The managers of Lunch Ticket all agreed that issue 26 needed to have a theme, and that theme had a responsibility to call for work relating to what we are seeing in society. We wanted a theme that resonated with Antioch University MFA’s mission of advancing “racial, social, economic, disability, gender, and environmental justice,” and we felt it was time to take a stand, to let others know our thoughts and feelings on today’s state of affairs, that we stand in community with those fighting against the various systems of oppression and those demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Writing feels impossible now.

Necessary, but impossible.

I don’t want to try making deep metaphors right now. I don’t want to inch my way to some profound realization, hoping the reader is inching along with me. Just writing those words, the poet in me felt inclined to add a metaphor to the previous sentence, as if everything needs to be earnest and pretty.