Photo by Lois Nantais
Uproar invites writers of all genres to submit their works written in consideration of our monthly theme. Once per month the moderators will select the best submissions and publish them here. See “About Us” for submission criteria. We are limiting the number of times we will publish work by the same writer to three per
For this theme, think of things, people, ideas left behind. It can also take the form of new beginnings. We are looking for varied and memorable pieces. Deadline: November 30, 2021.
Aanii! Boozhoo! A welcoming salutation to strangers whose long sojourn by jiimaan , driven by billowing clouds, has brought them to our shores. Come, rest upon our mats, shelter yourselves in our lodges, renew your strength with food, quench your thirst with clear, pure water. Creator’s gifts are yours as well. No! Not ours as
Dear Friends, What to be made of situations like these, With precedence most refused to see? When righteous anger now takes place. Where were you when wolves (viewed as sheep) were crying for wolves? Why is it we get acknowledgement now – when their bodies are no longer even cold? How to reconcile from this
Deciduous 2020 In North Hollow we know it usually happens this way. September meanders. A solitary maple in Hubbard’s meadow transforms red before we detect any changes in the canopies hovering the Hollow’s dirt roads. The air chills. In creeps October. Kaleidoscopic colors stain the Hollow’s sky while the maple in the meadow taunts us,
The World is On Fire It’s Hotter Than It’s Ever Been British Columbia’s forests are ablaze burning centuries of growth killing innocent animals threatens the communities the very fabric of the civilization that produced the pollution and caused the greenhouse gases which raised the temperature of our planet. The wind blows plumes of acrid smoke
Atmospheric Pressure Let forgiveness come in like breath I did not mean to draw. Let it flow, propelled by the pressure of the entire atmosphere being greater than that of my own lungs. Let forgiveness draw into me by force, thrust and crammed in like a deep, satisfying breath like a yawn mid-sentence that you
They say there was a time when the weather was always good and no one got sick. Animals were strong and plentiful. Was it so because they believed it? They say white man’s magic is stronger than Inuit magic. They say the animals no longer have power. They say the shamans have gone, have spirit
To my exes and estranged, yet to budge from a grudge – to those who are absent to those who resent, to those who are distant with distaste: I would like to invite you to tea forty years from now when we are old, wrinkled and wringed out by the world by those things that
(for MT) You teased, when we were girls, That my love of books and daily mass Over boys meant that I must Like girls. And I despaired for my baby soul For a week; Begged my bemused pastor For forgiveness; Tried holy water to rinse The wrongness away, Til I begrudged you The joke. Someone,
https://youtu.be/DAP59RPZoMg *Shorter version: https://youtu.be/iZ1Q9J4EBIw *Written in honour of the many children who never returned home from residential schools in Canada. “it was the land” by pj johnson Poet Laureate of the Yukon. it was the land no one knew the evil men could do behind closed doors no one spoke of it no one said
Look It Up They were always there the rumors, the stories Look it up Hundreds, no Thousands of children choices expunged, futures erased Look it up thousands of children who never came home dying alone and afraid at the hands of their protectors The ones who came to save their souls Look it up They
That Which Is Not Said By Chitra Gopalakrishnan 977 words, fiction, original and unpublished Akhila, a midwife, in her small village of Pugalur in Tamil Nadu, knows of the promiscuity of making, animated, animalistic, noisy, agonizing and even violent sometimes as it is, just as she knows of the assaults of unmaking, of its unspeakable
I Won’t Tell You Where This Place Is You’re on the logging road, extracting here from where. The dump’s a steam table for the bears, all-inclusive heads below the sneeze guards. The snowploughs are berthed in the works department yard, overgrown monkey bars hard by are a tetanus factory. Here a field with wooden crosses
Uproar welcomes submissions of poetry, prose, spoken word, video and mixed media on the theme “Reckonings and Reconciliation.” For reckonings, think about Every Child Matters, climate and environmental issues, debts owed, what goes around comes around, fallout from decisions made or consequences. For reconciliation, think about making things right, acknowledging the truth. This can be
Uproar is pleased to present six very different responses to our theme of “Plots and Schemes”—which admittedly was not the easiest theme to work with. We thank everyone who took the time to submit a piece and hope you’ll consider submitting to our next theme. Watch for information in the coming weeks. Please scroll down to
Prayer for a Friend Lost to QAnon your rage, it reverberates beyond what the human ear, the living earth herself can safely process, or mend. you must let your own ears find again even the softest chord resounding the planetary heartbeat – 7.83 hertz. let these words stifle the shouts of: save the (fictional) children
Digital Revenge The passwords of my Bank accounts shall get buried with me & no skeletons will remain. My self-centered children might guess the names of my dream girl (Deepika Padukone) & childhood crush (Martina Hingis) but will never be able to know about my special character. They shall keep sending pleas to heaven but
The Darkness as Night Whisperer I wouldn’t turn on the light, The darkness said, there’s no need. I’ll overwhelm you, I’ll keep you guessing, That’s just the way I work. Each day in the dark Is a death. In the course Of your life, you’ll die Many deaths. You might As well give up now
The ladder The head mason of the demolition squad shouted the labours to look for the bamboo ladder a tall one about 10 feet The sprawling centuries old mansion needed dozens of ladders but the team had been managing with only one which went missing The workers felled some casuarinas and made a make shift
An Instance Of Karma It was a hot August night. Jill was working hard at the local convenience store, and her husband, Jarvis, was working hard also—busily digging her grave in the back yard. He just knew she had been cheating on him. Not that he had any proof. It was the way she smiled
Here in February’s grey I bleed away, Red run into the snow. So many years from home I, here, a fugitive A captive too. The home I had gone away This one not mine, not quite. The whisky jack mocks me The “caw caw” and my soul crawls Into the frozen ground. I will die
MY SWAMP TIME I was barely surviving in Louisiana, unpleasantly and unsuited, a land as shifty, unstable, as a drunken father, where no frog, no gator, ever took a vow of silence on a long hot night, where I couldn’t step outside my door without some critter gnawing on my flesh, and all in the
A Descriptive Linguistics of Isolation Verbs of motion will be the first to go—well, not go which has long gone the way of disappearing into idiom. No, we will lose the careful ones: disembark, sojourn, trek, take leave. Perhaps, even, arrive. There will come a day when we will believe all movement is rooted into
