I was honorably discharged from the United Air Force in the summer of 2005 and suddenly found myself unemployed. A few weeks later, I was homeless. Dominant economic theory suggests that the economy becomes unstable […]
Author: TRR
Once, I Shot a Man Right Between the Eyes
Following orderson the battlefield,it was kill or be killedmy sergeant said,no different thanwhen he taught meto thrust and parrywith fixed bayonet.The young soldierwore thick glassesand looked a lot likeone of my classmates.Sergeant claimedGooks don’t belongto […]
The Things I’ve Stopped Trying to Stop
for my nonverbal Autistic son The word recovery goes off like a bomb, exploding for weeks, months, years until there’s nothing left but ash. A wasteland. Suppurated skin and canned foods riddled with BPA. Arsenic […]
Attempting to Define My Relationship to Black History Month
If you’re an educator, you might be celebrating Black History Month by assigning Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth, maybe Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. If you’re not confined by district restrictions and reading lists, […]
Close to the Heart: Learning the Chinese Characters
怒: anger influxes when slavery eclipses the heart愁: worry thickens as autumn sits high on the heart闷: depression settles when the heart is shut behind a door忘: forgetting happens when there’s death on the heart忍: […]
TRR Editors on Hope, Justice, and Activism in 2020
I keep thinking about Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde—what it means to revise history, why it’s important to understand the difference between poetry and rhetoric. Along with the poetry of Rich (and Sexton and Plath, […]
New Slave
The Washington Post reports that a total of 992 people were shot and killed by police in 2018. Similarly, there were 986 fatal police shootings in 2017, 962 in 2016, and 994 in 2015. A […]
Femicide
a Found Poem from BBC News on International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women They marched in Chile,red hands painted across their mouths.They covered their mouthswith purple hands in Argentina. They dressed in black […]
Word for the future: ACTIVHISTorian
Over 150 years ago, The Revolution’s Elizabeth Cady Stanton told women: “I challenge you to dare and do anything.” I don’t know that she ever considered “becoming historians” part of her challenge, but she might […]
Why I Believe Christine Blasey Ford and the Rest of Us
I don’t remember the name of the colleague who almost strangled me. Not his first name. Not his last. I remember he had a wrestler’s body and that he could vault like a gymnast over […]
