The vicuñas prancing
the narrow ramp in hoofed obedience—gangplank
to heaven, gangplank to cage—the lions with their
ruffled, comic faces
From 'While the U.S. President Throws A Military Parade, I Stand in Front of El embarque en el arca de Noé'
by A. Teague
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
This country couldn’t, really couldn’t, spell freedom with a q, yet here we go again. Quietly quaking. Killing
loudly. Spelling birthright like never here.
___
From 'On Inauguration Day, which is also MLK Day, I Consider America as a “Mouse Pie”' by A.Teague
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Deep freedom is the freedom to transform the state of one’s soul, self and society. Transformation is the organized emergence of a fundamentally distinct reality from that which presently reigns.
From 'Nourishing Deep Freedom' by Aaron Jamal
#LitMag #Freedom
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
This photograph of broken cement and an art installation was taken in a city park in Buenos Aires.
'Giving Comfort' by Sherry Shahan
Shahan has spent decades wandering the globe as a travel journalist, quietly watching the world and its people from behind. Her collages have appeared in Rattle, Josephine Quarterly, Orion’s Belt & elsewhere. #Photography
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Litany for Change
Change the wars in the middle east
wiping out the children in the streets
dressed in grey rags playing with dirt
and sticks and with pebbles
Change the insatiable hunger of the rich
for diamonds and dollar bills and oil to eat and to drink
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
"The Non-Breeding Option being exercised more and more pervasively of late demonstrates that Mother Nature can be kind. This contemporary system of Hers embraces traditions like:
contraception, sterilization;
same-sex marriage;
abstinence, celibacy..."
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
"I wanted to know whether immigrants and refugees—especially those who might look, believe, think, or speak differently—still fit in the United States of today, our so-called 'nation of immigrants'...”
From 'Why Are They Here?' by Peter Chilson
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
My mother told me anytime I see a mariposa monarca it is one of our ancestors, drifting with the breeze without restrictions. And still, I question why we have to wait until death to be free.
From 'Untitled (Trabajadores)' by Daniel Gonzalez
#Poetry #LitMag
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
She stood stretched in the air, as if she
Was winged & knew just how to fly
Childish, dark, second-rate wasn’t her
She meant to be long, golden, blue eyed
➡️ Red Gravel/Free Across the Roof-Top
by Susan Terris
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
I am the 1st and only featured poet at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine's Medical Conference at the U of AZ. I lead Against Disease: Poetry of Resilience, Th and Fri for MDs & P.A.s from all over the nation. I'll use Refugee, (Red Hen)-- poems I wrote during Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer.
Thank you to our @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social readers, our venue hosts, & everyone who attended the reading on Friday! It was a great success. Special thanks to Teri Hairston for hosting, and RaeLynn Gallagher for her photos and video!
youtube.com/watch?v=z9cecUfokpg&feature=youtu.be
🗓️ Reminder: Submissions for our next issue are due March 10, 2026.
🖋️ We welcome poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid work, visual art, and multimedia submissions from those rooted in activism, spirit, and justice. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to submit. #Poetry #Art #LitMag
One more week to submit to this!
🗓️ Reminder: Submissions for our next issue are due March 10, 2026.
🖋️ We welcome poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid work, visual art, and multimedia submissions from those rooted in activism, spirit, and justice. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to submit. #Poetry #Art #LitMag
Super stoked to have a poem in this stellar issue! Thanks to everyone at @whaleroadreview.bsky.social, especially @katiemanningpoet.bsky.social for giving my poem a perfect home!
But you don’t sail aimlessly either. Unlike what some ill-wishers say, imprisoned spirits who envy your fluidity, you know exactly where you want to go, and every stroke of your oar is a reaffirmation that this is where you are headed, here and now.
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Join us for an off-site reading during the #AWP2026 conference! March 6th, from 6-8pm, at the Black Genius Art Show. ➡️ 15 readers will read their work from "Taking Liberties" & "On Freedom" editions of @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social
@anniefinch.com @beingpoetry.bsky.social @elegystreet.bsky.social
We welcome poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid work, visual art, and multimedia submissions from those rooted in activism, spirit, and justice.
🗓️ Submissions open January 1, 2026
✅ Submissions due March 10, 2026
📑 Issue to be published May 2026
🔗 aboutplacejournal.org/submissions/
You love your home / but leave it
J.W.M. Morgan is writing a novel as a series of linked stories about the inspiration of the religious mystic slavery abolitionist John Brown.
📖 Read Morgan's text: John Brown: Only the Messenger, in the latest edition of About Place Journal.
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Each night we count about the same number
& those are just the ones with backbones
& we assign more value to anything with a spine
Tonight in politics they’re all exoskeletal old as dust
& perhaps the jellyfish is just the second largest animal without a heart
oil on canvas, winged person. Icarus Reborn (feel the burning light)
🖌️ Icarus Reborn (feel the burning light)
Joseph Laurro's recent works take the form of resilience. Perhaps a myth rewritten in defiance of fate or the freedom of a swimmer late in life. Meditations on movement—turn to folklore, science, and the sacred.
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Abstract personage, entitled 'Dancing with Fireflies/down here below'. oil on canvas, by Joseph Laurro.
🎨 Dancing with Fireflies/down here below
by Joseph Laurro
Laurro searches while painting, making visual decisions directly in the process. His work is visceral, open-ended, allowing anything to feel possible. Recent works take the form of resilience. aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Pretrial Case Management: The Weight of 1.5%
(for the underpaid, overwatched,
and underestimated)
They gave me a 1.5% raise
as if I wouldn’t notice the
extra weight of my silence,
as if the decimal point could
polish the edge
of my exhaustion.
Amanda Reavey
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
The call for the next issue of About Place Journal, "The Ground Beneath Us: Place, Power, and Resistance," is now open. We would love to have your work!
🗓️ Submission period: January 1 to March 10, 2026
🖋️ Editorial team: Amanda Ngoho Reavey, Seth Copeland, Nora Boxer & Beatrice Szymkowiak. #LitMag
Holding Tight to All we Love in an Underground Shelter by Lori Schreiner oil on paper, 12″ × 10″, 2024. 2 people holding a cat.
You love your home
but leave it, visit when
shells cease and soldiers
go to military tents
beyond the concrete
tons of Ukrainian grief.
From 'Epistle to Liubov Tymchenko'
by Theresa Senato Edwards (poem), Lori Schreiner (painting)
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
Cutthroat Journal Logo. About Place Journal Logo
Exciting news! On March 6th, at 6:00pm, Cutthroat and the #BlackEarthInstitute @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social are holding a reading during the @awpwriter.org conference at the Black Genius Art Show. We hope that you can join us.
Turned Away, painting by Lori Schreiner. Two people with their heads in hands.
Young twins, somber eyes
below scuffed foreheads. The artist’s painting holds
you amid the ship’s sway before disembarkment
from a porthole you’ll never stop looking through.
Poet - Theresa Senato Edwards / Artist - Lori Schreiner
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
And there, face down on the carpet of an old Victorian apartment building that had survived the 1906 earthquake, he realized something: He had entered a new world.
_
From 'Pan Francés,' by Mauricio Ernesto Ramírez, a Salvadoran American artist and scholar.
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
River at sunset. Image by SimoneVomFeld from Pixabay
Churches constructed
along riverbanks,
helped with waterborne escapes,
becoming havens for all
who entered. Finding strength
through faith, within
the hallowed walls, worshippers
found solace there that no one
could ever take away.
-Marjory Wentworth
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...