Issue #25: Prohibition

September 2021

GET IT NOW

Prohibition: Doomed to Failure
Capital-P “Prohibition” conjures up certain images in the minds of most people: jazz music, flappers, suits with big shoulders, smoky bars, mobsters. Maybe you also see rum runners, bootleggers, copper stills with their curled distillation coils. Nowadays, prohibition seems a romantic time in the same way the antebellum south or medieval times seem romantic. Easy to romanticize a time almost no living people remember firsthand.
But how did we get there in the first place? It started, as so many things do, with a war.
During WWI, congress in the US passed a temporary law prohibiting the sale of beverages with alcohol content of more than 1.28%, intended to save grain. Religious fundamentalists and social conservatives had long been opposed to the sale of alcohol, seeing it as the source of social ills including public violence and broken homes, and the temporary ban was the thin end of the prohibition wedge. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement’s influence spread from the US to Australia, Canada, Germany, Finland, India, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
But why did it fail? This is the part where I conjecture wildly, so bear with me.
For all of history, the lion’s share of humanity has been poor. We hear about famous, successful people because they’re the notable exceptions. It seems recent that popular media started telling us about the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, discovering that most modern people can relate to a medieval shoemaker or small farmer more easily than a king.
My older sister gave me a great piece of advice when I was struggling to put together a budget where my inadequate salary would cover all my expenses. “Leave room for something enjoyable. If you don’t have something that makes you happy, your life sucks, you get desperate, and you start making bad decisions.”
For a whole lot of people, what makes them happy is something that makes the pain retreat a little – sex, gambling, alcohol, cannabis, harder drugs. The more your life sucks, the harder it is to forget about it.
But there are two types of people opposed to pleasure.
The first is the rich. Most people get rich by exploiting the laboring class in some way, and anything that takes people out of the workforce is bad for business. To Bezos, the Walton family, and other modern-day robber barons, every minute someone’s on their payroll but not productive costs them money, blocking their efforts to acquire all the money in the universe. To them, people are not human beings – they’re units of production. If one no longer produces (because that one is sick, injured, pregnant, having a leisure day off), that one is removed from the line and replaced with an identical unit of production. It was true in the 1920s, and is even more true in today’s gig economy.
Surprisingly, the second group is the almost-poor. Millions of people are scraping by, one step ahead of penury. They tend to have a work ethic that values self-sufficiency, and while they are normally generous-hearted (the kind of people who will organize meals for sick friends or help rebuild when a house burns down), they also tend to think that because they are working hard to scrape by without help, others should do the same. People who use public assistance become a hazy group of “others” who are receiving resources for which they didn’t have to work, and are therefore living a life of leisure at the expense of hard-working people who are themselves barely getting by. To the almost-poor, seeing someone worse off than themselves spend money on anything beyond bread, water, sack cloth, and ashes is a slap in the face, but for those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the only escape from grinding misery is those little luxuries.
As long as people continue to be unhappy, they will continue to find means of escape. No matter how governments regulate, tax, ban, or control our forms of escapism, humanity will continue seeking ways to forget the oppression of their lives. Efforts at prohibition will always fail, not because people who need an escape are morally weak, but because the people who would oppress them are ethically bankrupt.
Lise Quintana

Homem Janela
Guilherme has developed projects with photography and the narrative possibilities that art offers. He believes in photography as the aesthetic potential and transforming agent of society. Awarded in national and international competitions, he has participated in exhibitions in 42 countries.

Fairy Tale Prohibition
Carina’s fiction and poetry have been published in Upon a Twice Time, Bitter Distillations: An Anthology of Poisonous Tales, Arterial Bloom, Gorgon: Stories of Emergence, Hath No Fury, and HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. V and VI. She is co-editor of Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas.

The Loophole
Jared’s work has appeared in After Dinner Conversations, Blue Lake Review, Door Is A Jar, Literally Stories, and Metastellar, among others. A lover of wordplay, he’s ranked as one of the top Scrabble players in North America. Follow the latest at www.jaredcappel.com.

Writing Sample: DUI in Texas
Stefanie loves coffee, books, cats, and Oxford commas. She has degrees in English, philosophy, and liberal arts. Her work has appeared in Grey Thoughts, Superpresent, Fiveminutelit, and Agapanthas.

Is Pulque Really Prohibited?
Rudy is a semi-retired journalist, reporter/columnist/editor living and working in Cancún in English and Spanish language media.

Fruitless Lands
Maxwell has been featured in Spectral Realms, Space and Time Magazine, Weirdbook Magazine, and Startling Stories. Maxwell’s work will appear in Chiral Mad 5. His forthcoming debut prose poetry collection Oblivion in Flux is scheduled to be released in August from Crystal Lake Publishing.

Drunken Monkey Hypothesis
Cathal is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in (string of reputable locales).

the day is its own trouble
Kathleen has poems in Barrow Street, The Boiler, The Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, jubilat, New American Writing, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, and West Branch, among others.

Health Reader
Deborah is a Toronto-area poet, recently and temporarily relocated to the Muskokas. She has been published in Existere, The Nashwaak Review, Vallum, NonBinary Review, Silver Apples Magazine and Popshot Quarterly.

Repent
Morgan has been published twice in Saints & Sinners Literary Magazine and was a finalized for the NYC Midnight’s Microficiton Challenge. I am an OwnVoices queer thriller author and enjoy exploring dark themes and morally ambiguous characters.

Yak
Anna’s books and poetry collections include DNA of the Reversed River and Cryptopathos published by the Liberty Publishing House, NY. Anna’s poems were published by Louisville Review, Pasque Petals, Bourgeon Magazine, In Parenthesis, O:J&A, Lucky Jefferson, Hash, Gyroscope review among others.

Haight St.
E. E. has been published in Clarkesworld, Flame Tree, Cosmic Roots, and Eldritch shores and On Spec. Her books include Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife, Pandora’s Card Game, The Truth of Fiction, and The Adventures of Emily Finfeather. Her mural A Meeting of the Minds is on Mercado La Paloma in LA.

Absinthe Firestorm
Rose is a poet & electronic producer. She has publications in Lotus-Eater, Bombay Gin, BlazeVOX, Hotel Amerika, Gargoyle, & others. She has poetry collections with Hesterglock Press and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. She currently lives in Minneapolis. Find her at roseknapp.net

Owed to Volstead
LindaAnn’s poetry includes “A Route Obscure and Lonely” and “Concupiscent Consumption” Forthcoming is a paranormal collection of ghost poems based on her real-life encounters with the afterlife as well as an Italian-centric book, Flirting with the Fire Gods, inspired by her Aeolian Island heritage.

Rudd’s Beer
Garry is author of the novels Belonging, Starts With C, Knowing Simone, Blacksmith and Canon, and A Blacksmith’s Life/Renaissance. He has also written a number of travel books including New South Wales Heritage Walks, Great North Walk, and Damn! Creative Journey Across Spain.

The Lily Rag
has poems published in print and e journals including Not Very Quiet, Mono, Granfalloon and Poetica Review. “Gloves” recently made top 100 in the UK’s “PoetryforGood” competition for healthcare workers. Her first chapbook County Lines (Dancing Girl Press) comes out later this year.

Meet the Shakespeareans! cover

Guliz is the author of Les Paroles Saphiques (Les Éditions Apopsix, France, 2011) Her haiku appears in The Mainichi, Modern Haiku, Frogpond Journal, The Heron’s Nest, Presence. She has translated many works into Turkish.

Another Glass
James’ books include Manhattan Plaza, Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater, Wind in the Cave, Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists, Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond, and Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense.

Every City a Small Town
Christi’s fiction has appeared in publications such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, The Arcanist, and Three-lobed Burning Eye. Her debut novel, Beulah, is coming in 2022 from Cemetery Gates Media. Follow her at christinogle.com or on Twitter @christinogle

Dutch Schultz’s Last Words
C Perricone has had poems published in A Summer of Monkey Poems, Cummington Press, Omaha, 1996; and Footnotes, Boatwhistle Books, London, 2018. His poem “Playing Catch” appeared in All Along the Fence, Gibraltar Editions, 2016.

The Cop and the Crow
Salvatore became a writer after realizing his dreams of being a wizard were unrealistic. His writing has been published in The Chaser Quarterly, and he recently received an honorable mention in the 2020 NYC Midnight Microfiction Challenge.

Bounty
Richard has published in The Quarterly, Outerbridge, Crazy Quilt, Timbuktu; American Literary Review, and Hayden’s Ferry. His children’s book The Kooken was published by Henry Holt. Clement Oubrerie and Richard collaborate on Nedtoons, a cartoon series

Angels and Demons
Brian has published work in NonBinary Review, Dearly Beloved (Zoetic Press), Electric Spec Magazine, NewMyths, Enchanted Conversations, Australiasian Horror Writers Association’s Midnight Echo 14 Magazine. Recently NewMyths purchased piece for the cover of their 2021 June issue.

No One Told the Grapes About Prohibition
Sarah helps run a combination bookstore and magic shop. She has written two young adult books, The Cheat and Family Ties, and her fiction and poetry are published in literary magazines and reviews across the United States and Scotland.

Lawful Onion
Shelly is a queer poet who currently resides in Philadelphia, PA with her wife, dwarfed poodle, and murderous cat. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans. Her poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies. She teaches at the University of Holy Cross in New Orleans.

Perfectly Legal
E. F. Schraeder is the author of Liar: Memoir of a Haunting, Ghastly Tales of Gaiety and Greed, and two poetry chapbooks. Recent work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Birthing Monsters, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Mystery Weekly Magazine, The Feminist Wire, and Lavender Review.

Speakeasy
Corinna is a founding Creative Partner of Flux Theatre Ensemble, and the director of communications at Theatre Communications Group. She has poems upcoming in Arachne Press, Canned, Capsule Stories, Eclectica Magazine, and LUPERCALIA Press.

They Have Mixed Me Up With Many Men
Arbër has been translated to Turkish, Slovenian, English, Serbian, Croatian, Italian, and English. His poem “When father died” appeared in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.

Two Weeks
Yarden is an Israeli painter and archaeologist from the town of Modi’in. Her work focuses on the built world and its relationship to lived dailiness. Her deep understanding of material culture and its reflection of the human experience finds its way to the canvas as it does to the history page.

Temperance
Mari is completing an MFA at Hamline University. She is a playwright and works as a theatre critic in the Twin Cities. She has had two of her plays produced. She is a Norcroft Writer Award winner.

Elusive
Mārta’s poetry has appeared in The Ice Colony, CRUSH Zine, the Sapphic Writers Collective zine “Out Of The Wardrobe” and South Broadway Ghost Society. Her Latvian-English translations include work in TransLit Volume 11: An Anthology of Literary Translations, and The Book of Riga.

Read the Editor's Letter

Subscribe to our Newsletter