Red Pen, Rage, and Rhetoric

A Manifesto for the Literary Resistance

Written by Rebecca M. Bell

---

There are easier ways to survive than writing.

I know that.

You could stay quiet. Go to brunch. Let the algorithm spoon-feed you palatable distractions and forget what your voice sounds like when it shakes.

You could pick your battles like produce at the store—

only the soft ones.

Only what fits easily in your mouth.

But if you’re here, you’ve already tasted the rot beneath the rind.

And I know something about you.

You’ve got a story buried under your skin like a splinter.

And you’ve got a red pen.

Even if it’s metaphorical.

Even if it’s trembling.

I write like the stakes are real—because they are.

The world is burning, and I’m tired of poetry that reads like scented candle labels.

I want flames. I want fury.

I want metaphors that peel paint off propaganda.

I want prose that exposes the scaffolding of power and dares to name names.

They told us to write what we know.

So I wrote about the cost of silence.

The anesthetic of compliance.

The hunger that grows when you keep swallowing your voice for safety.

This is not just a newsletter.

This is a dispatch.

Every keystroke is a knuckled knock on the door of the sleeping.

Every line break is a landmine, buried just deep enough to catch the careless.

And every stanza is a survival tactic.

If I learned anything from living in the belly of the Bible Belt, it’s this:

truth has a frequency.

And once you tune in, it gets harder to stomach the static.

There is a reason they banned books before they banned bullets.

Because words can do what weapons can’t:

they haunt you.

You can lock up people. You can burn pages.

But you can’t erase the echo of a sentence that changed you.

To everyone who said “it’s just poetry” or “don’t take it so seriously,”

I say this:

I have seen what propaganda can do when it’s dressed as prayer.

I have seen legislation disguised as lullaby.

And I have watched good people fall asleep under the weight of beautiful lies.

So no—I won’t shut up.

I won’t “write something lighter.”

I won’t soften my sentences for the comfort of cowards.

I’m not writing for applause.

I’m writing for the ones who are still buried under rubble,

waiting to be remembered.

If you’ve made it this far,

I assume you’ve got some matches of your own.

Strike them.

Redline the lies they taught you.

Underline the truth no one dared to say.

Footnote your rage with history and receipts.

And write like the page is flammable.

Because it is.

---

My warmest regards,

Rebecca M. Bell

Poet. Agitator. Editor-in-Chief of the Literary Resistance.

P.S.

May your syntax be sharp,

your metaphors lethal,

and your silence never mistaken for consent.

✉️ This essay is foundational. I’m making it free—for now. But if it haunts you, moves you, or arms you: please consider helping fund Molotovs in meter. Support the writer.

✨🆘🇺🇸🪖👧🏼💅✍🏼🧨✨