Photograph courtesy Danielle Banhart Danielle Banhart is a writer, editor, and events curator. She is cofounder of the NYC-based literary community, Village of Crickets, and teaches creative writing at Adelphi University. Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism is the first in what she hopes to be a series of projects celebrating the power of collective voices in literary and other arts. She is currently writing her first novel, and spends her free time gardening and washing out her children’s paintbrushes.

Photograph courtesy Jeremy Paschall Iris Mahan is a writer, translator, and devourer of all things books. She is cofounder of the NYC-based literary community, Village of Crickets, and is a poetry editor at Flock Lit. She works in the literary arts world as a nonprofit development specialist, most recently at PEN America and The Center for Fiction, and believes in the power of fundraising as means of activism.

after

after Danez Smith, with a line by Ol’ Dirty Bastard by Safia Elhillo if you read this in red maybe i didn’t survive every day i go missing one eyelash at a time or sometimes all at once & in the heaven for blackgirls gone away we walk in & out of rivers & wear our good silks our good brown velvet bodies dripping with sunlight we sprout leaves & no one decides for us to cut or keep them we bear fruit & self-sustain we tread water we pluck the moon for our hair & another grows in its place we are sistered or unsistered but never again to a dead thing somewhere a rope turns & turns & our feet never touch the ground somewhere a song plays & plays & names us with each touch of a needle to our round black surfaces i’m hanging out /partying/with girls/that never die

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

by Kim Addonizio If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to someone you loved opened them for someone you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

Photograph courtesy Danielle Banhart Danielle Banhart is a writer, editor, and events curator. She is cofounder of the NYC-based literary community, Village of Crickets, and teaches creative writing at Adelphi University. Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism is the first in what she hopes to be a series of projects celebrating the power of collective voices in literary and other arts. She is currently writing her first novel, and spends her free time gardening and washing out her children’s paintbrushes.

Photograph courtesy Jeremy Paschall Iris Mahan is a writer, translator, and devourer of all things books. She is cofounder of the NYC-based literary community, Village of Crickets, and is a poetry editor at Flock Lit. She works in the literary arts world as a nonprofit development specialist, most recently at PEN America and The Center for Fiction, and believes in the power of fundraising as means of activism.

after

after Danez Smith, with a line by Ol’ Dirty Bastard by Safia Elhillo if you read this in red maybe i didn’t survive every day i go missing one eyelash at a time or sometimes all at once & in the heaven for blackgirls gone away we walk in & out of rivers & wear our good silks our good brown velvet bodies dripping with sunlight we sprout leaves & no one decides for us to cut or keep them we bear fruit & self-sustain we tread water we pluck the moon for our hair & another grows in its place we are sistered or unsistered but never again to a dead thing somewhere a rope turns & turns & our feet never touch the ground somewhere a song plays & plays & names us with each touch of a needle to our round black surfaces i’m hanging out /partying/with girls/that never die

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

by Kim Addonizio If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to someone you loved opened them for someone you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming