On this May Day we dedicate the first issue of Rabble Lit not only to the Haymarket Martyrs Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg but also to the other thinkers and leaders who dedicate(d) their lives to the struggle including Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene V. Debs, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Voltairine de Cleyre, Alexander Berkman, Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Luigi Galleani, Joe Hill, Margaret Sanger, Helen Keller, Paul Robeson, Sid Hatfield, Ammon Hennacy, Utah Phillips, Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Elaine Brown, Peggy Terry, Stokely
Category: ISSUE 1
Hold the Fort/ Jen Fitzgerald
Hold the fort For we are coming… I.W.W. Battle Song Mallet men of manifest destiny keep time; women waulking tweed keep time; rhythmic stomps, knocks of cloth on plank; a song; if we still raised our voices like progeny; like singing lineage; the fluid life of memory; inheritance; in time; with time; in step; […]
How to Disappear/ Kaj Tanaka
Someone called me late in the evening to let me know. My last obligation here was finally dying. I walked out into the night, down the shoulder of the highway toward the nursing facility, and on the ground, the partially evaporated crust of brittle snow. When I crunched through it, the neighbor’s dog started barking […]
Di sotto in sù/ Hannah Cohen
Your cheek brushes against the soft ear covering of your headset. You put it on. It’s early Sunday morning, and there are hardly any calls. You sit in ready for thirty, forty minutes without interruptions. Clench your teeth out of boredom. Spin around in your chair. Clean the dust off the keyboard. You should […]
The Waitress/ Kai Harris
“So, well done?” I roll my eyes, digging my heels into the sole of the too-small shoes that grow hills on my toes. I got here this morning at 7:45 AM, the typical start time for an Opener, and now it’s 6:45 PM with no end in sight. I need the extra money, but I’m […]
In a Far Away Land/ Margaret Elysia Garcia
They must keep them somewhere, these fathers of sad girls. They are locked Mr.-Murray-tight in a column somewhere on dark distant planets far away à la Wrinkle in Time. Or perhaps we hope they are. They are trapped somewhere, maybe under falling debris from earthquakes, maybe under the weight of their freedom. They’ll […]
Two Poems/ Isaac Mason
Ralston Crawford Photographs the Negroes of Dryades St. c. 1950 What most interested him was the play of light on their dark skin: a shine or patina, a field upon the field. At the Dew Drop Inn, the San Jacinto Social Club, the dancers and musicians, posed engaging problems of framing and composition. In […]
Nelta and the Wolf/ Tom Weller
The rumble alerts Nelta that Frankie Farber and the white wolf are on the move. It starts like distant thunder: low, ominous. It grows louder, more insistent, more high-pitched with every click of the second hand on Nelta’s watch. When Frankie Farber’s truck passes Nelta’s house, the noise blossoms, fills the entire block, a mechanical […]
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