you didn’t hear our cries you didn’t see our dead you didn’t feel our pain

yet you hear our guns yet you see our rage yet you feel their pain

our homes destroyed our food wasted
our water tainted our women raped our children dead our men slaughtered

yet they cry out the wrong name free israel
free israel
free israel from what

Abstract

dilute.
to make it thinner or weaker to make it digestible
dilute.
to make me thinner or weaker i want to be digestible

i look like a fool holding a diluted heart out to the masses begging for someone to consume me
but when they do, they never finish
they mustn’t spoil their appetite they tell me they’ve barely taken three bites.

It’s my turn
I step into a room, a dull white
I watch my brother on that bed
one channel then another
wires drape from his arm
I know white, we
know white, but not this shade
the white of our porch in the night
illuminating the grass it stood from
we run, chasing little sparkles
our hands becoming cages
for those tiny bugs of glow
the white of innocent and ignorance
From that bed
he turns his head looking up at me
I catch a glimpse of that white
The yellow would fly from our palms

I carry too many postage stamps with me—
everywhere I go, I have no regret of it
There could be a chance I stumble upon a post office
and I could write to you every time I do,
even with you right beside me
Intertwined in ink and evergreen’s sacrifice,
words could never dry up in my bleeding heart;
poised and pounding exclusively for you
I would pull out my ribcage and necessary bones
just to makeshift you a mailbox for my prose

From a young age, most of us are taught to fear a specific kind of shadow: the “monster” lurking in a dark alley, a depraved stranger waiting to pounce. We build our lives and our institutions around the comforting belief that if we stay in sunny spaces like university campuses or with family and friends, then we are safe from these monsters. We assume these foundational spaces are neutral havens where safety, truth, and reason prevail. However, this focus on external monsters is a dangerous distraction from a much more uncomfortable reality.

Did you know that Detroit is home to the oldest Black ski club in the world? The Jim Dandy Ski Club (JDSC) was founded in 1958 by Frank Blount, William Morgan and Reginald Wilson to increase minority participation in skiing and snowboarding.

Radar, American barn owl ambassador, Cleveland Museum of Natural History Wildife Center, Oct. 24, 2025. Photo by Alex Gray

Michigan is home to a brilliant array of wildlife. Although the state has suffered ecological damage over the years, conservation efforts have helped restore native species, such as the beaver. Once extirpated, or locally extinct, from Michigan due to the fur trade and habitat loss, beaver populations have been on the steady rise since 2008 through reintroduction efforts and conservation surveys.

It was five months after Donald Trump’s second inauguration before Americans returned to the streets in protest of his administration’s growing misdeeds.

The first No Kings protest occurred on June 14th (~2,100 separate events) with an estimated 4.5 million people attending. The second was on October 18th (~2,700 separate events), with an estimated 5-6.5 million people in attendance. Depending on methodology, No Kings, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, and the Women’s March in 2017 (also in opposition to Trump) rank as the three largest protests in U.S. history.

Across the small lunch table in our break room, John was trying to dismantle a mechanical pencil that somehow broke at his desk. His attention was fully focused on the pencil, reminding me of someone trying to defuse a bomb. However, mine kept drifting to the email that we had gotten over the weekend.

Our boss, Matt, announced that he had to lay off a few employees in our department for budget cuts, though he never said who. The whole office was on edge ever since the email came through. Causing people to try and overachieve in their tasks.