The Delivery Man
The unremarkable office, home to two ancient wooden desks, collapsing file cabinet and ever-present aroma of oil emanating from the uniforms worn by Glenn Ray and his two employees, looked out over two weathered fuel delivery trucks parked in the gravel parking lot. Each one, rusty red and blue, covered in dust and grime, carried …
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Three Poems
Brown Fields One by one by one, they take The hollow factories down. It gives The sons of sons of sons Of workers work to do. They don’t Just blast or bash the buildings all to pieces: The job is difficult and careful. First, the guts come out, and then The skin comes off, sheet-metal …
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Call for submissions
We’re looking for stories that cut through the noise — from people living the contradictions of this moment: layoffs and rent hikes, ICE raids and border patrol crackdowns, automation, strikes and small acts of defiance, survival and solidarity. If you’ve seen or lived something that speaks to how working-class people make sense of these times, …
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Whatever It Takes
it is a warm spring afternoonin the politically drunk 1950sin the little Virginia mill townstuck like a bird’s nestin the fork that splitsthe James and Appomattox riversboth rivers slapping their mouthstogether in a rough wet kisschurning and swirling the tidearound the high banks of City Pointinheriting their tidal swoon and swayfrom the inland Chesapeake Baythe …
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Morbid Curiosity: Reviewing Jarrod Shanahan’s Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help
I’ve been a fan of Jarrod Shanahan’s work, but only with his new essay collection Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help: A Decade of Rebellion, Reaction, and Morbid Symptoms, published by PM Press, did it occur to me just how long I’ve been reading him. Well, I guess it’s been a decade. I …
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Refinery Reflections
One night in March of 1983, I had dinner on the stove and was building a fire when the phone rang. It was the foreman Charlie from the ARCO Refinery at Cherry Point, Washington. I was living in Bellingham then, about thirty miles away, and supporting myself by painting houses and working the occasional shutdown …
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From the Archives
Plowshares into Swords: John Brown and the Poet of Rage: An Appreciation of the Work of Russell Banks
The novelist Russell Banks died on January 7, 2023. We are publishing this appreciation of his work by Beth Henson that first appeared in Race Traitor #10 (Winter, 1999). Beth does a wonderful job describing Russell Banks’s “voyages” through the discontents of people’s daily lives. The Hard Crackers editors are especially thankful to Beth for agreeing …
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COVID, protest, and now fire: Portland at a tipping point
The past four months in Portland have felt like nature doling out warning slaps, demonstrating the fragility of all of our systems. In the midst of years of far right groups mobilizing and marching in the city, months of militant and bold demonstrations against police violence, and after COVID had arrived earlier, our local and national …
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