Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of our times, and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.
I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a genderqueer bisexual disabled Latinx writer because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of an oppressed group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times (WHICH ARE ESPECIALLY TERRIBLE IN THE U.S.A. RIGHT NOW–make no mistake, the current “presidential” administration is a fascist one), so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.
The list is basically in chronological order.
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Had a poem, “subway the sweat travels down my back,” published in Acorn 55 (Fall 2025).
3. and 4. Had a poem, “dahlias in the post office window new collector’s stamps,” published in Modern Haiku 56, no. 3 (Autumn 2025). The issue also includes a positive review of a good possible year for an apocalypse: poems.
5. Had an essay, “I Look Good in Fish Scales,” published in Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Suzanne Richardson and Edmond Y. Chang (Pittsburgh: Play Story Press, 2025), which is available as a free ebook.
6. Submitted five poems to Trash Panda Haiku.
7. Submitted fifteen poems to Modern Haiku.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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