Summer

2026

Editorial by Megan Douglass: Still Waters Run Deep: Cultivating Collective Conscious & Conscience

Movement. This is a word that gets bandied about regularly. It is also one that isn’t always so clear and carries many meanings. Meditation. This is a word that we… Read More

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Valerie Jean: April 2026 – The People’s Potluck

In the fall of 2025, the federal government came to a halt, unable to reach an agreement on a national budget. By October, word spread across the US that, beginning… Read More

Baba Wayne Curtis Edited by Kristian Davis Bailey: Artist Statement -“Driven by the Movement”

I don’t like explaining my work. I like to leave it up to people to decide.I like to joke that their interpretation is usually better than mine. If I have… Read More

Raina Rising: Movement Meditations

Writer. Birthworker. Abọriṣa Abolitionist. Mother. All of my identities are grounded in birth, transformation, and new ways of being. In my youth, I considered myself an activist. As a younger… Read More

Hoda Z. M. Amer: Dreams Of

In 2017, artist Barbara Fox (BF) designed a coin for the state of New Jersey, celebrating immigrant families as they enter through Ellis Island in pursuit of the American Dream.… Read More

Mary Kamal Gagnon: White Grief

Mural by Mary Gagnon located at the Artist Village in Brightmore, MI. I grew up in East Dearborn, the daughter of Arab immigrants, learning early that my body was always… Read More

Julia Cuneo: A Movement Family

My earliest memory is of a red metal wagon, a little rusty, covered in “No Scab Papers” bumper stickers. My childhood best friend and I remember holding hands from atop… Read More

Owólabi Aboyade: Dear Young Detroit: “a foundation ain’t the answer”

Featured article from the "Future Beyond Billionaires" exhibit held at Swords into Plowshares Peace Gallery. I’m writing this to you because you love Detroit; you build communities of care and… Read More

Abraham Paulos: The War Ant App

Sacred Spaces- Art from the Detroit 2050: Future Beyond Billionaires Exhibition

In Winter 2025, Riverwise partnered up with our friends at the Swords Into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery for the Detroit 2050: Future Beyond Billionaires exhibition, which ran from November… Read More

CHii Thee Last Poet: We Have Had Enough

Featured article from the "Future Beyond Billionaires" exhibit held at Swords into Plowshares Peace Gallery. We have had enough of your governments We have had enough of your schools We… Read More

Josmine Evans: Healing with Hibiscus – Refreshing Mind, Memory and Movement with Tea

Editor’s Note: This recipe is a part of a series graciously offered from the community inspired kitchen of Josmine Evans, founder of the Detroit based Indigo Culinary Co. We hope… Read More

Breanna Krywko: Motor City

They demolished our neighborhoods so they could put up highways. They put up highways so they could build and sell cars. They sold cars so they could build and sell… Read More

Haikus By Eric

The Hydra Mutual Fund: Centering The Solidarity of Choice

Abortion may be protected in Michigan, but protection has never guaranteed access. For many people across the state, getting care is shaped by cost, distance, clinic closures, stigma, and the… Read More

Erin Posas: Every Day

This poem was written on a day when I was supposed to be doing grad school homework. I felt too distracted. I had spent much of the semester processing the… Read More

Marilyn Lowen: Detroit Elder Haiku

I miss the fist Joe miss my parents, grandparents & the Bob-lo Boat Note: Detroit Poet Laureate jessica Care moore recently invited Detroiters to write haiku for our city, so… Read More

John G. Rodwan, Jr. Poetry

Weather Report Unlike white men wearing short pants in Midwestern winter, wholly unworried that the car might not start – no waiting for buses with these guys – and confident… Read More

Valerie Jean Blakely: The world is burning, and all I want to do is watch the birds.

I like to be very still. Very quiet and listen to them sing. Then I am not thinking about Genocide, ecocide. Drones, bombs, and war. I am most certainly not… Read More

Larry Sparks: Make The Past Serve the Future

Benni Aho: The Paris of The West

She is bass lines and sirens. She is your relaxing reward for a day of hard work. She slaps the back of your head when you say something stupid. She… Read More

Bryce Grubbs: RAGE → LOVE

When I sit cross-legged in a handstand in contemplation on action - my action - anger spills onto my living room floors. Movement was spurred by anger, an anger that… Read More

Bill Wylie-Kellermann: (Un)Forgotten: Memory as Resistance and Resurrection

Think Detroit in the 1930’s: religious hate radio is being invented here - broadcasting white supremacy and antisemitism; corporate industrialists openly embrace fascism and turn guns first on the homeless… Read More

Interview by Erin Posas: “Detroit Got D Power”: From ghettotech to transit justice, artist DUANE is making big moves.

Meet DUANE: Still smoldering from the late March 2026 cover of the Detroit Metro Times, working with Godmother of House, DJ Stacey “Hotwaxx” Hale, catwalking to open a fashion show,… Read More

Keeping Memory: How Storytellers Respond During Urgent Time: A Conversation with Cornetta Lane Smith and Ifayomí Chistine

A recent executive order targeting exhibits deemed “divisive” or “race-centered” has placed institutions like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture under pressure—raising urgent questions about how… Read More

Ava Ballew Poetry

Whatever You’ll Let Me You are not an easy person To come by, that is. Like a warm day in February, Melting the top two layers of compounded snow.… Read More

Josmine Evans: Collard Greens and the Politics of Resilience

Editor’s Note: As an offering to the Riverwise Community, over the next four editions we will feature a special recipe and it’s story from the community inspired kitchen of Josmine… Read More

© Safara Parrott: Eulogy for a Stone Fruit Tree

I woke up to find you already kissing the ground from which you were raised /blood rush and overwhelmed / I did nothing/ but let out a small earnest sigh… Read More

Gigi Boyd: Gathering The Pieces

The night after the results came in, I sat alone, a heaviness pressing against my chest. The air felt different, colder, chauvinistic as if the sun had burned through the… Read More

Madison Katrina Flood: Naked Like Water

Naked Like Water unlearn and remember you can swim sinuously surrender to serendipity breathe simultaneously… Read More

Monica Isaac: George Jackson

Monica is a mixed media artist living on the eastside of Detroit. Recognizing art as a tool of education and resistance shapes my creative work. Specifically, I use Film photography… Read More

Tomas Garberding: The Emerald Dream

Lush emerald surroundings sing their tune in the morning A betrodden but comforting scene, peaceful times Soft and sensitive conversation taking place, fresh with an evoking sensitivity The trip is… Read More

John Telford: ‘ZEITGEISTIAN WISHES THREE’

Birch Kemp: An Experiment in Hope

Land. Instead of holding it back let’s give it back. What does it mean to hold land in a bank? Land Bank? What a perverse concept. However, Land Bank is… Read More

Hrishika Makker: Invincible

I am broken pieces of diamond, Broken, but still shining in the dark They managed to break me To carve Words I don't want to believe onto me Switched the… Read More

Andrew Kaplowitz: Home Sick on Saturday Night

“May we all heal at the speed of land” -meital yaniv The sound of the bath running blends with the pitter patter of my fingers on the keys. A cup… Read More

Ru Colvin: Wisdom

You ever think of how wise trees must be? Some of them have been here for hundreds of years.. can you imagine the stories they’d tell if they could talk?… Read More

Kristian Davis Bailey, Feedom Freedom Growers, and Ghazzah Comrades: iamWe – A Cross-Pollination Trip from Detroit & Ghazzah to Puerto Rico

In early January, I booked a last-minute ticket to Puerto Rico with one of my closest friends and comrades - RG. At that point, RG had suffered through three months… Read More

Jenny Teed: Charity Hicks Memorial Tree Reflection

I have deep gratitude for Hadassah Greensky for including a stop at Charity's Tree, as part of the Water Walk on Waabizii Mnising (also known as Belle Isle) as part… Read More

Hadassah Greensky: Indigenous Peoples Day in Detroit

Detroit, Michigan — otherwise known as Waawiyaatanong — where the curved shores meet, the area between Windsor and Detroit — along the Detroit River corridor, occupied territory of the Anishinaabek.… Read More