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. Had three poems that I submitted to Sundog last month accepted.
2. Had a poem, “her train running alongside the river in the Find My app,” published in Stars in the Seaweed: 2026 Haiku Canada Members’ Anthology, edited by Pam Cooper and Mike Montreuil.
3. Submitted twelve poems to Blithe Spirit and had two accepted.
4. Had three poems published in the 2026 issue of seashores.
5. Had a poem, “driving to her funeral the snowed-over baseball field,” published in Modern Haiku 57, no. 2 (Summer 2026).
6. Had two poems accepted by Frogpond.
7. Attended confluence‘s annual virtual reading. It included a poet from India, a poet from South Africa, a poet from Germany, a poet from the Philippines, a poet from Canada, and several poets from the U.S. What other genre is holding such international readings? It was such a powerful event, a strong rebuttal of the U.S. government’s isolationism.
8. Had a poem accepted by Trash Panda.
Daniel Shank Cruz 