POEM BY CLAIRE BUSWELL
Editor’s Note: On Jan. 25, 2026, ICE agents near Seattle, Wash., detained a father who was driving his 2-year-old son to daycare. In the backseat of the man’s car, the toddler sat alone in his car seat for 30 minutes, waiting for someone to pick him up after his father was taken away.
Writer Claire Buswell wrote her poem in response to the news story. p>
A COLLECTION BY AJ JOHNSON
Already—before the recent changes—one of the things living in France had taught me was a story of America’s greatness, as seen from the outside. The way France’s newscasters follow our elections with careful explanations of the electoral college and graphics showing states turning blue or red. The way the world follows each pronouncement uttered by our leaders, because those pronouncements will affect that world, the world outside America that doesn’t vote for U.S. leaders but lives in those leaders’ downstream impact.
A COLLECTION BY AJ JOHNSON
Already—before the recent changes—one of the things living in France had taught me was a story of America’s greatness, as seen from the outside. The way France’s newscasters follow our elections with careful explanations of the electoral college and graphics showing states turning blue or red. The way the world follows each pronouncement uttered by our leaders, because those pronouncements will affect that world, the world outside America that doesn’t vote for U.S. leaders but lives in those leaders’ downstream impact.p>
POEM BY VAGRANT MOON
PHOTO BY JC JOHNSON
POEM BY RACHEL JOY WELCHER
PHOTO BY EJ BOWMAN
POEM AND DIGITAL IMAGE BY GLORIA NEWTON
After the fires in Maui, Hawaii
FICTION BY KAITLYN MCCRACKEN
Looking at the wren hopping surprisingly close to her shoe, the girl had the same thought she often had when thinking about birds:
My goal in life is to have the confidence of a Manhattan pigeon.
Except that this was not Manhattan, and this was not a pigeon. Alex (that was the girl’s name) remembered reading London travel articles the week before and finding an article about above-ground train stations using trained hawks to ward off pigeons.
FICTION BY DENISE CAMPBELL
IMAGES BY KAMI RICE and JC JOHNSON
“Wake up, Indigo! Time to start this journey you come here for.”
Aunt Mercie’s singsong call rushed in with the sound of the rooster crowing. We woke to a washed-out, downcast morning. But by the time Salome and I loaded the crocus sacks of groceries into the back of the pickup, the sun had put in an appearance. She’d landed in Kingston two nights before and had to make the trip with me to visit my sisters—Samira in Bog Walk and Claudine in Lional Town. Salome and I had grown up on the same street in Norbrook, in the hills of Kingston, and gone to high school together before attending universities in different parts of the world. Even so, we were bonded friends for life in the way Catholic high school compatriots often are.
POEM BY GHAZAL AL-MADADHA
