop she hosts monthly for Speak the Word, with the goal of healing, strengthening the mind-body connection, and normalizing fear. Maureen advocates for human and nonhuman animals, asserts that all oppression is connected, and—in alignment with the idea that none of us are free unless all of us are free (Fannie Lou Hamer)—hopes to inspire the pursuit of collective liberation with her writing.
Editors’ Note: Maureen P. Medina read “Synesthesia” during the virtual poetry event In This Together 2023. See the event recording here.
April 24, 2025
The Red Summer of 1919
By Antonio Vallone
Black soldiers return
victorious from World War
One to U.S. Ex-
cited white men meet trains, lynch
them in uniform:
Black medals in the branches.
Antonio Vallone (1957–2025) was an associate professor of English at Penn State DuBois, English Coordinator, and co-coordinator of the 2- and 4-year multidisciplinary studies programs. He was the founding publisher of MAMMOTH books, co-publisher of The Watershed Journal Publishing Cooperative, and former chief editor and poetry editor of Pennsylvania English. He published several poetry collections, including The Blackbird’s Applause, Grass Saxophones, and Golden Carp, and the chapbook-length poem Chinese Bats.
April 10, 2025
Dark Body
By Raman Gill
I am a dark writer with dark skin,
A precious gift from God—don’t call it a sin.
History branded me an ignorant slave,
But just listen to how intellectually I behave.
Same red blood flowing through my veins.
I belong to the same sapiens, yet still, you disdain.
Same emotions, same tears from every single mother.
I too belong to you—I’m not any other.
We are all equal. Only God is superior.
Born with more protective melanin, yet you call me inferior?
Despite many resolutions, I still lack my birthright.
From West to East, many still fight the king’s fight.
Soon my dark body will mix with your fertile sand.
Will you fast forever, or amend your cruel stand?
My spirit blushes at this hypocrisy from afar.
My dark, ghostly world is better, for here I am treated at par.
Raman Gill is a poet from India who is committed to exploring themes of equality, humanity, and social justice. His poetry seeks to challenge prejudice and inspire positive change, emphasizing the importance of unity and respect for all individuals. Raman’s work reflects his belief in the inherent dignity of every person and advocates for a world where racism and hate have no place. Through his writing, he strives to amplify voices that promote equality and celebrate our shared humanity. Instagram username: @rsgillwrites
March 8, 2025When
By Jane MacKinlay McCartney
When someone intentionally injures another
and everyone looks away in silence…
When anyone uses racial insults
and all others remain quiet…
When there is an unwanted sexual advancement made upon another
and everybody ignores it…
When no one challenges evil words or actions,
silence teaches.
Silence is anything but silent.
It speaks volumes.
Jane MacKinlay McCartney’s work has been published in various anthologies, the most recent being Volume 1 of Erie County Poetry Anthology (2022). Others include Celebrate: A Collection of Life’s Celebrations, compiled by Debra R. Sanchez (2019); The Picture This Anthology (2018), edited by 2016–2018 Erie County Poet Laureate Marisa Moks-Unger; and Poetry Quarterly (Spring 2018). A regular participant in various local poetry events, Jane resides with her husband, Mike, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Jane’s awards include Pennwriters Area 1 Annual Writer’s Road Trip Billboard Writing Contest, 2nd place—2018 and 2019, 3rd place—2022 and 2023.
February 11, 2025
When
By Barbara E. Rumore
Now we repeat the damn silliness again
How many times must this battle for freedom, for rights, for equity, for equality be fought
AND WON
Only to be erased as you also attempt to erase or more politely erode and rewrite my history
Done so to spare the poor long suffering white children from the emotional pain and trauma they are suffering today in classrooms from “a thing” that happened looong ago that they had nothing to do with
What about how I suffered through what little of my history was taught
The textbooks never mentioned the kings, queens, great leaders, movers and shakers and great thinkers that were my African ancestors
I was only exposed to the half naked bush African men and women with their spears in front of small huts made of twigs and mud
I saw only pictures of naked children
I the long suffering black child felt only shame
I the long suffering black child felt only embarrassment
I the long suffering black child felt only the desire to disappear
I the long suffering black child felt only the desire to be anywhere but there
I THE LONG SUFFERING BLACK CHILD FELT NO PRIDE
Martin remarked “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”
I want to know when
When will that arc finally hit justice
Note: The suggestion that the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice was attributed first to Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and prominent American Transcendentalist who in his 1853 sermon “Of Justice and the Conscience” made reference to the moral universe, stating “the arc is a long one.…it bends toward justice.”
Barbara E. Rumore retired from public health nursing administration and moved to Vieques, Puerto Rico, where she lived for 13 years. A native of Oil City, Pennsylvania, she settled in Franklin upon her return to northwestern Pennsylvania. Her avocation for fitness became a career teaching fitness, which shifted to work as a swim instructor. The world around her, poetry, and life experiences are her inspiration. She is a member of Poets Against Racism & Hate USA and The Bridge Literary Arts Center. She has had poems published in The Bridge Literary Arts Journal. Watching her parents volunteer has been her guide for volunteering throughout her life.
January 16, 2025
Rerun
By Dawn Marar
My daughter says, “Reveal yourself, your true ID,”
as I drink wine and write and she chopchopssizzz.
In the kitchen, I was never more than a Martha Stewart clone
clutching my ’70s Betty Crocker gold-tone statuette—
an award for sewing a wrap dress for my sister.
In the attic now, Betty holds the laurel high above her head.
At my request, daughter tosses words while pare-scrape-
slicing. Like a golfer shouting “Fore!”
she cries, “Corn!” And up pops
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.
It’s harvest time, after all.
But wait! Corn-crackin’ Jimmy?
I—who bursts into song at the slightest provocation—
bite my tongue. Rising from a ’50s childhood
(not Eminem’s 2007 rap song),
My master’s gone away.
How shall I harvest that?
As a child, I didn’t think about what it meant
but it could have meant only one thing:
slave master. I must’ve known.
We all must’ve known. All of us, white
kids in the all-white school in the all-white village
in upstate New York, where I grew up.
Daughter pitches, “Elmer Fudd and plastic surgery.”
(Where does this girl get her ideas?)
But it’s no laughing matter.
Shhh…be vewy vewy quiet.
Plastic surgery’s no cover.
Like Elmer Fudd, I sport scant melanin.
This is the moment, in the pwogwam folks,
where, tempted to flush it—or think I can—
the ole system backs up
and I have to face the fact
the master’s not gone away.
Dawn Marar is the founder of “Moving Beyond Bloc-Whiteness,” a writing workshop. Her chapbook, Efflorescence, published by Finishing Line Press, focuses on connections to the Middle East. A finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Orison Anthology of Poetry Awards, she has a master’s from Columbia University and has worked as a community organizer and planner. Her website is http://www.dawnmarar.weebly.com. Dawn is currently writing about whiteness from an antiracist stance. A poem from that series was published by Barzakh: A Literary Magazine.