Editors’ Note: This page highlights works produced by participants during a PARH USA virtual workshop: Fighting Firehose with Fire: Writing Epistolary Poetry in Response to the Political Maelstrom. The workshop was held in the Spring of 2025. The works represent the results of coming together in community to meet the moment and address issues that may be broader than but are adjacent to the PARH USA mission of confronting racism, bigotry, and hate through poetry.
Mandatum
By Jennifer Browne
The right whale calf in Cape Cod Bay
appeared on Holy Thursday, surfaced
in the middle of the feeding group,
a miracle of sorts, critically endangered.
The “unusual mortality event” continuing
for years. How do we hold what we hold,
last suppers, blessing of the oils that go
to bless the sick within a year. We have
stood on those shores, have shuddered
at the logbook’s ink-print whales, seen
a chief mate’s ivory stamps, reckoned
what it means to render fat to light.
Name the calf’s mother Monarch, think
of mammals’ milks, of milkweed, symbols
and rebirth. I don’t believe and I believe.
Such suffering there has been, there is,
will be. Beloved, we have walked together
in our own anointing. Everywhere, Miracle.
Let me dry your feet with my hair.
Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and some other stuff, too. Find her work at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne.
Prayer
By John Burroughs
after “Hampuy” by Catherine Joslyn
Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth,
who so many work to defile,
Though coins on parade masquerade
as stars, seek to purchase and use
you up, I watch benevolent serpents
emerge from your soil heart to challenge
all who would cause you harm.
Grant me strength to always join them.
Yours,
John
John Burroughs of Cleveland is a devoted dog dad, recent Ohio and U.S. Beat Poet Laureate, and currently serves as a vice president for the Ohio Poetry Association. His books include Rattle and Numb and The Wrest of the Worthwhile. His most recent chapbook, Awash, was published in July 2025 by Pure Sleeze Press. Find him at linktr.ee/johnburroughs and crisischronicles.com.
Postcard, Robert E Lee Junior High School, Danville Virginia, 1963
By Pam Campbell
Postcard
Robert E Lee Junior High School
Danville, Virginia
1963
Dear Friend,
Sorry for not remembering your name.
US Route 29 took me through Danville today.
Air closed tight like a fist in my chest.
First time I been back since I left after 8th grade.
I fled east on US Route 58.
Back home, name-haunted, I hunted
attic-stored boxes for school memories.
Found this black and white picture postcard
of our school, 2-storied brick with wide
double-hung windows, empty of children’s faces.
Lee honored there, separated us.
Love,
Pam
Pam Campbell’s writing has appeared in the Ó Bhéal Five Words anthology, Blue Mondays Poetry Anthology, PMS&G Literary Journal, The Petigru Review, Poets for Science, and To Life: The Past Is Present: Holocaust Stories of Hampton Roads Survivors, Liberators, and Rescuers (2022). She is the 2024 Tennessee Mountain Writers (TMW) first place winner in children’s literature and the 2025 TMW first place winner in fiction. Her photography has appeared in Blue Mondays Poetry Anthology (2021) and PMS&G Literary Journal.
A Presidential Postcard
By Donna Wojnar Dzurilla
Donna Wojnar Dzurilla’s poetry has appeared in Backbone Mountain Review and Rune Literary Journal and the anthology The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: Pittsburgh Poems. Her fiction has appeared in Anthology of Appalachian Writers Ann Pancake Volume 16, Wild Wind: Poems & Stories Inspired by the Songs of Robert Earl Keen, Northern Appalachia Review, The Last Word & Other Stories: A Sheila-Na-Gig Anthology, the Voices from the Attic anthology series, and other publications. Dzurilla graduated from Carlow University’s Creative Writing Program, is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshop community, and lives in Pittsburgh.
Post-Apocalyptic Postcard to My Parents
By Pauletta Hansel
Do you remember that summer,
how we’d watch the news until
the National Anthem forecast the snow
of static and quiet, then wake to see
if he’d slunk off in the dark,
or was still baring his teeth for the fight?
We slept easy, knowing
either way, Nixon was roadkill.
Now the thief in chief
is more Wendigo than weasel.
He says he could shoot us down
in the streets and survive.
And he could.
At night I mute my phone
and switch on the tv,
flip till I find an old whodunit
where justice is served in the end.
I miss you.
You wouldn’t want to be here.
Pauletta Hansel’s tenth poetry collection is Will There Also Be Singing? (Shadelandhouse Modern Press), poems of witness and protest. Heartbreak Tree (Madville Publications) won the Poetry Society of Virginia’s North American Book Award and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press, 2017) won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and 2022 Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Writer-in-Residence. This poem was written during the recent PARH USA workshop she cofacilitated with Tabassam Shah. Visit her website at https://paulettahansel.wordpress.com/.
[untitled]
By Janet E. Irvin
W,
Remember the wild horses? How they galloped
past the ATV, thundering our hearts and the sand
of the valley floor, the land echoing both our losses—
your wife, my son? Love’s silent hoofbeats sang, ringed
by saw-toothed mountains, the bite of sorrow
swallowed by the whisper of the sea
that once filled this bowl of dust and dreams,
that once, like you and me, believed in forever.
J–
Janet E. Irvin is an educator, a poet, and the author of eight mystery/thriller novels under the name J.E. Irvin. Her poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Creosote, The Raven’s Perch, Sky Island Journal, Flying Island Journal, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal, as well as various anthologies. A member of the Greenville Poets, Sisters in Crime, Central Ohio Fiction Writers, and Buckeye Crime Writers, Irvin resides in southwest Ohio on the edge of a nature park, which serves as inspiration for her work.
[untitled]
By Dory Maguire
See the trees in this forest;
I grew some of them from seed.
Native species, living locally—
thriving indefinitely.
Providing breathing air, erosion control,
lumber, and material for protest signs.
Call it ground support.
Dory Maguire is a self-published writer and environmental steward in Pennsylvania. Her poetry and essays focus on regenerative practices and the healing power of daily connection with nature. Passionate about practical solutions for wellbeing, she explores how mindful choices can help restore both people and the earth. Her work appears in various anthologies.
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