WHITEWASH

by Kay White Drew

“President Donald Trump ordered his administration Friday to install signs in front of the Smithsonian Institution’s U.S. History museum telling visitors that some of the exhibits are inaccurate, his latest move to reshape how the story of the United States is told.” —AP, July 24, 2026

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —James Baldwin

 

To paint over all our contradictions and ambiguities,

   pain and suffering, with a topcoat of “patriotism.”

To leave an entire people ignorant

   of the truth of our origins.

To erase whole populations whose very existence

   seems to offend him.

To pretend that all the theft and rape and slaughter

   was in self-defense/for a good cause/never happened.

To feed us fractured fairy tales that dismiss and distort,

   turn our history into a children’s recess war game.

To ignore our differences, discount the ways

   we treated each other in the past and to this day.

To rob us of our adulthood: our ability to apologize

   and forgive, to extend compassion and mercy.

To trim the corners, smooth the rough edges,

   obliterate the grain of the wood is no less than

To utterly destroy its character.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in various anthologies and print & internet outlets including Gargoyle, The New Verse News, and Second Coming. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband. Reading and spending time in nature keep her sane(ish) in these difficult times.

RAINBOW COAT

by Irene Axel

President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day of the second term, made it official policy: transgender, nonbinary, and intersex identities would no longer be recognized by the federal government. And, in turn, federal agencies started removing the questions that once measured SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] characteristics across approximately 360 data collections. —Instinct, February 19, 2026

A newbie gay sitting in my office

and the intake form said ???

next to sexually active

Girl, I see you.

And when she says I'm here for birth control

I whip out my rainbow pen to take notes and say

my usual normalizing speech

about the benefits of BC past preventing pregnancy

and we settle on a good plan to get to

NO MORE PERIODS

and when she starts to get up I say

hang on my dear what about a pap smear

you are 21 and due

and they say... but I'm well you know???

and I say—gently—aware of the white coat

covering my pride tattoo

you still need cervical cancer screening

and they shuffle their feet and bolt with a

KTHXBYE to go pick up their pills

but at least they were in my office

and now—we won't even know—

how many newbie gays

think they don't need

a gynecologist

when everyone with a cervix

needs the right

rainbow

gynecologist

Author's note: The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology cannot tell you how the rate of cervical cancer differs in the queer versus the straight population because they do not have enough data, but the ACOG does say that the risk factors for cervical cancer are more prevalent in LGBTQ patients and that ongoing research is needed. In addition, of course, LGBTQ patients may face significant obstacles in getting acreening—particularly transmen who may have a cervix and may not feel comfortable going to a gyn office to get a pelvic exam or pap smear. How are we in the field supposed to understand this underscreened population when federal policy works to obscure them?

Irene Axel is a queer OBGYN and a poet based in California. Her work has appeared in One Art: A Journal of Poetry.

DEAR PREZ

by Barbara Loots

Yes, there are certain legends

   you aim to stand among:

Caligula and Nero,

    Hitler and Mao Tse Tung,

Attila and Genghis 

    and Stalin, for a few—

But the dumpster of world history 

    will pile some shit on you,

Until, like all things rotten,

    you sink into the slime,

Soon buried and forgotten 

    in the lightning speed of time .

From towers and casinos,

   your name will be erased,

Your merch and memes abandoned,        

   your gold decor replaced. 

Your “legend” will be murky 

   with cruelty and vice, 

And, as you’ve often put it, 

   that isn’t very nice. 

Barbara Loots is retired but not retiring in Kansas City, Missouri. In addition to appearances in literary magazines (eg. I-70 Review, Pulsebeat) and anthologies (eg. Love Affairs At the Villa Nelle) she serves as book review editor for Light Poetry Magazine online. Three collections can be found on Amazon. 

A PRAYER FOR THE LIVING, FOR OUR COUNTRY: AFTER THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, AUGUST 2024

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

 

in response to Deborah Digges’s “The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart”

 

Let the wind break through

the walls of our chests

draw out curdled breath  anger

from past reckonings.

 

Let the wind race through the chambers 

of our hearts   cleanse the pathways  

erase the stench of hatred 

strip away the detritus of ridicule.

 

Let the wind eddy through us 

through small openings  

dissolve the particles of despair

that clog the beating heart.

 

Sweep them away, sweep

away passivity   turgid like

the air after a tropical storm.

Pointless static gone from our brains.

 

Clear out the darkness in  

our house of gall  darkness hardened like dried

blood   until we are again open-hearted

joyous   vessels of infinite worth.

 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many journals including Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review. Her poetry volumes include We Speak in Tongues; She had this memory (the Edwin Mellen Press), Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press), and Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows, co-written with Tana Miller (Kelsay Press).  Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize.

JUNETEENTH WORDS

by Sally Zakariya

Arlington County [VA] workers power washed away Black Lives Matter chalk art in front of a home in the Boulevard Manor neighborhood this morning. An outraged neighbor posted on social media about the removal of the chalk art, which featured words and phrases like “There comes a time when silence is betrayal,” “Justice 4 All,” “MLK,” and “BLM.” A portion of the art was on the county-owned sidewalk and road, while the rest was in the home’s driveway. “I am both saddened and outraged. My friend and colleague at Ashlawn has had a formal complaint made about her daughter’s chalk art on the driveway, sidewalk and street in front of their home,” wrote Dana Crepeau. “I spoke with the Arlington County employees, who did not want to remove the chalk but were told they must. I asked permission to post their photos.” —ARL now, June 19, 2020. Photo Credit: @dcsingerdc/Twitter)

There comes a time when silence is

betrayal.  –Martin Luther King Jr.

Justice for all–wise words chalked
in bright yellow down the driveway
spilling onto sidewalk and street

Words we must heed in these days
of reckoning, of reassessment
of long-delayed reparations

Black lives matter–words washed
away by county workers with power
hoses on this day of all days

Saddened and outraged say neighbors
who grab chalk and paint to make
words bloom from house to house

Silence is betrayal–it’s time
for us all to speak up

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is Muslim Wife (Blue Lyra Press, 2019). She is also the author of The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology Joys of the Table. Zakariya blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.