Write Forward: A Constellation of Voices

International Women’s Writing Guild

WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Foreword “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson, a poet who understood that language has the power to lift us, that a single word, well-placed, can open a sky.

In 1995, the world gathered in Beijing to declare what women have always known: our voices are not echoes, but origins. Equality is not an aspiration, but a right. Justice, like poetry, must be lived. The International Women’s Writing Guild stood among the storytellers then, as it does now. From the corridors of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women to Beijing+30 in New York, we return to the courage of ink and the quiet yet urgent thunder of women’s words.

This anthology gathers women’s voices speaking to the twelve critical areas of concern first outlined in Beijing: poverty and power, education and environment, freedom and fear. They write of the world as it is and the world as it must become, guiding us toward a freedom that is more than a whisper—toward a future where no woman’s story is left untold.

Here, in this constellation of words, let us listen. Let us rise. Let us begin again.

As the Tang Dynasty poet Xue Tao reminds us: 莫轻小女子，曾占洛阳春。

“Do not take lightly the small woman – she once held the springtime of Luoyang in her hands.”

Women do not simply hold up half the sky. We write it, shape it, and fill it with stars.

- Michelle M Miller, Executive Director, IWWG

Table of Contents Section 1. Women’s Words We Must Gather Our Voices by Mary Adams..........................................................1 Unsought Pickings by Usha Akella ...........................................................................2 Charting the Lost Continent by Linda Albert ........................................................4 In a Garden of Girlness by Debbie Allen ..................................................................5 My Mother’s Hands by Janice Alper..........................................................................7 Equinox by Ellie Bates ................................................................................................8 Nature’s Lessons in Resilience by Ellie Bates.........................................................9 Once Upon a Time by Diane Bell .............................................................................10 Weeping Beech Tree by Sheila Benedis .................................................................11 Transfiguration by Emily Bilman .............................................................................12 Clamors Against Inequality by Vanessa Caraveo ................................................13 #YouKnowMe by Susan Chute .................................................................................14 Ladders by Anne Cognato.........................................................................................16 Of Support and Security by Kate Copeland...........................................................17 Red by Linda Davies....................................................................................................18 Parable of the Foolish Virgins Revised by Joanne Durham ................................19 What the Salt Meant by Joanne Durham ..............................................................20 On International Woman’s Day by Victoria Dym .................................................21 The Cost by Rebecca Evans......................................................................................22 Violins & Thin Clouds by Rebecca Evans...............................................................22 Disbelief After the Vote by Caprice Garvin...........................................................23 Friendship Park by Caprice Garvin.........................................................................24 My Mother Was an Angel by Linda Ohlson Graham............................................25

Dreams in The Garden by Dorothy Randall Gray.................................................26 I Do Speak English by Dorothy Randall Gray ........................................................28 The Hospital Where I Was Born by Dorothy Randall Gray.................................29 We Women of the World by Faith Swingle Green ................................................31 For the Poets Writing the World in Times of Chaos by Geri Gutwein............32 Days Like This by Susan Justiniano | RescuePoetix ..............................................33 Elsa’s Memories by Marjorie Kanter.......................................................................34 Proof of Life by Elsa Wolman Katana.......................................................................35 #Enough by Dr. Kellie Kirksey .................................................................................36 A Soldier’s Song by Juanita Kirton .........................................................................39 Anatomy Lesson by Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbral........................................................40 Comfort Women by Tanya Ko-Hong ......................................................................42 Woman with an Upsweep by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee .........................................45 Alone and Together by Lynne A. McNamara ........................................................46 Somewhere a Man Sets a Woman on Fire by Leslie Neustadt ..........................47 Spoils by Leslie Neustadt .........................................................................................48 International Women’s Day by Mary K O’Melveny ...........................................50 The Voices of Women by P.S. Perkins .....................................................................51 Dear Girl, What is it That You Need? by Suzanne Lima Pickford.......................52 Side Effects of Surviving Breast Cancer by Judith Prest...................................53 Under the Sign of the Rusty Coat Hanger by Judith Prest ...............................54 I am Power by Adriana Rocha..................................................................................56 Lifting and Separating by Margaret R. Sáraco.....................................................57 Letter to Someone by Linda Leedy Schneider......................................................58 At the Threshold by Linda Leedy Schneider..........................................................59 Ask Me by Linda Leedy Schneider...........................................................................60

A Call to Arms by Myra Shapiro ...............................................................................61 The Faces of Women by Myra Shapiro ..................................................................62 I Am A Tree. Look At Me. By Myra Shapiro ...........................................................63 Me, [un] Braided by Barbara Simmons..................................................................64 Pro-Choice Women’s March - 2005 After the Supreme Court Took Away My Rights, 2022

by Jessica Simon .........................................................................................................65 Witness by Kashiana Singh ......................................................................................68 They Have Plans for Us by Megha Sood................................................................69 Dressing Mom by Lisa St. John .................................................................................71 Dear Grandchildren of Our Grandchildren by Lisa St. John..............................72 That’s not for girls by Sara Stegen.........................................................................73 Creation Is Our Power: a Protest Poem for Women

by J. Catherine Tetrault ..............................................................................................75 My Mother Told Me by Tracey Thiessen.................................................................77 A History of Silence by Cathy Thwing ....................................................................78 Pronouns by Cathy Thwing ......................................................................................79 Being by Deedle Rodriguez Tomlinson...................................................................80 * Coming of Age by Nichole Turnbloom .................................................................81 Braiding Catastrophes by Pramila Venkateswaran .............................................83 Chucking It Down by Camille Westermann..........................................................84 Against Teleology by Simone Muench + Jackie K. White....................................85

Section 2. Women’s Stories Silent Night by Allyne Betancourt...........................................................................87 The Metaphysical Magician by Judith Woolcock Colombo................................90 Julia’s Bet by Tiffany Davenport ..............................................................................92

Fifty Years of Lessons on Women and Men by Kimberly Hirsh.........................93 In Some Cheap-Ass Gas Station Line (or anywhere in public, really)

by Selene Hofstetter..................................................................................................96 Libus by Sarah Kehoe................................................................................................98 Imagine This by Doris Mahaffey ............................................................................100 Chat Masala by Meenakshi Mohan........................................................................103 Both Sides Now by Catherine O’Neill ...................................................................105 Making Tracks by Kathryn Pepper ........................................................................112 You Feel Me? by Desiree Rucker.............................................................................115 Counting and Recounting by Jawahara Saidullah...............................................121 Who Knew What to Do by Brett Summers .........................................................123 The Shot by Elita Suratman ....................................................................................125 The Evolution of a Girl by Robin Mayer Stein......................................................127 That Boy’s a Catch by Tina Tocco .........................................................................130 Just Another Day on Larkspur Lane by Linda C. Wisniewski............................133

Section 3. Writing Forward Not Enemies after Stephen Levine by Evelyn Asher..........................................137 La Presidenta: A Victorious Woman in a Country Dominated by Men

by Noris Binet ............................................................................................................138 A Brighter World Led by Women by Juliet Cutler.............................................146 No, I’m Not Like These Women Victims by Zefi Dimadama.............................153 Kindred Souls by Adhara Mereles.........................................................................156 What Tries to Kill Us by Brenda Wildrick ............................................................158

Writers’ Biographies .......................................................................................159

Women’s

Words

Section 1. Women’s Words

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We Must Gather Our Voices

by Mary Adams Here in the grassroots we dig our toes into the mud as we plant our seeds and watch empowerment grow.

At harvest time we gather our voices and fling them into the sky.

We winnow our harvest into messages of equality advocacy and community.

Our voices transcend into a murmuration of emancipation made up of thousands of words that swoop and dive in synchronicity.

Here in the grassroots we dig our toes into the mud and we watch the sky because we know our voices return to earth as rain that will nourish and enrich our next harvest.

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Unsought Pickings

for the African American slave women subjected to forced breeding

by Usha Akella

The years between us are bolled Gossypium, clawed realities spinning yarns—chilling truth not yarn, Mandeville knew this was a beast-sprouting plant— our kutn, your cotton—their currency of carnage, I am told ‘her’ pain is not ‘yours’ to articulate, share or voice; still, I seek her in the blurred spirals of the feminine self, my hand seeking her palm as a mirror, perhaps, she imagined snowflakes to pick, snowflakes— the white gold falling from the sky in the North, instead, her fingers stabbed cotton like wasps, the destiny of her people hewed her body to a sickle seeking earth’s arms more than sky, did she think, “I’ll be picking cotton till the sun is a hole,” in the lament-soaked sky of waning blues?

Perhaps.

Did she seek answers in the liminal spaces of unsought choices blooming like soft cotton: better the cotton-picking than de weddin’ ’tween de cows and de bulls, than the decree from dank walls, than the brooding air of muffled suffering, than the damp wet cave of smothered pain, than fingers and pubescence prying her open like a can, than the unwilling rabbet of her private to his, better numbing labor than the pinioning of air pressing as a bale of hay, the straw filling her mouth, throat, lungs, her eyes sweeping the air like bats?

Outside, the sullen crushed sympathy, like lifeless cotton with hardened seeds, ears dialed to deafness for survival, better her hands furrowed and perforated? better her palms fissured with ancestral pain?

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Did the moments of anger pile on stone by stone to sift between unsought pickings be a breeding woman than/ be fettered to a whipping post?

This better than a back striped like a field, red petals of welts blooming to the sun, a waste of dandelions around her drooping in shame, staining her memory’s notebook of incoherent rage, a rage alive breathing like cotton?

Quote by a slave woman on crude eugenics practiced by slave owners from Thelma Jennings, ‘Us colored women had to go through a plenty: Sexual exploitation of African American slave women,’ Journal of Women’s History, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 1, Number 3, Winter 1990, pp. 50; 45-74.

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Charting the Lost Continent

by Linda Albert The Feminine flourished like Atlantis once until, blamed for life and also death, her suckling and such cruelty feared, an ancient cataclysm swallowed her whole, submerged her stories under the sea.

Fathoms deep, she slept for eons, hinted at, but best forgotten.

Now, despite that, shelves of shale, multitudes of mangrove roots, layered limestone beaches thrust themselves upward after long, chaotic labors. It is a difficult business helping to birth a continent, crying out for skills of all to make the new/old landmass whole and seamless— heart and steel to chart it.

Charting the Lost Continent was previously published in: Albert, Linda. Charting the Lost Continent: Poetry and Other Discoveries. Sarasota, FL: Rainbow River Press, 2020.

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

In a Garden of Girlness

After Bloom by Ohio watercolorist Elizabeth Ford

by Debbie Allen

Wee one, look at you!

All around other girls busy about with pageants and play, reading and running, hide-and-go-seek through daisy and pansy, petunia, begonia, gardenia, and mum, primrose and tulip, forget-me-not, buttercup, and bergamot. Black lashes curved like the spine of our crescent moon, you peer in profile forward toward your future. Upturned palm, forefinger to thumb, you seek being beyond yourself. You’re six going on ... expectation! Composed in tutu of tempered perm rose, its barely pink bodice paled the more by skin hued umber imbued with Antwerp blue.

In a garden of girlness, you’re a Gilead iris. BLOOM is brandished across your frills, DREAM emblazoned on your gaze, REALIZE written in your pose.

Bloom, you shall. Petal by petal with jubilance!

PETAL ... PETAL ... PETAL ... PETAL. Yet all your blossoms may be harder wrought than ones of some sisters who surround you because your soil, your sun, your rain as of now is not the same—somehow— as theirs. And somewhere along

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the way, someone will wishful-think (as the artful asks), “Does this flower look weak?”

Composed, in skin hued umber imbued with Antwerp blue, you will intervene on your own behalf. You’ll paraphrase a painting in which you starred: “This flower isn’t weak. This flower is strong. This girl is ever blooming. Iris atrofusca! I am the bloom ... and will be ...

EVER ... EVER ... EVER ... EVER.”

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

My Mother’s Hands

by Janice Alper A soft pencil point, moistened on her tongue

add up a column of numbers

on a brown grocery bag.

My mother’s hands fingers calloused from packing groceries

lugging cartons across the floor

counting out change.

Over the washtub Scrubbing, scrubbing dirt from shirts and sheets My mother’s hands wet with soap up and down the washboard wringing, twisting droplets of dreams.

My mother’s hands knit sweaters held books as she read to me her grandchildren hugged me caressed my babies Softened with age My mother’s hands reposed in death.

Previously published in “A Year in Ink,” San Diego Writers Ink Anthology Volume 15

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Equinox

by Ellie Bates the arc of sun crosses the equator day and night are equal length in all parts of the world today’s news tells it differently dark and light are not equal more dark for immigrants seeking asylum herded from border towns to sanctuary cities without due process darker for war crimes in Ukraine tortured bodies found in mass graves dark for those longing to belong to be understood for being different racial justice still wears the shroud of prejudice in jeopardy a woman’s choice for her own health care the one doctrine of fear replaces religion as the sun moves across the line that divides north and south poles will people unite turn toward the light to right these wrongs?

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Nature’s Lessons in Resilience

by Ellie Bates shad bush blooms along ponds welcomes the valiant herring thousand mile travelers from the sea tiny silver eels flash finish to spawn Will I be as persistent to travel to the State House for Affordable Housing? not far from the pond forsythia screams yellow fearless and uncultivated brushes cars along the roadside Will I be fearless to stand up to a person who screams a racial slur? strong against ancient stone walls daffodil bulbs planted years ago lift their vibrant gold trumpets to play in harmony all spring Will I learn about native plants to support a fragile ecosystem? dandelions with spear shaped leaves abundantly blanket lawns push through walkway spaces to color the red bricks saffron Will I continue to push for women’s reproductive rights? in the nearby field a clump of narcissus naturalized among briars and leaves escapes the blade of an excavator when owners redesign the development Will I attend planning board meetings for fair land use and saving open spaces?

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Once Upon a Time

by Diane Bell November 6, 2024

Surely, I am not the first woman to wake up with a catch in my breath and ache in my heart.

Mad kings lusting after power and money as sweet treats for their consumption.

The story is familiar.

We have seen it time and time again.

Identify those you wish to demonize, consume your audience with terrifying images.

I look to my descendants, young and beautiful, their lives ahead of them, the world at their feet.

They are thrust into a demented fairy tale where evil characters lurk behind every tree and around every corner.

I summon the wisdom of the ancestors who have been pawns in this game.

Show me how to be the warrior hero who slays the dragon, kills the wolf, shoves the witch into the oven.

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Weeping Beech Tree

by Sheila Benedis weeping beech tree I come upon your closed side like a wall of leaves it seems to exclude the world people who are bitter cynical divisive but then I see your other side I watch the sunlight filter through your leafy canopy oh you you that is open to the world you that tries to be inclusive you that lets in the light protects people you that cries out safety dignity justice you speak peace and unity for all for all American people

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Transfiguration

by Emily Bilman The woman singing with her desertvoice transformed the sky and the nomad sitting by the barren bush into one seamless immensity. The sun shone upon the spring-waters, streaming between the palms and the orange groves by the oases; yet the transient mirage of her face, gazing through the wheelwindow, could hardly be effaced.

Her mirage-face still vibrates in my imagination while the sun still blazes upon the scintillated dunes, reminding me of the nomad’s silhouette and the desert’s redeemed bushes.

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Clamors Against Inequality

by Vanessa Caraveo The ongoing and ever-rising problem in the world is the reason why women continue to yell against gender inequality.

They raise their voices from the depths of silence to live equally in society and to break the limits of their resilience.

They demand their recognition and change.

They shout for their liberty with an uncontrolled rage.

Against the shadow of domestic abuse, they raise their voices like a spark of resistance.

For their rights to education, they yell, scream, and melt in their land where knowledge is denied by social discrimination.

Their voices want to break the chains of ignorance to have the opportunity to learn, grow, and shine with many abilities to succeed.

Against the shackles of the societal contradiction, they raise their voices.

A unified shout for fairness and for justice in the tribunal of the human world.

They yell for their right to be compensated, valued, and respected for their contributions, efforts, and labor.

In the face of sexual harassment, they yell an outcry against the violation of their will.

They keep shouting for strong justice toward healing.

There must be a place where their voices are not just raised and heard but also heeded and praised.

These yells are not just sounds to the generation.

They must be considered for their promise, strength, desperation, and unwavering will.

Women raise their voices in the hope of a world where they can finally stand with pride and sing the hymn of equality.

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#YouKnowMe

by Susan Chute I’m the one that would never tell you the grand red curtain at the front of the stage is the rose petal of a vagina.

You thought the red rose drape would mask the chambers of your secret.

What cue is called?

I’m the one that would never tell you the sheers letting in the sunlight fall upon a sickbed.

I’m the one in white.

I’m the one that would never tell you the fertilized egg cracks for Humpty Humpty.

I’m the one that would never tell you traipsing through a field in Michigan is a way to lose every cell of motherhood.

The crosshatched window panes catch the spell of stillness where sky defines its absence.

I’m Athena’s owl on the shoulder of your roofline.

I’m hunting for your blind side.

You thought the valence could hide the light.

I’m the one that never told you I know how blood drips and clots at the ending.

The eaves are lined with red.

I never told you the ancient woman in the other bed moaned an unforgiving ache all night long in the Catholic hospital that took me in.

I never told you no one wanted me so how could I want?

The dimmer decreases by 10.

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Leave your hard-earned experience, what you did and who you met, and how you happened there.

I’m the wisdom beyond your grasp But not your sight.

Group your past at out.

A room of your own weighs your worth.

#You know me is a hashtag women used on Twitter to describe the circumstances of their abortions, following the bans and restrictions on abortion adopted by the states of Alabama, Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi, Utah, Kentucky, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida and Texas.

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Ladders

by Anne Cognato I dream of climbing a ladder so tall, it rested against the clouds, my hands grip the cold, metal rungs, its horizontal lines marking nothing, or maybe something, a step forward, higher, closer to heaven.

As I reach the top, I fall, tumbling through the air, hitting the ground with a thud.

I get up, shake myself off, no injuries, no bruises, and I pick the dead grass out of my hair.

The next night, I do it again.

Persistence, perseverance, stubbornness drive me up and up the straight and narrow, racing, with no divergent path, no place to park my weary body, the rules of the game are exhausting My mother says women Should be stay at-home mothers and wives, not imaging life in a bright blue sky not daydreaming out glass windows, not climbing career ladders.

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Of support and security –

by Kate Copeland She sits on the bench closest to sand, distant eyes, shrouded soul. Careful, meek — once a therapist, always she says.

Irises blue, her dress goodwill, well arranged over wooden boards where swollen legs cross elegantly, burst shoes weathered.

A sip of whiskey a skater brings over because of his birthday, as fellow benchers join about the forecast.

It is good to travel, to avoid rain, she states, now beach, next month city. Lady Di and Mother Theresa were good women. Her tears, waves, without control; clouds never go away. Have I hurt her with my questioning? She answers: I saw someone at home, behind those eyes; the moment I let her go, she showed me.

My wife, life. I see. I’m not really afraid of you, she says. Just talking. Even if half of it is true.

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Red

by Linda Davies Mama, I like things red.

Not some namby pamby wine color too scared to be red, but Scream in your face Fire engine loud red The color that shouts Damn, you’d best see me and take notice ‘fore I run you over red That’s me, mama.

The red woman The scarlet woman they whisper about in church I don’t turn my eyes downward for no one These feet know where they’re goin’ Without me checkin’ up on ‘em every three seconds I wear red, mama and Hold my head up high Proud of my scars and my smile that says I been there and come out whole on the other side.

I wear red, mama, for the heat in my heart and my thighs For the dark fire that burns in these black eyes I wear red, mama because I won’t walk when I can run and I won’t whisper when I can sing I wear red, mama, for all the joy you ever taught me.

I wear red, mama For you.

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Parable of the Foolish Virgins Revised

by Joanne Durham “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish.” Matthew 25, New King James Bible Ten old women steered their wooden boat out to meet the sunset. There were those among them whose bodies knew ecstasy, those who knew violation, those who felt the fine thread of love stitching together their cells. Women who had lived on the few slips of earth where they were allowed to read had taken vast journeys of the mind. Others learned from stones and rivers and the deep pain of hunger and their children’s hunger, and some learned from both. They were, then, neither ignorant nor innocent. All of them sometimes felt wisdom stir in their bones, but since none had found the path to ending cruelty in the world, none claimed to be wise. They were wise enough, though, to take turns at the helm. They had seen such transformations many times, but still they marveled at how the sun nudged the mountains into fire, painted the river tones as varied as their own skins. Some had brought provisions – bread, oranges, lanterns, sweaters stretched from wear. Others had departed hastily with only their clothing, and some had nothing left to bring. When they reached the portal to their destination, they breathed relief that no one commanded them, only you can enter, you cannot, you must bring this or that. Those with knowledge from books had prepared them for such orders, and the ones who had studied the patterns of roots of trees and the touch of sun on every leaf were confident no such command would come. They were ready though and agreed they would entwine their fingers to basket themselves, shelter one another in their arms, enter by the strength of their dimming light.

First published in Litmosphere, ©Joanne Durham

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What the Salt Meant

by Joanne Durham “That night when the angels came to Lot, [his wife was] going to all her neighbors and saying to them, give me salt, because we have guests…Therefore ‘she became a pillar of salt.’” --Bereishit Rabbah.51:5 Her sin, after all, was not that her rheumy eyes travelled back, swollen with hope that her daughters’ singed shadows might rise from the blaze of collapsing skyline. It was that Lot’s wife warned her neighbors. She would become the woman who watched the whip burn across another’s back, then spread the word one dark night to slip inside the barn, hide breathless beneath the hay while the slave catchers followed a false scent. The woman who witnessed yellow stars sewn on neighbors’ jackets, and went to borrow a cup of sugar, perhaps a bit of salt, whispering what she had heard in town about the coming cattle cars. The woman who typed government reports no one imagined she understood, then waited near the factory gate at closing time, la migra viene, don’t go to work tomorrow. It wasn’t what she chose to face that raised the angels’ outrage, fearing the flames would heat her mind and melt her heart. What the salt meant to silence was her voice. ©Joanne Durham – first published in Poetry South, nominated for a Pushcart Prize 20

WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

On International Woman’s Day

by Victoria Dym when I go to shake his hand he stands up, starched white shirt— I say that it isn’t necessary for him to stand he retorts that a gentleman always stands for a woman, then awkwardly, he says, a lady his hand is warm like a tiger’s paw— I imagine his paws elsewhere on my body as I look into his tiger eyes; but then, I imagine a tiger fight both of us on haunches, man tiger, woman tiger; but then, his tiger paws around my gazelle neck— snap— man tiger, gazelle lady

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The Cost

by Rebecca Evans Is it trafficking if he is your stepfather and your mother knows, yet no money changes hands?

Violins & Thin Clouds

by Rebecca Evans Burnt sugar and sunset, we sip the dawn we bury a tombstone near a star while there’s still room A woman hides in her home, turns war into game, turns terror bearable for her toddler who believes the sky-bursting rockets equate celebration, the stars are glitter instead of exit-wounds A mother digs a grave midday her hair, ashened as smoke her eyes smolder deepgray. She prays a violin plays and clouds thin, unveiling sun She prays his aim is true

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Disbelief After the Vote

by Caprice Garvin No one has come to me, yet.

No one has knocked on my door asking to spend an hour chatting, and so I remain in a state of suspended belief—as a child might, upon waking, realize she never studied for that quiz.

What occurs within…

I’ve been present for each debate.

My campaign sign vanished from my lawn. I braced myself with silence. Rumination. Even so.

Perhaps, if someone would come, bringing cookies; expecting tea; making themselves at home on my sofa while retaining a certain politeness, knees tight, saucer, scone, porcelain cup balanced on those closed knees, perhaps then I might lean in, begin to understand the plan to take possession of my body as one might take possession of PTA duties when one realizes one is more qualified to play a certain role in cupcake night.

I am waiting for the gentle hand on my knee, before the parting of my thighs.

First published by Writers at the Well

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Friendship Park

by Caprice Garvin On this plaza bordering San Diego and Tijuana, A mother and daughter Touch fingertips Through thick steel mesh.

A rustling, like ribbons Windblown from a child’s hair, Storms up the bars, Confounding the wall’s height.

Trash undone By festival-goers hands, Rises as kites.

The child doesn’t turn To see carton Feather into a bird But sees flight In her mother’s eyes And believes it real.

She asks for wings, planes, A swing to swing That high.

The steel catches The light of the sun, Becomes a river on a kite’s tail, Saturates the air With the sound of fingertips Brushing, like palm leaves, The underside of grace.

First published by Indolent Books

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

My mother was an Angel

by Linda Ohlson Graham My mother was an angel With wings of grace and beauty …

Tolerance and strength Gentleness and kindness Wisdom and humor ‘Care packages for years’ were some of her attributes.

She allowed me to be my own person … and didn’t judge me …

‘I’ve taught you the difference between right and wrong … you have to make your own decisions.’ gave me freedom I took advantage of.

When I reflect on dynamics of someone who supported me loved me gave me GREATEST joy … laughed with so hard I had to pull the car off the road …

Even encouraged me to travel with a gentle man who was Wild and Crazy who I then sailed thousands of miles with …

I breathe with DEEPEST gratitude.

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Dreams In The Garden

by Dorothy Randall Gray Grandfather your great heart and hands plowed fields you did not own fifty years of breaking soil sweat fertilizing land making things grow you couldn’t sell or call yours I am breaking through earth here in LA tomatoes and sweet flowers butterflies love to smell.

I am making things grow in my garden making words blossom in my heart fertilizing dreams of those who come to learn what I have to teach.

Grandfather you did not believe in education for girls only marriage and children like grandma like her Cherokee mother gave thirteen to this world I am the daughter of destiny denied child of a mother who had to sneak through fields to go to school I am my mother’s garden beautiful and bountiful

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

Grandfather beyond those Georgia fields and red clay earth I dream of blue and Paris skies of speaking tongues I long to taste of sweetness in another city of being myself away from my self Rêves de Paris je pense que d’être dans ce lieu mon cœur est dans un village des ecrivant et amour dans le jardin de ma rêves Dreams of Paris I think of being in that place my heart is in a village of writing and love in the garden of my dreams un jour… un jour…un jour pas loin one day…one day…one day not far away Grand-père je ne sais pas vos rêves Grandfather I do not know your dreams But you can share mine in the garden

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I Do Speak English

by Dorothy Randall Gray I do speak English But sometimes You feel so foreign to me I squint my ears to try and hear Everything you’re not saying How do I dictionary myself make sense of your syllables translate who I am Extricate the definition of me without you I do speak English in my own fluent But often not knowing Which words stop midflight and which ones land on your understanding You are illiterate in your love for me My tongue trips over itself for you You are the past pluperfect The tension in future tense The unfinished sentence The dangling participle I do speak your English Now you learn to speak me

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

The Hospital Where I Was Born

by Dorothy Randall Gray The hospital not hospital a house of wood by the woods where my grandfather froze to death after passing out from too much alcohol and too much life unlived and never owning the land he farmed for 30 years The hospital not hospital a place with planks and slanted roof and a doctor not doctor midwife the first of several women who hurt my heart and slapped my soul when I entered into a universe I thought we’d share and made me want to crawl back into the place I came from and not be sandwiched between two sisters with no mayo and me the middle child meat The hospital not hospital a shack beside a red clay road echoing all the ancestor blood spilled all the tears shed all the scars sung all the land lost all the names forgotten all the language forbidden all the families torn all the music banned all the all the all the forevers that never came Section 1. Women’s Words

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2. hospital where I was born (no break) all the all the all the sounds not heard all the all the The hospital not hospital not knots untieable in my stomach thinking about the loss lost my people pushed past the door of no return my people laying back to back belly to belly in the belly of the ship like sardines in brine my people jumping overboard into waters more welcoming than a land that stole their souls thinking about the nots not knowing where my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother came from The hospital not hospital where I was born I give it name a name Ghana gave their chained and changed fihankra they called my ancestors fihankra ‘those who left without saying goodbye’ 1.

I am still looking for my name 2.

Ghana is still looking for me

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We Women of the World

by Faith Swingle Green We won’t look back We won’t go back We will no longer stand in the shadows.

We will not go back to silent submission.

We will hold our heads high and speak our truth.

It is our time to declare our worth to the world.

We will not walk behind We will not succumb to belittling, disrespect, or abuse.

We have found our voices and they matter.

We are resolute in these declarations We are here.

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For the Poets Writing the World in Times of Chaos

by Geri Gutwein Let us talk about poetry

and words like shrapnel

that fill pages of poets’ lives, who write lines in places where bombs explode

and dust filling poets’ lungs suppresses their ability

to breathe, still, they choke out words, cough compassion and truth, in storms of chaos,

and shattered glass.

Poets composing in rubble amidst twisted metal,

their pens moving ceaselessly across paper torn from war-spattered walls.

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Days Like This

by Susan Justiniano | RescuePoetix Days like today, crisp air expands the universe within me, takes out remnants of what was, whisps of yesterday’s paper beliefs, different by virtue of existence I find myself wishing.

Days like today, leaves make way for new, announcing that change is coming, whether I’m ready or not, dry crunch, shuffling, a magician’s trick, faster than my eyes can see I find myself wondering.

Days like today, as I pull lapels closer, hugging myself, excited for myself, afraid for myself it happens so fast, these changes of season so caught up in existing, living slips by I find myself grieving.

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Elsa’s Memories

by Marjorie Kanter 1970s new york city. a puerto rican child grows up. forked tongue. elsa goes to school. elsa is seven years old. she’s a sweet little shy child. elsa is from puerto rico but now she lives in THE city. at home they speak in (e)spanish. at school elsa is just learning english. she goes to catholic school. run by nuns. they care about her soul. they care about cleanliness. there is a (e)special nun who does the daily cleansing. everytime elsa says a word of (e)spanish she is taken over to the sink in the corner of the room and her mouth is washed out with a bar of soap. it makes a lot of suds. one day elsa just stops talking altogether.

-------------------P.S. (What happened to Elsa? She became a bilingual teacher.

She didn’t do what was done to her. She understood. This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it goes in reverse.)

Originally published in ‘I displace the air as I walk, 2004 and part of the wall installation ‘The Bagged Stories’ and used as a prompt in workshops to talk and write about relationships such as parent-teacher-child and mixing languages and cultures ...

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proof of life

by Elsa Wolman Katana my grandchildren’s time will be a flood of light being

a salt sea of memory healing the mother wound

future delight materialized

by love by devotion a heritage

seeded backward toward lineage and a grandmother who wasn’t in the river under the river

in the 6th extinction blood and bone giving way beneath a raft of peace her DNA survives childless

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#Enough

(in honor of Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka)

by Dr. Kellie Kirksey

They sacrificed enough for a million lifetimes.

They hold within their cells the memories of those who worked themselves to death, not because they desired to, but because they had to.

Generations Upon Generations of Black and Brown women pushed, nurtured, and shined through the pain of it all.

Yet With the strength and fortitude of all the ancestors beside them They rose up and said ENOUGH! I have had ENOUGH I have done ENOUGH I am ENOUGH Gone are the days of entertaining and nurturing the masses at the expense of flesh and bones.

Gone are the days of Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop in order to please the bosses and bearers of shiny things.

Enough 36

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Gone are the days of toiling under the hot sun, lest we die.

Gone are the days of, Do more, don’t stop.

Enough Gone are the days of your power dictating my destiny.

Gone are the days of swallowing back our No Enough Gone are the days of being the sacrificial lamb to satisfy others.

Gone are the days of won’t say no, can’t say no.

Enough Gone are the days of being owned by a system that believes we are theirs.

Gone are the days of being lashed for sitting down.

Enough Gone are the days of dismissing our emotional needs.

Gone are the days of giving away every ounce of ourselves until we are no more.

Enough Gone are the days of loving others more than ourselves.

Gone are the days of pushing through the pain.

Enough Gone are the days of giving until we are broken.

Gone are the days of ignoring the wisdom of our inner voice.

Gone are the days of smiling through the trauma.

Enough Gone are the days of dismissing our mental health.

Gone are the days of never doing or feeling enough.

Gone are the days of Section 1. Women’s Words

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giving until it hurts.

Enough Gone are the days of disintegrating under the weight of too many expectations.

Gone are the days of being superwomen who never stops.

So Enough of what is draining our mind, our bodies and our spirits.

Enough of what is draining our soul of joy.

The ancestors have spoken through the voices and talents of their descendants.

The world has witnessed what it means to say yes to loving oneself Enough to stop.

Prioritizing Self care is the new revolution.

Wellness is an act of rebellion equivalent to escaping the plantation of our bondage.

We too get to raise our voices And courageously proclaim Enough.

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A Soldier’s Song

by Juanita Kirton Hot sands digested grains grind against shackled weight my survival kit

teeth seventy-five pounds

Military partners share my shadow lasers light the night I survey the heavens identical stars watched Jesus and Mohammed wails and whimpers from open wounds Lost limbs boys in red, white and blue lost limbs boys in barbed wires gutted roads devour armored vehicles bloated with diesel and blood Comrades lost then found six months nine more another deployment families pray babies get born desert swallows’ dreams deferred Brothers and sisters sing a soldiers’ song freedoms empty breast sung by mothers children lost to wars of old men God forgives no innocent weapons Wind and heat stroke exposed skin i rise i fall i salute and obey a chest of metals boots and rifles stand tall Teachers doctors lovers a friend memories mixed with coarse residue no books to teach the bloody lessons in this barren waste I still pray for a different dawn

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Anatomy Lesson

by Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbral Slurred: Next time Flash your badge Not your breasts.

It was night.

It was deeply dark, Moonless and starless.

It was late, windy, and cold, Very cold.

Bundled in pea coat Several scarves Gloves Heavy boots Watch cap Shouldering a loaded backpack The only possible (not necessarily reliable) Indication of gender Would have been height (not tall) And voice (second soprano) Or maybe what little visage Could be discerned Under a single faint Streetlight.

Just two strangers Passing in opposite directions On an icy sidewalk Dimly lit And deserted Between library and dorms, What had he done That prompted A rebuke – If a rebuke it was Maybe a caution Or concern even Since he did seem unsteady On slippery ground 40

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With a whiff of being in his cups – That in its turn Prompted the verbal sneer Lashing Double-barreled Parting shot At the clearly unseeable?

Whether words or action Began it all – And all it was Was a single moment During a first year winter – Is lost Only the remark Remains in memory Confusing Hurtful Sad Needling Alliterative Absurd Educational And thus in its intent In perpetuity Successful.

originally published in t’Art Online (August 2022) https://www.t-artpress.co.uk/tartonline

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Comfort Women

by Tanya Ko-Hong 14 August 1991, Seoul, South Korea: A woman named Hak Soon Kim [Kim Hak-Sun, 1924–1997] came forward to denounce the Japanese for the sexual enslavement of more than 200,000 women during World War II. They were known as “Wianbu” in Korean and “Comfort Women” in English.

1941, That Autumn Autumn night, Japanese soldiers wielding swords dragged me away while I was gathering pine needles that fell from my basket filling the air with the scent of their white blood When you scream in your dream there’s no sound On the maru, Grandma’s making Songpyeon, asking Mom, Is the water boiling?

Will she bring pine needles before my eyeballs fall out?

I feel pain there— They put a long stick between my legs— Open up, open, Baka Chosengjing! they rage, spraying their sperm the smell of burning dog burning life panting grunting on top of me Under my blood I am dying

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1946, Chinju, Korea One year after liberation I came home Short hair not wearing hanbok not speaking clearly Mother hid me in the back room At night she took me to the well and washed me Scars seared with hot steel like burnt bark like roots of old trees all over my body Under the crescent glow she smiled when she washed me My baby! Your skin is like white jade, dazzling She bit her lower lip washing my belly softly but they had ripped open my womb with the baby inside Mother made white rice and seaweed soup put my favorite white fish on top But Mother, I can’t eat flesh That night in the granary she hanged herself left a little bag in my room my dowry, with a rice ball Father threw it at me waved his hand toward the door I left at dusk 30 years 40 years forever Section 1. Women’s Words

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Mute mute mute bury it with me They called me wianbu— I had a name

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Woman with an Upsweep —c. 1960s

by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee Suit. Nylons.

Heels.

Business demeanor. Hard knocks.

Work. Ethics.

Two bosses.

Half-pay.

No help. Greed.

No sexual favors.

Hair upswept.

Young.

Still young.

Respect.

An alliance—women men would not undo.

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Alone and Together

by Lynne A. McNamara Sometimes Alone with no one but this one being, a self I weep, deep nothingness owning my pettiness, attention to zero, insignificance.

Together with another particular other, you too I lustfully bathe in, take in my grandeur, relationships to infinity, uniqueness.

Sometimes Alone, beaming ecstatic in my private party, sole celebration I indulge, deeply own my growing greatness in improvised importance.

Together, intimately lonely with whomever, you and everyone, no ones wrapped in self-rapture I possess my nothingness.

So I am.

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Somewhere a Man Sets a Woman on Fire After Emily Skaja

by Leslie Neustadt

I pierce my heart with a jagged branch from the river, in remembrance.

Written out of their stories, their tales entombed, a hundred million missing in Asia, pruned by infanticide.

Cast as commodities, their dowries devalued them. Women sold as wives.

Children chiseled from mothers’ chests.

A woman bludgeoned on the street becomes a poem. Stoned because she was raped, because she lifted her veil, because she burned her wedding dress, because she owns a vagina. Women treated as spoils, soiled by soldiers; rape, every army’s arsenal.

Women’s bodies not our own.

Cruelty, its own religion, practiced by the selfrighteous and indifferent.

Men commandeer our wombs, nail us to wood to feel like gods.

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Spoils

by Leslie Neustadt I. In Memory of Judih Weinstein Haggai, 1953 - October 7, 2023 Among fields and flowers a privileged life death without mercy A pacifist on Kibbutz Nir-Oz in the Gaza envelope Judih greeted each dawn with haiku with joy with jackals May 2021 Judih reflected with talk of ceasefire we brace ourselves for attack one more sleepless night May 2023 Judih captured quiet for eight hours dare I hope no more war?

October 7, 2023 Judih penned her last pulse accelerates mind makes new connections as Fall shows her face Judih and her husband Gadi murdered morning stroll unraveled Their bodies held hostage her haiku remain 48

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II. In memory of Hiba Abu Nada, June 24, 1991 - October 20, 2023 After her poem, I Grant You Refuge No refuge from rockets’ red glare in the belly of the whale.

No refuge from dumb bombs’ relentless reach.

Your verse now beams of light, stronger than smog and scree.

A magician, you transformed tears into doves. Your words shelter survivors who shiver in the cold, bellies pregnant with hunger.

Your blessings blossom in the rubble.

In Heaven, the new Gaza is free of siege.

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International Women’s Day

by Mary K O’Melveny Today, please celebrate all the women we have lost.

In every war and cease fire.

On slavers’ ships. On thirsty desert treks to walled borders.

In back-alley rooms, without anesthesia. Locked in basements, without papers or escape routes.

Asleep in bed. Hitching a ride.

Nursing bruises or starving babies.

Our losses rise like mountain peaks.

Ukrainian, Sudanese, Syrian, Gazan women huddle in corners, camps, tents, rubble. They clutch children, family pets, a few hastily gathered objects from lives they will likely never know again. Even in so-called safer worlds, women die of causes that repurposed money, refocused attention might have remedied.

Some fade away from neglect, inattention, dreams downsized by school guidance counselors, religious zealots, patriarchy.

Others drop dead without a whimper on a sun-dappled afternoon. One friend’s memories vanished by midnight stroke; another’s by subtle, daily erasures. We open our mouths in praise of all: Let songbirds loose.

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The Voices of Women

by P.S. Perkins We hear the Voices Voices

Voices of Women, sounding, softly, strangely familiar as the

shackled silence becomes the deafening roar of peace growing louder and louder refusing to be stifled any more.

We recognize the Voices

Voices

Voices of Women as

our own reclaimed voices, piece by piece,

tear by tear, heart by heart,

one life at a time surrounded by a sea of love!

Nurturing love, healing love, a willing love, big enough, deep enough, strong enough for all womankind of like-mind, realizing there is only one Voice

ONE VOICE

one Voice

of plenty for everyone...

The Voices of Women building PEACE!

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Dear Girl, What is it That You Need?

by Suzanne Lima Pickford I became the child you saved, but barely.

The lucky one

whose experience was to be grateful–

but it seems that you never asked my perspective when you told my story.

Through all the

tellings and retellings my heart was

cataloging a memory of flight—

until, one day,

it dawned on me that I, too, could speak.

For now:

I will stare up

at the yellow-brick hospital

window and ask my looming ghost,

“Dear girl,

what is it that you need?”

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Side Effects of Surviving Breast Cancer

by Judith Prest Cancer was not a war for me, it was a skirmish left me radiated, scarred, still vibrating with life.

I emerged with both breasts, and no chemo.

Now colors are more brilliant, birdsong sweeter.

Side effects of surviving: It was a holy passage, on the other side, I know the scalpel. removed fears.

Six weeks of radiation burnt up malicious cells, incinerated all tolerance for bullshit.

I am grateful for these side effects.

Five years out, I am alive and whole, spirit honed by knife and fire ~Judith Prest, May 13 revision

Side Effects of Surviving Breast Cancer was published in the February issue of Chronogram. Chronogram is a free publication that highlights the arts/ culture/events in the Hudson Valley Section 1. Women’s Words

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Under the Sign of the Rusty Coat Hanger

by Judith Prest Imagine your uterus. Your ovaries.

The fierce and mysterious tide of hormones rising, receding, creating internal weather.

The dance our blood does with the moon.

Visualize how our wombs shape our lives.

Visualize yourself, coming into womanhood, How your changing body changed your experience.

How you changed in the eyes of the world when your breasts grew.

Who remembers that flash of knowing that something new was rising up in your life, something that changed how boys and men spoke and behaved with you?

Who remembers the value placed on virginity?

And all the vile names for “promiscuous girls”?

Who remembers the questions, spoken and silent, after a rape?

What were you doing there alone at that hour?

Why were you not injured fighting him off?

How could you bring this shame upon yourself?

Who remembers the girl in your tenth-grade algebra class who disappeared for the rest of the year, sent off to live with Aunt Sally?

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Repeat three times: Fetus. Fetus Fetus.

Who remembers a dead girl sprawled on a motel floor, blood between her legs.

Who remembers lying on a rickety table in a dingy apartment, the sharp scents of rubbing alcohol and your own blood?

Who remembers the cutting, the poking, the scraping with nothing for the pain?

We are living again under the sign of the rusty coat hanger.

Fifteen years from now, we can expect an army of angry children, survivors of foster care, group homes, juvie jail, the street.

Once they emerge breathing, and howling into this world hungry for love and breast milk, we must brace ourselves for the fury of the unwanted.

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I am Power

by Adriana Rocha I am voice, and song, I am revolution, and strength, I am charm and tears, I am history and memory, I am reference and essence, I am art and bridge, I am nature, and strength, I am woman and I am power.

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Lifting and Separating

by Margaret R. Sáraco Cups for every size, shape, woman and girl. Hook and eyes, underwire, padded, low-cut, strapless, A-cup, B, C, D Double D, E, F, G, H for asymmetric, athletic, bell, east-west, relaxed, round, side-set, slender, teardrop.

At 10, fitted with a piece of cloth, the saleswoman pulled and pushed my teeny tiny breasts into pre-teen humiliation hanging loose in a dressing room. Six years later, I throw them in a drawer not to be seen for some time.

Burn the Bra, Baby. Burn it! echoed over airways and in the streets to the terror of traditional women and old men.

Never burned mine, wore them on theater auditions, job interviews.

Other times I wore men’s undershirts until someone asked why I wore wife-beaters, shook my head “no” and, “what?!”

“Guinea tees,” they said. I should have known all the slurs growing up Italian American in New York, but I didn’t, had to ask my best friend who knew more than me.

We stared at a package of whites on my kitchen table, wondering how a piece of cloth could elicit intense hatred and violence against women. I never wore them again.

Instead, camis were my go-to until I breastfed my newborn, wore the one with hook-and-eyes that dropped fabric exposing one or both nipples pleasantly surprising a hungry infant sometimes crying when she latched on.

There are cancer bras (which I didn’t have to wear) instead packed soreness and fright into wire day and night after surgery, supporting a weightier lesser me, shifting from symmetrical and upright to asymmetrical and uptight.

Can anyone see the slice removed?

One night I had that Burn the Bra sensation again, ditched the underwires and my surgeon’s warnings, stuffed them into the garbage and unhinged, danced around the bedroom.

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Letter to Someone

by Linda Leedy Schneider We thought we would always be able to buy new houses on high ground, could survive wearing masks on polluted days.

We didn’t care that the coral was bleached and dying, or know that the oceans would become slimy cauldrons of death.

We didn’t know that hunger would lead to tribalism and then war, but not war for property.

Wars for food broke out everywhere.

We didn’t know displaced climate migrants would take our land and food.

Then others would take it from them.

Fires burned.

The oceans invaded We fled inland.

And then all of the bees and birds were dead.

This is a letter from one of twelve survivors in Winnipeg. The sky is black.

We haven’t seen the sun or stars in months.

We are eating grass, roots, leaves, even dirt; anything that has survived.

I don’t know who I am writing to...

Now we are ten.

Who am I writing to?

I am so afraid to no one... and now we are seven.

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At the Threshold

by Linda Leedy Schneider I look out into my garden, leave the dishes in the sink, abandon sheets soaking in bleach, forget counseling, forget my husband.

Remember I am a widow now.

I enter the garden.

Daffodils, yellow as sunriseIris, bruise purpleI inhale lilacs, feel a soft breeze on my cheek, pick up a few stones for my journey.

I take one iris and three daffodils with me

into the yellow light of a new life.

Previously published by Verse-Virtual ***

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Ask Me

by Linda Leedy Schneider Ask me if I speak for the peony. and will tell you, yes.

I speak for green veined leaves, the fuchsia flower that burns like the heart of a ballet dancer.

I speak for fecund heaviness, and peony’s love and fear of lightning. I speak for all whose heads are full of moon jelly.

Current moves swiftly not like the snail.

To blossom is a burden.

Yes, I speak for the peony loved in her youth for her beauty, cut back as she crinkles and sags.

But, next year a fuchsia fist will plunge through the soil.

Peony will begin again if she is allowed water and sun.

I speak for our waning water, the moon, our sister, the sun, mother of us all.

Yes, I speak for the peony.

Previously published by Verse-Virtual

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A Call to Arms

by Myra Shapiro Armed with poems, I played inside words their violence. Decapitating dearth to make earth.

Today words come toward me through a cloud across an ocean from bordered lands that refuse to bury hatchets, where arms fire, and neighbors fear.

Arms become arms to bomb and shoot.

Underground, a dear friend writes from a shelter--she says help everyone you know to hear both sides— 1000 Palestinian and Israeli women have formed Prayer of Mothers to hold each other on Zoom.

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The Faces of Women

by Myra Shapiro

“. . . men die miserably every day for lack

of what is found there.” William Carlos Williams It was the news, the day leaders of the world gathered to mourn the writers/ the artists murdered in Paris.

There are newspapers that refuse to print the face of a women.

Reading The Times we saw the mourners in a row: the Israeli Netanyahu on one end, the Palestinian Abbas on the other, and in the middle from Germany Angela Merkel who was simply erased in the Orthodox Jewish press.

I am trying to fathom it. The news which does not exist.

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I Am A Tree. Look At Me.

by Myra Shapiro A tree never screams this which is not to say

the drama of its life,

blazing yellow from fall to fall, shaking

openly for months

on end, perhaps wild in verdant forests,

occurs without a language.

Our minds may fail to comprehend the vocabulary of hairy buds

bursting from having lived invisibly, catkin blossoms giving themselves to loll, then leaf

not singly but compounded

five or seven broad and fragrant times, showing teeth

along green pendant edges, laughing mockernuts,

bitternuts-- those tricksters-and glorious pecans

in thin, winged husks. Generosity we surely see; then we cut it

down to size, hearing-- sugar me for your pies, my sisters’ bodies for the handles of your axes.

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Me, [un] Braided

by Barbara Simmons Mornings meant braids, my hair divided into three long ponytails, right side, left side, middle, being undered and overed by mom’s fingers, caught by rubber bands, concealed by plaid ribbons matching whatever I’d be wearing.

Neat. Tidied up, braided, ribboned, bowed, no hair flying in my face: contained.

I remember saying goodbye to braids, graduating to ponytails, one long streaming motion much like wings on Achilles’ heels, liberating me from barrettes that kept me kempt, permitting unruly to be all right.

Later, I would brush my hair, long and wild, imagining a halo round my head swirling, circling, wildly catching everything from snow to pollen, all the seasons in every follicle, until I heard my mother say unkempt, my hair all tangled, snarled, her words upbraided me, sent me to shears, the sheer freeing cutting all that hair off, heard me say yes and yes and yes again to being shorn and edged.

Gone was long hair. I would slowly learn to plait the many strands I needed to become my braided self, without my mother’s help, without her ribbons, without her rules, but always with unraveling possibilities.

(This poem was printed online in Journey of the Heart, Women’s Spiritual Poetry, March 2023; I retain rights to reprint this poem )

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Pro-Choice Women’s March - 2005 After the Supreme Court Took Away My Rights, 2022

by Jessica Simon Walking amidst nearly a million people in 2005 we held our heads high.

We were country women, city women, young women, older women, working women, feminist men, black women, Latinx women, Asian women, Native women transwomen. Women carrying children and babies.

We were so many and so peaceful We sang and walked for our rights.

On either side, horseback mounted police looked down over us.

Behind them, men and women waved crosses nailed with signs “Jesus saves” and “Abortion is Genocide” A man with a megaphone shouted religious phantoms into frozen air.

A woman cried ‘murderer,’ with an accusing stare.

Shame on you, Congress, a speaker said, at the time They could say it again today in a different year, same crime For lack of access to birth control For no access to the pills we need to survive For trying to stop women crossing state lines For a 10-year-old rape victim fleeing to the free side for denial that people have sex for fun, for denial that women have always ended pregnancies one way or another.

For denying people who have abortions love the children they already have.

For playing judge and jury, for telling women what is right and wrong inside their own organs.

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The morality you issued to yourself about God’s work is littered with the dead bodies of women you say are a political agenda or with women you call murderers because they are poor or black or brown.

Special shame, Justice Kavanaugh.

You know, #notallmen cover her mouth to prevent her from screaming.

Some just go home.

MisJustice Alito, Selective Justice Thomas, Gutless Gorsuch No visible leadership, Chief Roberts, Missing the point, Justice Barrett while you’re living supposedly pure lives and going to church, you did not even stain a shirt writing away my rights.

Some young woman just ran to the bathroom to heave her guts, will now consider ending her life.

Sleep tight.

When shame is not lessened by the sun, It scabs over until you itch it enough to draw blood.

At least before, it was blood on the surface of the skin, not within, dripping from a vagina or a cervix.

It’s no longer your choice, bodies with wombs, you shall now be jailed or killed for someone else’s truth.

Rich white women still have a choice.

White women weren’t sterilized or told there should be no more of THOSE kinds of babies If it ever is your daughter, will you turn your head away in shame, say she’ll burn with the Salem witches?

Will you cast the first stone on her bloated and nauseous body?

Will you disown your aunt when you find out her 22-year-old self made a mistake?

God forbid now your daughter, wife, sisters, cousins is molested or raped in the wrong State.

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Show me your devout Gods, we have Gods too.

We have faith and we see through you.

We will continue to litter your lawn with glitter-covered bodies, pink boas, t-shirts and signs, giant rainbows of messages of love and protest.

We belong to each other in deviance and compassion.

We have traveled this far and we will not give up our rights laying down getting fucked by your propaganda So dish it out and we will light it up.

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Witness

by Kashiana Singh Her aloneness fills the sky—

the blood moon, heavy and watchful.

The river wraps around itself, like his silk scarf trailing

the summer night, untangling jasmine from his braids.

Every bleeding month is a rangoli season,

my underpants the color of maa’s phulkari thoughts drifting like snowflakes,

coming undone like the fragile lace of her wedding veil, whispering of days yet to come.

Sickle moon,

ripping open the sky of my grief,

every opinion offered inside the walls of the home is the portal to a hurricane season,

the soundless labor of her death rattle.

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They Have Plans for Us

by Megha Sood Based on the complete abortion ban mentioned in the Project 2025 Manifesto.

Severely limiting abortion access nationwide by reversing the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion, and reviving a 19th-century law, the Comstock Act, to ban any abortion medications, equipment, or materials from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service. Source: ACLU.Org Oh! yes they have plans for us Oh! yes the one they have hammered down to the last line The Manifesto word after word line after line; pages after pages, mapping the curves of our bodies silhouettes of our desires: dipped in their thick black inks of subjugation.

Yes, they have plans for us boxing all the mottled things bejeweled with life plans, trinkets, and bling underlining their adoration for us their unfettered love, passion their soft caring being.

Yes, they have plans for us stripping bare our tongues with hands tied at our backs wombs scraped clean, as pristine and demure as they want us to be with their stories of success etched in our spines for kingdoms to come.

Yes, they have plans for us to carry the love of incest and rape in our womb licking our wounds clean but never saying a word bringing shunned love to our full breast letting it down a bit, warmly and gently nursing it every day recounting the days like a horror story on reels.

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Yes, they have plans for us till our thick blood trickles down murky lanes of a dark empty parking lot for their sheer pleasure a sluice of broken dreams and desires carrying our strangled future.

Yes, they have plans for us for guarding every inch, every iota of our existence having a lien to our soul; a perfect story of a mother with rounded bellies, making it complete, making it whole.

Yes, they have plans for us to get on our knees, to say our prayer for exalted gods in heaven to utter words of salvation and redemption till the kingdom comes.

Yes, they have plans for us to carry blood stories in our sacred womb and not to utter a single word, to hold the bitter truth on the edge of our teeth while licking razor blades without spilling a word.

Yes, they have plans for us freeing us from all this self-destruction our simple minds can’t conceive taking us to yet another hell that they have brilliantly mapped out for us.

Published in the Arts and Literary Journal, Narrative Northeast, Vol 12

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Dressing Mom

by Lisa St. John Soft as new skin, pliable as silk, the casing of her bony arms slide into the bra straps.

After the hospital, at this age, I cannot help but wonder why she bothers.

Only whores go without bras.

Earlier, helping her wash, I sponge underneath and around the long empty breasts that fed five children.

I hold her as she washes the feathery gray pudendum, the mysterious labia; origin places.

I hate for you to see me like this.

I ask which shirt she wants to wear, and she smiles up at me grateful and gentle.

Nothing like her mothering years.

Then, the hard core of self-preservation created us both. Born out of its hard shell with eyes open and screaming, we traded combat secrets and realized we were both alone in this war.

How long can you stay this time? We could go to that bookstore you like.

What would have happened if I had loved her like this before?

Loved her smooth tan skin before the rice paper wrinkles?

Hatred is just the awkward side of love.

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Dear Grandchildren of Our Grandchildren

by Lisa St. John We were capable of joy if we could still walk in the green if the lake was clean enough for swimming.

We planted pollinators, and gave tax-deductible donations to the World Wildlife Fund, used only herbal pesticides.

We bought electric cars, and purchased eco-friendly laundry soap without the plastic jugs.

But concrete words shifted like sand, and climate “emergency” became “change” “extinction” became “disruption.”

Our vagueness hid our apathy so we could sleep at night saying, “someone will do something.”

We were humans, after all.

Top of the food chain.

If Mother Earth wanted to heal, she could shake us off.

We hoped she would.

Otherwise, we’d have to do something Previously published in Grande Dame 2024 72

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That’s not for girls

by Sara Stegen A line of black hats and skirts cause traffic jams on Sundays walking to church some might be my mother’s unknown cousins that’s our legacy My grandmother’s father did not believe in education ‘that’s not for girls’ the only learning she needed was to cook and clean he wanted her controlled Then she met my socialist Opa and her love turned deep red like the garnets she wore around her neck not black like the men who did not love their sisters - daughters once they gotten minds of their own her brothers turned their heads when they met her in the street their mantra ‘that’s not for girls’ They want you thinking that you don’t need to be smart study hard you’ll have babies don’t get wild ideas they box you in with their beliefs clip you one around the ears I don’t want men do my thinking for me like they tried with you I don’t want to become theirs I want to control my destiny my mind sharp like the silver clippers my dad used to shave the tails of our cows so they did not trail in muck and shit I want my mind to work like my Oma’s never could Section 1. Women’s Words

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I want it to be an antidote against those wanting control who say ‘that’s not for girls’ I don’t believe in conspiracies conspiracies did not control my oma men and church did when they said ‘that’s not for girls’ When my Oma turned old deaf and depressed she told us over and over ‘this is my punishment’ for what remained unknown like my mother’s cousins

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Creation Is Our Power: a Protest Poem for Women

by J. Catherine Tetrault Stirring from within churning, twisting, restless to be born from the sacred space of our creative source Open wide and push hard let it flow from you My voice, your voice, our voices burning hotter than the desert sun blowing stronger than a hurricane bursting like riverbanks swollen from monsoon rains Lean into the edginess of your silence harness its potent force Bare feet pressed upon the Great Mother hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, arms interlocked we are many hues of Gaia’s palette glistening with oils of almond, coconut, jojoba, shea and sunflower Our bodies round, full, slender, soft, muscular, smooth, creased and kissed by time The scent of us bergamot, Clary sage, lavender, jasmine, rose, sandalwood We are beautiful, so beautiful, more beautiful together We are powerful, so powerful, more powerful together When eyes meet eyes, windows of our souls we see each other - Look at us!

Mother, daughter, sister - we are all of it standing on the shoulders of our ancestors We are the ancestors creators of this human timeline

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Why do we carry the world when we should be leading, solving, restoring harmony with our wisdom, heart, and strength All we have created given away All we have created taken away All we have never created too afraid to use our voice our power Where is your voice, my sister?

When we create with our words, music, colors, movement, maths, sciences, foods we raise each other up Tell me your story any way you choose and I will tell you mine we will be each other’s legacy They cannot put out your light, silence or damage you not as long as I see you - we see each other as long as the power of our voices rings through Take my hand, hold tight birthing from the divine creation in our core cry out We are here! We are here!

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My Mother Told Me

by Tracey Thiessen Mum, you told me, I don’t need a boy or man to feel good about myself, yet, I steadily chased love more times than flushed red roses bloomed.

Mum, you told me, only have one alcoholic drink on a date then men can’t take advantage, after several failed attempts of moderation I skulked out of various beds to escape the shame.

Mum, you told me, inevitably it’s a man’s world be careful who I choose to work for, deciding to trust my own feminine intuition my professional brag sheet now includes sexual harassment.

Mum, you told me, no matter how smart, probable or loud my opinion, men won’t listen, ignoring your chalkboard grating advice, my bold voice found rhetorical silence during debates, parties, inside my own home.

Mum, you told me, it’s too bad I only birth boys girls will be kinder and more caring towards me, for decades I hated you for these cruel words until my boys became married.

Mum, you told me, don’t marry that princely-type man he is controlling and disrespectful, to prove you wrong I shacked up with his controlling behavior for 40 years.

Yes, you told me.

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A History of Silence

A poem found in Hilary Clinton’s address to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing

by Cathy Thwing

in the home, on the job, in their communities, the way women come together every day in every country we come together and talk the right to speak freely and the right to be heard— valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and out of their homes— break our silence the world to hear raising children on minimum wage can’t afford health care or child care women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes No one should be forced to remain silent denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women whose experiences go unnoticed whose words go unheard listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, for women everywhere who simply don’t have time to do everything they are called upon to do each day I speak for them heed the call

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Pronouns

by Cathy Thwing That pink, sequined purse, those too-tight magenta jeans, a crop-top with fringes that sway, my student Manuel waltzing into class, C’est moi, mes chéris!

Must have been thirty years ago when Manuel changed her name to Alma, her pronoun to ella.

Now I can be seen for who I truly am, she proclaimed: a forerunner.

My neighbor Natasha dashed down the street, to the corner, clutching only her purse, climbed into my station wagon.

We drove to the shelter.

It wouldn’t have happened if I were a guy. She took the Kleenex, dabbed at the cut below her eye.

I’ll change my name, she swore, change my home—but not my pronouns.

As for me, I want to be a woman, but I don’t want to be seen as a woman. I can’t decide on my pronouns. I don’t want to be seen as one who spends twice as much time on household chores, earns three-quarters less, holds fewer than twenty percent of the leadership roles, depending on how you partition power.

I’m still the little girl who tucks in her braids and pulls up the hood of her red sweatshirt so strangers will think she’s a boy.

Now all these years later, Alma has her identity, but not her freedom. Natasha has her freedom, but not her name. I have my ambiguity, but not my power. We can choose our pronouns, but we can’t choose our world.

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Being

by Deedle Rodriguez Tomlinson I remember being fourteen I remember I loved diving I remember diving into a kiddie pool, the lifeguard glaring, warning me not to do it again, but I did.

I remember waking up I remember walking out I remember marching along EDSA highway two weeks after my 23rd birthday during the People Power Revolution shouting Tama Na! Sobra Na! Palitan Na! -- till Marcos fled.

I remember my father I remember my mother I remember at ten standing in my mother’s mother’s backyard, the kusinera chopping off a chicken’s head, the chicken flapping wildly, the chicken running headless, the chicken running ‘round and ‘round and ‘round— till it dropped down dead.

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* Coming of Age

by Nichole Turnbloom Be nice (carry two masks—ensure skin and neck tone match) Be quiet (scream into your pillow, wipe the spit with the back of your hand) Be beautiful (smooth skin with fillers, avoid gluten, dairy and sugar--eat air) Swallow (with a chaser of your choice) Again say (“yes” and “so sorry” shovel resentment like manure) Anoint yourself (disguise the soft animal within) Reproach delicate Artemis- granted bow and arrow to roam in perpetuity.

Yield fierce Athene- Medusa’s head displays on your shield and in her death her spirit released a white Pegasus.

Are we to wait till then to fly?

I seek…( I seek) in forked snake tongues in the turmeric robe of nuns a language before language.

I sip from the great dipper drop (by drop) to quench the thirst of these bodies sacrificed.

I have died still unborn, vanished in brush strokes, burned myself an island, sinned and loved, lied and persevered to truth that stung like a trespassed hive. either for me honey nor the honey bee

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this is fate’s toil, this is my bed woven of olive and myrtle, wool and gold. This is where “I” ends and begins, once again. *Italics are Sappho Fragments #84 and #146 as translated by Anne Carson

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Braiding Catastrophes

by Pramila Venkateswaran Jaws of flaming trees bite down homes fire rains on people in tents, on women feeding their babies someone rescues kittens, rushes out of black smoke a girl shares her ration with her cat no one will save us, a woman cries into the camera the one holding it trembles for there are no answers you order Uber-eats and watch the split screen daily, swallow horror with your vitamins sleep until the alarm rings clarion call of engines rockets

spyware spot the weak winds wreck what’s in the way man-made nature-made man-made terror doled out daily chunks of flesh charred concrete, birds and plants the land wilts

fires only eat and eat, don’t know California from Gaza, rich or poor, ally

or enemy, no binary can we go home, please?

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Chucking It Down

by Camille Westermann A new word, foreign on both of our tongues, as I try to imitate my love. ‘oues’ and ‘ahs’ thick like morning precipitation as I twist around, trying to make myself sound appetizing to a new crowd of spectators.

Sleek, I am stripped down, hair water-falling around me each morning; Brollie-less because I didn’t quite get it yet.

King’s anatomy theatre, On the Dissection of the Species, I am Unloaded, brain picked apart with interest in my tongue: So muddled and knotted around words that aren’t mine. Chopped off and pickled and put in a museumI wish I could find a specimen like me.

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Against Teleology

by Simone Muench + Jackie K. White They made Eve an event, a teleology

we’ve teethed too many mouths upon, jawing uneven through supposed apple skin. We’ve seeded and ceded enough. Enough gnawing on our bones by canonized men. Let fang

become fallout, reverse this ache, this sorry.

Let bees shimmer inside our eyes instead

of men’s glory. Let’s mouth a modern story revise every exodus, each line of dread they put upon us in sackcloth or satin.

We took the garden with us, now the gavel

is our godhead. We’ll not be suckled or bled to ghosts again. We’re the heart’s rattle,

razored at our core. Full of sharp. Full of sheen.

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Women’s

Stories

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Silent Night

by Allyne Betancourt The words spinning off Sally’s tongue press against me like fingertips persistently jabbing my shoulder. Her words sound distant, more remote than the two states she speaks from. The thrust of these fingers creep into my soul as they tug and pull at pieces of my past I’ve put to rest. Shush Sally, I don’t want to awaken them. She pounds out her anguish over Molly’s memories of our childhood. “He was our dad. Dads are supposed to protect their little girls, not hurt them. Molly thinks it was me Dad hurt. Can you believe her? She’s sick you know. She’s so crazy now that’s she middle-aged she really thinks it was me, not her.

Damn. Can you believe that?”

Is Molly crazy? Is Sally? Perhaps it is me who’s crazy? Certainty of my memories waver as I recall the bedroom we shared at Grandma and Grandpa’s home during visits with Dad. There was that night – that one night I remember it beginning… …The bedroom is very dark, darker than any other room in the house.

Daddy works nights and sleeps during the day. Being Deaf, the daylight keeps him awake, so Grandma put foil on the windows to keep the light tightly out, then covered them with solid roller blinds. I hate those blinds. The gentle but firm tug required to get them to roll up in the morning is too tricky for an awkward kid like me. I always pull and release too hard, causing them to snap to the top, flapping around like the paper on a player piano when the music stops.

I can hear Daddy getting out of his bed in the spare bedroom just across the tiny hallway. The thud as his feet hit the floor seems so loud, I wonder why Grandma and Grandpa don’t hear him. Then the prolonged squeaking as he slowly, painfully, opens his bedroom door. I know the slow movements mean he intends to be very, very quiet, but because he can’t hear the door, he doesn’t know that the slower he opens it, the louder and longer the squeak. Now I know Grandma and Grandpa can hear the noise. I know they aren’t deaf like Daddy. I know they can hear him getting up. But they don’t come.

Daddy bumps the door jamb as he enters our room. “What? What Daddy?” But I can’t sign to him. It’s too dark. My eyes are already strained trying to make out his shape entering our bedroom. As I stare in the direction of the doorway, I can only see millions of tiny dots, varying shades of black and gray. I can’t see Daddy, but I can hear him. Sally, the eldest by five minutes of my identical twin sisters, lies next to me on the top trundle bed. Molly, her mirror image, sleeps soundly on the bottom trundle bed. Part of Molly’s bed is tucked Section 2. Women’s Stories

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under the top bed, creating more space to walk around the room. Daddy stands there now beside Molly. He doesn’t know that his breathing is loud, like an old dog snoring while it sleeps. It’s so loud here Grandma and Grandpa. Can’t you hear him now? Can’t you hear that old dog’s tortured breathing… …Our phone conversation shakes that old dog, threatening to wake it. My throat tightens as I try to speak calmly and softly to Sally.

Often talking to her is like talking to my teenager; I wonder if she hears any of my words. “I don’t know Sally. Dad hurt all of us. What we lived through was unreal. It’s hard to know where the lines of reality cross into the abyss of self-preservation. Molly just needs to know you love her, that’s all.”

Sally spits at me across the phone line, “I do love her, damn it.

But I want her to get her head on straight.” I can see steam rising and swirling around her head as fiery words strike our Dad, burning him alive. Did he ever think about what he did to us? I imagine stretching the phone lines and reaching out to put my hand on Sally’s shoulder… …Daddy’s hand reaches across Molly and shakes Sally’s shoulder, stirring her awake. “What?” she says groggily, although she knows he cannot hear her words. I want to sign to Daddy, “What? What?” but those millions of dots of black and gray block my small hands from his vision as he pulls Sally out of our tiny bed and leads her away from me. I’m alone now and I don’t know why I’m so scared. I don’t know why Sally is gone to Daddy’s bedroom. Why does he want her in his bedroom in the middle of the night? I think if I can lie very still, holding my breath, I might hear something, anything that will tell me why Sally is gone. Should I go see? Maybe if Daddy took me instead, then I’d know what was in his bedroom.

By the time Sally returns I am dizzy from holding my breath for long stretches at a time. She silently slips into the bedroom, then heavily plops onto the bed as though she suddenly weighs hundreds of pounds. I bounce as she hits the bed, and I anxiously remain upright to hear her story. “Sally, why did Daddy take you out of bed?” Lying flat on her back, she opens the top of her pajamas to expose her breasts. “Allyne, touch my breasts.” The small, newly budding breasts are just a paler shade of gray dots swirling among the darker outlining dots.

“Why?” I ask. A hollow sob courses up through her chest, chokes off her breath, and heaves out of her mouth. Now I’m really scared. She doesn’t stop sobbing.

Time passes, she sobs harder. Now I know that Grandma and Grandpa are really a different kind of deaf. I reach out through the dots to put my small hand on her shoulder…

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…but I can’t reach through the phone lines. Sally is wailing now, cursing our Dad. I marvel at how she has transposed her memories onto her identical twin, and I think being a twin gave her a place to put the things that hurt.

Shedding more tears and questioning more memories, we wearily reach the end of our conversation. Our burdens find small comfort in the closet of our shared childhood. “It wasn’t okay, Allyne.”

“No, Sally, it wasn’t okay. But we can choose to embrace a life free of hatred.”

Our quiet resolve casts a dim light on the darkness of that night. “Good night,” I mutter with hope as I hang up the phone.

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The Metaphysical Magician

by Judith Woolcock Colombo To a child the normal is the everyday, the environment in which they live. Growing up, I didn’t find it strange that our family doctor, Dr. Cook, was a psychiatrist. Nor did I find it strange that I spent every Friday afternoon from age eleven to fifteen in Dr. Cook’s office dealing with my anger issues. These weekly visits to Dr. Cook’s office were just offshoots of the many family visits Dr. Cook paid to my grandmother’s house.

Dr. Cook was a friend to the family, talking to everyone, prescribing pills that had the marvelous effect of turning your urine blue, and numbing your lips. It was he and his henchmen who told my mother that my anger issues were not due to the physical abuse by my father but by a lack of emotional and intellectual discipline.

I didn’t blame him for the endless and exhausting lessons in every known subject that followed, or Friday afternoons lost to therapy. He still remained a superior being, a metaphysical magician, who with just a few quiet words could make you feel better. He was a godsend.

He was the man whose many pills transformed my mother from a nervous, energetic, creative person, filled with passion and pain into a lethargic pain free zombie. Still, I tried to believe that he knew best.

I went with my mother the day she was to receive a special therapy. We were told it was a treatment that would change her and make her better.

Dr. Cook waited for us. He smiled and escorted us into the University Hospital’s waiting room where he handed my mother over to two white clad nurses.

My brilliant mother, whose stories lulled me to sleep at night, who created fantasy castles for me out of cardboard boxes and cellophane paper, and who played Beethoven, Strauss, and Joplin on an antique piano for my pleasure, clung to me like a child, mute and afraid. I placed my arms around her protectively and pulled her to me. But I was assured, as her fingers were pried from my arm, that this therapy would put a new zing into her life.

Dr. Cook and I sat together in the waiting room, discussing Christ, Buddha, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and occasionally my fourteenth birthday, a week away. However, he left after a while because 90

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I was not being grownup that day. I wanted to ask questions about my mother. Why was she in a room away from me? What was happening to her? When could I see her? Was he sure this treatment would work? He left, and I stayed, crying for my mother.

Three hours later, I was directed down a long narrow hospital corridor and told to open a nondescript door at the end. The woman, who rose from the bed to greet me was not the red- haired brilliant storyteller and musician I had arrived with, but a confused white-haired copy.

Electricity, flowing through my mother’s head, had not only knocked the rinse right out of her hair but had scrambled the brain of the woman who introduced me at age four to Milton’s Paradise Lost. She had enthralled and excited me, flying around the room draped in a golden curtain as the Son of Man or hovering over me wearing a black cape on her shoulders as Satan surveying his domain.

Dr. Cook was disappointed by this treatment. It did not work, so he doubled the dose of pills. My mother now had a rainbow collection of pills to take every morning. Her urine was now orange and blue. Her lips were white and flaky, and her speech slurred.

She wasn’t silent anymore but screamed her hate and anger. She screamed her hate for me, crying out loud with pent up anger at my being a breech birth. She screamed her hate for herself. She suffered from hallucinations and was convinced that biblical demons were pursuing her. She no longer spoke of the Egyptian pyramids or the of Coptic Christian Art of Ethiopia and her desire to visit those countries, instead, she cried of roaming spirits, death, and suicide.

Dr. Cook, that marvelous magician, no longer understood. Instead, he prescribed stronger sedatives. He no longer spoke to me as an intelligent person but as an overanxious child. Of course, my mother wouldn’t take her own life. She just wasn’t the type.

The next time he came, he brought a colleague with him to convince my aunts that allowing my mother a vacation at the seashore with her children and a nurse was totally out of the question. She needed to be locked in the house and sedated until this manic phase passed.

The day my mother escaped, she used up all her rainbow collection of pills. Dr. Cook was mystified. This was not to be. He was perplexed. He blamed the era. He blamed the weather. He never blamed himself and his fellow magicians.

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Julia’s Bet

by Tiffany Davenport Biloxi, Mississippi 1958 I went straight to Daddy, and I told him what Mama did. She didn’t have to hit me that dang hard. It wasn’t my fault Jasper couldn’t keep up.

Everyone in town knows how fast I run. He shouldn’t a teased me before church, he shouldn’t a challenged me in a race, and he shouldn’t a bet his bike. It’s my bike now. Fair and square. Before I could get my whole story out to Daddy, Mama came stomping up behind me, yellin’ all crazy-like.

She was still mad. What’s wrong with me racing a boy anyway? He’s always boasting about how fast he is, how much better he is, richer he is. I just had enough. Girls can run fast too. Especially me. Moma’s just always mad, except to the people in town she’s kissing up to. But I knew Daddy would understand. He had to! Jasper and I made a bet, with spit and everything. That counts double, triple, even! Mama shouldn’t a given the bike back to him. She had no right. We was all hollerin’ outside.

Neighbors were starin’.

And I woke up looking forward to today. I really was, even church!

That preacher from out east was visiting, and he’s real nice. Tells good stories that even I understand. Afterward, me and Darlene was gonna walk down to the creek and catch tadpoles. We saved two big pickle jars, and we was gonna keep the tadpoles in our rooms and watch them grow into frogs. It was our special experiment. But NO, I got hit in front of the whole congregation, dragged into the car – all teared up and embarrassed. And there Jasper was, just laughing with that no- good wretched smirk on his wretched freckled face. I hate him, and I always will. Dad didn’t understand. He took her side. Their side. What’s wrong with this stupid town? Why do the boys always get their way and us girls are just s’pose to sit on the side and keep our dresses pretty. Why can’t Mama understand this? Didn’t she like running around when she was a kid? What’s she so afraid of?

A bet is a bet. Now I’m grounded all day, doing chores because Jasper can’t run fast, can’t lose to a girl. One thing good about today though... I won that race. I could hear Darlene, Louise and Marianne cheering me on. I was faster. I was better. Jasper can’t take that away from me. I’ll race him again. I’ll race all those boys again. And I’ll keep on beating them.

You just watch me.

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Fifty Years of Lessons on Women and Men Kimberly Hirsh Connecticut, USA, 1971-1982

I grew up believing I could do anything. From childhood, family members referred to me as “the smart one”. We never discussed differences between men and women. I read voraciously, so my aunt and uncle who both worked at a New York City publishing house brought me books. I spent a lot of time reading seated by my bedroom window, watching for activity on the street. One neighbor jogged by daily during her pregnancy, often wearing an ERA YES T-shirt. After she gave birth, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) died when less than three quarters of the states agreed that women deserved equality.

Virginia, USA, 1993

Mark was unusually tall with a head of hay-colored hair, his skin pockmarked like the moon’s surface. He played college basketball for a top ranked school, but failed at finance jobs until he was demoted to be head of HR. The human resources department where I worked served as a dumping ground for under-performing executives. I repeatedly found myself at Mark’s polished wooden conference table explaining the principles of our company compensation program. I was unable to determine if Mark was that dumb or if he was searching for some formula to increase his own paycheck. He prematurely dismissed my last presentation to him saying, “You don’t need to worry your little head, I have to go now and take some ascorbic acid.” I inferred his frustration arose from what he perceived as my shortcomings.

Czech Republic, 1995

When I arrived for my new job, the American men — a motley crew of various sizes and ages, some married — had already paired up with Czech girlfriends. There was an ample pool of them in the office, as the communist era had afforded high levels of employment to women. The girlfriends were uniformly slender, lovely, and twenty-five. In my small circle of female friends at work, one dated a man who reportedly had one wife in Germany and one in Estonia. Another friend briefly dated an American man, Conner, who had a Czech girlfriend. Shortly after, Conner traveled with his girlfriend on a visit to the U.S., calling her a “souvenir”. Later, I returned to the U.S., single. When genders were reversed, the system did not provide women with souvenirs.

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Rwanda, 2011

In 2011, Rwanda was a beacon for gender equality, having elected women to over 50% of parliamentary seats after legislating quotas in its 2003 constitution. Francine worked for the government in Kigali. She dressed in patterned wrap skirts and long tunics, her hair plaited and nails manicured at the saloon* on Saturdays. She stood tall and wore heels. She spoke French well and English moderately and was working on a master’s degree. One day, she arrived at the office in full regalia.

Her headdress was wrapped high, her gold earrings flashed. “You look beautiful!” I announced. She explained that her formal dress was for a court date. Her husband was an unreliable drifter, and she hadn’t seen him in years. She sent three of her five children to boarding school in Uganda so she could work. Each time they returned there, her husband had to sign a document permitting them to cross the border. Without his signature, Francine needed to go to court and fight for it.

“I thought Rwanda was different,” I said. “Women are at the top of ministries. You have the highest percentage of women in parliament in the world.”

“That power is for the elite in the country,” Francine said. “Because we are women, we can’t get anything done at our level.”

Massachusetts, USA, 2021

My husband started defining rules and roles for me early. “Couples always need to have each other’s backs. People carry feelings about our successes,” he said. He gave me a useless lesson in self-defense. He was ten inches taller and more than double my weight. He bought me pepper spray and put a screwdriver in my glove box. “Women are vulnerable,” he advised, saying he could beat any woman, including professional athletes, in a physical fight. The time I would feel vulnerable arrived only after we separated, when his volatility and rampant entitlement exploded.

Our first fight began near midnight. He asked for a ride to the train station early the next morning. “It’s my first chance to sleep since I’ve been teaching nights.” I moaned, suggesting a bus, taxi, or ride share.

He slept in the guest room and left the next morning, returning three days later. He didn’t hate women, he said. Rather, I thought, he hated women who failed to behave exactly as he wanted. Articles that emerged during the COVID pandemic explained that women carry most of the “emotional labor” in a household. This term provided language for what I lived.

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Over breakfast one day, his phone rang, showing a call from “Mi Esposa Olimpia”, his former girlfriend. The word “my” carries weight; I was also “my wife”. After he left for good, I learned that my husband had built a collection of live women, as well as videos and images of women – exes and strangers – more than ten thousand of them, stored on his cloud account.

Equatorial Guinea, 2024

In the 1987 book Tropical Gangsters, Robert Klitgaard describes his time in Equatorial Guinea. While working there, he had multiple gorgeous Equatoguinean women as suitors. On one flight out, he chatted with a German tourist. She observed contradictions in how the foreign men lived: the money, status, activities that Equatoguinean women couldn’t otherwise access, and in the power it gave the foreign men.

I traveled to Equatorial Guinea with a woman from there, but raised in Spain, and living in Amsterdam. “I refuse to be treated like a secondclass citizen in my own country,” she explained. “If the Dutch wish to treat me as second class, I’ll take it from them, but not my own people.” *Saloon is the term commonly used in African countries.

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In Some Cheap-Ass Gas Station Line (or anywhere in public, really)

by Selene Hofstetter Darling, listen to me.

A man’s compliment comes with expectations.

It leers at a fresh, plump of some 12 years old ass and down the shirt of a 20-year-old waiting to pay for gas.

When they speak of romance - it’s more out of allure and excitement rather than Title IX allegations and legal prosecution.

When a man with a 15-to-20-year difference asks you out on a date - age is not the issue, but you being possibly gay is??

They search for ways in: anonymous Snapchat accounts commenting how your avatar is just their type and Instagram messages of “lonely and single, will pay for dinner” appear in your social media account.

All I want is to drop this ten-pound conversation of desperate flirting and inability to keep it in their pants on their foot and pay for my gas.

Their eyes are nothing more than holes that appraise and rotate from face, to boobs, to ass, to crotch, to thighs.

Midriff slopes down to the hips that carry future generations - but to a man it is seen as an open invitation to begin a conversation.

The deep-cut shirt accentuates your boobs - leading the eyes downward praising you for the shape of your body rather than the two hours you spent on your makeup. Darling, this is how the world works.

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You sit on a cheap-ass toilet - expecting some simple decency of privacy and all you get from society is the devil looking up to your boobs and standing eye level to your crotch.

They say not all men. Then who?

This is not an issue of simply covering up.

When a man walks around the grocery store with his butt crack manifesting from his purposefully low-hanging pants.

And a man jogs around Balboa Park, flashing his boobs.

Society’s feedback is silence.

Societal commentary aligns with policing a woman’s body more because of its sexual innuendos of just existing.

So darling, when a random old man passes you in Stater Brothers, saying you look beautiful.

Do not take the compliment at face value because being beautiful in this world means a lot more than simply having a beautiful soul.

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Libus

by Sarah Kehoe Libus has invited me over for the day. I am excited and eager. Dad works for Libus’s father, driving a wagon for extra income, which is a shoe-in for me. My mother, protective and particular about who I befriend, has granted permission.

Libus leads me around the farmhouse and introduces me to her mother.

The kitchen holds the familiar farm smell of tractor diesel and milkingcows.

In the afternoon her father takes us for a spin in the car, driving us a mile down the road to a holiday caravan site.

“Bag o’ crisps for the young ’n’s,” her dad instructs the barman. Fizzy drinks follow, and I sit à table like a pampered princess We giggle quietly to the taste of salt and vinegar.

Attention from the bartender eventually dwindles. Libus’ Dad has long gone quiet, and stares into his glass, appearing mesmerized by the bubbles. We’re no longer giggling.

“Let’s go home, Dad,” Libus asks again. “In a little, love. Let me finish this one.”

When the glass looks close to empty, we shuffle to re-show our readiness to leave. But a slight head-nod to the barman causes another pint to arrive.

Eager to be anywhere else, Libus and I head to the toilets. The room is cold and echoes. Boredom shows us the window that can be reached via a scramble from the sink to a ledge. The window is narrow and stiff to open. Libus’ foot slips on the wet porcelain, but she’s determined, then emboldened. Out, in fresh air, we startle the odd sheep and a few curlews, the prominent curve of their beaks accentuated by sunlight as they scatter and fly over. We head across the fields back to the house, rushes brushing our little legs, dodging the cowslips and tall dock leaves.

Weeks later, playing on the schoolyard after lunch, Libus is watching a man intensely as he tends rows in a garden by the playground wall.

Her eyes follow him as he leaves and enters the back of the The Dog and Partridge. As soon as the door closes, she tells me crossly, “He threw my Dad out of the pub last night!”

Keeping one eye on the door, the other on the veggie patch, she climbs the wall and approaches the first row.

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“He called my Dad names!” She stomps on the closest plant. Pupils have noticed and lean increasingly into the cold grit of the granite, watching.

She stomps on more. Filled with the energy of anger, she pulls up taller plants. We feel her righteous indignation, and cheer her on.

The school bells rings. Kids scamper. Libus leaps back over, wipes the soil from her shoes in blades of playground grass, and in we run.

The following day, at the close of classes, the headmistress makes an announcement. “I have been informed of dreadful damage done to the garden next door! Not one of you is going home until I know who did it!”

Eyes fall to feet. Small bodies freeze. Allegiance remains surprisingly strong.

“It was one of you, that I know!” She continues, layering on blame and shame that sicken my stomach. The clock ticks. The seconds hand circles.

Mothers peer in through side windows, their talk outside getting louder.

Guilt crawls up my esophagus: I had cheered her on. Acid pools at my uvula. I swallow it bravely, proud of classmates for not telling on my friend.

“It was me,” Libus states.

“Stand here! The rest of you are dismissed!”

In the push-and-shove scramble to the door, I look back. She is alone by the blackboard chalk.

She does not come to school for days. I don’t request to phone her: the phone lives in the realm of adults who frequently speak of its great expense. Nothing is said when she returns.

Later in secondary school, our social circles differ. I pass her in the yard, sitting with her gang, in an alcove around the back. She looks at me and I notice bruising encircling the orbit of one eye. I’ve seen black eyes on telly. It’s more blue in real life. “Your Dad did it?” I overhear. My gait stops. She holds my gaze, then turns.

When I next see her three years later, she’s married. In the wedding photo in hand, she’s in front of her Dad’s wagon, white dress flowing. Her Dad is beaming but not dressed for the occasion. She’s watching me, waiting for me to ask. “I didn’t tell ‘im we was getting married, y’ know. Didn’t tell me Dad nor me Mum. They couldn’t sit in the same room if they tried.” Libus turns back to the picture; “Apple of me Dad’s eye, I am. Apple of his eye.”

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Imagine This

by Doris Mahaffey You will not believe what happened today. Wait — let me shut the door.

Stop primping and listen.

You know that guy in my International Poli Sci class — Gerard — the guy I did that role playing with — I was Indira Gandhi; he was Anwar Sadat.

Right. The guy who asked me to go out with him next Saturday.

So, today Gerard said he had these notes on Indira Gandhi he wanted to share with me, so we walked back to his dorm room, and no sooner had he shut the door than he grabbed me. I swear to God, I thought he was going to rip my clothes off. I was stunned. I never saw that coming. But boy did I act — I swung my backpack at him and got out of there as fast as I could.

I can’t believe he did that. I mean the nerve. I never gave him any sign that I wanted anything like that from him. And, oh yeah, when I was leaving, he called me a slut. I mean, what was he thinking?

I’ve been walking around campus, going over and over it in my head. I’m sure I didn’t lead him on. I don’t know what to think.

You always say any guy’s a potential rapist, but I don’t think that’s true.

I’ve been to several guys’ rooms — we both have. None of them ever did anything like that. I mean dorm rooms are more like living rooms than bedrooms. We sit, we talk, we listen to music. Maybe drink a beer. But that’s it. Until Gerard.

None of the other guys ever grabbed me like that. So, I know all guys are not like Gerard. But how can you tell?

It’s not like the Gerards of the world have horns. No tattoos on their forehead, either.

I’ve heard some people say, you know, you can’t tell, so you should just assume all guys are like that — or could be.

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But I don’t agree. I don’t want to treat all guys like they’re something they’re not. I don’t buy that idea that on any given day any guy could be…

I think about those cultures we talked about in Intro Anthropology — you know — where they segregate the sexes and supposedly that solves the problem of rape. But at what price?

We know separate but equal is a lie, no matter who you’re separating.

One side always has the power. Oh, my Egyptian friend tells me men may control government and business, but women have the power in the home. Who’s he kidding?

I mean, for that to work, the woman would have to be married. What if she doesn’t want to get married? Where’s her power then? What if she marries but she’s better at business than her husband? What if he’s a better cook?

Seriously, trying to solve the problem of rape by segregating men from women only creates a slew of new problems. That can’t be the solution.

So, what are we left with? Was Gerard just a one-off? How many other Gerards are lurking among the non-Gerards? How many Gerard wannabes?

He called me a slut. I totally can’t believe I did anything to lead him on.

Nothing.

What? No. Don’t even ask. Of course, I’m not going out with him.

But I don’t know what I’m going to say when I see him in class on Thursday.

Maybe I won’t go to class.

Is it too late to withdraw?

Yeah, I thought so.

I could arrive late and leave early. Sit on the other side of the room. Avoid him that way.

No. That way Gerard wins. I can’t let that happen.

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I know. I’ll go to class tomorrow. I’ll saunter up to Gerard and say something like: Oh Gerard, you didn’t remember to bring those notes you were going to lend me, did you?’

No? Shoot. I was so looking forward to reading them.

By the way, that was some role-playing yesterday. You should have warned me about what you had in mind.

Don’t you ever do that to any girl again. The way it played out anyone would believe you were a rapist.

Imagine that.

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Chat Masala

by Meenakshi Mohan My grandmother affectionately calls me her Chat Masala …

Why, I ask? She tenderly expounds, You are as eclectic as all my chat masala recipes!

Chat masala – her favorite of all spices – a mixture of various flavors.

A pinch in here and a nip in there goes in all the delicacies her kitchen produces.

Italian, French, Mexican, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, or name any – I relish the chromatic results this unique spice brings in her cooking.

How am I your chat masala? Through her luminous smile, she illuminates the story of my being.

Born in Singapore, childhood in Indonesia, India, England. Now, home in America –a land of mixed ethnicity, race, culture, language, and religion.

In this deep-sea, of the variegated expanse I am not anyone’s “bird of a feather.”

My DNA weaved with mixed color and texture – not a melting pot, but my own unique identity.

I speak in many tongues. As a child, the first full sentence I babbled – Aku mav nasi goreng. At four, I mesmerized my audience, reciting Sanskrit Shlokas in a tongue of pure silver.

I often correct my father’s Americanized Hindi. I trick my mother with her Cockney heritage.

Spanish and French come with liminal drifts.

In the world of music, I float from Bollywood to Hollywood, from rock, nu-metal, 90’s rap, soft pop to Indian Blues and Remixes Anthony Bourdain’s adventure with universal cuisine fascinated me.

My palatability extends beyond fish and chips, hamburgers, pizza, parmigiana, NY strips, enchiladas, tacos, moussaka to murgha Mussallem, and sag paneer.

Mexican, Italian, French, Japanese, and many more I love.

I am Chat Masala, I love my grandmother’s analogy – So precise and pure. I am a pinch of this and nip of that. An eclectic mix!

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I Am a Child of the Universe.

Note: Chat Masala is a spice and a mix of different ingredients used in Indian cooking, but now getting universal galore.

Aku mav nasi goreng – Indonesian. I want fried rice.

(Published in Setu Bilingual Monthly Journal, published in Pittsburgh, PA., the USA in its September 2020 issue, also in International Writers Journal, April 2021.)

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Both Sides Now

by Catherine O’Neill When Joni Mitchell wrote and sang “Both Sides Now” in the sixties, the Canadian-born singer/songwriter’s lyrics I’ve looked at life from both sides now From win and lose, and still somehow It’s life’s illusions I recall I really don’t know life at all were about the loss she endured after giving up her daughter for adoption when she was pregnant and penniless at age 21. Giving up her baby was a rational choice that haunted her for many years amid erroneous media reports claiming she chose career over motherhood.

The pain of loss became her creative journey of healing words for a global generation of women who gave up children, had abortions, or stayed in their marriages while never bonding with those children.

I Am Alarmed by Recent State Anti-Abortion Efforts I was first rattled to the core on May 15, 2019, when Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed a highly restrictive abortion bill that challenged Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/alabama-abortion-facts-lawbill.html I dug out my old Joni Clouds album and listened harder to the lyrics of “Both Sides Now.” I had first heard the song in 1983, when I was a feisty college kid excited to vote in Ireland’s first abortion referendum. The country was divided into pro-life supporters campaigning to vote “yes” to protect the life of the unborn versus the abortion activists rallying a “no” vote in order to protect a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. All I knew was that the woman who raised me and my four siblings was a small, proud woman who jostled with a netted head of curlers she dismantled for church on Sunday. As a devout Catholic, my mother had given up her secretarial job to multiply and take care of her family. Her generation had accepted Pope John XXIII’s announcement to create the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, in January of 1959. https://www.britannica.com/event/Second-Vatican-Council Born out of the cultural changes after World War II, Vatican II set out to address relations between the Catholic Church and the modern Section 2. Women’s Stories

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world. One of its greatest disconnects was to make birth control illegal.

I would spend most of my life trying not to become like the women of my mother’s generation who relied on the joys of menstrual cycles and suffered the woes of the encyclical Humanae Vitae. http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_pvi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html Caught Between Two Sides of the Abortion Issue (Within My Own Family) I left my house on voting day and my mother yelled after me, “Vote Yes!” It boggled me why she voted yes after her rants about getting poorer with every child in the low economic tide of the sixties and seventies.

At age 13, I became her partner in hardship, working as a waitress and chambermaid in local hotels and sharing my small wages with her. I didn’t want to upset her, so I said, “Sure, I’ll vote yes,” and meandered into town to visit my grandmother. There were highly visible blue prolife signs on street poles, front yards, and in the clutch of priests and nuns canvassing on street corners. My grandmother led a hardscrabble life through what she called “The Troubles,” a turbulent 1920’s of tension between England and Ireland. I didn’t want to upset her either when she asked me if I voted. I told her that I had voted yes, even though I would vote no in order for Ireland to legalize abortion. Her response was: “What’s wrong with you? I voted no! All the young Irish women going to England for back street abortions and all you can do is vote yes.” I was caught in the crosshairs of two white lies and the two generations of women in my family. I waited intently for the polls to close for the vote count. The “Yes” vote won, and the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution Act was passed on Sept 7th 1983 with a 67% majority. It is referred to as Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution: The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn, equating it with the mother’s right to life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_of_the_ Constitution_of_Ireland My mother continued to be a mystery like the Blessed Trinity when I lived at home through college. She once shared that she visited the parish priest when she was in the throes of a postpartum depression after having me. His advice was to go home and please her husband and she quoted him saying “It’s better to have a child on your lap than a sin on your soul.”

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I ferried friends across stormy waters from Rosslare to Fishguard and shared a bumpy bus ride to London abortion clinics. They had found themselves alone with an unwanted pregnancy. I remember the giddy chat on the way and the silence on the return journey. I remember holding their hands on the bus ride home and visiting them for weeks when they missed classes. But what I remember most is our drinking binges and the vacant look, the hollow eyes, and dry tears lamenting they would never be able to pay me back, after confessing they would never be the same after the shame and guilt. Outwardly, I told them they’d be fine, they’d get over this because my grandmother knew a lot of people who survived and moved on. Inwardly, I secretly hoped I would never have to make this decision, never have to bear their loss and emptiness.

I left Ireland in 1986 with $50 in my back pocket and a dire motivation to leave my mother and Catholic Ireland where I found them. My father reassured me on the train ride to the airport: “You can always come home.” I never responded because I knew I would return to Ireland. I left for the states in a huff on a J1 visa which I later extended with an F1 visa.

I worked and gallivanted up and down the east and west coasts before I began dating a guy named Joe.* Exercising My Own Right to Choose Family — in America It was after three months of hot sex that the pregnancy test came back positive. I was awaiting a visa to visit Australia and there was no plan to stay in the states. I was faced with making a decision I hoped I would never have to make. I flicked through the yellow pages and found an ad for “Pro Choice.” Confusing it for Pro-Life, I made an appointment thinking I was going to discuss what my options were to have a baby in America— my body and my choice. I didn’t know it was an abortion clinic until the big blond-haired lady pressed her thumbs into the corners of her mahogany desk and stretched her buxom body in the direction of my 110-pound scrawny one.

“Listen, Duckie, you can’t afford to have a baby here without health insurance, an abortion is your only option, do you know how much it costs to have a baby in America? Any idea how much it costs to raise a child?”

“Who says I am having my baby here.” I answered and left quietly out the back door thinking I wasn’t anyone’s Duckie.

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stopped at Summit Hill Park. It was no coincidence to hear Joni Mitchell on the radio belting out the melancholy lyrics: I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down and still somehow It’s clouds illusions I recall I really don’t know clouds at all I looked into the billowy clouds and back to earth at the nearby kids playing in the brisk winter weather, the shrill screeches and giggles of snotty nosed toddlers with ruddy faces, sliding, scooting and swinging their nimble bodies on a play structure.

“I am pregnant.” I said, repositioning the floor mat.

“Catherine, this baby will bring us together, we’ll always be a family.”

Gobsmacked, I was not expecting this response. “But we didn’t plan on having a baby together.” I said, fretful when he seemed so sure of our future. I was telling him as an act of conscience that he would be a father, thinking all ties would end after he dropped me at Logan Airport to return to Ireland. I wasn’t ready to stay in America, never mind having a baby. I was footloose and fancy free on a mothership of spontaneity, craving adventure in my twenties. What did I know about caring for a baby? I had wanted to kiss New England winters goodbye and join my sister in the sunny outback for the new year. I hadn’t factored in that I was falling in love and having a baby with a stranger. I knew I couldn’t face the fraction of who I might become if I had an abortion, though I was scared and nervous to stay in America without family support. What if things didn’t work out? What if Joe or his parents, who I hadn’t even met, might make it difficult for me to leave, or force me to give up my baby?

Why I Never Considered Putting My Baby Up for Adoption And so, I stayed to give us a chance to be a family. A year after our daughter was born, Joe and I married in Vegas in 1991 because the last place I wanted to marry was in a Catholic Church. We worked together in a family business while enjoying raising our two children in a 17-year marriage. The marriage failed to recover after his affair; we divorced in 2012 after years of tension and stress.

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if I had made the right decision at the Pro-Choice clinic. Whose Duckie was I anyway? Had I missed something? I wondered what my life would have been like had I gone back to Ireland to have our daughter. Why did I even tell Joe he was the father? I hadn’t planned to. The moral decision to stay with him in my twenties was not based on need or religion. I was way too footloose to comprehend the financial responsibility of raising a child. My decision to have the baby was made before I’d heard Joe’s readiness at age 34 to be a father. I did not have the clairvoyance to see who I would become in my forties with my feelings of abandonment after his affair. I had been running on a full tank of rage for years before the divorce. Nothing prepared me for the homesickness for Ireland that followed until I began to write.

I’m not sure now why I never considered putting our baby up for adoption. I often think the 20-year-olds like Joni Mitchell who made this decision were culled by the laws without fully understanding the lifelong impact. The women ferried upstream and shuttled out of town, often by a parent, a shocked lover, or a friend forced to keep their little secret safe. I think of the number of Irish women who had silent pregnancies and put their babies up for adoption in Ireland, England, and the USA because abortion wasn’t an option. I wonder how many choose adoption over illegitimacy for fear of the stigma of being a single parent in the conservatism of church laws and politicians who shoot from the hip, suddenly, without any consideration. I wonder how many women like my sad mother stayed in marriages with a child on their lap and led unhappy lives not bonding with their children.

Could Ireland and America Switch Places?

I had been living in America for over 30 years on May 25th, 2018, after much debate, Irish voters were asked if they wanted the Eighth Amendment to be repealed. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/abortion-referendum/ abortion-facts Again, I thought of the Irish women who, after the walk of shame to an abortion clinic, were never able to live full lives. Once again, I waited intently for the votes to be counted. A peace settled when the country voted by 66.4% to 33.6% in favor of removing the 1983 amendment. It proved to be a 64.13% turnout, with over 2 million votes, one of the highest ever recorded. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ireland-s-abortionreferendum-result-in-five-charts-1.3509845 The fact that the margin for the passing of the 1983 referendum and its Section 2. Women’s Stories

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2018 removal are both in the 60% range show a drastic electoral shift over a 35-year period. I knocked back a few Guinness to celebrate the fact that generations of women will no longer be subjected to the tyranny of laws masked by religious conservatism.

The fight is not over. The Guttmacher Institute (a national nonprofit organization monitoring state policy developments) says a second Trump Presidency will decimate sexual and reproductive health. On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a national right to abortion. The Pew Research Center shares 63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or in most cases. As of January 8, 2025, 12 states have banned abortion (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, Tennessee. The ACLU fears anti-abortion extremists will enforce a 150-year-old federal statute called the Comstock Act banning all abortions nationwide without any need for congressional action.

Many states have already implemented T.R.A.P. laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers), which are deliberately designed to deny doctors local hospital access. Project 2025 proposes limiting abortion access by criminalizing abortion, revoking FDA abortion drugs and related materials from the mail. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/targeted-regulationabortion-providers What America Stands to Lose My angst has returned as I imagine how America became a kind of old Ireland with a generation of female teenagers, college kids, and women forced to cross state borders for risky abortions, suffer misdirected adoptions, or take marital vows they believe incorrectly will support them for life: some will, like my mother, stay in miserable marriages because they don’t want a sin on their soul. These most recent abortion bills are not only regressive, but they are also oppressive for generations to come. And note: America already has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed nation, and states with restrictive abortion laws have an even higher incidence of mortality for both mothers and infants.

We must also remember that it took 35 years — and a whole new generation of voters — to legalize abortion in Ireland and over a half century for the Irish to grow out of the pains of Vatican II. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/irish-expats-comehome-to-vote-for-abortion/

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Today I reflect on who I was as a scared twenty something American immigrant who sat teary-eyed on a bench under a cluster of trees in Summit Hill Park. I remember Joe’s hug and looking into the fathoms of his deep brown eyes. Glancing up to a panoramic view of the Boston skyline, I wondered then if I would ever live in Ireland again. I had feared America but loved Boston and Joe. Would I miss him if we had said our good-byes at Logan airport. I didn’t know if these emotions would recede once the wave of passionate sex broke. But I felt peace and power knowing that it was my choice to keep the baby or have a legal abortion.

How Laws Shape Us and Our Futures Twenty years later, the anger settled over Joe’s infidelity, I realized that no law could have protected me from having to work four jobs in my 40’s as a single parent. In 2012, I was penniless once again when I decided to represent myself in Cambridge Probate Court and divorced Joe. I felt sad knowing that he no longer had a relationship with our daughter. The child who had brought us together so many years earlier had chosen to wipe him out of her life. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I respected her decision. I read the sign above the judge’s bench, “In God We Trust.” In a satori moment, I found peace knowing I had made the decision to have our daughter in a country that supported a woman’s right to choose and that this right had made all the difference to me.

I’ve lived on both sides of this issue now and understand that years of strict abortion laws in Catholic Ireland only made the poor dip further below the poverty line to serve those fearful of losing power in a country with a tightly knit church-and-state relationship. Perhaps America’s leadership is jockeying for a similar type of power.

Today, I live happily with our daughter in Boston. On cloudy days, I wonder about our strange journey in this land where abortion laws seem so fickle. Might my daughter’s generation be forced to bend and distort their lives to accommodate an ever-changing set of rules issued from on high? While it is too early to know the statistical impact the new legal abortion law will have on Irish women’s health, financial, and social status, I can say for certain that going backwards is never a wise way forward.

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Making Tracks

by Kathryn Pepper Making Tracks “Why did I wear these ridiculous boots?” she grumbled to no one but herself. The swirling snow smothered her words and the usual evening sounds in the neighborhood, like a hand clamped over a mouth.

Too bad it couldn’t smother the argument with her husband raging in her head.

Earlier, she’d flipped on the TV to distract herself. An excited meteorologist predicted the earliest and largest snowfall in years, maybe decades.

“Stay off the roads, gather up plenty of blankets, water, flashlights and candles, and prepare for the worst!” he wailed.

She’d lunged at the power button. The last thing she wanted was to be trapped in a cold, dark house with Mike and the boys.

This time could be worse than the outage last summer when her four sons had fought over anything and everything while her husband had worked his laptop battery to exhaustion. She grimaced at how automatically she had complied with their requests instead of saying, “Do it yourself!”

“Mom, I’m dying of thirst and the fridge is dark. Can you help me find a Coke?”

“Mom, can you help me get a pillow. and tell Josh to stop hogging the sofa?”

“Dot, I need more light. Don’t you have anything better than these candles?”

Dot. How she hated that nickname. She didn’t like her full name, Dorothy, much better, except that it reminded her of Grandma. At least it made her feel more substantial than “Dot.” The whir of a spinning tire came from behind her. A car, the only sign of life, skidded up the white road and struggled to turn into the safety of its driveway.

How had she learned to give up her desires whenever they clashed with Mike’s and the kids’? Did she absorb it from Mom and Grandma? The culture? Mike never asked her to put herself aside directly. That would have made it too obvious, too easy to say no. Instead, he stole her confidence by demeaning her interests and criticizing her.

Subtly, like a gentleman. Like he was trying to be helpful. Why had it taken her so long to see what was going on and change it? Instead, she just kept trying harder. Trying to be good enough.

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It was too familiar, like the foundation plantings that lined the front of the houses she walked past. The weight bent their branches at odd angles, changing their eternal sameness into unique irregular shapes. Of course, if they didn’t recover their normal upright stance when the storm passed, they were likely to be punished, their owners lopping off the offending branches or perhaps even pulling up the entire shrub by the roots. “That’s the price of nonconformity,” she said to the wind.

A bitter gust tore at her face. The snow fell with such force that she couldn’t see how far she’d come. After 25 years of living here, she was unsure of her direction. She turned onto the next street that she came to, the snow already past ankle-level of her big boots. At least the wind was at her back now.

“Get off my back!” was the last thing she’d shouted at Mike before stuffing her feet into the nearest boots, grabbing her coat and slamming the door – far from her typical behavior. But she hadn’t felt like herself lately, especially after a nurse encouraged her to apply for the Director of Volunteers position at the hospital. Her years of volunteering had earned her a favorable reputation. After a strong interview, she was offered the job – the first paid position since David was born and Mike encouraged her to give up her nursing career to stay home with the boys.

Tomorrow, she needed to let them know if she would accept.

Mike had resisted the idea from the start, and just before she stormed out, he spoke with his hands posed in the pyramidal shape of an authority. “You can’t manage a real job and your housework, too. You never supervised anyone before. The boys need you to pick them up from practice. You won’t have dinner ready if you’re working until-” She listened silently at first as usual, taking the cue to fall into self-doubts. But this time, heat rose up from the base of her spine to her head, filling her ears with a white roar that blanketed his words.

“This isn’t about my deficiencies. You’re afraid!” she blurted. He startled, reeled back, then regained his composure. His eyebrows rose.

“You’re afraid my job will inconvenience you. You live like you did when you were a child playing, and your mother did everything for you. You never help with the house, the kids or anything. You won’t even change a lightbulb!”

He’d followed her to the closet, rattling on about how ungrateful she was for his hard work in providing for her, until she had cut him off by yelling and storming out.

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up everything she wanted to do with her life, did it? And soon they’ll need more money for college. Many women she knew held at least parttime jobs either by choice or necessity. Their husbands took on some household duties, often at their insistence. How had she gotten this old without insisting? Worse, what had she taught the boys?

Her toes ached. If only she had dug further back in the closet for her snow boots. Instead, she grabbed her mother’s old mud boots – a rubber outer shell with a red flannel liner. She kept them for some vague sentimental reason and only wore them for working in the yard and garden, like Mom had.

The huge size of these boots impressed her when she was young and appalled her when her feet hit a growth spurt out of proportion to her average build. Classmates found her feet endlessly amusing. Then, she had only wanted to be inconspicuous, to be safe. How many ways has she continued to act as invisible as possible?

The wind was relentless now, and the snow grew deeper by the minute. Her eyes stung and ice coated her eyelashes. She pulled her collar tighter. As a child she found snow delightful, even magical, the way it sprinkled their yard with sparkles. The magic faded once her feet became a source of ridicule. She learned to step partly into other kids’ footprints, her carefully planted steps obscuring the true size of her own feet. If she couldn’t avoid laying prints, she had dragged her feet, leaving two long lines behind her instead of discrete prints.

She looked behind her now, and there they were, lines made by dragging her feet. She shivered. How had the habit continued unnoticed for over 40 years?

Rounding the corner onto her own street, she exhaled with relief that she was nearly home. Then her breath came in shallow spurts. She’d soon be safe from the blizzard but would face a storm of a different kind.

She drew in a deep breath of frigid air that stung her lungs.

Braving a storm meant experiencing discomfort. She was done with the alternative of appeasement, practiced for years, that had caused her insidious pain.

As she walked the final block to her home, she lifted her feet and planted them firmly in the snow. She paused at her doorway, turned to see the tracks she had laid. Yes, her footprints were big. They made a substantial impression. She smiled.

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You Feel Me?

by Desiree Rucker Regina wedged her foot into the doorway of the Legacy bookstore as the owner, Daphne Legace, stepped out to say they were at capacity and could not fit another person.

“I’m a friend of the author,” Regina declared.

“Everyone here is a friend of the author,” shouted Daphne, a short black woman with enough girth to hold the crowd at bay. Regina was among the group of latecomers who were grousing about their bad luck in arriving five minutes too late. Regina pulled the email from Leticia out of her purse and waved it in front of Daphne’s face. The woman snatched the paper and looked it over quickly.

Her disdain turned into a smile.

“Why didn’t you say you were Regina?” She let Regina in and shut the door behind them. A tall, broad, black, man in a tweed sports jacket and black jeans stepped in front of the door. Five rows of hard metal chairs had been set up but an overflow crowd of mainly women, ranging in age from 20 to their late 50s stood all the way to the door, grasping the latest copy of Leticia’s book to their bosoms. Daphne directed Regina to the front row where a reserved seat was still vacant. Now at the podium, the owner introduced herself to the crowd, and read the short speech handed to her by the anxious woman clutching a stack of folders standing next to Leticia who Regina guessed to be Leticia’s publicist Leticia waved at Regina from the podium. Regina smiled back and waved. Leticia still had it. It being a joy that radiated out of her. It, being a sexiness that had lasted over thirty years. It being beauty. Had she had work done? As, if. Regina knew the tautness of Leticia’s face and body stemmed from her daily work outs. At college Leticia was always at the gym and running around the track. Regina had tried to tag along, but she broke out in hives from the sweat that poured out of her. It had hurt Regina that Raj had made wisecracks about her to Leticia that she was allergic to exercise and only wanted to work up an appetite. Did he really think he would impress Leticia by making fun of her best friend?

Leticia’s red sleeveless dress displayed her Michelle Obama arms, as she gripped the edges of the podium. There is applause and someone shouts “We love you, whatever you call yourself, girl.” The crowd hushes as Leticia stands there smiling. Leticia swings her long black locks behind her and begins to read. Regina watches Leticia hold the audience in rapt attention. It is a seduction. Leticia turned to the next page and read: Section 2. Women’s Stories

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“Wanda could not believe her luck. How had she, a first-year associate been selected to work on the McDaniel deal? Nor could she believe she was alone in the mahogany paneled conference room with Lionel Davenport, Esq. He hobnobbed with politicians and defended celebrities. His ex-wife was Sheila David, the actress. Though Wanda graduated third in her law school class, and had many experiences and privileges, inside she was still Wanda from the Bushwick Houses. She hoped that girl might always stay with her, keeping her centered, and grateful. If only she and Mr. Davenport, Lionel could have a real conversation she would let him know how much she admired him. How she had followed his career. He turned down an NFL contract to work for his Dad’s law firm. Was he chiseled from granite? She licked her lips. Though she didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize her position with the firm, she knew there was chemistry between them. She felt it when they passed each other on the elevator, and they even exchanged friendly glances at company social events. This afternoon he had asked her to go over some paperwork with him. It was all business. They worked steadily not looking up until 9:00 pm. It was then that Lionel suggested that instead of ordering in they go out and have something to eat and come back to the office. It would also allow them to work with refreshed eyes he said and winked. They shared friendly eye contact and awkward smiles, as they waited for the elevator. On the elevator, she noticed him staring at her as nervously pulled a stray hair behind her ear. Her pearl earring fell off making a soft ping sound as it hit the polished marble floor.

“My earring” she said, feeling her empty earlobe, while looking down at the floor squinting.

“I’ll let security know. They’ll alert maintenance to look for it.” Lionel said.

“I have to look. The earrings were a high school graduation gift from my aunt. ” she said as she bent down.

She knew she was being silly. It wasn’t even an expensive earring, but it was valuable to her. She felt along a crevice between the floor and the wall. She pinched the earring with her fingers bringing it up along with two strands of someone’s lost hair. She blew the hair off the earring. As she stood up the elevator stopped abruptly and rocked. She was thrown against Lionel and found herself pressed against him. She felt his hard penis move against her hip. Lionel grabbed her by her waist, to steady her.

“Are you okay?” He asked, his minty breath tickling the back of her ear. She was aware of the closeness of his mouth to her ear, to her neck.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, smiling from the pleasure his touch had brought her. He was still holding her by her waist. When she did not pull away, he pulled her to him, pressing her high round ass onto his erection.

“Lionel, Aren’t there cameras in here?”

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“No, just an intercom,” he said rubbing her breasts through her silk blouse.

She felt herself softening opening anticipating. She gyrated slowly. Was she really giving the head of the firm a vertical lap dance?

“Hello. Are you okay?” a male voice emanated from a circle of small holes in the elevator panel. It was followed by scratchy static.

“Wanda gasped and quickly moved away from Lionel”.

Upon closer scrutiny, Regina realized, Leticia did look ten years older. And she should. Her divorce had been ugly. And Leticia’s recent reveal didn’t help either. In the past three years, one Zena Taylor had published a series of novels - quasi romance, quasi soft porn. No one in the industry knew who she was. They just knew that she was a phenom. Her stories of professional women seeking love in high places (Love and Justice) and sometimes under rocks (Our Only Crime Is Love) had resonated with black women in their hearts, minds, and vaginas, and they opened their pocketbooks.

“Lionel walked over to the enameled panel next to the elevator door. He cleared his throat and pressed the red button that said TALK.” “Yes, we’re fine. What’s going on?” He looked at Wanda and smiled.

“Scheduled maintenance. We didn’t know anyone was still in the building.

We’ll have you out in a jiffy.”

Lionel walked over to Wanda and put his hand under her chin; he turned her face up to his and gave her a kiss.

“Still hungry?” she said.

“I could eat,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later when the repairman opened the elevator door, he found Lionel immersed in his Blackberry. Wanda was spraying herself generously with perfume. The repairman stepped inside the elevator and breathed deeply. Lionel pressed a fifty-dollar bill into the hand of the repairman and slapped him on the back. The repairman stood in the elevator and thought how he loved the smell of approaching rain, the smell of the forest, and the smell of lovemaking.” *********

It was last week on the Wendy Williams Show that Leticia revealed that she was Zena Taylor. Regina was at work, but she had gotten a tweet about it. She called Leticia’s home immediately. Whatever she and Leticia were feuding about was put on hold. How had she kept this secret? What other secrets was Leticia keeping? When Leticia returned home to California, she returned Regina’s call and promised to tell her everything when she came back to New York in a week for more interviews. Regina never Section 2. Women’s Stories

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would have guessed Zena Taylor was Leticia’s alter ego.

Leticia’s reading ended with the girl getting the man and many orgasms. The publicist announced that Zena/Leticia would not take questions but would sign all books. The publicist directed them to Zena’s website for her blog and listings of television appearances and reminded them to pick up Essence Magazine next month to read the profile on Zena.

Regina and Leticia approached each other with their arms outstretched and hugged each other tightly. They stepped back and looked at each other.

“Oh, my bad. You look just like my friend Leticia,” Regina asked.

“You are so crazy. I missed you,” Leticia said.

on?”

“Me too. I can’t wait until you tell me what the HELL is going “A lot. I’m glad we have all weekend.”

“We just have to put up with my mother for a few hours, but …”

Regina said “Your mother…” Leticia exclaimed, covering her mouth.

“I told you…” Regina said.

“No, you didn’t. How is that relaxation? Leticia asked.

“It’s a break from the media circus you’re in now.”

“This will be fun, like when we were in college,” Leticia said.

“I know isn’t it great?” Regina said, suddenly giddy from the thought of Leticia and Andrea meeting.

Leticia rolled her eyes.

*********

It had been over 25 years since the spring break when Regina had first brought Leticia to the country house. Leticia said she felt like she did when she went to the Fresh Air Fund.

They walked in the woods for hours sharing secrets, smoking pot and planning their post-graduation, successful, yet bohemian lifestyles. Raj was smitten by Leticia. She was the first black girl he ever liked. Andrea had hated the idea of Raj with a girl like Leticia.

“Who are her people?” Regina recalled Andrea yelling, the veins in her pale neck rising to the surface, throbbing, engorged with blood silently speaking for DNA long submerged.

“Please don’t invite her back. There is absolutely no advantage in her 118

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friendship. Always forward Regina that is what my parents told me. We do nothing that will set our family back.” *********

“Look my fans need me. You’re okay with waiting right?” Leticia said as she was pulled away by her publicist.

Regina watched everyone buzzing happily. Even the cash registers seemed to be singing. Some women had two or more copies of the book under their arms. Regina purchased a copy of the book in support of the bookstore. She had read in the New York Times that this bookstore was a victim of its own success. It was one of the small business ventures in Harlem that needed every dollar to keep up with the rent and stay open. Regina watched Daphne hustle books, move chairs and pour wine. She seemed focused and happy as a lark in her beloved bookstore. Regina admired Daphne for going for it and risking her money. She wished she had the courage to quit her job. Regina refilled her plastic cup with wine as she browsed the stacks, glancing over at Leticia who, to her publicist’s dismay, was laughing, talking and taking pictures.

It was two hours before all the books were signed. When the last customers left, the publicist kissed Leticia, waved to Regina and Daphne and shook the hand of the tall black man at the door. Regina was standing at the register reading bookmarks and chatting with Daphne.

Regina noticed the tall black guy didn’t leave the door even though the bookstore was closed.

“This must really be a hot spot? Does your security guard come with velvet ropes?” Regina said, laughing.

“He’s doesn’t work here. That’s your friend’s bodyguard.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. Hot stuff too, huh? Let me go put this in the safe,” Daphne said walking away with a red bag bulging with money.

The tall black man who had been quietly observant the entire evening moved away from the door when Leticia gestured for him to come over. They turned their backs and spoke conspiratorially. As they walked over to Regina, she realized the man’s facial expression had not changed since she first saw him.

“Regina, this is Brian, my bodyguard. Brian, this is one of my oldest friends, Regina Walker.” Brian extended his hand.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Brian. Leticia, why do you need a bodyguard?”

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“It’s a precaution. I’ve received strange emails, letters, and calls.”

“Now I’m frightened.”

“You should be, this is New York City.” Brian said.

The sarcastic look Regina gave Brian was met with the same blank expression.

“The FBI has pinned it down to three possible suspects.” Leticia chimed in.

“FBI? Three suspects?” Regina repeated.

“Do you know how much fan mail I get daily?” Leticia asked.

“Three letters with return addresses, I hope,” Regina said smiling.

“Very funny. Give Brian the address.” Leticia said.

“Is he coming?” Regina realized she sounded rude.

“Your mother would love that. No, he’s not coming. But he needs to know where I am at all times,” Leticia said.

“I’ll tail you to make sure you’re not followed, and I’ll let the police know what’s going on. I know a couple of freelancers in Ulster County, if you need somebody,” Brian said.

Regina started fanning herself with a bookmark, thinking “How come this heifer didn’t tell me she was being stalked before I invited her to the country? Hasn’t she seen Halloween?” said.

“You look kind of shaky, we better get something to eat,” Leticia “Leticia, keep it low key, please,” Brian said.

“Damn Brian, can a sister get some fried chicken in Harlem on the low?”

“Can she?” Brian asked.

“Regina, sorry, this is my new normal. Fame, you gotta love it!”

Leticia said, snatching her suitcase and wheeling it towards the door.

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Counting and Recounting

by Jawahara Saidullah First meeting: he accompanied his parents and younger sister to see me.

We liked each other, our parents liked each other, our families seemed to mesh, priests matched our horoscopes. I waited for my life to begin.

Second, third, fourth: at relatives’ homes. We walked in the garden while our parents drank tea inside. We talked about our plans, children, our futures. How could two strangers’ wants and desires, our hopes and dreams be so alike? It was Kismat, perhaps? Our hands brushed. I felt warm all over.

Fifth: he said he wanted to marry me. He was sure about it. So was I. He liked that I wanted to stay home, have children, look after him and his family. Why else did he want to marry me, to take care of me? It was perfect. Love ran like fire through my veins. And his?

Sixth: our engagement party, at my house, with our families and 150 guests. There was lots of food. The cake was heart-shaped, our names written on it in gold, intertwined. We cut it together, his hand on top of mine. He slipped a delicate gold ring with one diamond on to my finger.

I put an embossed gold ring on his. The claps and shouts of joy and well wishes from the family and friends crowded around us reverberated in my ears. I saw only him, smiling into my eyes.

Six to 25: over eight months. Being engaged, we could be alone, unchaperoned. We went to the movies, to dinner, for motorbike rides. We held hands, kissed hotly.

26: our wedding took hours. The priest chanted Sanskrit shlokas, spooning ghee into the holy fire. The end of my sari was tied to his silk scarf. We walked around the fire seven times. He led four times, I led three. Seven lifetimes together. The glow of the wedding fire made me shiver in anticipation. Day one of our married life together.

Also, one: unbanked fire roared between us; our skin scented by the jasmine blossoms crushed beneath us. We also became one. It was poetic, almost.

Two to 120: we lived with his parents in their large house. Life was normal but different from what I had been used to. That was to be Section 2. Women’s Stories

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expected, of course. I was no longer a daughter. I was a wife and a daughter-in-law. Then, their family business started failing. Ask your parents for money, they said sweetly. I tried, I couldn’t. He asked, they asked, every day. They cajoled, shouted, called me names. I still couldn’t.

121-179: All this continued. I was useless. Utterly useless. Who did I think I was? I could help them by asking my parents for money? How could my parents not have that kind of money? I was a liar in addition to being useless. Did I know there was a rich merchant’s daughter who was perfect for him? She would make a much better wife than me.

Her parents loved her. They would give any amount of money for her happiness.

180: the liquid his mother splashed on me, as I washed dishes at the sink, was icy-cold. For an instant. I turned to face her then saw the blue flame of the matchstick she had just struck. It was tiny, inconsequential until it touched the edge of my sari. She ran out the kitchen door, closing it behind her. Through my agony and confusion, my fear, I saw his face outside the window. Our eyes met, then he looked down and walked away. Fiery pain exploded in every molecule of my being. There was nothing else to count.

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Who Knew What to Do

by Brett Summers The night we got the phone call that my mother-in-law had died, we were on our way home from Hartford to Providence. We’d spent the day breathing the stale air of the hospital room with her. Even though I was sleepy on the car ride, I was kept awake by a small miracle that had happened in that close, box of a room.

When we entered the room, there was Nonie, limp and lifeless, dwarfed by the bed. It was Dave’s mom, but also – it wasn’t. None of her poise and intelligence animated her face. Her head rested back on the stiff pillow, her hair flat and wispy, not “done” as it always had been when we came to visit. She had arrived at the hospital with a possible brain bleed from simply bumping her head, and in the two ensuing weeks, her essence had shriveled and vanished. She had already shuffled off this mortal coil (know about her that she would appreciate this Shakespeare reference).

The room was an airlock, a chamber between life and death; the still air and diffuse light confirmed this as a sacred, if secular, space.

Dave and his brother sat on one side of the bed and I on the other. We positioned the oddly wide hospital chairs a respectful distance from Nonie’s body. Nonie herself had retained a respectful distance from her own body all of the thirty-five years I’d known her. She was a true intellectual, and her body was mostly an inconvenience, needing to be fed and clothed. A doctor diagnosed her with rheumatoid arthritis when Dave was still in middle school, so her body had also been her enemy for years. She lived in pain every day and contended with excruciating flareups and debilitating migraines periodically. She never spoke of any of it.

The disease taught her to perform a studied distancing from her body, as though she were saying, There is my body over there being difficult; I will ignore it until it chooses to behave. I imagine this performance came easily to her, as she was a modest, philosophical woman by nature.

While Dave and Julian filled the room with talk of baseball history and events, I looked at Nonie on the bed, her eyelids stretched over the globes of her eyes and her mouth hanging open. In medical school Dave learned to call this pose ‘the O sign’; it meant the patient was really out, gone, unaware of their surroundings. Still, it stirred something in me; I felt embarrassed by proxy – I knew Nonie would be mortified to be lying agape surrounded by her children like this. But even in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t imagine reaching out and touching the soft skin of her chin to press her mouth closed. Dave saw me watching her and said, It’s sad, isn’t Section 2. Women’s Stories

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it? He asked tenderly; he was caring for me in that moment, not for his mother, who couldn’t hear him anyway.

Dave brought his guitar, because his mom had always loved hearing him play. He sang “Sweet Baby James” and Julian joined in. I couldn’t understand how they could get out any words at all. I couldn’t sing a single line without my throat filling with a big lump that blocked all passage of sound, so I just listened to the alchemy of voices and strumming created by the four walls of the chamber. Later we called her sister and held the phone near Nonie’s ear. I heard Sally telling a story about being at the piano in their childhood home in Omaha; Nonie’s face betrayed no change. Finally it was getting late, and the nurse came in to advise us to go get some food; she needed a little time for nursing tasks in the room.

We ate a desultory meal from plastic clamshells. The cafeteria was deserted both of diners and workers; we ate quietly and quickly, driven by some urgency that the end was nigh. When we got back to the room, the door thunked shut behind us. We were enveloped by the same smell and otherworldly light as before, but Nonie looked more settled and comfortable. The bed had been tidied and her linens neatly turned down.

The nurse came in and told us she’d given Nonie a bath while we were out. This amazed me. A bath! Where was she going? For what, exactly, did she need to be clean? The nurse added that she had put lotion on her, as though in the face of dying, dry skin was a concern. “Us girls love our lotion,” she said to me conspiratorially, like surely another woman knew the facts. She was right of course. Even I, who consider make-up a frivolity, know that lotion is lovely. We left shortly afterwards. With Nonie lying flat on her back, we couldn’t easily hug her, so I kissed her on the cheek and gently held her hand of bird bones and knobbed knuckles.

Her skin felt smooth and cold and slack. In the middle of the night, when we got the call from the hospital, we were told that the nurse had come in and the room felt still; when she checked, Nonie was gone.

I love that Nonie was tenderly touched and tended before leaving the world. Dave, Julian and I stayed close to her during our visit, but we didn’t touch her. We were daunted by how diminished and fragile she looked in the bed, and by her own preferences in life. But just like babies in incubators, dying people need to be touched. In that airlock in-between space, the dying need to be physically ushered out. Gratitude billows in me for the nurse who did this for Nonie – a paid caregiver, a stranger, knew how to do what we couldn’t.

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The Shot

by Elita Suratman

previously published on Herstry https://herstryblg.com/theme/2020/12/21/the-shot I pushed the glass door and took my first step into the store. A man sat across from the entrance, separated from me by a glass display of Minolta and Canon SLR cameras. He was reading the paper and his pasty, distended arms looked like alabaster bookends holding the news captive.

“I need a photo, please,” I said. “For a permanent green card?”

Long before instant headshots were available at every pharmacy and post office, you had to make an appointment at an actual photo studio or walk in a camera store. The closest camera store that offered the special Polaroid headshots was several miles north of where I lived. I was unfamiliar with it as it was of me.

It was just a transaction, an exchange of money for services, I told myself.

No more. No less.

The store looked the way it smelled, musty, like a pile of beatup gym shoes. In a corner, I saw a barstool with legs chipped from too many reincarnations. A few weeks’ worth of the Columbus Dispatch was stacked on the stool, leaning against a yellowing Vanguard sheet taped on the surface behind it. A Polaroid box camera on a tripod leaned against the wall which was plastered by a Rand McNally world map stippled with red push pins.

This has to be the right place.

The man said nothing to me but inched his stool behind the glass counter toward his studio corner, picking up the stack of the Dispatch along the way and dropping it to the floor.

“So where are you from?” he asked.

“Singapore,” I said, my legs tethered to a spot on the store’s musty carpet.

“Hmm … Singapore,” he echoed. The man surveyed the continents on his world map, picked up a red push pin and stuck it on an island one degree north of the Equator. Singapore. The world map was clear of pins except for a splash of red plastic in the continents of Asia and Africa.

Is he mapping me?

He motioned me to sit on the barstool, the carpet releasing me at his command. I walked to the stool and climbed on the vinyl seat, my Section 2. Women’s Stories

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legs dangling about four inches off the ground.

“Not China, eh?” he grunted, appearing irritated perhaps because he had me pegged wrong.

“China … hmm … that’s where all those lesbians go to adopt little Chinese babies,” he said nonchalantly.

What did he just say?

“So …,’ he said, positioning his right cheek against the camera after gesturing me to look straight at him, “… you finally decided to be part of the solution.”

Click. He took his first shot.

Part of the solution.

I tried scanning my still-new-to-America databanks in search of some kind of cultural cipher, a Cliff Notes reference to understand what he had just said.

When was I a problem? When I stepped on American soil, paying Singapore dollars to get an American degree? When I walked into the lives of a small-town Ohio community who embraced me and my newspaper stories? Or was it when I started to take up space, brazenly trying to start a life in someone else’s homeland even though I had my own?

“Don’t move,” the man ordered. “I’m going to take another shot.”

My legs felt tight under me even though I had not moved since I sat down.

He took another headshot then motioned me off the stool as he walked over to the glass counter, photo plate in hand. His oversized fingers were surprisingly deft, peeling the protective film off the top of the Polaroid photo sheet. He tucked the corners of the sheet into the slots of what looked like a passport cover.

Did he just take my picture, or did he already have one in his head?

“Your headshots will show up when it dries,” he said, handing me the package. “You can wait here if you want.”

I paid him $14.99 for the transaction. In exchange, I received the images he captured, plus a bonus: his personal world view waved at me like the American flag. I felt pinned to a point on his map, driven by a red post into the ground to make sure I stayed tethered to the longitude and latitude I was born, not to be let out to wander into worlds where I did not belong.

It was just a transaction, I tried to remind myself.

No more. No less.

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The Evolution of a Girl

by Robin Mayer Stein PLANTING SEEDS–JACKSON HEIGHTS 1959

As a child, I plunged into projects with high hopes. Each year, I spent my allowance on seeds for sale at school. I checked off marigolds and zinnias on the long pink slip, imagining the gold and orange blossoms that would emerge in a few weeks under my tender care.

I nestled the small seeds in soil in small milk containers and placed them on the fire escape in the sun. I watered them and waited. In a few days, bright green shoots appeared. But as the weeks went by, they never grew flowers. Still every year, I ordered seeds with my heart full of hope.

BOYCOTTING WOOLWORTH’S–NEW YORK CITY–1960

When I was seven, my mother and I walked to Woolworth’s to buy toothpaste and hairbands. A group of people bundled in warm coats and hats, marched in a circle outside the store. They held up signs saying, “Don’t shop here. Boycott Woolworth’s.”

“What does that mean?” I asked my mother.

She said, “Woolworth’s doesn’t allow Black people to eat at the lunch counter. That is wrong. We will not shop here.”

I knew from her serious tone that this was a moment of great importance and, in some small way, that we were both a part of it.

COMING HOME FROM A 7TH GRADE PARTY

One night, after a boy-girl party, which I spent mostly in the kitchen, drinking soda, my friend’s father drove us home. He dropped me off on the corner of 81st Street and 35th Avenue, not at my doorway. “Your street is one-way” he said,” so I would have to drive around the block to drop you off in front of your house and I don’t want to do that.”

It was midnight in New York City. Would he have wanted his daughter to walk that block alone? I ran down the street as fast as I could. I unlocked the lobby door and then had to take the elevator or walk up four flights. I walked up as quickly as I could.

Out of breath, I unlocked our apartment door. My parents were sound asleep. They never doubted that I would arrive home safely. At that moment, I realized that I was now responsible for my own safety in the world.

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QUITTING THE MATH TEAM 1969

In tenth grade, I was the only girl on the math team. I hadn’t wanted to join but Mrs. Hayes, my math teacher, pursued me. She followed me up and down the halls. She said, “It’s important that girls get involved in math.”

I must admit, I was proud to be good at math. I could see a real career for myself in math, so finally, I said yes. Every day at lunchtime, I sat in a classroom with six boys. We ate the lunches our mothers had packed– tuna sandwiches and apples, drank grape juice and worked on exponents and equations.

I enjoyed the symmetry of math. I liked that there was only one answer to each question, unlike in life. We were preparing to compete with teams from other schools. The boys were friendly and funny, but I missed eating lunch with my friends, so I quit the team.

A week later, the Honor Society held its election for president. I ran against Lisa Anderson. All the members of the society voted in the cafeteria by a show of hands, a very public display. Lisa and I were supposed to cover our eyes during the vote, but I peeked.

When I saw my two best friends raise their hands for Lisa, my heart was crushed. Why would they betray me? And why in front of everyone? I couldn’t confront them because I wasn’t supposed to know how they voted.

I should have gone running back to the math team where the boys were friendly, and my talents were appreciated. I’m ashamed to say that I went back to sitting at the lunch table with those girls. At fifteen, I craved acceptance, but I had chosen the wrong people.

WATCHING MY MOTHER TEACH 1970

In her fourth-grade classroom, my mother showered her students with acceptance and joy. Many acted as interpreters for their parents who didn’t speak English. They had responsibilities too great for children, but my mother allowed them to be young and gave them confidence. They came back to visit her years later, to thank her for believing in them.

MOVING TO BOSTON 1975

When I moved from New York to Boston to attend law school, my mother seemed more excited for my adventure than I was. A realtor showed us one dreadful place after another. Finally, in an old fortress of a building on Commonwealth Avenue, we settled on a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony.

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I looked out over the trolley tracks and saw my future stretching out before me. It struck me, with a pang, that my mother had never had the chance to follow her dream. She had moved from the constraints of her parents’ house to the confines of a stifling marriage. In each case, she had to adjust to the needs and whims of others, never having, in the words of Virginia Woolf, “a room of her own.”

WALKING WITH MY MOTHER 1983

When I went on errands with my Mom, she stopped at the stores all along Queens Boulevard to chat with people she had befriended—Liza at Key Food, George at Greenwood Savings Bank, Joanie at the coffee shop.

She knew the names of their children and she knew their life stories.

That’s the greatest gift that women can give–to make a difference in this world, no matter how big or small, to show people that they matter and to stand up for what is right not only for others but for ourselves. And one day, the seeds we plant will burst into golden blossoms of equity, justice and freedom.

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That Boy’s a Catch

by Tina Tocco “Your daddy and I just figured all this nonsense would be over by now.”

My mother has just dropped six spoonfuls of instant coffee into a mug filled with hot water from the bathroom sink. Her spoon chinks and chinks and chinks and chinks the side with the chip. I sip the tea I brought from Berkeley.

“You’re thirty-one, Tanya Grace. I hope someone’s told you what that means.”

My father has read what he can of the newspaper. He has shaved off the end of his pencil and is circling the houses locked in foreclosure.

He and Uncle Rex can be in and out in under an hour, the knobs and faucets silent in the sacks my mother sews.

“Four sweatshirts wide,” she used to tutor, “so the stuff don’t clang so much, like.”

I sip the tea I brought from Berkeley. My advisor told me about the place, extoling the flakiness of their scones. After walking past it for two more semesters, I finally got up the nerve to go in and order one.

When the high school girl behind the counter asked, “Which kind?” I had to say, “Surprise me.”

My mother’s housecoat catches the nick in the butcher block as she tips her weight against the counter. “He’s not going to wait around forever, you know.”

The last chunk of the butter cake I picked up in St. Louis is still in its box, propped on the little burner at the back of the range, which my father has been meaning to look at. My mother sets the box on my father’s newspaper, but he waves his pencil at it, the hunch of his shoulders inert. His pencil shavings blow into the Used Autos column.

My mother settles the box on one of the front burners and eats. “You know what happened to that Morton girl.”

“That Morton girl” — there are five — is Jane. After two years at Mike’s Tackle, she bought a duffel bag and begged one of her cousins to drive her to Middle Tennessee State. Sociology and Anthropology.

And waitressing. Seven years. She moved to New York the year I started

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my thesis. When she came home the following Christmas, John Harling paid her back rent. His marriage to her lasted less time than her time in Greenwich Village.

“No use keeping it in if nothing’s coming out,” my mother says, her nose in her mug.

The phone rings. It is probably Mrs. Morton. My mother makes for the living room. My little cousins like to call it the alligator phone; they do not yet know the word “avocado.” They like to twirl the cord around silverware they have pilfered from the kitchen, pretending it is green spaghetti.

I pull Applied Mathematics for Physics: A New Approach from the chair alongside me. It sticks against the cherry vinyl, making that sound my cousins think is hilarious. My father smiles, circling another foreclosure. He turns a page; I turn a page. He pulls another pencil and his knife from one of his breast pockets. He gives the pencil four easy strokes, then blunts the new point between his fingernails. That point will never break. He hands the pencil to me without a glance. I take it, even though I have started in yellow highlighter. I underline words that will never be spoken inside the county line.

The door swings in, and my mother is back. She is about to shoot off a tale about someone or something, but stops a few words in. “Books off the table, miss.” I oblige, returning it to the chair. There is still plenty of time to finish my syllabus before the start of the semester. As my mother would say, “There’s never any reason to court an argument.”

“You need to think about what you want, Tanya Grace. He’s always been on a path, that one. It’s not easy getting county work nowadays, and he’s got seniority.” The last wedge of butter cake in her throat, my mother says, “Medical benefits for life.”

She goes back to the bathroom for some more hot water, and I pull out my phone, pointing it at the four walls for a signal. I am uncertain if it is the aerial on the roof or the hills’ minerals that deter the natural flow of anything in or out. I am finally reading, “Grace, when you get here on Monday, can we review…” when my mother’s slipper cracks a curl in the linoleum. “Oh, for the sake of the Lord, girl!”

I return my phone to the patchwork knapsack I have carried since grad school, the one that reminds me of Meemaw’s quilt work. It will blend in at Cal State, even though it never blends with my Fendi pumps.

I sip the last of the tea I brought from Berkeley. I bring the mug to the sink. I am explaining under the cold spray that I do not want to hit traffic in Kansas City. My mother says that’s wise of me.

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My knapsack is not even on my shoulder as I swing the door toward the living room. My mother follows me, and my father follows her. I sidle around a few of his boxes, heavy with his latest round of acquisitions, and I admire the way he has taped them. Those seams will never break.

At the screen door, my mother has my face in her palms. She is telling me to drive safe and other things. The alligator phone starts up again. She kisses me hard on one cheek and makes for the receiver. She tells whoever it is to hang on, and without covering the mouthpiece, says, “Now get your head in line, Tanya Grace. That boy’s a catch.”

My mother fades, and my father steps into her place. He dips into his other breast pocket, pulls out a small rectangle of bills; probably fives and singles. He nestles it into my hands, cups them at the knuckles. I smile, push the little pack into my pocket, next to the pencil.

As I maneuver down the driveway, then floor it on the county road, I remember that Applied Mathematics for Physics: A New Approach is seated on the cherry vinyl. I do not go back. My mother will send it with one of her little notes — “This was at my own expense, Tanya Grace” — to the address she has for me in Berkeley. But the book will never reach me. My boxes are already headed south to Cal State, to an address I have neglected to leave behind, and I am well beyond anything sent from home.

Originally published in New Ohio Review, Spring 2016.

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Just Another Day on Larkspur Lane

by Linda C. Wisniewski It’s a cloudy fall day on Larkspur Lane, and the humidity level is down from yesterday. Thank God, Birdie thinks, as she wraps her white cotton robe around her, tying the cord tightly at her waist. She scurries out her garage door and bends to pick up a few leaves from her driveway. There are more on the sidewalk, and two on the lawn, so she scuttles over to them, picks them up and hurries back into the garage to find a plastic trash bag.

The leaves on the trees are mostly green but already a few have begun to drop, and if she doesn’t keep on top of them, they will be all over her driveway and lawn and sidewalk, and Birdie can’t have that. If there’s one thing Birdie cannot abide, it’s a messy lawn. Or sidewalk. Or street.

But all she can control is her little patch of property in front of her townhouse.

On Monday morning, she waits for the recycling truck. Her blinds are open just a crack so she can see outside but nobody can see that she is watching. The truck rumbles around the corner and stops at the first house. A tall young man jumps off the side, picks the first bin on the curb and empties it into the truck, then tosses the bin back on the curb. He does this up and down the street until the whole neighborhood is littered with empty blue bins. Birdie can hardly wait to hurry outside.

She walks quickly up the street, returning each blue plastic bin to the garage door of each townhouse within sight of her window. Donna comes out of the house next door just as Birdie is coming back up her own adjoining driveway.

“Thanks,” she says, “for returning our bin.”

“I like to do it,” Birdie looks down with a tight little smile.

Donna shakes her head and goes back into her house. Birdie likes her but can’t quite understand her. What does she do all day?

Birdie picks up more leaves from her driveway, shaking her head as she walks toward the garage, her eyes focused on the blacktop.

Donna comes outside again, getting into her white Honda.

“Working hard?” says Donna, and Birdie sees a look of pity on her face.

“They get into the garage,” Birdie says, but Donna just smiles.

“I kind of like them,” she says.

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“Do you?” says Birdie.” They’re so messy.”

Donna loves the crunch of dry brittle leaves under her feet. The red maple in front of her townhouse blazes with color in the fall and each day more color lies beneath it like a red blanket.

The day Birdie and Donna met as new neighbors, Birdie told her that Mr. Clean was the best floor cleaner. Donna just laughed and Birdie could tell she didn’t really care. And sure enough, in the first week after they moved in, a cleaning service showed up. Birdie learns they come back once a month because she’s seen them through her blinds.

Birdie likes to think that “helper” is her middle name. Twice a week, as soon as the trash truck comes by, she scurries up and down the street bringing empty trash cans from the curb to everyone’s garage door. Just like she does with the recycling bins, and that includes the new, big ones on wheels. The ones she refused, because she and Bill don’t need them.

The small ones work fine but she doesn’t mind bringing the big ones up to everybody’s garage door. Once, Donna came up the sidewalk and saw her. “I can do that,” she said.

“Oh, I do it for everybody,” Birdie replied. “I don’t like the way they look, out at the curb.”

Dolly, another neighbor, had a big problem with leaves and Bill had helped her ‘clean them up.” She also mentioned that somebody up at the cul de sac has “leaves all over the place.” Donna just smiles at her like she’s an idiot. That tells Birdie she just doesn’t care about helping anyone out. Birdie has never seen her do it.

The homeowners pay a monthly fee for trash removal, mowing, pruning and leaf removal. But they haven’t come around yet. Birdie cannot wait.

In summer, when they mow every week, she puts a broom across her front walk “so they don’t blow grass on it.” She’s the only one in the neighborhood who does this, and hers is the only walk that is always neat as a pin.

When Birdie gets sick, Donna brings soup from the deli. When Donna gets sick, Birdie brings a bigger soup from an Italian restaurant. At Christmas, Birdie rings the doorbell and delivers big tins of store-bought cookies and bottles of wine to selected neighbors, including of course, Donna and Marc, who always thank her and invite her in, but of course she always says no. Gotta deliver some more, she says cheerily, happy holidays! She waves and scurries away.

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Donna prides herself on her feminism. Marc cooks more often than she does. He also likes to buy groceries and do laundry. Birdie frustrates her.

How can a woman scurry around like that, doing chores she doesn’t have to, and that aren’t much appreciated. Does she know the neighbors talk about her? Still…she’s ninety-five and going strong. What’s that about?

Donna shakes her head and moves away from the window, where she’s been watching Birdie at work. Just when you think you have things all figured out, she muses, someone comes along and throws new questions your away, just by being themselves. Someone who does the opposite of what you want for her and still seems happy.

Just when you were minding your own business.

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Not Enemies

after Stephen Levine

by Evelyn Asher We are not enemies

though strangers toss epithets.

We are not enemies though your tongue is mocked by ignorance.

We are not enemies though your voice rises to a pitch that affronts my senses.

We are not enemies though my home is occupied by your forces.

We are not enemies because the bombs have stopped, boys will be boys, men’s egos holding us hostage.

If we can forgive ourselves, We can forgive anyone.

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La Presidenta: A victorious woman in a country dominated by men

by Noris Binet “I am not here alone; we are all here. With our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, with our daughters and granddaughters.”

A new linguistic phenomenon in Mexico challenges the Royal Spanish Academy, which deems the feminine gender incorrect usage for a person occupying the presidency. Now, in the person of Claudia Sheinbaum, who in June 2024 was elected the first female president in the 200-yearold Mexican Republic, everything is changing, including the use of the feminine gender in all professions that before only used the masculine gender, regardless of whether a male or female filled the role.

For the first time, we hear an intentional inclusion in the president’s daily and official communication of the female gender. But what is the importance of language? When things are not named, they do not exist.

The historic nonexistence of women in public functions has been reflected in a language that excludes the feminine gender and even prohibits it.

What has happened in Mexico shows an extraordinary process of women’s empowerment at many levels of culture and throughout the political arena. Since the nineties, gender quotas promoted both in Mexico and in other countries have been one of the first initiatives to improve the representation of women in the political sphere. This improvement in the status of Mexican women is linked to the progressive actions taken in Beijing as the following quote asserts: “Flavia Freidenberg and Vázquez agree that it was at the Fourth World Conference in Beijing in 1995 that provided a starting point for many democracies, including Mexico, to begin adopting affirmative laws and regulations to guarantee women’s access to decision- making public spaces….” (BBC News Mundo, May 27, 2024) Indeed! The Mexican congress achieved parity among its members, increasing the number of women to 50.96% in 2018.

Though Mexico as “early” as 1993, held its first legislative discussion on the rights of women to access more important positions. This debate managed to modify the Federal Code of Electoral Institutions and Procedures by specifying that political parties should promote the participation of women in politics. However, this forward statement remained only a recommendation.

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Although political parties began nominating and electing female candidates based on the principle of gender parity, access to municipal presidencies remained lower for women.

Then, election results in 2015, 2018 and 2021 began showing an increase in female victories as municipal presidents. Claudia Sheinbaum, for example, was elected as the mayor of Tlalpan from 2015 to 2017 and in 2018 she was elected as mayor of Mexico City.

This is not a detailed statistical report of how the process of gender advancement has taken place, but rather a description of the process that, starting in the 1990s, has created the conditions for more and more women to be able to access the political process.

These gender balancing reforms bore fruit demonstrating that female participation generated positive social changes. For example, among the constitutional reforms achieved, the Political Observance against Women stands out, published by CNDH (Political Participation of Women in Mexico), which states in part: • The prohibition of political or electoral propaganda containing discriminatory and/or violent messages against women • The prohibition of participation of people with a history of political violence against women • The redefinition of political gender violence

• The extension of parity to the General Council of the Electoral Institute of the State of Mexico and to the Electoral Tribunal of the entity • The principle of gender parity and inclusive language in state regulations

• Guarantees of the principle of gender parity in the candidacies of political parties • The creation of the Technical Unit to Address Political Violence against Women and the Electoral Institute of the State of Mexico, which is responsible for addressing attacks on female precandidates, aspirants, activists, public servants, journalists and human rights defenders

Claudia Sheinbaum was elected president as a result of a long “transformation in progress” in a country where machismo is openly exercised, which has left many of us surprised and intrigued.

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the Morena Party candidate, the reactions were mixed, but above all people doubted that a woman could be elected president in Mexico. In Sheinbaum’s case not only her gender stood against her but she was of Jewish descent—not Catholic, in fact, not religious at all. All kinds of videos came out to discredit her.

I found it very interesting to observe the reactions of both men and many women in Mexico. This was all the more intriguing because a coalition of neoliberal parties opposed to Morena (Sheinbaum’s party), which had held power for many years in Mexico, plunging the country into a state of corruption, violence and poverty, also decided to nominate a woman.

The poor qualifications and the record of rampant dishonesty of the female candidate they nominated to run against Sheinbaum made me think that they only nominated a woman out of fear that the majority of Mexican women would vote mostly for Claudia Sheinbaum, if they chose another man to be their candidate.

They had good reason to fear a strong female candidate. The large number of femicides that Mexico has suffered for many years, had riled multitudes of women across the nation. The discontent and anger of women, evident in massive protests demanding the authorities to prosecute the criminals and develop a coherent policy on prevention, was impossible to ignore.

Finally, Mexico went to the polls with two female candidates, and the polls made it quite clear which one would win. Nevertheless, Mexico, her men included, was bound to elect a woman as president.

Obviously in my mind—absent fraud--Claudia Sheinbaum would win the election because when I saw her for the first time, I realized that this woman had been prepared since childhood to reach a position like this.

She is the daughter of left-wing political activists, academics and scientists who fought for freedom of expression, equality and the rights of all peoples. They participated in the great student protest of 1968 that ended with the Tlatelolco massacre, when Claudia was six years old. This has led Claudia to declare herself a daughter of ‘68, indicating that she is with the people and will serve the people.

Following her parental footsteps, Claudia Sheinbaum had an academic and scientific career, earning a postgraduate degree in energy engineering. She wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Berkeley, California, where she lived and worked for four years.

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As a youth she learned ballet and how to play the guitar, charango, harp, maraca and Argentine bass drum. She belonged to a musical group as a teenager and performed in theaters in the capital. This balance between artistic sensitivity and the “hard” sciences forged her humanism and her executive skills in official positions, in addition to her academic work at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Claudia Sheinbaum won overwhelmingly against her candidate with 35 million votes. Even after the recount demanded by the opposition, her margin of victory rose.

The inauguration displayed extraordinary symbolism, the person who handed her the presidential sash was Señora Ifigenia Martínez, the president of the General Congress.

“She is Ifigenia, a graduate, master and doctor in Economics from UNAM, and is the first Mexican to obtain a master’s degree in economics from Harvard University. In 1967 she was the first director of the National School of Economics of the UNAM and in the turbulent year of 1968 she defended the University after the Army invasion of Ciudad Universitaria.”

(El Sol de México, September 30, 2024) “For Sheinbaum, the fact that Ifigenia Martínez gave her the presidential sash has great significance because it represents a woman who throughout history has paved the way for many Mexican women and who has been consistent in the fight for the democratization of Mexico.” (El Sol de México, September 30, 2024) In fact, when Claudia went to vote, she wrote the name of Ifigenia Martínez on the ballot for president and placed it in the ballot box, as a personal statement that Martínez was a woman who could have been president as well.

The arrival of a woman to the presidency is a significant event in history not only in Mexico but in the world. Since Women currently serve as the head of government in just 13 of the 193 member states of the United Nations.

Mexico is a complex, multilingual, multicultural country-- one of the 10 countries with the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. There are 68 indigenous languages spoken and two sign languages. The shift that Mexico is undergoing under the Morena party with its humane motto “For the good of all, the poor first,” and their genuine recognition of indigenous peoples that the previous president, Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) put in place and that Claudia Sheinbaum continues to champion.

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Addressing the generational marginalization of the indigenous peoples in Mexico, Claudia, as part of her inauguration celebration, included women representatives from 70 indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities. Collectively they handed her the Baton of Command and Service. In this way, the president reaffirms her commitment to implement the Constitutional Reform on the Rights of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples, continue the justice plans, and guarantee cultural and linguistic rights, which are already incorporated in the Constitution.

“At 5:00 a.m., in the Templo Mayor, the epicenter of the culture, worldview and civilization of the ancient inhabitants of MexicoTenochtitlan, a delegation of men and women, representing the peoples of deep Mexico, carried out a ceremony of purification and consecration of the baton of command and service and the beginning of the new cycle of government of the constitutional president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. Amidst prayers, songs, incense, copal and an atmosphere full of spirituality and symbolism, traditional doctors and marakame (spiritual guides of the Wixárika people) “Later, in the capital’s Zócalo, before a crowd gathered to witness the ceremony of handing over the baton of command and service, and to hear the message of the Constitutional President to the people of Mexico, 114 indigenous and Afro-Mexican women handed over the baton of command and service, which represents a recognition of their solemn investiture and a symbol of service, on the part of the heirs of the oldest inhabitants of Mexico, from the depths of their identity.” (National Institute of Indigenous Peoples—INPI) For those of us who have had the privilege of participating in indigenous ceremonies and rituals, this moment means a rebirth, it marks a new era. For the first time, indigenous peoples participate and contribute visibly, energetically and spiritually to the direction of the country. They are part of the new era: Mexico is finally returning to its deep roots, its ancestral legacy, and what had been latent, waiting for this moment, is re-emerging.

Very excited about her victory, the candidate of Morena, the Labor Party and the Green Ecologist Party arrived at the celebration. In her speech at the Zócalo, embracing her victory, she emphasized: “It is time for women and for transformation, and I also want to say it here, this means living without fear and free from this violence. And from this platform I say to the young women, to all the women of Mexico: Comrades, friends, sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, you are not alone.” (President, Jorge Zepeda Patterson, p. 17, Planeta Publishing, 2024) 142

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For the first time in my life, I am an observer of a historic moment that many women have long awaited; perhaps more than waiting, I have dreamed of it. For more than forty years I have worked with women using a psychotherapeutic model to promote healing and transformation of the traumatizing dehumanization that women suffer under a patriarchal system. At an early age I became aware of the oppression of women, both social and religious, and I could not understand it clearly.

I was born under the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic: a totalitarian, bloody and misogynistic regime. Although he was killed when I was six years old, his reign left its mark on my psyche: the murder of the Mirabal sisters a year earlier (November 25, 1960) cut through the country like a dagger and left it suspended in a precarious balance that led to the overthrow of the dictator. In my country, women were killed: this was engraved in me in childhood.

During my Sociology studies, I realized that social changes are slow and that even those who spoke of social transformation did not include women. For this reason, I decided to look for alternatives so that women could have access to at least individual healing and achieve a life where they could experience greater internal liberation, since external liberation was denied to us.

Therefore, being present in Mexico to observe and contribute with my reflections on the importance of this historic moment has inspired me to write this article.

During these first weeks of the new President, I have dedicated myself to listening to her, to observing how she moves, how she communicates, what is the difference with what I am used to seeing, what moves me about her presence and above all about what she says.

She is someone who has a very well-balanced masculine and feminine sides: there is firmness in her statements, but there is also subtlety and embrace. There is great honesty in her statements, an enthusiasm that does not let controversies nullify it, a confidence in life and a deep faith in what she does and in the people who have elected her.

Hearing the head of a nation state that femicide is an aberration of human behavior, that it has to be defined as a hate crime against a woman for being a woman, and that it has to be condemned by the authorities, opens a new panorama that has never been seen before.

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need to be worked on to eliminate corruption, drug trafficking, drug use, youth neglect, migration and violence is putting her finger on the sore spot, where healing can begin.

We could say that Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, which she describes as Mexican humanism, ambitiously focuses on multiple areas of importance to transform the situation of women, including: • • • • • •

A welfare program for financial support to women aged 60 to 64 who do all the housework and do not receive any remuneration A reform of gender pay equality, which was approved by the Senate

Women’s education and training, with a strong emphasis on free education and new university programs Health programs related to the right to abortion and its decriminalization

The Sembrando Vidas project, which provides financial support to rural families to plant trees, in which women are the pioneers The creation of the Women’s Secretariat focused on women’s human rights and their protection against media, physical, institutional and political violence

I could describe Claudia’s government as one that places great emphasis on the situation of women, although it is committed to all people, from young people to the elderly, to offer free and accessible education for all, eliminate violence and corruption, protect the rights of indigenous peoples, promote Mexico towards equitable development, negotiate broadly with all countries and respect the sovereignty of peoples.

Her motto is: “I am not arriving alone, we are all arriving. With our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, with our daughters and granddaughters.”

Sheinbaum defines her commitment to the people as follows: there cannot be a rich government with poor people. Her determination is overwhelming, and she has a daily dialogue with the people. Each day press conference of the week is dedicated to an area of government work: •

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Healthy Living: education on how to live healthily, from food to physical exercise

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•

•

•

Mexican Humanism and Historical Memory: dedicated to emphasizing to the people their human quality, their true value and to reconnect with their essence as a nation, since the US bombardment of discrediting the Mexican people is tremendous.

Women in History: educates about forgotten women who have played important roles in all areas of the country’s development: education, art, politics, the fight for independence, the revolution and much more.

Soft Homeland: shows the diversity of indigenous peoples, their cultural, linguistic and spiritual wealth.

During these press conferences, her government team makes presentations and there is a space for all the press present to ask their questions. There is also one day a week when the opposition’s elaborate lies are dismantled with a segment called The Lie Detector.

Before President López Obrador, no president communicated with his or her people on a daily basis. This direct information from the President is a necessary and important platform for us to really know who our presidents are.

Does she face challenges? Of course, not only internally in a country that has been dominated by men, but in the geopolitical landscape. Being a neighbor of the United States under the new government, which before taking office is releasing continuous threats, from mass deportations to military invasions, is not easy.

President Sheinbaum has not engaged in attacks and responds with kindness, firmness, without attack, but with a clear position: Mexico is a sovereign, free country and will not submit.

Noris Binet © January 12, 2025

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A Brighter World Led by Women

by Juliet Cutler On a sunny Sunday afternoon, it’s relatively quiet in Arusha’s leafy Njiro neighborhood—a place where fancy supermarkets, salons, restaurants, and hotels cater to wealthy locals and expatriates alike. Located just southeast of downtown, Njiro has long been a regional center for Tanzania’s nonprofit sector, which remains robust in the Arusha Region.

Conservation, community development, and social service organizations provide critical services to people in need and advocate for the region’s significant natural resources, which include not just the famous Serengeti National Park but also more than twenty other national parks and conservation areas that encompass nearly one-third of the country’s land mass. Arusha’s Njiro neighborhood serves as a springboard for much of this activity.

As we drive through the neighborhood, imposing gates guard sprawling bungalows and modern offices. Small local initiatives exist side by side with international heavy hitters, such as World Vision and the African Wildlife Foundation. Somewhere between these extremes is a modestsized nonprofit called Solar Sister.

With a regional office in Arusha, Solar Sister works to fight energy poverty in Tanzania and other sub-Saharan African countries by promoting solar energy in places where people live off the power grid and are reliant on firewood and kerosene for cooking, light, and warmth.

As the organization’s name suggests, Solar Sister reaches these remote places by creating sisterhoods of local women who sell solar energy to their neighbors, creating a two-for-one impact by providing economic opportunities for women and bringing clean energy to places where people live in deep poverty and lack access to the power grid.

Solar Sister’s two-story office building is located just a block off Njiro’s main thoroughfare in a quiet corner of the neighborhood. As if harkening to its very mission, the organization’s office building is painted a bright sunshine color. It’s surrounded by lush green trees and plants. Though largely vacant on a Sunday afternoon, the office has a vibrant, welcoming feel, as does the woman who walks up to greet us as we pull into the building’s small, gravel parking lot.

We are here to interview Agness Joseph Porokwa—an accomplished graduate of the first secondary school for Maasai girls in East Africa and 146

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Solar Sister’s program manager in Tanzania. Dressed in a leopard-print top and black slacks, Agness’s hair is cut into a short bob, her fingernails are immaculately manicured, and she wears a flattering, deep purple shade of lipstick. While her appearance projects modern professionalism, Agness’s demeanor is friendly and soft-spoken, her smile warm and kind. As we stand in the parking lot, she introduces herself to the interview team and shakes each of our hands before leading us upstairs to Solar Sister’s office.

While the videographer sets up his equipment, I take in Agness’s place of work—a large, open room with desks and chairs scattered about to create a common workspace. Boxes of solar panels and lanterns are stacked around the perimeter of the room, and promotional materials adorn the walls. I can tell this is a functional, busy place that houses several employees; I suspect they spend as much time here as they do out in the field, well outside the comforts of Arusha’s Njiro neighborhood.

Solar Sister’s success is evident in the vibrant images that lend the room intimacy and purpose. Many women featured in the photos wear orange Solar Sister T-shirts. Some stand with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, big smiles on their faces. Others hold solar lanterns, visibly delighted to demonstrate their use. One image I linger on features a group of children gathered around a table strewn with books. Though the background is dark, the children are studying by the light of a solar lantern.

A poster behind the desk where Agness has taken a seat depicts the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. Even though I do not yet fully understand the work that Agness and Solar Sister are doing in Tanzania, it’s clear that they’re working toward several of these lofty international goals, including “affordable and clean energy,” “gender equality,” and “no poverty.”

Agness watches me closely as I study the images around the room. She’s eager to share about her work, and even before we begin the recorded interview, she starts telling me about the various people and groups pictured around the office.

“We recruit, train, and support women to be the suppliers of clean energy in their communities,” she says as she points to a picture of ten or so women gathered in a happy-looking group. “These are participants in one of our training seminars.”

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I ask her to tell me more about the women in the photograph. She looks at the image as she speaks, and I can tell by the soft expression on her face that she knows these women and their stories personally. “Imagine you are one of these women who wakes up and goes to bed without reliable power. To make dinner, you must start early, because it takes time to collect wood to make a fire. Your eyes sting and your lungs hurt from the woodsmoke every day. You wash dishes in the dark by the light of a kerosene lamp. The burden of energy poverty falls on these women”— she points at the image again—“but at Solar Sister, we are changing this.”

A wide smile extends across Agness’s face and her eyes light up. With this brief introduction to her work, she’s hooked me. I want to know more about how Solar Sister is changing the equation for the women whose images surround us. We’re ready for the interview at just the right moment, and as the camera starts to roll, I prompt her, “Tell me about your work at Solar Sister.”

Her eyes still alight, Agness begins: “I work as a country program manager at Solar Sister Tanzania. We are working across the country with women to eradicate poverty through the clean energy industry.

How do we do this? We have employees in every district. We call them business development associates. Their job is to recruit, train, and support women. The women we recruit live in places without electricity.

Only 63 percent of Tanzania is covered by electricity, so there are many places that are totally untouched. They have no government services or hospitals or electricity. We go there. We spend time with women, and we teach them the benefits of solar energy.” She picks up an orange lantern with a solar panel on top. “For example, this small solar lantern costs 12,000 shillings [about $4.60]. If a woman buys this lantern, she can save on the cost of kerosene every day and use that money for something else.

She will bring cleaner air into the house. She can extend the hours for her children to study. She can have extra hours to do her work.”

Agness points to another image on the wall, this one showcasing five women, each of them holding a different part of a solar system. One has a small solar panel; two hold LED lamps; another has a battery; the last holds a cluster of charging cables. “For a woman who can buy a phonecharging product like this one,” Agness says, pointing to the woman holding the cables, “she can make money by charging the phones in her community. She can charge ten phones each day for 200 to 500 shillings each, and that’s a little bit of income [about $2 per day]. In the village, that’s actually not a small amount of money. It can buy something else to support the family.”

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I quickly grasp the ways in which a single solar lantern or a small solar system can improve life for a woman who lives without electricity.

I want to know more about how Solar Sister is creating networks of women entrepreneurs who are more broadly promoting clean energy in Tanzania, so I ask Agness to tell me more about that aspect of the organization’s work.

“Solar Sister does not manufacture solar products,” she explains. “We buy from suppliers that provide a two-year warranty, so we make sure our solar products are reliable. We buy the products and then sell them at a reduced price to women who are interested in starting clean energy businesses. Our prices ensure that entrepreneurs will make 18 to 20 percent on each product they sell. These women are already embedded in remote communities or places where people can’t afford to connect to the power grid, so they are perfect ambassadors for clean energy. These women are trying to create a change. They are improving life for other women and families.”

She shows me a black bag with a Solar Sister logo on the front. She pulls out promotional brochures, a receipt book, and a cash bag. “Our entrepreneurs get all the tools they need to start a small business. They are trained in a sisterhood group of five to ten women. They go through twelve modules that are designed to help them grow a business while also building their confidence. Every month has its own specific topic.

So, the women benefit personally from using solar power, and then, by creating a small business, they benefit even more. Beyond this, they gain courage and confidence. We build leaders in the community. They inspire each other. We see the difference. We see how women are transforming from one stage to another.”

When she pauses to catch her breath, I find myself so inspired by her work that I can’t help but interject, “Agness, you must be so proud of your work. It’s clear you are changing lives.”

She smiles bashfully and looks away, but her enthusiasm has already said it all. She obviously finds her work rewarding and is delighted to share Solar Sister’s innovative model—one that brings electricity to women but also gives them newfound skills and confidence. I know that Solar Sister serves a population of women who have had few opportunities for growth and success; I suspect the sisterhood model provides a source of encouragement even beyond what I can imagine, and I can’t help but reflect on the sisterhoods that have uplifted me over the years.

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“There isn’t much a group of women can’t do when they put their heads together,” I say to Agness, and we both smile because we know it’s true.

Agness places her hands on the desk in front of her. “Our vision is to see a brighter world led by women,” she says with passion. “That’s what we really want to see. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but that’s the vision. That’s what we want to see.” She nods and smiles, letting a little silence surround that statement.

As a segue into talking about her life before Solar Sister, I ask Agness if her upbringing prepared her for this work.

“The village where I grew up is called Emboreet,” she tells me. “It is in the Simanjiro District of the Manyara Region, and many people there struggle with poverty, so of course I understand the challenges many women face personally. When I was a young girl, I really wanted to go to school, but it was difficult to get money to pay for it. My mom and dad believed in education and wanted me to be educated, but the challenge was income. We had no money. We had no cows. We had no support.

When I graduated from primary school, I was asking, ‘What’s next?’

Fortunately, I was selected for a scholarship at the Maasai Secondary School for Girls. I was among the lucky ones who got the chance to pursue an education and gain other skills. Who would have thought I would go to college and study community and gender development?

Among the Maasai, not many girls get the opportunity to go to school, so you can spot them.”

While it is difficult to gather accurate demographic data about the Maasai, most estimates suggest that fewer than 50 percent of Maasai girls enroll in primary school, and only 10 percent of girls make it to secondary school. The Maasai are one of more than 120 cultural groups in Tanzania, and they remain among the poorest people on the planet.

Maasai women and girls like Agness often bear the brunt of this poverty.

They rise early to milk cows and goats. They cook, clean, and care for children without access to running water or electricity. Many must walk miles just to get the minimum amount of water required to sustain their families. They live in austere, mud-walled homes in places where access to healthcare is limited and preventable diseases are prevalent. Too many Maasai girls still endure female genital mutilation and forced child marriages as early as age ten or eleven, though both practices are illegal in Tanzania.

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These challenges mean many Maasai girls are unable to attend school.

Some are denied access because their families see more value in a dowry than in an education. Others can’t afford even basic school supplies. For many, the workload at home means they don’t have time to study. Yet if you ask most Maasai girls like Agness if they want an education, they will emphatically tell you that they do. They know it is a pathway out of poverty and into a life where they will have fewer challenges and more choices.

In the late 1990s, a group of Maasai elders began discussing how to help their people face escalating challenges in a rapidly changing world. These elders knew that in order for the Maasai people to endure in the twentyfirst century, they would require different skills and ways of being. They believed that the Maasai needed more access to education, and that girls required a special school that would honor their cultural identity and maintain Maasai traditions. And so the Maasai Secondary School for Girls was born in partnership with Operation Bootstrap Africa, a USbased nonprofit that would fund the school’s construction and operation.

In 2025, the school celebrates its thirty-year anniversary. Agness is one among hundreds of graduates who are now advancing positive changes within their own lives, communities, and country. Even with all the progress the school has made in educating Maasai girls, I know Agness is right—there is still more work to be done.

“Those few educated girls, they really need to go back to the community and contribute in a positive way,” Agness says. “This is what I’m doing through Solar Sister.”

Like most graduates of the Maasai Secondary School for Girls, Agness feels her education requires more of her—that with her good fortune has come a responsibility to give back to her community so that more women and girls can have the opportunities she has had.

“In my home district—Simanjiro District—we gave seven midwives these big solar lanterns,” she says. “This is an example of women helping more women. The midwives can help women who are delivering at night. The impact is exponential. In 2020, a donor gave one hospital in every district a solar system. That had a big impact. I’m helping to do something for the community. Even if I’m touching only one person’s life, at least I’m helping. That is my dream for my two children, too, that they grow up willing to change somebody’s life. That is what I pray for them.”

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As we close the interview, I tell Agness how inspired I am by her work.

She and Solar Sister are changing people’s lives across Tanzania—2.3 million of them, in fact, which is the number of people Solar Sister has reached since its work began in 2013. Together, Agness and a sisterhood of women are lighting the way, literally transforming poverty into power.

This essay is adapted from Juliet Cutler’s forthcoming book, Lessons in Hope: A New Era for Maasai Women in Tanzania. In this inspiring collection of interviews and portraits, over twenty Maasai women share the ways education has transformed their lives by giving them the tools to overcome poverty and empowering them to make profound differences in their communities. As graduates of the first secondary school for Maasai girls in East Africa, these thriving leaders now hold positions in education, health care, nonprofits, government, and business. Their stories reveal a veritable cadre of Maasai women working toward positive change within their own culture and offering a compelling, optimistic vision for the future. Proceeds from the sale of this book support education for Maasai girls.

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No, I’m Not Like These Women Victims

by Zefi Dimadama “I’m not like those women. I don’t understand why they tolerate violence from their boyfriends, why they are so weak and passive!” This is exactly what a good friend of mine, Helen, a 40-year-old businesswoman, used to tell me repeatedly.

Helen often emphasized her professional status and independence: “I’m a professional woman, an independent entrepreneur. I have my job, I have my money, I’m strong, and I don’t understand why you keep focusing on issues like equality and women’s rights. That’s enough! Feminism is obsolete. Find something more modern, more interesting, more ‘sexy’ to work on.”

She echoed a common stereotype: “Gender equality? Solved. Human rights? Violence against women? Those issues are practically resolved; they don’t exist anymore.”

A few months later, my phone rang. It was late on a Sunday night. Helen was crying softly. Her voice was trembling, almost a whisper, as she struggled to speak.

Helen had gone on a short vacation with her new boyfriend at a resort near Athens. I knew she was excited about this trip and her new partner.

Through sobs, she murmured, “Help me. Help me.”

“Helen? What are you saying? Calm down and speak louder; I can’t hear you,” I begged her, my mind racing with worry.

“He hit me,” she finally managed to say. “I’m locked in a small room.

I can’t get out. He hit me on the way back from the restaurant, in the car. He slapped me. Then he hit me again when we got to the room.

Punching, kicking—everywhere.”

My heart sank. I was speechless. I called her name repeatedly: “Helen?

Helen?”

She continued, her words broken by sobs: “He beat me and tried to rape me. I begged him to stop. I cried and said no, no. But he wouldn’t listen.

He kept yelling at me, cursing me, humiliating me.”

Suddenly, I heard a crash and a scream. Helen screamed as someone kicked the door of the small room where she was trapped.

“Call the police now!” I urged her. “I’m hanging up to call them myself.

You’re strong, Helen. Hold on.”

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I didn’t know the exact hotel. I hadn’t asked her earlier because I was simply happy for her—happy she had found someone who seemed kind, handsome, and financially secure. Helen had been thrilled about Kostas, her new boyfriend. She believed she had found a loving companion.

This wasn’t the first time I had witnessed a strong, independent woman fall victim to abuse. Stories like Helen’s are far too common. I recalled a recent workshop I attended on domestic violence and its psychological impacts. One of the speakers, a survivor herself, emphasized that abuse doesn’t discriminate. “It can happen to anyone,” she had said. “Strength and independence don’t make you immune to manipulation or violence.”

The statistics support this harsh truth. Globally, one in three women experiences physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, often at the hands of a partner. These numbers are staggering, yet the issue is persistently minimized.

Ten minutes later, my phone rang again. It was Helen. She sounded calm, no longer crying or whispering.

I assumed the police had arrived and she was safe. I was wrong.

Kostas had stopped shouting and threatening her. Instead, he had started apologizing and begging for her forgiveness. Helen opened the door for him. She pitied him.

She called me back to say they were together again. “It was just a bad moment,” she said. “Don’t worry. We’re going to sleep now.”

Her tone was lighthearted, almost dismissive. She laughed as she hung up the phone. I panicked.

I called her again and begged her to leave. “Helen, please, go down to the hotel reception and take a taxi or a bus. Don’t pack your things. Don’t tell him you’re leaving. Just go. You’re in danger.”

“Come on,” she replied, laughing. “It’s fine. It was a misunderstanding.

Kostas apologized. We’re fine. Thank you for caring, but you’re overreacting.”

Kostas even chimed in, laughing in the background and told me “Your friend is in good hands.” I froze. It was almost dawn, and I couldn’t relax or sleep.

The next morning, as I drove to the university, I listened to the radio.

A journalist was discussing the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2025. The principles of gender equality, the elimination of violence against women, and the advancement of women and girls were being highlighted.

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rights,” the journalist declared. “Gender equality is not just another problem to solve; it’s the solution to many global challenges. Recognizing and promoting the human rights of all women and girls is our shared responsibility.”

Her guest, however, dismissed the significance of these issues: “All of that has been solved. Violence against women? It’s practically a thing of the past.”

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, anger surging through me. I thought about the 15 femicides reported in Greece in 2024. Fifteen women murdered because they were women. The patriarchy remains alive and well.

These femicides aren’t just numbers. Each represents a life lost, a story cut short. Helen’s laughter from the night before echoed in my mind, now tinged with chilling irony.

As I parked my car, I reached for my bag and glasses. Just as I was about to turn off the radio, the journalist interrupted the program with breaking news:

“A woman was found dead this morning in Sounio, at a luxury resort near Athens. She was murdered in her hotel room by her partner after a fight. Witnesses reported hearing shouting from the room. The victim’s partner admitted to the crime, claiming he didn’t know how it happened.

He didn’t understand how he picked up the knife or how the room filled with blood.”

The reporter’s voice continued, but I couldn’t process the words. My mind went blank. Helen was gone. She had trusted him, pitied him, and now she was no longer with us.

In the days that followed, her story became another headline, another statistic. But to me, Helen was not just a number. She was a friend, a woman who had once been so confident in her strength that she couldn’t imagine herself as a victim.

Her story is a grim reminder that no one is immune to abuse and that we must continue to fight for a world where such tragedies no longer occur.

Zefi Dimadama, Msc, Phd

Lecturer, Panteion University of Social & Political Sciences Department of International, European & Area Studies

f. Secretary General for Equality and Human Rights of Greece Member of Global Women Network “Leading Women for Oceans” Section 3. Writing Forward

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Kindred Souls

by Adhara Mereles Somewhere along the block, a dog barks nonstop. A heartfelt sound— with the force of a siren there is no off switch for. It’s the night before election day. I wander around my apartment. Restless.

I immigrated to the United States from Mexico with my family as a kid. My brother, a Black girl, and I were the only students of color at school. By the time I reached my forties, San Diego’s colors shined more vibrantly.

The dog worries me—its cries entwined with the occasional howl.

Pleading. Abandoned. An undercurrent of anxiety sullies my blood when I consider the decision America is about to make.

I’ve lived openly as a queer woman for years. But the path to acceptance remains rough for people like me, my trans niece, and so many others.

Our pack lives under the shadow of increasing violence and harassment.

The barking grows louder, then fades, as if the dog’s pacing through an empty pad. Can she sense this epidemic of isolation and loneliness?

Growing up, I fell in love with the allure of Californian beaches and 80s pop culture. Though the country paints a pretty picture, its marginalized communities are unable to exist equally and authentically. Capitalism, the patriarchy and white supremacy swipe at freedom and safety without shame.

She keeps up her yelping, in sync with my thundering heartbeat. Maybe the dog’s yearning for belonging. Can she smell the spears of separation pointed our way? Hate, racism, and sexism on the rise. Reproductive rights in peril. Women in peril.

My elementary school held annual fire and earthquake drills. Nowadays, children practice school shooting drills. People are not born violent, they learn what they absorb. Education in danger. Books banned. History erased. Ignorance praised. We are being defaced.

I want to pick up the pooch and cradle her in my arms, tell her she’s going to be okay, tell her this will pass. She echoes my angst—grasping at hope.

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Extreme weather forewarns climate change is no joke. Extreme denial eclipses America. Lands in need of nurturing, people too. When will we be ready for a future that is female? Guns have more rights than women.

We are the same, the dog and I. Barking ad nauseam. Wanting to shake the world. Wanting to wake people up.

Fear and toxic othering are fueling division. But I believe we can channel courage and optimism. I believe we can trust the light within us to lead us out of this impending gloom.

Later, as the votes reveal devastating results, silence befalls my canine kindred soul and I. Spiritually tethered, we share the grief of our collective consciousness, giving way to intention, compassion and determination. This bitch ain’t done. Hate may have won, yet the fight for love has only just begun. We may rest, but we will not stop making noise.

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What Tries to Kill Us

by Brenda Wildrick The abuse of women and girls is the most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on earth. – Jimmy Carter What has tried to kill us, and is still trying, is violence, is rape, is hate, is cruelty.

The actions of evil men – terrorists, greedy dictators, and ordinary weak cowardly damaged men – are a tsunami crushing and destroying us all.

An attack on any woman, any child, any vulnerable person, is personal, is an attack on us all.

We are not your toys to be mangled for your sick pleasure, crushed under the boot of your absolute control by your tactics of humiliation and dehumanization.

We must stand up for our sisters, as if they were right here, instead of far away.

Because no one is far away. We are all at risk.

As long as any person is unsafe, we are all unsafe.

Rise up, stand together.

Protect each other

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Writers’ Biographies Writing has been part of Mary Kathleen Adams life since she was a child. Forms of writing have included poetry, short stories, travel essays, business documentation, research papers, blogs, and websites.

Her passion is poetry, using words to capture moments and communicate feelings. Originally from Texas, Mary has lived in Europe for 25 years. She is the Human Rights co-chair for FAWCO, an international women’s organization. She is co-author of the book Hope is the Thing with Feathers, Portraits of Human Trafficking Survivors and Change-Makers.

Usha Akella has authored ten books that include poetry, and two musical dramas with publishers such as Spinifex Press, Australia, Sahitya Akademi (India’s Academy of Letters), and Mantis Editores, Mexico. She earned an MSt. in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is the founder of Matwaala (www.matwaala.com), launched to increase the visibility of South Asian poets, and www.the-pov.com, a website of curated interviews. She was selected as one of the Creative Ambassadors for the city of Austin in 2019 & 2015.

Linda Albert is an internationally published, awardwinning poet, essayist, and former theater director.

Her poetry draws inspiration from her academic training in Jungian Archetypal Pattern Analysis, communication coaching, and Neurolinguistics, and explores the evolving roles of contemporary women.

Linda has received prestigious awards, including the Olivet and Dyer-Ives Foundation Poetry Prizes and the Atlanta Review’s International Merit Award for poetry.

Her poetry collection, Charting the Lost Continent: Poetry and Other Discoveries, earned her the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards gold medal in 2021. The book was successfully adapted for the stage and produced in 2023.

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Debbie Allen is a cofounder of Poets Against Racism & Hate USA. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has performed internationally, and her poetry has appeared in various journals and collections. She has served as an associate poetry editor for Poets Reading the News, a committee chair for the Ohio Poetry Association, and a board member for The Watershed Journal Literary Group. Debbie is committed to combating systemic inequities, with much of her poetry tending toward response to injustices. She practices her craft on land originally inhabited by Myaamiaki and Bodéwadmik.

Janice Alper is an active octogenarian who writes poems, personal essays, and memoirs. Her poems and essays have been published in the San Diego Poetry Annual, When a Woman Tells the Truth, The Jewish Writing Project, and in several publications from IWWG. Janice is currently enrolled in the Creative Writing Program-Poetry at Sand Diego State University. You can follow her at www.janicesjotttings1. com or read her memoir, Sitting on the Stoop: A Girl Grows in Brooklyn, 1944-1957.

Rosemary Amato, a former CMA, CISA, CPA, and Six Sigma Green Belt, is a bold changemaker whose global career spans the U.S., Netherlands, and Malta. She advanced in finance and IT across industries before spending 20+ years at Deloitte, serving clients in over 20 countries. Rosemary has served on the global boards of IMA and ISACA, participated in AACSB peer reviews, and currently chairs IMA’s SCMS Scholarship Committee. A board member of the Association of International Women in Malta, she embraces challenge and change while making a lasting impact across borders and disciplines.

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Evelyn Asher uses poetic techniques to tell her personal story wrought with compassion and unwavering commitment to social justice. She thrives wherever she lives and travels, the furthest being cruising five days on the Yangtze River. She cherishes her writing experiences in the Women Writers Guild, Pens Unlimited, Tall Tales Writing Critique Group, Eastern Shores Writers Association, Katey Schultz’s Emerge and Book Club, and High Country Writers.

She is thrilled to be a mentor with a woman in Ukraine which is her ancestral heritage. She is crafting her third poetry collection about immigrant life in the voice of her great-grandmother.

Ellie Bates is a member of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, Polly Hill Arboretum, Cleaveland House Poets, MV Poets’ Collective, New England Poetry Club and Pathways Institute.Her collage work of images and words has appeared at Featherstone Center for the Arts. Her writing has been published in the Vineyard Gazette, MV Times, Cleaveland House Poets: 50 Years and In the Company of Poets, Anthology 2021.Other credits are Covid Monologues MV, PathwaysArts: New Works 2020-2021and the Island Educational Journal: Refocus. Ellie’s photographs and poetry are in her three small chapbooks: Everything Changes, Rooted in Change & A Collage of Poetry Her book, Seasonal Wonderings:Poems for Summer Fall Winter Spring was published by Kelsay Press in 2022.

Diane Bell is a writer living in Minneapolis Minnesota.

She loves exploring the intersection of the physical and spiritual worlds and finding creative means to express those experiences. Her work was shortlisted for the 2024 Craft Literary Flash Prose Prize, appears or is forthcoming in Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts; Bloodlore: A White Stag Anthology, and others.

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I, Sheila Benedis, am an artist and writing is a grounding practice. I use poetry in my work to amplify my woman’s inner voice. I champion empowerment, equality and justice. In the poetry I am submitting, I am cultivating conditions for creativity and care for the world. I am empowering my creativity, self compassion and growth.

Allyne Betancourt is a nonfiction writer, with a focus on life within a Deaf family. She has contributed essays to various magazines, anthologies and writes for her local newspaper. Allyne lives on a small farm with her husband, Raymond, where she tends to her small animals and three gardens. Her current book, “Think Easy? My Story About Growing Up in a Deaf Family,” is in the final editing stage and is expected to be published by summer.

Dr. Emily Bilman is a widely published author of poetry, essays, and short stories. Her PhD dissertation on T.S. Eliot and Paul Valéry was published in 2010.

Her poetry collections include A Woman by A Well, Resilience, The Threshold of Broken Waters, Apperception, and The Undertow, all from Troubador Books, which reissued Resilience in 2025. Her work also includes La rivière de soi and Modern Ekphrasis. Her sonnet “Pathfinder” reached the moon’s south pole via a NASA time capsule in 2024. She teaches literature, psychoanalysis, and creative writing, blogs online, and enjoys sea-swimming.

Visit: www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman

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Noris Binet, born in the Dominican Republic, lives in Ajijic, Mexico/US, is a visual artist, author, poet, psychotherapist, sociologist, environmental activist, and spiritual teacher. Received an honorary doctorate from the International Institute of Human Science in Canada, IIHS/ United Nations, for her community work with women. Published her book Women on the Inner Journey, Healing Racial Wounds, and in several anthologies: A Rooted Heart, Sonoma Writers Alliance, Light and Shadows, Benicia Poets, The Foundation of my Spirituality, Mago Books, Indiana University Press.

She wrote a bilingual newspaper column for La Voz CA. A regular contributor to Return to Mago E*Magazine.

Her Satsang and meditations at: www.norisbinet.org and https://m.youtube.com/@norisbinet Vanessa Caraveo is an award-winning bilingual author, published poet, and artist who has a passion for promoting inclusion for all and helping others discover the power they possess to overcome adversity and persevere in life. She is involved with various organizations that assist children and adults with disabilities and enjoys working with nonprofit groups and volunteering in the promotion of literacy.

Her work brings focus to many social issues that exist in today’s world and has been published in Literature Today Journal, The Poet Magazine, Latinidad Magazine, Poetrybay, Anacua Literary Arts Journal and in multiple anthologies throughout the years.

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Susan Chute is a poet, librarian, book artist, and curator/founder of Next Year’s Words: a New Paltz Literary Forum, where she is known for her reader introductions. Recently, she placed 1st in the CAPS (Calling All Poets) 25th Anthology contest.

Publications include La Presa; Lightwood; Shawangunk Review; Comstock Review; Reflecting Pool: Poets and the Creative Process; and, many years ago, Sinister Wisdom. Her writing also appears on the blogs of The New York Public Library and Women’s Studio Workshop. She holds an MFA in Theatre from the Univ. of Michigan and an MLIS from Pratt Institute.

Anne Cognato is a poet, fine art photographer, gardener and computer programmer residing on Long Island, New York. Her poetry has been published in the Bards Annual, the Suffolk Country Poetry Review and GreenPrints.

My name is Judith Woolcock Colombo. I am the author of two published novels. “The Fablesinger”, a fantasy set in the Caribbean, was first published in 1989 by The Crossing Press. “Night Crimes”, my second novel and first mystery, was published by AmErica House in 2000. My short stories, “The Gasman” and “The Death Of Betty Pinto”, were published under the Amazon Shorts program. My essay, and current submission, The Metaphysical Magician was first publish in 2001 in the Anthology Voices From The Couch. My blog is: https:// judithonwordpresscom.wordpress.com/

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Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for TER and IWWG. Find her poems @ TER, Wildfire Words, Gleam, Hedgehog Press [a.o.] and @ https://www.instagram.com/kate. copeland.poems/ Kate was born in Harbour City, and adores housesitting in the world.

Juliet Cutler is a writer and exhibit designer for museums, parks, and cultural centers around the world. In 1999 and 2000, Juliet lived in Tanzania, where she taught English at the first school for Maasai girls in East Africa. She recounts her experiences during those years in her award-winning first book, Among the Maasai. Twenty-five years later, she illustrates the positive impacts of education on Maasai women in her second book, Lessons in Hope. Juliet regularly returns to Tanzania to support causes that uplift Maasai women and girls. She currently lives with her husband, Mark, near Atlanta.

A poet, artist and photographer, Linda M. Davies has been leading writing and creativity workshops for over thirty years. She’s an active member of the International Women’s Writing Guild whose work has appeared in various publications both here and in Europe. She loves collaborating with other artists and has worked with The Susan Turner Dance Company, sculptor Alton Falcone (Conversations in Red, and the Echoes series), and illustrator Doug MacGregor (Broadsides poetry series). When not traveling, Linda makes base camp on the north shore of Long Island.

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Tiffany Davenport is a native Texan who’s spent the past 28 years in Amsterdam, where she lives with her tall Dutch husband and their equally tall 16-yearold son. For over two decades, she’s worked as a senior copywriter for brands like Ketel One, Doritos, Paula’s Choice and Samsung. These days, she splits her time between commercial work, writing her own screenplays, and translating scripts from Dutch to English for fellow filmmakers. This is her first published flash fiction piece — and hopefully not her last.

Dr. Zefi Dimadama is a Lecturer at the Department of International, European and Area Studies at Panteion University. She holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in the scientific field of Regional Development and Environmental Policies. She has served as Secretary General for Gender Equality and Human Rights of Greece, as well as Director General of the International Center for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS). She is currently President of the Union of Women of Greece and an active member of international networks, as the Global Network “Leading Women for Oceans” (LWO).

Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). Her poetry appears in over 100 journals and anthologies across the US and English-speaking countries. She lives on the North Carolina, USA coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. She teaches poetry workshops online and in person. Visit her at https://www.joannedurham.com.

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Victoria Dym is a graduate of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College with a degree in Humility, a Bachelor of Arts, in Philosophy, from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Masters of Fine Arts, Creative Writing-Poetry from Carlow University. Her two poetry chapbooks, Class Clown, and When the Walls Cave In were published by Finishing Line Press in 2015 and 2018. Victoria’s chapbook, Spontaneous, winner of the 2021 Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge Contest, was published by the West Florida Literary Federation in 2022. Ms. Dym’s full-length manuscript, The Hatchet Sun, was published by Finishing Line Press in August 2023.

Rebecca Evans writes the heart-full guidebooks for survivors. She teaches high school teens in the Juvie system and co-hosts Radio Boise’s Writer to Writer show. She’s a disabled veteran, an avid gardener, and lives with four Newfoundlands and her sons. Her poems and essays have appeared in Brevity, Narratively, The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, and more. Her books include Tangled by Blood (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Safe Handling (Moon Tide Press, 2024).

Caprice Garvin - Caprice’s poetry has been published in Colorado Review, North American Review, Terrain. org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Banyan Review, Lily Poetry Review, Poetry East, The New Verse News, Indolent Books, The Belfast Review Magazine and Writer’s At The Well, and has been archived in the international academic database, Project Muse. She has recently co-written songs with producers Roberto Priori and Jody Gray and the veteran Italian hard rock band, Danger Zone, which may be found on the band’s latest album “Shut Up” (Pride and Joy). Visit Caprice online at www.capricegarvin.com

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Linda Ohlson Graham is a fine art photographer and ecstatic poet who has sailed thousands of miles through the Bahamas, Caribbean, and Central and South America. From 1984–93, she lived in and codirected The J.M.W. Turner Museum in Denver, which was named one of the “99 Finest Museums in America”

by Atlantic Monthly. Named Colorado’s Department of Peace Poet Laureate in 2009, Linda now shares her spiritual and artistic vision through EARTH OCEAN HEAVENS, a mini-guide for humanity’s next era, viewable at earthoceanheavens.com.

Dorothy Randall Gray is author of the bestseller, Soul Between The Lines, Sharing The Same Sky, and numerous publications. An award-winning artist, master teacher and co-founder of Women Writers & Artists Matrix, she is also a former IWWG board member, LA Poet-in-Residence and Hedgebrook Fellow. Her fiction and poetry have been published in anthologies that include Conditions, Sinister Wisdom, Best Black Women’s Erotica2, Spell Breaking, and 2020:The Year That Changed America. Her monologue, Anger, was selected for the Eve Ensler and Aja Monet 2024 production of Voices: A Sacred Sisterscape.

Dorothy has represented the City of West Hollywood for National Poetry Month and recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Faith Swingle Green was born in a small town in upstate New York. Her first collection of poems, “My Prophetic Soul and other Poems’ was published in 1992

by Mellon Press. She has been published in ‘Silhouette’, the Virginia Tech literary magazine, Trolley, the online newsletter at SUNY Albany, and in an anthology, “With Pen in Hand”. Most recently she published a pocketbook of poems, “Seasons of the Heart” with Local Gems Press. Her work has also appeared in the New Writer’s Journal Issues XX 1 & 2.

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Geri Mendoza Gutwein, Ph.D., is a poet, educator, and lecturer. Her poetry has appeared in Fledgling Rag, Libretto Magazine, Green Elephant Anthology, and Dream Anthology, Roots Trunk Sky: IWWG’s Imagination and Justice Meditation-Free Writing Circle and Pasque Petals. A Pushcart nominee, she is the author of three chapbooks: Every Orbit of the Circle, The Story She Told, and An Utterance of Small Truths.

Of Lakota and Mexican-American descent she is an enrolled citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She lives in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota.

Selene Hofstetter is a first-year graduate student in Colorado State University’s MFA poetry program. She graduated from the University of California, Riverside, with a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. She is a lineal descendant of the Lummi Nation, Musqueam Indian Band, and an enrolled Tribal Member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon.

Kimberly Hirsh lives with two dogs and two cats outside Boston, Massachusetts. She is a vegetarian, traveler, writer, and artist. She works in global public health and has traveled to more than 60 countries.

She has published travel essays and essays on interracial relationships and is an executive member of PensAroundtheWorld.com.

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Susan Justiniano | RescuePoetix is a self-taught bilingual, internationally published performing poet, workshop facilitator, teaching artist and recording artist, and a twice honored Poet Laureate: first Puerto Rican Poet Laureate Jersey City, NJ (2020-2022), State of NJ Beat Poet Laureate (2022-2024). She was shortlisted in the 2023 Downtown Urban Arts Festival (NYC) as a first-time playwright, leading to the 2024 Paterson Performing Arts Development Council playwright in residence. An IWWG member since 2021, Rescue has produced on line events for IWWG and participates in committees. She develops a body of work focused on community and social justice. Learn more: https://linktr.ee/rescuepoetix

Marjorie Kanter is author of three books of hybrid short literary poem-like pieces based largely on real life experiences: ‘I displace the air as I walk’, ‘Small Talk’ and ‘Field Notes/Notas de Campo’ and the projects ‘The Saddle Stitch Notebooks’, ‘The Bagged Stories’ and ‘Im/politeness: One Hundred Im/polite Days ‘amongst other texts; she has participated in Public Word Art Installations and Interactive Projects: ‘In-comunicación’ at La Caixa, Lleida, ‘Historias para la Espera’ for La Noche en Blanco, Madrid and ‘Nexus’ a project for Madrid Abierto. Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, she lives in Madrid, Spain. www. marjoriekanter.com

Elsa Wolman Katana is an Israeli American. She has an MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, studying under the late Grace Hartigan. She is a maker with words, collage, photographs, and textiles.

Her calling is to assist others in finding a connection to their own Muse.

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Raised in the north of England, a parental desire to farm necessitated a move to the southwest corner of Wales as a teenager. Out of college, in part to escape, Sarah Blackburn Kehoe went until the map stopped in Alaska and stayed for 32 years. Work as a Physician Assistant/Associate in a small end-of-the-road Alaskan community informs her writing, as well as the return to her British roots in her 50s.

Dr. Kellie N. Kirksey is a Global Wellness Consultant who has used poetry and expressive arts to teach social justice, self-care, mental health, and cultural awareness. Dr. Kellie is passionate about drumming, dancing, writing, travelling the world, cultivating joy, walking labyrinths, learning global healing practices, and encouraging audiences to use the gifts they were born with. She is the author of Word Medicine: Affirmations and Poems to Support our Journey (2021) and Poetry Prose and Miscellaneous Musings (2018).

Her current project discusses the impact of slavery on current psychological functioning. Dr. Kellie is the proud mother of Kelsie, Dominic and Gabrielle. www.drkelliek.com

Juanita Kirton a Black, gay, African American, elder women; earned an MFA from Goddard College. The 2024 1st place winner of Oprelle Publication/Matter Anthology. Recently published in AVOW (American Veterans Women Magazine), Mom Egg Review, Narrative, Persimmon Tree, Stillwater Review, Stone Canoe, Veterans Voices. A member of Women Who Write, IWWG and Women Reading Aloud workshops; a teaching artist Crossing Point Arts, a Trauma informed facilitator for Warrior Writers, conducts writing workshops at Kirkridge Retreat Center. Her chapbook, Letters to my Father, (2020). Juanita is working on her first a full-length book of poetry. Riding her motorcycle keeps her sane.

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Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko-Hong (고현혜) is an internationally published poet, translator, and cultural-curator who champions bilingual poetry and poets. She is the author of five books, including The War Still Within (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). Her poetry appears in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly (The Feminist Press), the Choson Ilbo, and The Korea Times, among others. In 2015, her segmented poem, “Comfort Woman,” received an honorable mention from the Women’s National Book Association. In 2024, Tanya was honored by the Saharawi Women’s Forum in Laayoune, Morocco. She holds an MFA degree from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two awardwinning collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the Seventh Annual Gival Press Poetry Award and recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications internationally, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly.

Her website is www.donnajgelagotislee.com.

Over the years, in between various employments and scholastic endeavors, geographical locations and life events, Elizabeth Dominique Lloyd-Kimbrel (whose car masquerades as a branch library) has published biographical, critical, and scholarly articles and essays in academic journals and tomes as well as poems and creative non-fiction in assorted literary journals (some now defunct, which she hopes was not her fault). Her poem “Anna Kuerner” was selected

by Littoral Press of Richmond, California, as its 14th annual letterpress broadside poem. Her poetry chapbook MATRIMONIES (Finishing Line Press) was released from the gates in 2023.

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I’m Doris Mahaffey (she/her). I reside in Westerville, Ohio, a place affectionately termed as “the city within a park.” I’ve been an economist and a wanna-be writer. Of the two I prefer the second, but the pay is less. I’m currently at work on a novel that takes place in the late 1960s and could be classified as either a comedic coming of age story for septuagenarians or historical fiction for young adult readers.

Disorganization is my superpower.

Lynne A. McNamara feels privileged in her wondrous international career allowing her to wander and live in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia while being gifted with the music of lives lived differently than within her US home. In her mid-life journaling, she saw the poetic arrays in her writing that led to linguistic dancing in poetry. For her, poetry is word art, painting the multidimensional flows of life to share with others in their similar quests for understanding human realities. Her most recent poetry is included in the California Quarterly and Art in Public Places Program (Loveland, CO).

Adhara Mereles was born in Mexico and raised in California. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco and a master’s degree from Columbia University. Her work appears in the anthology, A Year in Ink, Volume 17, and in the online journal, Red Rose Thorns. Beyond prose and poetry, Adhara enjoys photography, playing the piano, and discovering life alongside loved ones.

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Dr. Meenakshi Mohan, an internationally published writer, is an educator, art critic, children’s writer, painter, and poet. She is on the editorial Committee for Inquiry in Education, a peer-reviewed journal published by National Louis University, Chicago, Illinois.

Meenakshi received Setu and Panorama International Awards for Excellence in Literature. Meenakshi lives in Washington, DC, USA. Leslie B. Neustadt is a retired attorney, and a poet and collage artist. Author of The Sustenance of Stars (Kelsay Books, 2024) and Bearing Fruit: a Poetic Journey ( Spirit Wind Books, 2014), she explores the beauty and power of the natural world, and life’s joys and struggles. Her poems have been published in anthologies and journals, including Veils, Halos and Shackles, International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women; Rumors Secrets & Lies: Stories & Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice; and Heels into the Soil: Stories & Poems Resisting the Silence. Leslie serves on IWWG’s board of directors.

Mary K O’Melveny, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent work, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird is an album of poems, art and music available at https:// www.jerryjazzmusician.com/if-you-want-to-goto-heaven-follow-a-songbird-mary-k-omelvenysalbum-of-poetry-and-music/ Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in numerous print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites. Her book Flight Patterns (2023) was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her collection, Merging Star Hypotheses (2020), was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored

by The Word Works. Mary’s website is: https://www. marykomelvenypoet.com.

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Catherine O’Neill returned to her love of writing in her forties as a debut author, graduating from the Grub Street Memoir Incubator program and is presently looking for representation for her memoir Zero Balance: A Journey into the Invisibility of Gambling Addiction. She lives in Massachusetts and advocates for families and friends affected by gambling. She was a guest reader at Tell All Boston and is published at Write Angle, Write Launch, Irish Central Newspaper and Medium. Both Sides Now is an essay that was previously partially published at Covey Club.

Kathryn Katafiasz Pepper holds an MSEd in Counseling from Duquesne University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University. She has been a counselor and life coach, taught personal growth and writing-related seminars, and now devotes her time to teaching meditation in the county jail, writing fiction and essays, and completing a revision of her novel, Storm Dreams. When she’s not off visiting her adult children or on a different adventure, she resides near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband and dog, Yoshi.

PS PERKINS P.S. most currently was Founder of the University of the District of Columbia’s Artist Collective. She is past board chair of the Poets on the Green Line and major contributor to recently released Poetry Anthology, POEMS FROM THE GREEN LINE, 2023. Recent poetic contributions also, POETRY X HUNGER, 30 for 30 Poets (Mike Maggio), the D.C. Hill Rag, Prince George’s Community College Reflections Magazine 2018 - present, and the poetry/prose/visual art compilation Hallelujah Anyhow, volumes 1 and 2!

She is published in several poetry anthologies as well as scholarly writer of Human Communication articles and books.

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Suzanne Lima Pickford is an educator, as well as an artist-in-residence on Prudence Island in R.I. She holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and Literature and publishes an annual literary magazine for teenage writers and artists. Her work has been published in Grown and Flown, The Providence Journal, and IWWG Network.

Judith Prest is a poet, photographer, mixed media artist and creativity coach. She has published 3 poetry books: After and Geography of Loss (Finishing Line Press, 2019, 2021) and Grafted Tree (Kelsay Books, 2023). Her poems have been published in Misfits, Rockvale Review, Mad Poet’s Review, Chronogram, Akros Review, Earth’s Daughters, Up the River, Fredericksburg Literature and Art Review, Upstream, Waxing and Waning, and in 17 anthologies. She is a longtime member of The International Women’s Writing Guild, Hudson Valley Writing Guild ,Foothills Arts Council and is a poetry partner with Institute for Poetic Medicne. www.spiritwindstudio.net Adriana Rocha was born in Bolivia. She is a psychologist who has been writing for five years and was published in three languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. She believes in the healing power of art, and she has found in it, both a way of expression and reflection.

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Desirée Rucker is a multidisciplinary artist who tells stories through words and video. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from LIU Brooklyn in 2015, with work published in Brooklyn Paramount, By the Overpass, and others. Her poetry appears in the Writers Studio 30th Anniversary Anthology and Resources for Joy. Her work was featured in 50 in 50

by Frank Silvera and the Billie Holiday Theater. She appeared in the documentary Spread Love, and her film credits include Hairstory, The Theater, and hundreds of Culture Matters TV episodes aired on BRIC Free Speech TV since 2001.

Linda Leedy Schneider, a psychotherapist in private practice and poetry mentor who was awarded The Contemporary American Poetry Prize by Chicago Poetry, has written six collections of poetry including Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist and edited two poetry anthologies, Poems From 84th Street and Mentor’s Bouquet. Linda leads a poetry workshop for The International Women’s Writing Guild’s Annual Summer Conference and founded The Manhattan Writing Workshop. She believes a regular writing ritual leads to discovery, authenticity, personal growth and even JOY. Jawahara Saidullah is a writer and columnist based in Düsseldorf, Germany. Her novels include The Burden of Foreknowledge (Roli Press, 2007) and Where the Rivers Meet (Tara Press, 2023). Her nonfiction book We Are…Warrior Queens was released in 2024. A former columnist for Mid-Day Mumbai, her work reached over a million readers. Her short stories and essays appear in Panorama, Open Road Review, Rind Literary Journal, and more. She is the creator of Kissa: A Story Podcast, sharing voices from the Global South.

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Margaret R. Sáraco is a storyteller, writing at the intersection of fiction, memoir, plays and poetry.

She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won several Honorable Mentions in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. Margaret is the author of the poetry collections If There Is No Wind and Even the Dog Was Quiet (Human Error Publishing.)

Myra Shapiro, born in the Bronx, returned to New York City after forty-five years in Georgia and Tennessee where she worked as a teacher and librarian and, with her husband, raised two daughters. She is the author of four books of poems, most recently Crossing the Street to Paradise, and a memoir, Four Sublets: Becoming a Poet in New York. Her poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry. She serves on the Board of Directors of Poets House and teaches poetry workshops for the International Women’s Writing Guild.

Barbara Simmons is a Wellesley College and The Writing Seminars ( Johns Hopkins) alumna, and a Counseling Psychology and Education graduate of Santa Clara University. A retired educator, she continues to write in order to share her wonder and hope.. Publications include Soul-Lit, Capsule Stories, Journal of Expressive Writing, Writing it Real Anthologies. Her book, Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums, was published in 2022; chapbooks, Sweeping, Not Swept Away, in 2022, and Hopefully Before their Expiration Date in 2023.

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Jessica Genia Simon began writing poetry at age seven. As a teenager based in Rockville, MD, she competed and won a spot on the 2001 Brave New Voices D.C. National Youth Poetry Slam Team. She earned a B.A. in English and Textual Studies and Policy Studies at Syracuse University and her M.S. in Education from University of Pennsylvania. She works at Brady: United Against Gun Violence, volunteers as a writer-in-residence with Day Eight and lives with her family in Silver Spring, Maryland. Built of All I Shape and Name (Kelsay Books, 2023) is her first poetry collection.

Kashiana Singh (http://www.kashianasingh.com/) serves as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society, Managing Editor of Poets Reading the News, and has authored five collections of poetry. Kashiana’s TEDx talk was dedicated to her life mantra of Work as Worship. Her newest collection called Witching Hour was released with Glass Lyre Press in September 2024.

Megha Sood is an award-winning Asian-American author, poet, editor, and literary activist from New Jersey. Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Her four poetry collections include the award-winning (My Body Lives Like a Threat, FlowerSong Press, 2022). She has received support from VONA, Pen Women, Dodge Foundation, Kundiman, and Martha’s Vineyard Writing Institute.

Her 900+ works have been featured in Poetry Society of New York, MS Magazine, NYPL, Pen Magazine, PBS, WNYC Studio. Her poems and anthology “The Medusa Project” have been selected to be sent to the moon in 2025 in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. Link: https:// linktr.ee/meghasood

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Lisa St. John is a writer living in upstate New York.

She is the author of two poetry books, Ponderings (Finishing Line Press) and Swallowing Stones (Kelsay Books). She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee for her poem “War is a Human Child” from The Poetry Distillery. Lisa is published in journals such as 2Elizabeths, New Verse News, The Poet’s Billow, The Ekphrastic Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Light, Entropy Magazine, Poets Reading the News, Glassworks, and Chronogram. Lisa believes that art is hope and that there is beauty in possibility. Find out more at lisachristinastjohn.com.

Sara Stegen is a Dutch poet, equity advocate, and non-fiction author who writes about family, neurodivergence, and the landscape she lives in.

She has published in Spelt, Ranchlands Review, The Brussels Review. Sara has an MA in English from the University of Groningen and is a 2022 Rural Writing Institute alumnus run by best-selling authors Kathryn Aalto (Writing Wild) and James Rebanks (The Place of Tides). Home is a boulder-clay ridge in the northern Netherlands where her bike shed contains eight bicycles. Sara works for Research Centre Art&Society and is working on her first poetry collection and memoir about autism.

A native New Yorker, Robin Mayer Stein wrote and illustrated her first book at the age of five. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Paterson Review, the new renaissance, Home Planet News, Urthona and 50 Give or Take. She received an Artist’s Grant in Poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She speaks about her children’s book, “My Two Cities: A Story of Immigration and Inspiration,” at schools, libraries and community centers. She lives in Newtonville, MA and loves dancing, swimming and sharing stories with Stella, Maya and Liam, her grandkids.

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Brett Summers taught English for fifteen years and has always written alongside her students. This year she is reinventing herself as a writer by writing daily, submitting regularly, and by reading a lot of what writers have to say about writing. She lives in Providence, RI with her family (furred and human).

Elita Suratman emigrated from Singapore with dreams of following in her father’s footsteps as a writer. A master’s degree, family and a twenty-year marketing career later, she’s discovering her writing roots, working on a cross-continent memoir on her flyway toward self-identity. Read excerpts in Beautiful Things, Flights, Herstry, Beyond Words, Cutbank Literary Journal and Five Minutes. You can find more of her work at elitasuratman.com.

J. Catherine Tetrault is a mother, teacher, writer, feminist, and advocate for children’s mental health and well-being. Her poetry is influenced by observations of the natural world and the mindful experiences of nomadic travels in the U.K., Europe, and India.

When she’s not wandering the planet, she’s walking the mountains and coastlines of New England. She publishes a regular Substack blog at jctetrault77. substack.com. Her poetry has been published by the Scottish Book Trust, One Page Poetry, and the London Writer’s Salon. This poem first appeared in a Spring 2024 exhibit at the Glasgow Women’s Library.

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Tracey Thiessen’s life began in London, England. She then lived through ‘The Troubles’ of Northern Ireland, experienced the scenic four seasons of Winnipeg’s prairies and finally settled in the urban city of Toronto, Canada. This globetrotter existence helped create her eclectic poetry and stories. Tracey received a Recognition of Achievement in Creative Writing from Sheridan College, Oakville, ON and belongs to The IWWG and The Ontario Poetry Society. She is a Golden Grassroots Honorable Mention Chapbook Winner, 2nd runner up winner for the Wingless Dreamer anthology ‘Darkness in Me’ and her work has been published by several Wingless Dreamer anthologies, The White Cresset Arts Journal and Verse Afire.

Cathy Thwing has been teaching writing at community colleges since receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. You can find some of her recent poems in Blue Heron Review, Meniscus, the Orchards Poetry Review, and Whitefish Review. Gardening, practicing cello, and swinging in hammocks fill her life’s other nooks and crannies.

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in publications for both adults and children, including New Ohio Review, River Styx, Hobart, Portland Review, Potomac Review, South Dakota Review, Italian Americana, Highlights for Children, and Cricket. The author of the children’s poetry collection The Hungry Snowman and Other Poems (Kelsay Books, 2019), Tina has also contributed to multiple anthologies, including The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press, 2019) and the middle grade horror anthology The Haunted States of America (SCBWI-Macmillan Publishers, 2024). Tina earned her MFA from Manhattanville University, where she was editor-inchief of Inkwell.

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Deedle Rodriguez Tomlinson was born and raised in the Philippines. Her poems, reflecting her peripatetic life, appear in Under The Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry, the online travel publication Wonderlust Travel, Live Encounters, the literary issue of Silliman University Journal, as well as Tomas, the University of Santo Tomas literary journal.

Her first short story, touching on Philippine mythology, was published in Mom Egg Review and was nominated for the 2023 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She is Program Manager for New York Writers Workshop.

Nichole Turnbloom is a poet, yoga therapist, amateur potter and workshop facilitator. She currently works for a nonprofit where she provides individual and small groups sessions to those affected by trauma and violence. She has an MFA in poetry and has completed additional training through the Institute for Poetic Medicine. You can read her work in Acumen 108, Westbrae Literary Group 2, Spillwords among various other venues.

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of many poetry volumes, the most recent being We Are Not a Museum, winner of New York Book Festival award and Exile is Not a Foreign Word (Copper Coin 2024). Her literary criticism book is Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics (Rowman and Littlefield 2024).

Camille Westermann is a poet and writer, born in the USA, raised in the Netherlands and educated at King’s College in London. She studied English Literature and Film, and also enjoys writing screenplays. She loves travelling, trying new cuisine and spending time with friends and family, who are spread all over the USA and Europe.

Writers’ Biographies

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Simone Muench, recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship and multiple arts awards, is the author of seven books, including The Under Hum (2024), cowritten with Jackie K. White, who has also authored three chapbooks. Muench directs the Creative Writing Program at Lewis University and edits for JackLeg, Tupelo Quarterly, and Jet Fuel Review. She co-hosts the Hungry Brain Sunday Reading Series. White, former editor at RHINO and Jet Fuel consultant, brings collaborative and editorial expertise to their shared work. Together, they champion innovative poetry and nurture emerging voices through teaching, publishing, and community engagement.

Brenda Wildrick, poet and visual artist, member of Columbine Poets of Colorado, the Arizona State Poetry Society, Colorado Poet’s Center, and IWWG, has published poems in various anthologies. Her first book, On the Train for Somewhere Else, and her coloring book with haiku were published in 2023 by Wild Rising Press.

Linda C. Wisniewski is a retired librarian and journalist living in Bucks County, PA, where she volunteers at the historic home of author Pearl S. Buck.

She is the author of a memoir, Off Kilter, a time travel novel, Where the Stork Flies and an essay collection, Old Women and Other Strangers. Visit her on the web at www.lindawis.com.

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WRITE FORWARD: A Constellation of Voices

PUBLICATIONS

Published by IWWG Press, 2025 Edited by the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) Designed by Alexandra Chilikina IWWG is deeply grateful to the The de Groot Foundation for their generous support of this anthology. The Foundation’s mission to recognize, promote, and cultivate the work of emerging and underrepresented writers aligns powerfully with IWWG’s commitment to uplifting diverse voices and building literary community. We share a belief in the power of stories to shape, heal, inspire, and educate.

We also thank the I’m Still Here Foundation, the Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, and the Kettering Family Foundation for supporting our writers and the transformative act of storytelling through publishing.