Status Updates From The Pushcart Prize XLVIII: ...

The truth of the matter is that black people have a 12,000-year history of noble, sacred, and dignified relationship to soil that far surpasses our 246 years of enslavement and seventy-five years of sharecropping in the United States.

"If you're not affected by climate change today, that itself is a privilege," said climate activist Andrea Manning.

BLACK LAND MATTERS:
CLIMATE SOLUTIONS IN BLACK AGRARIANISM
by LEAH PENNIMAN from TRANSITION MAGAZINE

As a species, we suffer from a sort of collective amnesia brought on by a phenomenon called "shifting baseline syndrome." Shifting baselines are what allow each new generation of people to be born into a world that appears "normal" to them, even as their grandparents loudly lament "the way things used to be." Those lamentations die with the older generation, and the new generation begins the process over

DREAMING OF WATER
WITH TIGER
SALAMANDERS
by SAM KECK SCOTT
from LONGREADS

SELF PORTRAIT AS MARY MAGDALENE IN THE STYLE
OF GENTILESCHI
by KAMERYN ALEXA CARTER
trom TORCH

“Fight week” by Laura Van Den Berg

“Two breaths” by Christina Rivera Cogswell

“Everychild” by Alice Christie

Breathtaking: “backsiders” by Kathryn scanlan published as memoir by Paris review; as full length novel by new directions (“kick the latch”). I wish I had known scanlan was the ersatz translator/transcriber and not the narrator but an incredible story nonetheless 🐎

First short story (by Lydia Conklin) is set in PHL told from POV of a 47 yo person born as a woman at a critical juncture in their journey to sharing with others that they are nonbinary. Well crafted and thought provoking.