Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
Children cough, wheeze, inhale the gas, and rub burning eyes in the capital city through January. Inhalers are in demand. The government talks about creating artificial rain to clear up the sky.
(nonfiction)
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
“We can recite the Preamble here,” my mother said.
“Who would hear us?” I asked.
“We can say it to the sky.”
(fiction)
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I hope the water of Lake Michigan knows the water of your body like kin. I hope there is soil under your nails, that the light of necessary fires burns luminous in your corneas.
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I tasted only / freedom, opportunity, knew little of /
all the difficult work my body would / endure to exist here, examine patriotism.
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
in America under a big chandelier that fills my chest with ice
Blond women selling their hair injure their faces to produce
an altered shapeliness, their lips a pert woodland scene
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I am longleaf pine, soybean
and cotton fields. I am not American.
(poetry)
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
Her father had always believed in fairness, in giving people a hand up instead of—or maybe in addition to—a handout, in the kind of society where the strong should lift up the weak.
(fiction)
The third place winner of ACM’s second nonfiction contest, and part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
This woman, with her light touch, the woman at the clinic who held my hand during the procedure, the clinic staff, and the women who shared their stories, have given me something I seldom encountered before in life—kindness without expectation or judgment.
This is the first in our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
Unhappy with the garbage they were given, here they all came to exchange it for different garbage, and to perfume the warm December air with exhaust.
(fiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 