Lacy Crawford’s memoir Notes on a Silencing speaks to the ways gender, privilege, and power silenced Crawford twenty-five years ago. When Crawford was fifteen years old, she was lured to a boys’ dormitory one night, pulled from beneath the night shadows, and sexually assaulted.
My sister Nancy and I have become used to answering the door to strangers. Since arriving a week ago, people we don’t know have shown up bearing sympathy cards, plates of cookies, and casseroles. They also brought a story or two to tell us about some adventure they had shared with my father.
But today we are too busy to welcome callers. The severe winter storm predicted to descend in twenty-four hours has shortened our time for being in Arkansas. Noon tomorrow is our deadline for starting homeward if we hope to stay ahead of the bad weather. My husband, sister, niece, and I are down to hours to get the house ready to close up and for each of us to pack the chosen keepsakes we are taking.
by Lauren Rose burnt bush skeletons like a haze of unbrushed hair ohoo a dead deer, she says as we drive past it and never think of it again Lauren Rose was born on Misawa Air Force Base in Japan in 1999. She is a senior at Sierra Nevada University studying biology, creative writing, and outdoor adventure leadership. She currently…
hail mary full of grace,
I sit in a pew
head bowed
dress torn
drinking her whispers
the lord is with thee.
by Bruce Craven Willie Nelson’s band on the road in the early days, with Bush, Day, Nelson & English, rode in a ’47 Flxible Flyer bus. Surly Paul had tooled saddles, racketeered, showed he would learn drums, but still pimping — a Waco bad-ass. The drum secret? “Don’t count”, Willie said, “just feel it.” Paul kept drumming, carried a blade,…
“Pack up all your dishes,
make note of all good wishes…”
sang the Texan, Guy Clark, talking
about leaving Los Angeles for a more simple
life. “Don’t cry now,” he reminded Susanna, love
is a gift, perfect, hand-made. The tune? L.A. Freeway.
Clark got a song-writing contract, left for Nashville.
His L.A. landlord had chopped down a grapefruit tree with deep roots.
I didn’t strike the law, didn’t brawl, but fall, 1980, I did rebel: “No Nukes!” The right kind of coup d’état!
Summer ‘81, I’d break rocks in the hot sun, dig ditches; choose pay-days as my right kind of coup d’état.
After that freshman year, my political rage would fade. I played Ultimate, smoked weed, eyed love,
but at Lawrence-Livermore Labs in 1980, I grabbed at a chance to fight in the right kind of coup d’état.
A plague A call for survival Mortality rates Numbers Too large to name The lost souls of The unclaimed Wisdom stripped Forget Remember Normal new normal Listless numb-M Milicent Fambrough is an author from San Antonio, Texas. Milicent has been writing since her childhood. Creativity has always been encouraged in her family. After a long time in the working world,…
A 10-Minute Play
Cast of Characters
BLUE A Blue Hydrangea
PINK A Pink Hydrangea
CAROLE The Great Gardener (optional voiceover)
GEORGE The Great Gardener’s Husband (optional voiceover)
Scene
A backyard garden.
Time
Late spring/early summer.
Lights up on a garden. A hydrangea bush with multiple heads of blossoms is seen center stage, all of them pink except one, which is blue. The blossoms are asleep. The sun rises at start of play waking the blossoms from their slumber.
PINK
Good morning world.
BLUE
Good morning sun.
PINK
Good morning dirt.
BLUE
Good morning butterfly.
PINK
Good morning little ants.
BLUE
Good morning Lilies and Roses and Jasmine.
PINK
Good morning Cherry Tree, good morning Kale!
BLUE
Good morning family.
PINK
(turning toward BLUE) Good morning – OH MY GROVE!
BLUE
What is it?
PINK
What happened to you?!
You are on mute, nestled in front of the computer screen, filled with boxes of blank, ivory faces. This is the usual though. You present on alternative assessments for students during a pandemic.
Nonchalantly, you say; I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, but traditional grading is a form of colonization and white supremacy.
She privately messages you that she is not offended, but how is the grading system related to white supremacy?
You tell yourself, you knew you shouldn’t have said anything, that people don’t want the truth, but prefer to live in a phantasy world of disillusionment.
Either way, you email her links on pedagogy and approaches to teaching English composition to international and multicultural students. And because you’re always the lone token, representative for blackness, you’re scheduled to fight the power and discuss those equity inclusion essays and articles, constantly doing the work for whiteness.