Eve Lyons
Rae Rose
Jan Theuninck
Eve Lyons
.
.
Personal ad for my country
Married Jewish female
seeks one person
who knows how to love country
without hating its inhabitants
who knows how to cradle
both extremes while standing
astride the middle.
Married Jewish female
whose marriage is only legal
in five states, who feels
as uncomfortable with
the Orthodox of her own kin
as she does with orthodox Christians
orthodox Muslims
orthodox capitalists
and orthodox secularists.
Married Jewish female
seeks a country
where the borders don't feel like prisons
where the talking heads
on the television
don't preach hatred
and mistrust.
Married Jewish female
seeks love.
It's hard enough
some days
to remain
a married Jewish female
without feeling the urge to
"fuck and run"
from arguments over whose turn it is
to change the cat litter
from arguments over which part of the population
deserves more funding
from attack ads
from bitter political debates
from a whole world.
Married Jewish female
seeks a home
Not a condominium or
a house or a mortgage
Not a rented space
from year to year
But a home
a place where my soul
can rest.
Bio:
I am a 30 something year old married queer woman living in Boston, MA.
I have been previously published in Fireweed, Concho River Review,
Labyrinth, Women’s Words, Woven, Sapphic Ink, Texas Observer, Word
Riot, Houston Literary Review, and two different anthologies. I have
performed in the now defunct Amazon Poetry Slam for many years and
recently had a ten minute play in the production Ten Tiny Shows in
Cambridge, MA. I currently have a poem coming out in January in voxpoetry.
(author retains copyright)
.
Personal ad for my country
Married Jewish female
seeks one person
who knows how to love country
without hating its inhabitants
who knows how to cradle
both extremes while standing
astride the middle.
Married Jewish female
whose marriage is only legal
in five states, who feels
as uncomfortable with
the Orthodox of her own kin
as she does with orthodox Christians
orthodox Muslims
orthodox capitalists
and orthodox secularists.
Married Jewish female
seeks a country
where the borders don't feel like prisons
where the talking heads
on the television
don't preach hatred
and mistrust.
Married Jewish female
seeks love.
It's hard enough
some days
to remain
a married Jewish female
without feeling the urge to
"fuck and run"
from arguments over whose turn it is
to change the cat litter
from arguments over which part of the population
deserves more funding
from attack ads
from bitter political debates
from a whole world.
Married Jewish female
seeks a home
Not a condominium or
a house or a mortgage
Not a rented space
from year to year
But a home
a place where my soul
can rest.
Bio:
I am a 30 something year old married queer woman living in Boston, MA.
I have been previously published in Fireweed, Concho River Review,
Labyrinth, Women’s Words, Woven, Sapphic Ink, Texas Observer, Word
Riot, Houston Literary Review, and two different anthologies. I have
performed in the now defunct Amazon Poetry Slam for many years and
recently had a ten minute play in the production Ten Tiny Shows in
Cambridge, MA. I currently have a poem coming out in January in voxpoetry.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Rae Rose
.
.
Sometimes A Man Comes Back From War
like shadow –
himself, but different.
Some kind of science fiction,
Invasion of The Body Snatchers.
Same body, sometimes.
Same eyes – used up,
inkwells that can't be refilled.
His fingers know how to touch wire
and explode, or –
sometimes he comes back,
war stuck to his shoes,
he drags it inside,
right over the welcome mat.
Sometimes his family
huddles like sheep.
Eyes shut so tight
it aches.
We bought him a war,
he sometimes comes back
all shadow,
footsteps like gunfire
up the hall, down the hall.
Bio:
Rose's poetry and fiction have been published in literary magazines,
including The Pedestal Magazine, Cicada, The San Diego Poetry Annual,
Earth's Daughters and THEMA. Her poetry about race and gender has been
used as a resource within the Portland State University sociology
department.
(author retains copyright)
.
Sometimes A Man Comes Back From War
like shadow –
himself, but different.
Some kind of science fiction,
Invasion of The Body Snatchers.
Same body, sometimes.
Same eyes – used up,
inkwells that can't be refilled.
His fingers know how to touch wire
and explode, or –
sometimes he comes back,
war stuck to his shoes,
he drags it inside,
right over the welcome mat.
Sometimes his family
huddles like sheep.
Eyes shut so tight
it aches.
We bought him a war,
he sometimes comes back
all shadow,
footsteps like gunfire
up the hall, down the hall.
Bio:
Rose's poetry and fiction have been published in literary magazines,
including The Pedestal Magazine, Cicada, The San Diego Poetry Annual,
Earth's Daughters and THEMA. Her poetry about race and gender has been
used as a resource within the Portland State University sociology
department.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Jan Theuninck
.
.
Beyond the limit
tempting is
the border area
hanging around
in the gray zone
watching the game
of back and forth
seeing how vanity
and power
push them
far
beyond the limit
Bio:
Jan Theuninck (born 7 June 1954 in Zonnebeke, Belgium) is a Belgian painter and poet. His work in both media is guided by his social and political convictions, dealing with topics such as colonialism old and new, mass and society, and pacifism.
(author retains copyright)
.
Beyond the limit
tempting is
the border area
hanging around
in the gray zone
watching the game
of back and forth
seeing how vanity
and power
push them
far
beyond the limit
Bio:
Jan Theuninck (born 7 June 1954 in Zonnebeke, Belgium) is a Belgian painter and poet. His work in both media is guided by his social and political convictions, dealing with topics such as colonialism old and new, mass and society, and pacifism.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Laura Gail Grohe
.
.
Sugar and Spice
Nice girls kill themselves
rather than their enemies.
Nice girls prefer to swallow the poison themselves
rather than watch their rapists choke on their own bile.
Nice girls know how to make polite conversation
while walking on piles of broken glass,
feet bloodied, but not a hair out of place.
Watch a nice girl, with her lovely measured steps,
her nails are trimmed and perhaps painted pink (never red).
She wears her mother’s brooch over her heart
like a medal for a war she never won nor lost.
Casualties have no sides.
Bio:
Laura Gail Grohe lives in western Massachusetts. She believes in the power of poetry to change the world.
(author retains copyright)
.
Sugar and Spice
Nice girls kill themselves
rather than their enemies.
Nice girls prefer to swallow the poison themselves
rather than watch their rapists choke on their own bile.
Nice girls know how to make polite conversation
while walking on piles of broken glass,
feet bloodied, but not a hair out of place.
Watch a nice girl, with her lovely measured steps,
her nails are trimmed and perhaps painted pink (never red).
She wears her mother’s brooch over her heart
like a medal for a war she never won nor lost.
Casualties have no sides.
Bio:
Laura Gail Grohe lives in western Massachusetts. She believes in the power of poetry to change the world.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Janice D. Soderling
.
.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Torture
Waterboarding? It’s just a word,
a useful word, like surfing, like sailing,
like basketball. Nothing appalling
about it, friend. That scream you heard?
I didn’t hear nothing. Maybe a night bird.
Anyway the end
justifies the means. Anyway the point is to bend
not break. OK, so break a little maybe. That wail you heard?
Just the wind. Don’t forget
we’re the good guys. Not some Hitler jerk or Stalin
character. We got nothing in common
with historic monsters like them. I’ll bet
you don’t understand the kind of people we’re dealin’
with here. It’s like they aren’t even human.
Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to Protestpoems. Her poems with political themes have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Apple Valley Review, New Verse News, nth position and the sadly now defunct journals Green Fuse and Babel Fruit. Scheduled publications include The Centrifugal Eye, Studio Journal, Literary Bohemian, Literary Mama, Turtle Quarterly, dotdotdash, Boston Literary Magazine. Coe Review and Mezzo Cammin.
(author retains copyright)
.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Torture
Waterboarding? It’s just a word,
a useful word, like surfing, like sailing,
like basketball. Nothing appalling
about it, friend. That scream you heard?
I didn’t hear nothing. Maybe a night bird.
Anyway the end
justifies the means. Anyway the point is to bend
not break. OK, so break a little maybe. That wail you heard?
Just the wind. Don’t forget
we’re the good guys. Not some Hitler jerk or Stalin
character. We got nothing in common
with historic monsters like them. I’ll bet
you don’t understand the kind of people we’re dealin’
with here. It’s like they aren’t even human.
Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to Protestpoems. Her poems with political themes have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Apple Valley Review, New Verse News, nth position and the sadly now defunct journals Green Fuse and Babel Fruit. Scheduled publications include The Centrifugal Eye, Studio Journal, Literary Bohemian, Literary Mama, Turtle Quarterly, dotdotdash, Boston Literary Magazine. Coe Review and Mezzo Cammin.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Michelle Curtis
.
.
Gunned Down in Church
- for Dr George Tiller
Ushering in the congregation at your church
Roeder shot you full of bullets—
Your pension for twenty years of saving lives
late-term abortions ending those destined to fail,
fetuses with only partially formed heads,
other nightmare disfigurations, delivering women
from births that could mean for them only death.
You carried this burden. Never faltered,
while critics threw at you their bibles,
their own bodies, their apoplectic hate across picket lines,
even ‘the book’ in the courtroom though it never landed—
Then simple as they come, a man pointed a gun
in the house of your god and took your life to save the life
of “unborn children.” Judge. Jury. Executioner
of you and all those lives, all the grieving,
you could have saved.
Bio:
Michelle Beltano Curtis is a recent recipient of an MFA from National University. Her writing focuses on her ruminations about the human condition and often includes themes of difference/otherness, sexuality, aging and illness in her distinctively unmitigated voice. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her partner where she works on her poetry and fiction and facilitates a creative writing workshop at a local domestic violence shelter. Her recent publications include The Gnu and Lambda Literary Review.
(author retains copyright)
.
Gunned Down in Church
- for Dr George Tiller
Ushering in the congregation at your church
Roeder shot you full of bullets—
Your pension for twenty years of saving lives
late-term abortions ending those destined to fail,
fetuses with only partially formed heads,
other nightmare disfigurations, delivering women
from births that could mean for them only death.
You carried this burden. Never faltered,
while critics threw at you their bibles,
their own bodies, their apoplectic hate across picket lines,
even ‘the book’ in the courtroom though it never landed—
Then simple as they come, a man pointed a gun
in the house of your god and took your life to save the life
of “unborn children.” Judge. Jury. Executioner
of you and all those lives, all the grieving,
you could have saved.
Bio:
Michelle Beltano Curtis is a recent recipient of an MFA from National University. Her writing focuses on her ruminations about the human condition and often includes themes of difference/otherness, sexuality, aging and illness in her distinctively unmitigated voice. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her partner where she works on her poetry and fiction and facilitates a creative writing workshop at a local domestic violence shelter. Her recent publications include The Gnu and Lambda Literary Review.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Jeff Lacy
.
.
Refer Machiavelli
A circus is joyless without clowns,
dull without trapeze fliers, lions,
and high wire acts.
Ms P’s penned palm pricked
her to pluck: Energy. Tax Cuts.
Lift American Spirits.
Refer Machiavelli: it matters not
untrue content, it is
the battering ram making it true.
Drown ye sinner
in the tea of the lowest common
denominator -- democracy’s demon:
ignorance’s plague and protection.
Bicycles under Madison Avenue trees,
Reagan jelly beans,
stimulus money for teeth.
Our father, who art in,
who art,
who,
give us our diversions – the
barren ways of men.
Dead trees give no shelter.
Wild flowers will not grow in winter.
A sail lists without breeze or bluster.
Balloon, without heat, will not rise.
Spinning plates will topple without tending.
Darkness emits no white, blue, or red.
When diplomatic husband
found no yellow Nigerian cake,
the White House Scootered Novak
to shed spy wife’s cover.
Ye P.T. Barnum constituents:
Saddam, Sad-dam, the very tyrant of tyrants,
your mushroom cloud missiles,
hid within your fertile crescent,
your sandy California hills.
Tenet said invasion would be
a basketball shot.
Cheney and Rummy,
Geneva rules of war redefined
by a brain tree of lawyers,
said we would be received
as great deliverers.
History, you disagreeable senator,
F yourself. For thee prudent archer,
that made all the difference.
Not like hollow men,
the Haliburton Tea Company
mighty Achilles Hummered north,
wearing ball cap turned round
tattoos unfurled, tingling
from studded-tongued lovers,
so that back home,
there is a free AK-47,
with the purchase
of a pick-up truck.
As in myth, Jr. jet upon the carrier,
strut, pilot costumed,
Il Duce, Texas Ranger.
Rove’s Bob Fosse’s
ensembled sailors,
the Admiral saluted.
Sweet charity,
from ship’s bridge,
the banner backdrop hung,
Divine man of distinction,
a real, big, spender,
bo-o-o-mb’s red glare.
When disciple John’s photograph was revealed,
General Powell, having seen
the sorrow of men,
and putting aside folly,
and rancor of council,
was on the very edge.
Saddam had it coming,
he had himself,
only,
to blame.
Pulled out,
from his hiding hole.
He claimed illegal invasion,
no weapons
of mass destruction,
no jurisdiction,
to be charged or tried.
Trivialities, said the Red Queen,
there are other tortures,
sword-play, and madness,
we’d like to address,
to see you hanged.
Go tell Ms P
to bring the pill
that makes one small.
The Persian caterpillar
will pay a call. He’ll whisper
to keep your head, say nothing at all.
At Abu Ghraib, Black Knights
turned Hop-Frog into pornography.
Others renditioned and Gitmoed,
hooded and shackled
like strands of hooked fish,
nameless, countryless,
without being informed of charge,
without knowing possibility of hearing,
no probability of release in sight.
Vagaries of torture,
Hop-Frog flailed and yowled,
for Black Knight’s pleasure,
hinting truth, untruth, or taking suicide.
Drunks twelve-step
to sobriety or,
swilling lye of divisibility
sober naught.
Invasion, whatever the aim,
cannot be snorted up the nose.
From capitalistic home,
Agamemnon acclaimed
the book deal,
speech tour adoration,
Fox’s absolution.
Send in the acrobats,
the animal tamers, the clowns.
Load the man into the cannon.
Toe the high wire. Thrower,
select your knives. Toss the pins,
jugglers and exchange them
uncorrupted, seamlessly.
Dismantle the nets from
under the trapezers. Greater
the risk, more exquisite the pleasure.
Ms P, you’re awfully late.
Alberto G. has made
delightful tea and cakes.
After pledging allegiance,
Rummy is going to wrestle us
in top secret charades.
Don’t mind the dormouse.
He told that to what’s her name.
Your running mate and
that wife of his have come.
Set ‘em up, Fredo,
Let us have a merry time
drinking tea and eating cake.
Bio:
I received a MFA from the University of Nebraska. My stories have appeared in such literary magazines as Storyglossia, Fiction Collective, Conte, Unheard Magazine, Mary Journal, Sex and Murder Magazine, The Wrong Tree Review, Full of Crow Quarterly, and Review Americana - A Literary Journal. Since 1991 I have worked as a public defender and prosecutor in the Atlanta area and on the Georgia coast.
(author retains copyright)
.
Refer Machiavelli
A circus is joyless without clowns,
dull without trapeze fliers, lions,
and high wire acts.
Ms P’s penned palm pricked
her to pluck: Energy. Tax Cuts.
Lift American Spirits.
Refer Machiavelli: it matters not
untrue content, it is
the battering ram making it true.
Drown ye sinner
in the tea of the lowest common
denominator -- democracy’s demon:
ignorance’s plague and protection.
Bicycles under Madison Avenue trees,
Reagan jelly beans,
stimulus money for teeth.
Our father, who art in,
who art,
who,
give us our diversions – the
barren ways of men.
Dead trees give no shelter.
Wild flowers will not grow in winter.
A sail lists without breeze or bluster.
Balloon, without heat, will not rise.
Spinning plates will topple without tending.
Darkness emits no white, blue, or red.
When diplomatic husband
found no yellow Nigerian cake,
the White House Scootered Novak
to shed spy wife’s cover.
Ye P.T. Barnum constituents:
Saddam, Sad-dam, the very tyrant of tyrants,
your mushroom cloud missiles,
hid within your fertile crescent,
your sandy California hills.
Tenet said invasion would be
a basketball shot.
Cheney and Rummy,
Geneva rules of war redefined
by a brain tree of lawyers,
said we would be received
as great deliverers.
History, you disagreeable senator,
F yourself. For thee prudent archer,
that made all the difference.
Not like hollow men,
the Haliburton Tea Company
mighty Achilles Hummered north,
wearing ball cap turned round
tattoos unfurled, tingling
from studded-tongued lovers,
so that back home,
there is a free AK-47,
with the purchase
of a pick-up truck.
As in myth, Jr. jet upon the carrier,
strut, pilot costumed,
Il Duce, Texas Ranger.
Rove’s Bob Fosse’s
ensembled sailors,
the Admiral saluted.
Sweet charity,
from ship’s bridge,
the banner backdrop hung,
Divine man of distinction,
a real, big, spender,
bo-o-o-mb’s red glare.
When disciple John’s photograph was revealed,
General Powell, having seen
the sorrow of men,
and putting aside folly,
and rancor of council,
was on the very edge.
Saddam had it coming,
he had himself,
only,
to blame.
Pulled out,
from his hiding hole.
He claimed illegal invasion,
no weapons
of mass destruction,
no jurisdiction,
to be charged or tried.
Trivialities, said the Red Queen,
there are other tortures,
sword-play, and madness,
we’d like to address,
to see you hanged.
Go tell Ms P
to bring the pill
that makes one small.
The Persian caterpillar
will pay a call. He’ll whisper
to keep your head, say nothing at all.
At Abu Ghraib, Black Knights
turned Hop-Frog into pornography.
Others renditioned and Gitmoed,
hooded and shackled
like strands of hooked fish,
nameless, countryless,
without being informed of charge,
without knowing possibility of hearing,
no probability of release in sight.
Vagaries of torture,
Hop-Frog flailed and yowled,
for Black Knight’s pleasure,
hinting truth, untruth, or taking suicide.
Drunks twelve-step
to sobriety or,
swilling lye of divisibility
sober naught.
Invasion, whatever the aim,
cannot be snorted up the nose.
From capitalistic home,
Agamemnon acclaimed
the book deal,
speech tour adoration,
Fox’s absolution.
Send in the acrobats,
the animal tamers, the clowns.
Load the man into the cannon.
Toe the high wire. Thrower,
select your knives. Toss the pins,
jugglers and exchange them
uncorrupted, seamlessly.
Dismantle the nets from
under the trapezers. Greater
the risk, more exquisite the pleasure.
Ms P, you’re awfully late.
Alberto G. has made
delightful tea and cakes.
After pledging allegiance,
Rummy is going to wrestle us
in top secret charades.
Don’t mind the dormouse.
He told that to what’s her name.
Your running mate and
that wife of his have come.
Set ‘em up, Fredo,
Let us have a merry time
drinking tea and eating cake.
Bio:
I received a MFA from the University of Nebraska. My stories have appeared in such literary magazines as Storyglossia, Fiction Collective, Conte, Unheard Magazine, Mary Journal, Sex and Murder Magazine, The Wrong Tree Review, Full of Crow Quarterly, and Review Americana - A Literary Journal. Since 1991 I have worked as a public defender and prosecutor in the Atlanta area and on the Georgia coast.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Brian Thomas
.
.
The Chant
It's freedom they rant
And freedom they rave
The american dream they chant
While existing enslaved
Subdued and quite dumb
They're contently confined
Tis freedom, they hum
Within a governed mind!!
Consume they are taught
Conformed they've become
Conducted is their thought
To this hypnotic drum
The american dream they chant
Instructed to desire
Tis freedom they rant
while existing for hire
To borrow they are taught
This american creed
In debt! They are caught
Serving creatures of greed
Laboring each day
For the enslaving scheme
Assigned pittance in pay
For their deceitful dream
Seduced into a trap
Where the greedy pig feed
Opressed are their lives
For the crap they don't need
It's freedom they rant
And freedom they rave
That horseshit american dream they chant
As they march to their grave!!
(author retains copyright)
.
The Chant
It's freedom they rant
And freedom they rave
The american dream they chant
While existing enslaved
Subdued and quite dumb
They're contently confined
Tis freedom, they hum
Within a governed mind!!
Consume they are taught
Conformed they've become
Conducted is their thought
To this hypnotic drum
The american dream they chant
Instructed to desire
Tis freedom they rant
while existing for hire
To borrow they are taught
This american creed
In debt! They are caught
Serving creatures of greed
Laboring each day
For the enslaving scheme
Assigned pittance in pay
For their deceitful dream
Seduced into a trap
Where the greedy pig feed
Opressed are their lives
For the crap they don't need
It's freedom they rant
And freedom they rave
That horseshit american dream they chant
As they march to their grave!!
(author retains copyright)
Return
Stephen Jarrell Williams
.
.
The Rush
You should hurry and kill us...
We are overpopulating the earth.
Those are your words.
If you shared your gluttonous wealth
there would be plenty.
You have been fortunate,
or is it insidious?
Perhaps you don't even know
yourself...
The time is coming...
It is now.
Be quick...
Jack jump over the candlestick,
before it becomes an erupting volcano.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.
(author retains copyright)
.
The Rush
You should hurry and kill us...
We are overpopulating the earth.
Those are your words.
If you shared your gluttonous wealth
there would be plenty.
You have been fortunate,
or is it insidious?
Perhaps you don't even know
yourself...
The time is coming...
It is now.
Be quick...
Jack jump over the candlestick,
before it becomes an erupting volcano.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Curt Hopkins
The Burning City
New York, San Salvador and Buenos Aires
Are loud and ugly cities on the make.
In centuries tolerant of violence
They dedicate themselves to money.
Their new raw lands are prisoners of schemes
Whose beauty shines in icy cliffs and airplane engines.
Masters of the future, men and women with no names
Vouch for God’s collapse in blasting caps.
Helsinki, Rome and London, though,
Are captives of whispers, dreams
Hung in golden doorways on the air,
Ivory bees wings carved in drapery
Caving into light, soft roads and walls
Used to hands and feet, seducing stones
Spiked by the nap of time.
You cannot breathe in the burning city
The beautiful ideas which kill.
A Dream of New York
Here your rights are few and well-defined,
You have the right to silence and to die,
You have the right to call and cancel time.
You do not have the right to change your mind.
The gunfire of the blossoms on the branch
Decorates your tomb when night descends.
Only live. Until that box of light’s abandoned
You will not have to find your gauge again.
The marked moon is murdered every day
As pewter trumpets in the blood lament
But murder, as we know, is temporary
And someday even ending has to end.
Through worlds words rain down like broken glass
And from our several wounds our terrors pass.
House of War
Brother of the knife
Sister of the gun
The sky is dark with bats
And the bats are full of moons
And from a thousand thousand cracks
In cracked old leather coats
A thousand blue-white sheets of flame
Illuminate a thousand boats
Whose sails reach from cold black waves
To touch the stars that stud their masts.
The hands they lay upon your brows
Are hard as ice
Are harder than your names
Are hard as solid light.
The House of War is dark
That set you side by side
And launched you on the waters
And turned your breath to diamonds.
Brother of the knife
Sister of the gun
Turn your eyes away from life
Death is bright
Death is bright.
Bio:
Curt's poems, plays and essays have been published in 3:AM, Exquisite Corpse, BlazeVox, Cavafy Forum, Rhythm, Cirque, Perceptions, Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow, Cavafy Archive, Good Foot, Bluelawn, SPSM&H, Dada, Catalyst, Big Talk and others. He has had plays produced at New City New Playwrights Festival in Seattle; Northwest Playwrights Festival in Eugene, Oregon; and Venue9, The Marsh and Doc's Clock in San Francisco, California (all in the U.S.). He is a founding member of The Big Time Poetry Theatre, Emergency Horse Magazine and the Committee to Protect Bloggers. Carl is currently the culture and technology writer at readwriteweb.com.
(author retains copyright)
New York, San Salvador and Buenos Aires
Are loud and ugly cities on the make.
In centuries tolerant of violence
They dedicate themselves to money.
Their new raw lands are prisoners of schemes
Whose beauty shines in icy cliffs and airplane engines.
Masters of the future, men and women with no names
Vouch for God’s collapse in blasting caps.
Helsinki, Rome and London, though,
Are captives of whispers, dreams
Hung in golden doorways on the air,
Ivory bees wings carved in drapery
Caving into light, soft roads and walls
Used to hands and feet, seducing stones
Spiked by the nap of time.
You cannot breathe in the burning city
The beautiful ideas which kill.
A Dream of New York
Here your rights are few and well-defined,
You have the right to silence and to die,
You have the right to call and cancel time.
You do not have the right to change your mind.
The gunfire of the blossoms on the branch
Decorates your tomb when night descends.
Only live. Until that box of light’s abandoned
You will not have to find your gauge again.
The marked moon is murdered every day
As pewter trumpets in the blood lament
But murder, as we know, is temporary
And someday even ending has to end.
Through worlds words rain down like broken glass
And from our several wounds our terrors pass.
House of War
Brother of the knife
Sister of the gun
The sky is dark with bats
And the bats are full of moons
And from a thousand thousand cracks
In cracked old leather coats
A thousand blue-white sheets of flame
Illuminate a thousand boats
Whose sails reach from cold black waves
To touch the stars that stud their masts.
The hands they lay upon your brows
Are hard as ice
Are harder than your names
Are hard as solid light.
The House of War is dark
That set you side by side
And launched you on the waters
And turned your breath to diamonds.
Brother of the knife
Sister of the gun
Turn your eyes away from life
Death is bright
Death is bright.
Bio:
Curt's poems, plays and essays have been published in 3:AM, Exquisite Corpse, BlazeVox, Cavafy Forum, Rhythm, Cirque, Perceptions, Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow, Cavafy Archive, Good Foot, Bluelawn, SPSM&H, Dada, Catalyst, Big Talk and others. He has had plays produced at New City New Playwrights Festival in Seattle; Northwest Playwrights Festival in Eugene, Oregon; and Venue9, The Marsh and Doc's Clock in San Francisco, California (all in the U.S.). He is a founding member of The Big Time Poetry Theatre, Emergency Horse Magazine and the Committee to Protect Bloggers. Carl is currently the culture and technology writer at readwriteweb.com.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Kat Dixon
.
.
Out
“Where you folks headin’ to?” The man who could be any man leans
into the window just far enough to take full note of Milta’s red
hair and my flickering white skin. He has unseen guns
pressed up against his body; he is at once more American than we are.
Milta is a Cherokee name. Her ancestors had been marched west
to Oklahoma, where she was born after a few rounds
of intermixing with redheaded Scottish pioneers. She knows
how a story is constructed, knows too the pleasure in telling a lie.
Bio:
Kat Dixon is poetry editor of Divine Dirt Quarterly and author of four chapbooks, most recently DON'T GO FISH (Maverick Duck Press) and BIRDING (Thunderclap Press). She can be found online at katdixon.blogspot.com.
(author retains copyright)
.
Out
“Where you folks headin’ to?” The man who could be any man leans
into the window just far enough to take full note of Milta’s red
hair and my flickering white skin. He has unseen guns
pressed up against his body; he is at once more American than we are.
Milta is a Cherokee name. Her ancestors had been marched west
to Oklahoma, where she was born after a few rounds
of intermixing with redheaded Scottish pioneers. She knows
how a story is constructed, knows too the pleasure in telling a lie.
Bio:
Kat Dixon is poetry editor of Divine Dirt Quarterly and author of four chapbooks, most recently DON'T GO FISH (Maverick Duck Press) and BIRDING (Thunderclap Press). She can be found online at katdixon.blogspot.com.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Frances Drabick
.
.
The Streets Are Filled
Young children sink in the sagging corruption
of a bed. It is not a compromise. It is by force
they lay their head. A vile putridity thick
in their throats, tiny voices altered by adult
dominion that provoked their childhood out of them.
Their silty innocence is disturbed; young bodies
become a social study of trauma found submerged
in statistics. They are the corpus that continues to teach
the repetitious, repeat performance by man-not-so-kind.
Begin the search on a dark day near the dry rot
of depression in a damp cellar door. Peer deeply inside
to abhor mankind’s internal creatures
that cause us to cringe. Persist in this chilled risk
as the viper slips into your spine. Don’t fear. Think
of the children constricted in our world’s vast lands.
Reach in. Feel their fangs puncture your hand
or fail gravely again to save the innocence of humankind.
Rescue a child from the coil of guilt
and shame. Not theirs. Yank the young
from among the sly-ugly. From sordid stations beneath
our streets and at foul-heights deviants roam and comb
for the womb’s gift. Still. It hasn’t ended. In all places
they are faces of deceit. Press on to defeat them.
Venture into bleakest nights and into grayest days.
Search in our very homes and onward to Rome’s spires.
I cannot write of colorful birds today. I cannot
begin such a flight when so many songbirds
are nesting in places of fright and fear. They are
held captive in our blindness. Open eyes.
Gather them. Swoop them up. For too soon they grow
old and enter the death of their youth. Lift them up
to the humanity of truth: that someone cares
about this abysmal abuse of their flourishing feathers.
Bio:
Frances Drabick has poems published in Off the Coast in Maine; Editors Michael Brown & Valerie Lawson. Poems and essays published in national, state and local sources. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry in 2009. Retired from Human Services; lives in Maine.
(author retains copyright)
Return
.
The Streets Are Filled
Young children sink in the sagging corruption
of a bed. It is not a compromise. It is by force
they lay their head. A vile putridity thick
in their throats, tiny voices altered by adult
dominion that provoked their childhood out of them.
Their silty innocence is disturbed; young bodies
become a social study of trauma found submerged
in statistics. They are the corpus that continues to teach
the repetitious, repeat performance by man-not-so-kind.
Begin the search on a dark day near the dry rot
of depression in a damp cellar door. Peer deeply inside
to abhor mankind’s internal creatures
that cause us to cringe. Persist in this chilled risk
as the viper slips into your spine. Don’t fear. Think
of the children constricted in our world’s vast lands.
Reach in. Feel their fangs puncture your hand
or fail gravely again to save the innocence of humankind.
Rescue a child from the coil of guilt
and shame. Not theirs. Yank the young
from among the sly-ugly. From sordid stations beneath
our streets and at foul-heights deviants roam and comb
for the womb’s gift. Still. It hasn’t ended. In all places
they are faces of deceit. Press on to defeat them.
Venture into bleakest nights and into grayest days.
Search in our very homes and onward to Rome’s spires.
I cannot write of colorful birds today. I cannot
begin such a flight when so many songbirds
are nesting in places of fright and fear. They are
held captive in our blindness. Open eyes.
Gather them. Swoop them up. For too soon they grow
old and enter the death of their youth. Lift them up
to the humanity of truth: that someone cares
about this abysmal abuse of their flourishing feathers.
Bio:
Frances Drabick has poems published in Off the Coast in Maine; Editors Michael Brown & Valerie Lawson. Poems and essays published in national, state and local sources. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry in 2009. Retired from Human Services; lives in Maine.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Louis E. Bourgeois
.
.
Of Straw and Brick
I am the pig whose house was made of straw.
My other brother died last week in a logging accident.
My fat-ass brother with the big red house
Is still oppressing the villagers.
I spend most of my time trying to see the sun,
And figuring out what went wrong.
I only want a few things out of life:
A good fuck, a fat joint, and a place to rest my head.
The wolf changed all of that, but I’ve been thinking
I might find him and turn him against my brother.
Perhaps we could have a drink together
And figure out a plan.
(author retains copyright)
.
Of Straw and Brick
I am the pig whose house was made of straw.
My other brother died last week in a logging accident.
My fat-ass brother with the big red house
Is still oppressing the villagers.
I spend most of my time trying to see the sun,
And figuring out what went wrong.
I only want a few things out of life:
A good fuck, a fat joint, and a place to rest my head.
The wolf changed all of that, but I’ve been thinking
I might find him and turn him against my brother.
Perhaps we could have a drink together
And figure out a plan.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Eliyahu Enriquez
.
.
Honor Thy Sons and Daughters
I did not want to go.
They described a War on Terriers.
I was not scared.
They promised Lifetime benefits.
I did not want to die.
They ran a background check.
I found no weapons of Mass destruction.
They handed me an M16 rifle.
I got scared of drones.
They threatened to court-martial me.
I did not shoot.
They arrested me.
I was sent home, Without Honors.
They called me unpatriotic, Faggot.
I cried in the back seat.
They didn't expect IEDS.
Shrapnel tore my guts out.
They ordered the siege.
I was buried in the wrong grave.
They sent letterhead to my pregnant girlfriend.
I fought to keep it.
They said I gave my life.
I was censored from calling them liars.
They gave a statement on the local news.
I was ashamed of them.
They said they were proud of me.
Mom fainted.
They said my father would have also been proud.
I wanted to live.
They called me a Martyr.
I die an Artist.
They call me Soldier.
I am still.
Struggling.
(author retains copyright)
.
Honor Thy Sons and Daughters
I did not want to go.
They described a War on Terriers.
I was not scared.
They promised Lifetime benefits.
I did not want to die.
They ran a background check.
I found no weapons of Mass destruction.
They handed me an M16 rifle.
I got scared of drones.
They threatened to court-martial me.
I did not shoot.
They arrested me.
I was sent home, Without Honors.
They called me unpatriotic, Faggot.
I cried in the back seat.
They didn't expect IEDS.
Shrapnel tore my guts out.
They ordered the siege.
I was buried in the wrong grave.
They sent letterhead to my pregnant girlfriend.
I fought to keep it.
They said I gave my life.
I was censored from calling them liars.
They gave a statement on the local news.
I was ashamed of them.
They said they were proud of me.
Mom fainted.
They said my father would have also been proud.
I wanted to live.
They called me a Martyr.
I die an Artist.
They call me Soldier.
I am still.
Struggling.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Connie Walle
.
.
Should I Apologize
I know the curve of my breast
attracts your eye, my wet lips
when I smile, the smooth stride
of my step when I cross the room.
Is it my fault your breathing
becomes shallow, your palms sweat?
Do you hear voices from God
that I am evil? Do you fear me?
Is it my fault your rope found
my throat and you satisfied
your greed after I was dead
when I could not refuse you?
Should I have covered
my head with a babushka
worn long dark robes
instead of bright red lipstick?
Bio:
Connie Walle is President of Puget Sound Poetry Connection, which just celebrated its 20th year, and secretary for Tacoma Writers, founded in 1919. She is an advocate of poetry for the State as she forwards announcements of all poetry activities and events throughout the state, including calls for submitting poetry.
(author retains copyright)
.
Should I Apologize
I know the curve of my breast
attracts your eye, my wet lips
when I smile, the smooth stride
of my step when I cross the room.
Is it my fault your breathing
becomes shallow, your palms sweat?
Do you hear voices from God
that I am evil? Do you fear me?
Is it my fault your rope found
my throat and you satisfied
your greed after I was dead
when I could not refuse you?
Should I have covered
my head with a babushka
worn long dark robes
instead of bright red lipstick?
Bio:
Connie Walle is President of Puget Sound Poetry Connection, which just celebrated its 20th year, and secretary for Tacoma Writers, founded in 1919. She is an advocate of poetry for the State as she forwards announcements of all poetry activities and events throughout the state, including calls for submitting poetry.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Howie Good
.
.
The century's eyes are red from crying
The clatter of bones comes
from a slightly open door.
We huddle under a broken
umbrella. Ravens change
places with the swans. There
are pills they can give you,
a friend confides. I find
a black birthmark floating
at the bottom of my cup.
Bio:
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 19 print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Lovesick, published by Press Americana.
(author retains copyright)
.
The century's eyes are red from crying
The clatter of bones comes
from a slightly open door.
We huddle under a broken
umbrella. Ravens change
places with the swans. There
are pills they can give you,
a friend confides. I find
a black birthmark floating
at the bottom of my cup.
Bio:
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 19 print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Lovesick, published by Press Americana.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Brit St.Clair
.
.
The First Cooking Accident
Burn units in Afghan hospitals
are filling, as more and more women
set themselves on fire.
Two are interviewed,
their downcast dark eyes like forgotten
charcoal, left to smolder.
One chose the flame
to escape daily abuse.
Her husband, unable to stand her skin
grilled like chicken,
sent her back to her family
but refuses divorce.
The other was eleven
when she torched her own body
the morning she was set to marry
an old man.
Her beauty not a source
of electric adolescent thrill
but still, a source of power.
Neither expresses regret,
preferring the comfort of shame.
The husbands are interviewed as well.
Cooking accident, they say,
mouths taut as barbed wire.
I picture these women’s faces
haloed in golden flames
like Allat, the Arab goddess
revered in ancient times
as Allah’s counterpart,
Her own light extinguished
in what must have been
the first cooking accident.
Bio:
Brit St.Clair is a freelance writer (and closet creative writer) living in Atlanta, Georgia. So far her poetry has been published in the literary magazine Mountain Laurels.
(author retains copyright)
.
The First Cooking Accident
Burn units in Afghan hospitals
are filling, as more and more women
set themselves on fire.
Two are interviewed,
their downcast dark eyes like forgotten
charcoal, left to smolder.
One chose the flame
to escape daily abuse.
Her husband, unable to stand her skin
grilled like chicken,
sent her back to her family
but refuses divorce.
The other was eleven
when she torched her own body
the morning she was set to marry
an old man.
Her beauty not a source
of electric adolescent thrill
but still, a source of power.
Neither expresses regret,
preferring the comfort of shame.
The husbands are interviewed as well.
Cooking accident, they say,
mouths taut as barbed wire.
I picture these women’s faces
haloed in golden flames
like Allat, the Arab goddess
revered in ancient times
as Allah’s counterpart,
Her own light extinguished
in what must have been
the first cooking accident.
Bio:
Brit St.Clair is a freelance writer (and closet creative writer) living in Atlanta, Georgia. So far her poetry has been published in the literary magazine Mountain Laurels.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Howie Good
.
.
Stacked Coffins
1
On the hour,
assistants gave
schoolchildren
tours of the silent
woods,
the leaves bullet-
shredded and prone
to melancholy.
I hoped I wasn’t
where I thought I was.
2
Chandelier flares,
their fall slowed
by parachutes,
light up the ashes.
The gray car
with the gray men
comes almost
every day.
3
Clear skies
and a bomber’s
moon.
We look at one another
with the mute despair
that has become
a kind of greeting.
Bio:
Howie Good is the author a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, as well as 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently, Hello, Darkness, available from Deadly Chaps. He blogs at http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/.
(author retains copyright)
.
Stacked Coffins
1
On the hour,
assistants gave
schoolchildren
tours of the silent
woods,
the leaves bullet-
shredded and prone
to melancholy.
I hoped I wasn’t
where I thought I was.
2
Chandelier flares,
their fall slowed
by parachutes,
light up the ashes.
The gray car
with the gray men
comes almost
every day.
3
Clear skies
and a bomber’s
moon.
We look at one another
with the mute despair
that has become
a kind of greeting.
Bio:
Howie Good is the author a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, as well as 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently, Hello, Darkness, available from Deadly Chaps. He blogs at http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Nkirote Laboni
.
.
14 Kilometres from Africa
Old Fisherman Mamadou
was informed that he was an 'illegal'
for living in Nouadhibou
instead of Senegal
He was surprised to learn
from the sneering uniformed men
who guarded the land he had called home
since he was a pimple-faced boy
that his was a ploy
to walk the Sahara
and cross the Strait of Gibraltar
in pursuit of the European El Dorado
They bunched old Mamadou up
like a piece of paper
and threw him in detention.
They brought to his attention
That the law frowned upon
those who mistook Mauritania
for a convenient stop-over
while journeying to the land of milk and honey.
They spit out the word immigrants
wrapped in phlegm
We are nothing but parasitic vagrants
feeding on their taxes, so they condemn
us to their five star prisons.
They build high impenetrable walls
and fortify their army-
ready to confront the Euro-tsunami
They sign agreements with our blood
And tell the African Big Men to prevent the flood
As if man's basic need for food
Can ever be stopped by a piece of paper:
Restrict, return and definitely do not re-admit!
Did those who die at sea, while dreaming
of the promised land do so in vain?
The fire's burning, can you hear them cry in Calais?
Bio:
Nkirote was born in Kenya, is a citizen of the world and plays many interchangeable roles including human rights activist, apprentice-poet, student and dreamer. She dreams of a world where people don't have to fight for freedom and believes in the power of the pen over the power of the gun.
(author retains copyright)
.
14 Kilometres from Africa
Old Fisherman Mamadou
was informed that he was an 'illegal'
for living in Nouadhibou
instead of Senegal
He was surprised to learn
from the sneering uniformed men
who guarded the land he had called home
since he was a pimple-faced boy
that his was a ploy
to walk the Sahara
and cross the Strait of Gibraltar
in pursuit of the European El Dorado
They bunched old Mamadou up
like a piece of paper
and threw him in detention.
They brought to his attention
That the law frowned upon
those who mistook Mauritania
for a convenient stop-over
while journeying to the land of milk and honey.
They spit out the word immigrants
wrapped in phlegm
We are nothing but parasitic vagrants
feeding on their taxes, so they condemn
us to their five star prisons.
They build high impenetrable walls
and fortify their army-
ready to confront the Euro-tsunami
They sign agreements with our blood
And tell the African Big Men to prevent the flood
As if man's basic need for food
Can ever be stopped by a piece of paper:
Restrict, return and definitely do not re-admit!
Did those who die at sea, while dreaming
of the promised land do so in vain?
The fire's burning, can you hear them cry in Calais?
Bio:
Nkirote was born in Kenya, is a citizen of the world and plays many interchangeable roles including human rights activist, apprentice-poet, student and dreamer. She dreams of a world where people don't have to fight for freedom and believes in the power of the pen over the power of the gun.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Sara Basrai
.
.
Street Baby
I’m born and I’m born
Honduras
To
Mother can’t care
4 me
She
Thirteen
thirteen
Sniffing yellow glue
Am born in a shack
By a dump
Am growing up
Aged 2
Working on the dump
Breathing in bad air
sniff
Kicked by dump's
boss
Making friends
Growing up
Police hate
Stealing and running
Man is grabbing
Hurting
hurting
Hurting
Train to
América
Train to America
Hanging on the roof
Digging with nails
faster
Through tunnels
Lowering head
Faster
heat of the day
Thirsty
Faster
Hungry
Holding on
holding on
Kid overboard
faster
Killed on the rail
Dying
Faster
gone
In America,
Walking through the desert
Hot
Police
police
Papers
Hot
Police
Papers
Crying
Crying
Hot
Police
papers
Back Home
Working
On the dump
Working on the
Dump
Garbage
sniff
Junk
Sniffing yellow
Glue
Having a
Baby
Sniff
I’m born and
I’m born
To
Mother can’t
care 4
me
me?
Bio:
Sara Basrai is a UK citizen who lives in NYC with her husband and two young children. She used to teach in London schools. She grew up collecting money for Amnesty International with her mother. Her writing appears in 34th Parallel, Outwardlink.net, the Cloud anthology. Her poetry will appear in Grey Sparrow Press and Nefarious Ballerina.
(author retains copyright)
.
Street Baby
I’m born and I’m born
Honduras
To
Mother can’t care
4 me
She
Thirteen
thirteen
Sniffing yellow glue
Am born in a shack
By a dump
Am growing up
Aged 2
Working on the dump
Breathing in bad air
sniff
Kicked by dump's
boss
Making friends
Growing up
Police hate
Stealing and running
Man is grabbing
Hurting
hurting
Hurting
Train to
América
Train to America
Hanging on the roof
Digging with nails
faster
Through tunnels
Lowering head
Faster
heat of the day
Thirsty
Faster
Hungry
Holding on
holding on
Kid overboard
faster
Killed on the rail
Dying
Faster
gone
In America,
Walking through the desert
Hot
Police
police
Papers
Hot
Police
Papers
Crying
Crying
Hot
Police
papers
Back Home
Working
On the dump
Working on the
Dump
Garbage
sniff
Junk
Sniffing yellow
Glue
Having a
Baby
Sniff
I’m born and
I’m born
To
Mother can’t
care 4
me
me?
Bio:
Sara Basrai is a UK citizen who lives in NYC with her husband and two young children. She used to teach in London schools. She grew up collecting money for Amnesty International with her mother. Her writing appears in 34th Parallel, Outwardlink.net, the Cloud anthology. Her poetry will appear in Grey Sparrow Press and Nefarious Ballerina.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Stephen Jarrell Williams
.
.
The Pelican
Near sunset,
sapphire sea streaked with black ooze.
On shore the pelican sits
covered in oil,
eyes staring, unseeing.
An old man standing above it,
poking the pelican with a sharp stick.
“What’s wrong you ugly bird?
The world got you down?”
He snickers,
the bird still breathing.
“Should I put you out of your misery?”
He pushes the stick into the pelican’s back.
The bird flinches, too weak for escape,
its wings closed, coated in sticky goo.
“Yeah, you’re close to dead,” says the old man.
“I’ll be like you in a few years,
lying in my room, gurgling, all alone…”
He pulls the stick away, blood mixing with oil,
the pelican still alive…
“You’re a tough old bird like me.”
The old man tightens his jaw, “Damn world.
I hate it here.”
He shakes his head, takes off his coat,
wraps it around the pelican,
takes it home to clean and nurse it back to life.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.
(author retains copyright)
.
The Pelican
Near sunset,
sapphire sea streaked with black ooze.
On shore the pelican sits
covered in oil,
eyes staring, unseeing.
An old man standing above it,
poking the pelican with a sharp stick.
“What’s wrong you ugly bird?
The world got you down?”
He snickers,
the bird still breathing.
“Should I put you out of your misery?”
He pushes the stick into the pelican’s back.
The bird flinches, too weak for escape,
its wings closed, coated in sticky goo.
“Yeah, you’re close to dead,” says the old man.
“I’ll be like you in a few years,
lying in my room, gurgling, all alone…”
He pulls the stick away, blood mixing with oil,
the pelican still alive…
“You’re a tough old bird like me.”
The old man tightens his jaw, “Damn world.
I hate it here.”
He shakes his head, takes off his coat,
wraps it around the pelican,
takes it home to clean and nurse it back to life.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Kristin LaTour
.
.
The Kaytn Forest Massacre
I.
Shots fired
to the lower rear of the head
a clean hole from a pistol
one hole for entering
another for exiting
were not enough
bodies placed side by side
officer's woolen winter coats
hats placed on their heads
covered in soil
freezing hard over winter
holding them still and grouped
a massive embrace
II.
disinterred by Germans
Polish faces still covered in white
skin, eye lids still closed
coats keeping them covered
even though warmth receeded
black and white pictures
removed from coats' pockets
held up before a movie camera
blonde and brunette ladies
white skin, curled hair
chubby babies
in bathubs, against chests, on chairs
smiling and toothless
doctors saying they had been buried for weeks
in this forest
not at the front line
or in camps, eating stale bread, drinking bad coffee
women saw their own faces
on screens in movie theaters
and probably collapsed
or stared unbelieving
III.
after first blessing and reburial
softening into food for worms and trees
shading forest floor in Russia
the ground turning to mud, promising spring
then fall, covered in leaves,
freezing again, thawing,
grass growing over large mounds
forest swallowing what it needs
IV.
years later, to be uncovered again
by Russians this time
now lacking flesh, just flaps
black and white and grey
falling away from white skulls
showing holes again
entering and exiting
doctors trying to cleanse history
with a report on white paper about dirty bodies
now mismatched
from their families
and their lives far passed by
V.
second blessing and third burial
left now to disintegrate into soil
beyond being nutrients
silent coming
and going of nature's cycles
decades pass
the forest breathes
freezes, thaws
the animals pass over
there are no headstones
bodies are beyond caring
when truth is unearthed
the blamed are as dead as the blameless
Bio:
I'm a poet living outside of Chicago in Aurora, IL. I teach at Joliet Jr. College, and am active in Chicago's poetry circles, especially by performing at open mics. I have two chapbooks, Red Beaver Lake, Minnesota published by Pudding house Press, and Blood published by Naked Mannequin press. My work has appeared in After Hours, Pearl, and online at LaFovea.org and New Verse News.
(author retains copyright)
.
The Kaytn Forest Massacre
I.
Shots fired
to the lower rear of the head
a clean hole from a pistol
one hole for entering
another for exiting
were not enough
bodies placed side by side
officer's woolen winter coats
hats placed on their heads
covered in soil
freezing hard over winter
holding them still and grouped
a massive embrace
II.
disinterred by Germans
Polish faces still covered in white
skin, eye lids still closed
coats keeping them covered
even though warmth receeded
black and white pictures
removed from coats' pockets
held up before a movie camera
blonde and brunette ladies
white skin, curled hair
chubby babies
in bathubs, against chests, on chairs
smiling and toothless
doctors saying they had been buried for weeks
in this forest
not at the front line
or in camps, eating stale bread, drinking bad coffee
women saw their own faces
on screens in movie theaters
and probably collapsed
or stared unbelieving
III.
after first blessing and reburial
softening into food for worms and trees
shading forest floor in Russia
the ground turning to mud, promising spring
then fall, covered in leaves,
freezing again, thawing,
grass growing over large mounds
forest swallowing what it needs
IV.
years later, to be uncovered again
by Russians this time
now lacking flesh, just flaps
black and white and grey
falling away from white skulls
showing holes again
entering and exiting
doctors trying to cleanse history
with a report on white paper about dirty bodies
now mismatched
from their families
and their lives far passed by
V.
second blessing and third burial
left now to disintegrate into soil
beyond being nutrients
silent coming
and going of nature's cycles
decades pass
the forest breathes
freezes, thaws
the animals pass over
there are no headstones
bodies are beyond caring
when truth is unearthed
the blamed are as dead as the blameless
Bio:
I'm a poet living outside of Chicago in Aurora, IL. I teach at Joliet Jr. College, and am active in Chicago's poetry circles, especially by performing at open mics. I have two chapbooks, Red Beaver Lake, Minnesota published by Pudding house Press, and Blood published by Naked Mannequin press. My work has appeared in After Hours, Pearl, and online at LaFovea.org and New Verse News.
(author retains copyright)
Return
T. L. Cooper
.
.
Foreign Language
The words you speak
I do not understand
They sound like a song
But could mean anything
Please keep talking
All around me
The words continue
A fleeting sense of comprehension
Am I right?
Sometimes
In any language
Laughter sounds the same
Tears communicate clear emotions
Love flows between words
Anger bleeds through
Words still unknown
Is communication beginning?
We of two different languages
Finding a way
To reach one another
To connect
To understand each other
To bridge the gap
Between individuals
Between cultures
Between peoples
Between countries
Perhaps
Even to change the world
In a small way
So please keep speaking
I’ll continue to listen
Maybe someone else will as well
Bio:
T. L. Cooper grew up in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with a B.S. in Corrections and Juvenile Services and a minor in Psychology. Her short story, Fortress, won second prize in the Professional Division of Idaho Magazine’s 2005 Fiction Writing contest. Her articles, essays, short stories and poetry have appeared in magazines, books, and online. Her essay, Common Values, won first prize in the 5th Annual Be the Star You Are! Essay Contest. She contributed an essay, The Gift of You, to Be the Star You Are! for Teens. She is the author of the novel, All She Ever Wanted. Currently, she and her husband live in Albany, Oregon.
(author retains copyright)
.
Foreign Language
The words you speak
I do not understand
They sound like a song
But could mean anything
Please keep talking
All around me
The words continue
A fleeting sense of comprehension
Am I right?
Sometimes
In any language
Laughter sounds the same
Tears communicate clear emotions
Love flows between words
Anger bleeds through
Words still unknown
Is communication beginning?
We of two different languages
Finding a way
To reach one another
To connect
To understand each other
To bridge the gap
Between individuals
Between cultures
Between peoples
Between countries
Perhaps
Even to change the world
In a small way
So please keep speaking
I’ll continue to listen
Maybe someone else will as well
Bio:
T. L. Cooper grew up in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with a B.S. in Corrections and Juvenile Services and a minor in Psychology. Her short story, Fortress, won second prize in the Professional Division of Idaho Magazine’s 2005 Fiction Writing contest. Her articles, essays, short stories and poetry have appeared in magazines, books, and online. Her essay, Common Values, won first prize in the 5th Annual Be the Star You Are! Essay Contest. She contributed an essay, The Gift of You, to Be the Star You Are! for Teens. She is the author of the novel, All She Ever Wanted. Currently, she and her husband live in Albany, Oregon.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Diane Elayne Dees
.
.
Sounds
Crack of brown pelican eggs
Smash of chicks under oily boots
Crush of tern nests beneath giant tires
Sounds of BP cleanup
Splash of Corexit into the Gulf
Whoosh of oil spouting from dolphins
Rustle of marsh grass as dying birds flee
Sounds of BP cleanup
Curses of workers still waiting for pay
Gasps of crew members with no respirators
Unheard cries of widows and children
Sounds of BP cleanup
Bio:
Diane Elayne Dees lives in Louisiana. Her poems of protest have appeared in Out of Line, HazMat Review, Mobius, The New Verse News, Poetry SuperHighway, and several other publications.
(author retains copyright)
Return
.
Sounds
Crack of brown pelican eggs
Smash of chicks under oily boots
Crush of tern nests beneath giant tires
Sounds of BP cleanup
Splash of Corexit into the Gulf
Whoosh of oil spouting from dolphins
Rustle of marsh grass as dying birds flee
Sounds of BP cleanup
Curses of workers still waiting for pay
Gasps of crew members with no respirators
Unheard cries of widows and children
Sounds of BP cleanup
Bio:
Diane Elayne Dees lives in Louisiana. Her poems of protest have appeared in Out of Line, HazMat Review, Mobius, The New Verse News, Poetry SuperHighway, and several other publications.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Michael Lee Rattigan
.
.
No. 8
......for kwaku Agyeman
A number where a name should be: Immigrant No.8.
A plaque set roughly into concrete, stained with damp.
Two dates. The first for when a skinless body was discovered;
a second for the burial.
His widow prone against the stone-
crying speaking. To her husband through tears
from the stomach of her sorrow.
Pressed warmth on the stone-
compacted human grief.
A storm's foul news tossed up at sea,
three days adrift of a name.
Flowers, like tears, trail on the stone-
bright tongues bruised and crumpled;
their only freshness in grief.
Bio:
Michael Lee Rattigan was born in Croydon, England. He studied at the University of Kent and Trinity College Dublin. He has lived and taught in Cancun, Mexico and Palma de Mallorca. Through Rufus Books he has published “Nature Notes” and a complete translation of Fernando Pessoa's Caeiro poems.
(author retains copyright)
.
No. 8
......for kwaku Agyeman
A number where a name should be: Immigrant No.8.
A plaque set roughly into concrete, stained with damp.
Two dates. The first for when a skinless body was discovered;
a second for the burial.
His widow prone against the stone-
crying speaking. To her husband through tears
from the stomach of her sorrow.
Pressed warmth on the stone-
compacted human grief.
A storm's foul news tossed up at sea,
three days adrift of a name.
Flowers, like tears, trail on the stone-
bright tongues bruised and crumpled;
their only freshness in grief.
Bio:
Michael Lee Rattigan was born in Croydon, England. He studied at the University of Kent and Trinity College Dublin. He has lived and taught in Cancun, Mexico and Palma de Mallorca. Through Rufus Books he has published “Nature Notes” and a complete translation of Fernando Pessoa's Caeiro poems.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Marybeth Rua-Larsen
.
.
Unarmed
......for Furkan Dogan
Unarmed. Unjust. It’s pandemonium
when wheel chairs and cement can’t reach the quay,
when protest, or Lennon on harmonium
for “We Can Work It Out” can’t take away
their righteousness. Unthink. Unspeak. Unhide
the guns that don’t exist? What choice but splinter
sticks on legs in self defense? Outside
we witness tensions rise but unsign Pinter’s
name from JfJfP; we’re facing
nothing, our policy’s a giant brick
we hurl to sink their ships as TV-chasing
politicians slip and slide in their own slick.
Four bullets in his head. Can we refrain?
Undo? Unlearn enough to start again?
Note: JfJfP is Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Bio:
My work has been published or is forthcoming in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Raintown Review, Measure and The Battered Suitcase, among others. I live on the south coast of Massacusetts and have spent my teaching career working with affirmative action programs building basic writing and reading skills and teaching English to second-language learners at the college level.
(author retains copyright)
.
Unarmed
......for Furkan Dogan
Unarmed. Unjust. It’s pandemonium
when wheel chairs and cement can’t reach the quay,
when protest, or Lennon on harmonium
for “We Can Work It Out” can’t take away
their righteousness. Unthink. Unspeak. Unhide
the guns that don’t exist? What choice but splinter
sticks on legs in self defense? Outside
we witness tensions rise but unsign Pinter’s
name from JfJfP; we’re facing
nothing, our policy’s a giant brick
we hurl to sink their ships as TV-chasing
politicians slip and slide in their own slick.
Four bullets in his head. Can we refrain?
Undo? Unlearn enough to start again?
Note: JfJfP is Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Bio:
My work has been published or is forthcoming in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Raintown Review, Measure and The Battered Suitcase, among others. I live on the south coast of Massacusetts and have spent my teaching career working with affirmative action programs building basic writing and reading skills and teaching English to second-language learners at the college level.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Janice D. Soderling
.
.
We Wait
Another brick through the window last night.
They used to come only at night.
Not now.
Nights are the worst,
but even in the daytime, I startle at every sudden noise,
the slam of a car door,
loud voices of passers-by.
Now it is dark again but we cannot sleep.
We wait. Our child sleeps, sandwiched between us
like a slice of prime meat between bits of old bread.
I lie in the purple silence and try to find
something good to think about.
My husband lies tense beside me in the dark.
He repeats it like a mantra.
A man should be able to protect his family,
His thin arms.
He is a scholar, not a fighter.
We lie waiting. What will be thrown in tonight?
A Molotov cocktail?
The severed head of a pig?
Do you know the cost of replacing a broken window?
Last week, the neo party members,
the ones who call themselves patriots,
piled out of their vans in the public square.
I was there. I saw it all.
One held a brief speech. The others stood at attention,
holding flags.
They trashed everything breakable.
They were gone in ten minutes, leaving chaos.
No one said a word to oppose them.
When the police cars showed up,
no one had seen anything. I kept quiet too.
What can we do in this darkness
but wait?
Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is an American-born poet who lives in Sweden. Her work is in the current print journal Magma and has appeared at Babel Fruit, nth position, The Pedestal, The Flea and numerous other venues.
(author retains copyright)
.
We Wait
Another brick through the window last night.
They used to come only at night.
Not now.
Nights are the worst,
but even in the daytime, I startle at every sudden noise,
the slam of a car door,
loud voices of passers-by.
Now it is dark again but we cannot sleep.
We wait. Our child sleeps, sandwiched between us
like a slice of prime meat between bits of old bread.
I lie in the purple silence and try to find
something good to think about.
My husband lies tense beside me in the dark.
He repeats it like a mantra.
A man should be able to protect his family,
His thin arms.
He is a scholar, not a fighter.
We lie waiting. What will be thrown in tonight?
A Molotov cocktail?
The severed head of a pig?
Do you know the cost of replacing a broken window?
Last week, the neo party members,
the ones who call themselves patriots,
piled out of their vans in the public square.
I was there. I saw it all.
One held a brief speech. The others stood at attention,
holding flags.
They trashed everything breakable.
They were gone in ten minutes, leaving chaos.
No one said a word to oppose them.
When the police cars showed up,
no one had seen anything. I kept quiet too.
What can we do in this darkness
but wait?
Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is an American-born poet who lives in Sweden. Her work is in the current print journal Magma and has appeared at Babel Fruit, nth position, The Pedestal, The Flea and numerous other venues.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Paul Hostovsky
.
.
People in Deaf Houses
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.
The deaf students have barricaded the door,
hot-wired the school buses, moved them
in front of the gates, and let the air out of the tires.
They’ve shut the campus down, and the police
can’t do anything about it because they don’t
know sign language. And neither does the president
of the college. And neither does the chairman of the board
of trustees, and neither do the trustees themselves.
The trustees can’t be trusted with this college, this
church, this school, this blessed sacrament…
In the deaf world deaf is good. Deaf people marry
other deaf people, and live in deaf houses,
and do not throw deaf carpenters’ telephone numbers
away, but give them to other deaf homeowners
looking for a good deaf carpenter, because deaf
is a good and trusted name all over the deaf world…
Here’s the hospital and here’s the urology unit.
Open the door and see all the doctors
with their deft fingers and expensive educations.
Here is one performing a vasectomy
on a deaf patient who has elected to have it
because he doesn’t want any children.
And the surgeon has a slight accent, maybe
German. And the sign language interpreter
has a professional code of ethics,
and is signing what the surgeon is saying
but not what the interpreter is thinking
about German-speaking surgeons and vasectomies,
about Aryans and eugenicists and the forced
sterilizations of the congenitally deaf
in Europe only 40 years ago, about the protests
going on right now at Gallaudet, and about
cochlear implants being performed in this very
hospital, on deaf children who haven’t elected to have them…
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
He was a teacher of the deaf. He had a deaf mother,
and a deaf wife too, and he knew
that deaf people marry other deaf people
and live in deaf houses. And he deplored that fact.
He deplored deaf people. He urged Congress to act,
to prohibit deaf marriages, to reduce the risk
of more deaf babies. He wasn’t a Hitler,
or an Eichmann exactly. He didn’t advocate
killing the deaf. He loved the deaf. He taught the deaf.
He was only trying to eradicate the deaf
for their own good, for the good of the world…
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple
and the deaf students are burning
their oppressors in effigy. They’re saying: Look!
To anyone with eyes to see, they’re saying: Look!
And the interpreter’s fingers are flying,
and the surgeon’s fingers are snipping, and the nurse is
adjusting the light above the deaf patient
lying on the table with his johnny hiked up, his little
deaf penis the center of attention. And the interpreter
who has been trying all this time not to look at it,
looks at it. Takes a good long look.
Bio:
Paul Hostovsky's latest book of poems is Dear Truth (2009). To read more of his work, visit his website at www.paulhostovsky.com
(author retains copyright)
.
People in Deaf Houses
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.
The deaf students have barricaded the door,
hot-wired the school buses, moved them
in front of the gates, and let the air out of the tires.
They’ve shut the campus down, and the police
can’t do anything about it because they don’t
know sign language. And neither does the president
of the college. And neither does the chairman of the board
of trustees, and neither do the trustees themselves.
The trustees can’t be trusted with this college, this
church, this school, this blessed sacrament…
In the deaf world deaf is good. Deaf people marry
other deaf people, and live in deaf houses,
and do not throw deaf carpenters’ telephone numbers
away, but give them to other deaf homeowners
looking for a good deaf carpenter, because deaf
is a good and trusted name all over the deaf world…
Here’s the hospital and here’s the urology unit.
Open the door and see all the doctors
with their deft fingers and expensive educations.
Here is one performing a vasectomy
on a deaf patient who has elected to have it
because he doesn’t want any children.
And the surgeon has a slight accent, maybe
German. And the sign language interpreter
has a professional code of ethics,
and is signing what the surgeon is saying
but not what the interpreter is thinking
about German-speaking surgeons and vasectomies,
about Aryans and eugenicists and the forced
sterilizations of the congenitally deaf
in Europe only 40 years ago, about the protests
going on right now at Gallaudet, and about
cochlear implants being performed in this very
hospital, on deaf children who haven’t elected to have them…
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
He was a teacher of the deaf. He had a deaf mother,
and a deaf wife too, and he knew
that deaf people marry other deaf people
and live in deaf houses. And he deplored that fact.
He deplored deaf people. He urged Congress to act,
to prohibit deaf marriages, to reduce the risk
of more deaf babies. He wasn’t a Hitler,
or an Eichmann exactly. He didn’t advocate
killing the deaf. He loved the deaf. He taught the deaf.
He was only trying to eradicate the deaf
for their own good, for the good of the world…
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple
and the deaf students are burning
their oppressors in effigy. They’re saying: Look!
To anyone with eyes to see, they’re saying: Look!
And the interpreter’s fingers are flying,
and the surgeon’s fingers are snipping, and the nurse is
adjusting the light above the deaf patient
lying on the table with his johnny hiked up, his little
deaf penis the center of attention. And the interpreter
who has been trying all this time not to look at it,
looks at it. Takes a good long look.
Bio:
Paul Hostovsky's latest book of poems is Dear Truth (2009). To read more of his work, visit his website at www.paulhostovsky.com
(author retains copyright)
Return
W.F. Lantry
.
.
Listening to an Old Poet
I believe he knew
perfectly well
there were bombs falling
as he wrote
but he didn't care.
I believe he knew
that during the time
it took to compose
each line, a child
died alone
in another hemisphere.
And as he moved his pen
from one stanza to begin
the next, he knew
a man or woman's heart
stopped beating
a few blocks away,
or the breathing ceased,
the weary chest
no longer rising
and falling like the rhythms
of his lines.
He had an interest
in all these,
an indirect profit,
but more than that
he decided no matter
what he did, the bombs
would keep on falling,
the vain mouth would open
to receive no grain,
the heart would still,
the lungs empty.
And so he wrote
knowing that soon enough
he would be unable to move
from stanza to stanza
that the pen would soon fall
from his hand.
Bio:
W.F. Lantry received his Licence and Maîtrise from the Université de Nice, M.A. in English from Boston University and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the University of Montana CutBank 2010 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry and the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Umbrella, New Verse News, Unsplendid and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He currently serves as the Director of Academic Technology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
(author retains copyright)
.
Listening to an Old Poet
I believe he knew
perfectly well
there were bombs falling
as he wrote
but he didn't care.
I believe he knew
that during the time
it took to compose
each line, a child
died alone
in another hemisphere.
And as he moved his pen
from one stanza to begin
the next, he knew
a man or woman's heart
stopped beating
a few blocks away,
or the breathing ceased,
the weary chest
no longer rising
and falling like the rhythms
of his lines.
He had an interest
in all these,
an indirect profit,
but more than that
he decided no matter
what he did, the bombs
would keep on falling,
the vain mouth would open
to receive no grain,
the heart would still,
the lungs empty.
And so he wrote
knowing that soon enough
he would be unable to move
from stanza to stanza
that the pen would soon fall
from his hand.
Bio:
W.F. Lantry received his Licence and Maîtrise from the Université de Nice, M.A. in English from Boston University and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the University of Montana CutBank 2010 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry and the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Umbrella, New Verse News, Unsplendid and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He currently serves as the Director of Academic Technology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Mae Keyson McAuley
.
.
Patricide
It was by chance that I was teaching at a University Hospital in China,
where Chen was being held for killing his father with a knife
meant to fillet the carp languishing in the kitchen sink.
I was immediately drawn into the tragic drama of an oedipal complex.
I met Chen on the day he was interviewed by the Director.
He was thin, 16 years old,
seated erect on a green metal chair.
The room was crowded with men in white lab coats,
their faces obscured in a nauseating fog of cigarette smoke.
For two hours Chen answered questions thoughtfully, clearly.
I listened to his mythic account—
a rich father, high-ranking official
disgraced by his “stupid” son’s school performance,
a weeping mother unable to protect herself or the boy
from the father’s alcoholic rages, burning shame.
Blink.
Something happens that cannot be undone.
Bio:
Dr. Mae McAuley is clinical psychologist in Los Angeles and a retired professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. A world traveler with her husband, Dr. George McAuley, a noted psychiatrist, her poetry often concerns issues around the subjects of human rights, social justice and poverty in a straightforward narrative that is easily accessible. Her passion equals her talent.
(author retains copyright)
.
Patricide
It was by chance that I was teaching at a University Hospital in China,
where Chen was being held for killing his father with a knife
meant to fillet the carp languishing in the kitchen sink.
I was immediately drawn into the tragic drama of an oedipal complex.
I met Chen on the day he was interviewed by the Director.
He was thin, 16 years old,
seated erect on a green metal chair.
The room was crowded with men in white lab coats,
their faces obscured in a nauseating fog of cigarette smoke.
For two hours Chen answered questions thoughtfully, clearly.
I listened to his mythic account—
a rich father, high-ranking official
disgraced by his “stupid” son’s school performance,
a weeping mother unable to protect herself or the boy
from the father’s alcoholic rages, burning shame.
Blink.
Something happens that cannot be undone.
Bio:
Dr. Mae McAuley is clinical psychologist in Los Angeles and a retired professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. A world traveler with her husband, Dr. George McAuley, a noted psychiatrist, her poetry often concerns issues around the subjects of human rights, social justice and poverty in a straightforward narrative that is easily accessible. Her passion equals her talent.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Peter Goodwin
.
.
Russian Democracy
Had I a better sense of history, I would have known that the euphoria
that accompanied the collapse of communism in August of nineteen
ninety one—I was there! An eyewitness to history!—would not last,
that cheers and exuberance would not usher in the dawn of democracy,
that those three days when some Muscovites faced down tanks
was not necessarily the greatest achievement of the Russian people
and even if it was, euphoria, courage, ecstasy will not build democracy,
cannot liberate Russia from a thousand years of autocratic rule, Oh how
we cheered for Yeltsin, tore down statues of tyrants and dreamed
of a future which had nothing to do with the past little realizing
that a people long used to abuse may define democracy differently,
little realizing that the Russians had long ago made their compromises
with communism, moderating it with deals and favors, creating their own,
informal social fabric which sustained them and when communism
collapsed so did their social safety network, and crime which had been
contained and organized, now burst open—a septic boil— spread
and stained and swallowed the stillborn democracy. No one cheers
for Yeltsin now, no one cared when he departed, yearning for a tzar
who will restore order, even if just a small man, and flowers
placed on a Memorial to the Gulag,
placed with such hope, have withered.
Bio:
Peter D. Goodwin resides in Maryland, close to the Chesapeake Bay, writes poetry while providing succulent treats for deer, rodents, birds and insects.
Poems published in his chapbook No Sense Of History; the anthologies September eleven; Maryland Voices; Listening to The Water: The Susquehanna Water Anthology; Alternatives To Surrender; and various journals including Rattle, Scribble, MainStreet Rag, Dreamstreets, Lucidity, Bent Pin, lunarosity,Delaware Poetry Revire, Yellow Medicine Review, LunchLines, Memoir(and), Prints.
(author retains copyright)
Return
.
Russian Democracy
Had I a better sense of history, I would have known that the euphoria
that accompanied the collapse of communism in August of nineteen
ninety one—I was there! An eyewitness to history!—would not last,
that cheers and exuberance would not usher in the dawn of democracy,
that those three days when some Muscovites faced down tanks
was not necessarily the greatest achievement of the Russian people
and even if it was, euphoria, courage, ecstasy will not build democracy,
cannot liberate Russia from a thousand years of autocratic rule, Oh how
we cheered for Yeltsin, tore down statues of tyrants and dreamed
of a future which had nothing to do with the past little realizing
that a people long used to abuse may define democracy differently,
little realizing that the Russians had long ago made their compromises
with communism, moderating it with deals and favors, creating their own,
informal social fabric which sustained them and when communism
collapsed so did their social safety network, and crime which had been
contained and organized, now burst open—a septic boil— spread
and stained and swallowed the stillborn democracy. No one cheers
for Yeltsin now, no one cared when he departed, yearning for a tzar
who will restore order, even if just a small man, and flowers
placed on a Memorial to the Gulag,
placed with such hope, have withered.
Bio:
Peter D. Goodwin resides in Maryland, close to the Chesapeake Bay, writes poetry while providing succulent treats for deer, rodents, birds and insects.
Poems published in his chapbook No Sense Of History; the anthologies September eleven; Maryland Voices; Listening to The Water: The Susquehanna Water Anthology; Alternatives To Surrender; and various journals including Rattle, Scribble, MainStreet Rag, Dreamstreets, Lucidity, Bent Pin, lunarosity,Delaware Poetry Revire, Yellow Medicine Review, LunchLines, Memoir(and), Prints.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Christine Klocek-Lim
.
.
Gadreel
— fallen angel, “God is my helper,” taught mankind about weapons of war
Her heart burned despite the cold subway, the explosive packs on her belt and back heavy and hot as grief. Around her the ignorant faces of the enemy: petals on a wet branch, the mother tree infested, already dying. Best to put them down. And after, perhaps they would be cognizant, their souls suddenly reborn into reason. She would explain how their lethargy killed her husband, her brothers and father. They would mourn their negligence, their disregard for her people, her homeland. Or perhaps she would meet them again and they would be no different: their torpor infinite, spanning death and life over and over again in terminal apathy, their souls cursed, unforgiven. No way to know. And so she recreated herself, made her body into the spider that bites in darkness, her widow’s veil more battle mask than shroud. Her handbag full of nails, the shrapnel reassuring despite the lurching car, the click of the track, as she waited for Lubyanka station, the last stop. Morning never more beautiful than right now.
(http://www.calgaryherald.com/columnists/suicide+bombers+dying+revenge/2923173/story.html) (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/29/russia.subway.explosion/index.html)
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262222/Moscow-metro-bombings-Chechyna-link-emerges.html)
Bio:
Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. In 2010, her manuscript “Dark matter” was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her manuscript “The Quantum Archives” was a semi-finalist at Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, March 2010). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.
(author retains copyright)
.
Gadreel
— fallen angel, “God is my helper,” taught mankind about weapons of war
Her heart burned despite the cold subway, the explosive packs on her belt and back heavy and hot as grief. Around her the ignorant faces of the enemy: petals on a wet branch, the mother tree infested, already dying. Best to put them down. And after, perhaps they would be cognizant, their souls suddenly reborn into reason. She would explain how their lethargy killed her husband, her brothers and father. They would mourn their negligence, their disregard for her people, her homeland. Or perhaps she would meet them again and they would be no different: their torpor infinite, spanning death and life over and over again in terminal apathy, their souls cursed, unforgiven. No way to know. And so she recreated herself, made her body into the spider that bites in darkness, her widow’s veil more battle mask than shroud. Her handbag full of nails, the shrapnel reassuring despite the lurching car, the click of the track, as she waited for Lubyanka station, the last stop. Morning never more beautiful than right now.
(http://www.calgaryherald.com/columnists/suicide+bombers+dying+revenge/2923173/story.html) (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/29/russia.subway.explosion/index.html)
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262222/Moscow-metro-bombings-Chechyna-link-emerges.html)
Bio:
Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. In 2010, her manuscript “Dark matter” was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her manuscript “The Quantum Archives” was a semi-finalist at Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, March 2010). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
.
.
Remembering Rosa Luxemburg in the “New” Times Square
Rosa, the porno theaters have vanished,
but the dreams remain.
They’ve only migrated from the realm of shadow
to the blare of billboards
The flashing lights reveal your face, exhausted after a rally,
......after yet another essay completed
........but
Rosa, I’ve lost the words to this poem.
I’ve lost my way to you.
Frantically, I’ve searched my old computer,
even the floppy disks. To no avail.
All I have are these lines scribbled down about
The scope of your vision,
your finely wrought theories,
now so buffeted by vogue winds
and the claims of identity politics and multiculturalism
.......the singularity of your stances—
the courage of your opposition to the “Great War”
—the slaughter of workers everywhere—
even when others caved to the pressures of nationalism,
even when it landed you in prison,
your insistence on freedom and international solidarity and democracy
even in revolution’s heady throes,
your critique of Lenin’s reign of terror,
even as you knew what was to come,
those many years, sometimes with Leo, sometimes without him,
how the absence of his embrace could never deflect you for long,
truly a life in love and in struggle,
in loving struggle, in struggling love,
all of this, Rosa, has made its way into the memory halls of justice,
into the meetings of the groups that trickle into basements
seeking somehow to end the carnage campaigns of today
and yes even if that very sweep erased the particular,
even if the interconnections of nation, minority, and self
never found fruition in your analysis—
you, the immigrant from Poland, the woman with a doctorate and a limp,
the Jew relentlessly attacked in anti-Jewish terms—
even if that. Still,
Rosa, you resist my rose colored glasses.
Your ideas are too immense;
the events of your life are too neon—
from your revolutionary schoolgirlhood in Warsaw
to your corpse dumped in the Berlin canal after torture¬—
to be squeezed into a single soliloqu/ode,
even one this unkempt, this ungainly
So I summon you here,
.............here,
beneath the claims for revolutionary bikini briefs
the announcements of new gadgets already outmoded,
the fabrication of craving for all things superfluous
the beams of searchlight oblivious to the sweatshops
and the sex slaves invisible to the dragons of grace
and the homeless men shouting for retribution and shelter and fifty cents
near the lone, if never lonely, military recruiting station
by the ruins of the glory holes and the ghosts of go-go boys perished,
I fondle the shards of my credit card, and I pause, gasping, to ask:
Rosa, Rosa, how did it come to this?
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Leo Jogiches (1867-1919), leaders in European social democracy
Bio:
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Insatiable Psalm (Hershey, Pa.: Wind River Press, 2005) and What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2008; Free Verse Editions series). He was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists. Visit his web site at http://www.yataub.net.
(author retains copyright)
.
Remembering Rosa Luxemburg in the “New” Times Square
Rosa, the porno theaters have vanished,
but the dreams remain.
They’ve only migrated from the realm of shadow
to the blare of billboards
The flashing lights reveal your face, exhausted after a rally,
......after yet another essay completed
........but
Rosa, I’ve lost the words to this poem.
I’ve lost my way to you.
Frantically, I’ve searched my old computer,
even the floppy disks. To no avail.
All I have are these lines scribbled down about
The scope of your vision,
your finely wrought theories,
now so buffeted by vogue winds
and the claims of identity politics and multiculturalism
.......the singularity of your stances—
the courage of your opposition to the “Great War”
—the slaughter of workers everywhere—
even when others caved to the pressures of nationalism,
even when it landed you in prison,
your insistence on freedom and international solidarity and democracy
even in revolution’s heady throes,
your critique of Lenin’s reign of terror,
even as you knew what was to come,
those many years, sometimes with Leo, sometimes without him,
how the absence of his embrace could never deflect you for long,
truly a life in love and in struggle,
in loving struggle, in struggling love,
all of this, Rosa, has made its way into the memory halls of justice,
into the meetings of the groups that trickle into basements
seeking somehow to end the carnage campaigns of today
and yes even if that very sweep erased the particular,
even if the interconnections of nation, minority, and self
never found fruition in your analysis—
you, the immigrant from Poland, the woman with a doctorate and a limp,
the Jew relentlessly attacked in anti-Jewish terms—
even if that. Still,
Rosa, you resist my rose colored glasses.
Your ideas are too immense;
the events of your life are too neon—
from your revolutionary schoolgirlhood in Warsaw
to your corpse dumped in the Berlin canal after torture¬—
to be squeezed into a single soliloqu/ode,
even one this unkempt, this ungainly
So I summon you here,
.............here,
beneath the claims for revolutionary bikini briefs
the announcements of new gadgets already outmoded,
the fabrication of craving for all things superfluous
the beams of searchlight oblivious to the sweatshops
and the sex slaves invisible to the dragons of grace
and the homeless men shouting for retribution and shelter and fifty cents
near the lone, if never lonely, military recruiting station
by the ruins of the glory holes and the ghosts of go-go boys perished,
I fondle the shards of my credit card, and I pause, gasping, to ask:
Rosa, Rosa, how did it come to this?
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Leo Jogiches (1867-1919), leaders in European social democracy
Bio:
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Insatiable Psalm (Hershey, Pa.: Wind River Press, 2005) and What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2008; Free Verse Editions series). He was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists. Visit his web site at http://www.yataub.net.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Gary Beck
.
.
Radiation Rhapsody
Strum a chord for me,
and I shall improvise…
Sparrows sit upon the window-sills
watching in bewilderment
as snot-nosed children
cower under desks
in the schoolrooms of the world,
while daddy’s working hard,
building rockets…
Presidents and Premiers
(protocol is not forgotten)
send each other formal notes,
while people read the pamphlets
of atomic age survival.
Shall I be a garbage man
and haul away the ashes?
But who will haul away my ashes,
if the whole world crashes?
Ride with me…
Put your farecard in the turnstile to annihilation.
The "A" train stops at Times Square station,
opens it’s pneumatic doors,
ejects the crowds whose rhinoceros roars
are silenced by a blinding flash,
a sudden flood
of molten slag
No more rush hour.
No quick latté at Starbucks.
Just a large crater
that will glow at night
for the next hundred years.
Bio:
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook 'Remembrance' was published by Origami Condom Press, 'The Conquest of Somalia' was published by Cervena Barva Press, 'The Dance of Hate' was published by Calliope Nerve Media and 'Mutilated Girls' is being published by Bedouin Press. A collection of his poetry 'Days of Destruction' was published by Skive Press. Another collection 'Expectations' was published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
(author retains copyright)
.
Radiation Rhapsody
Strum a chord for me,
and I shall improvise…
Sparrows sit upon the window-sills
watching in bewilderment
as snot-nosed children
cower under desks
in the schoolrooms of the world,
while daddy’s working hard,
building rockets…
Presidents and Premiers
(protocol is not forgotten)
send each other formal notes,
while people read the pamphlets
of atomic age survival.
Shall I be a garbage man
and haul away the ashes?
But who will haul away my ashes,
if the whole world crashes?
Ride with me…
Put your farecard in the turnstile to annihilation.
The "A" train stops at Times Square station,
opens it’s pneumatic doors,
ejects the crowds whose rhinoceros roars
are silenced by a blinding flash,
a sudden flood
of molten slag
No more rush hour.
No quick latté at Starbucks.
Just a large crater
that will glow at night
for the next hundred years.
Bio:
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook 'Remembrance' was published by Origami Condom Press, 'The Conquest of Somalia' was published by Cervena Barva Press, 'The Dance of Hate' was published by Calliope Nerve Media and 'Mutilated Girls' is being published by Bedouin Press. A collection of his poetry 'Days of Destruction' was published by Skive Press. Another collection 'Expectations' was published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Chris Brandt
.
.
Fear As A Principle Of Social Organization
Fear nukes. 1953, duck, cover, crawl under
your desk, the same desk where you carve your name
and have to stay after school for a week, sanding it
by hand under the teacher’s icepick eye. Learn fear.
Fear father. When your father comes home…
Mommy, will daddy be in a good mood?
You understand why I must punish you? That this
hurts me more than you? Daddy please! Love fear.
Fear God. He sees you, knows when you cheat,
when you touch yourself, when you think
your dirty little thoughts about Susie, he’s
a bit like Santa Claus, only real, and he
can make you go to hell. Worship fear.
Fear acne. Fear wearing dumb shoes, cliques,
being left out, getting turned down
for dates, for a part in the play, being
the last one chosen for softball or soccer,
fear showing you care. Fear yourself.
Fear sex. Fear girls, fear women, fear boys.
Fear hairy palms, syphilis, wet dreams,
not knowing how to undo a bra, sweaty hands,
coming too soon, not coming. Fear desire.
Fear getting a job. Fear losing it. Not knowing
the right word, saying the wrong thing, gossip
and office intrigue, drug tests, the boss.
Fear candor, fear secrecy. Fear everyone.
Fear aging, fear skin growing slack, joints
getting stiff, eyes weak, desire limp, thought
thick, memory thin. Fear nothing
to do, fear loneliness. Fear
Bio:
Chris Brandt is a writer, activist, translator, carpenter, furniture designer, theatre worker. He teaches in Fordham's Peace and Justice Program. Poems and essays have been published in Spain, France, Mexico and the US; translations in The New Yorker and by Seven Stories Press, UC Berkeley, and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
(author retains copyright)
.
Fear As A Principle Of Social Organization
Fear nukes. 1953, duck, cover, crawl under
your desk, the same desk where you carve your name
and have to stay after school for a week, sanding it
by hand under the teacher’s icepick eye. Learn fear.
Fear father. When your father comes home…
Mommy, will daddy be in a good mood?
You understand why I must punish you? That this
hurts me more than you? Daddy please! Love fear.
Fear God. He sees you, knows when you cheat,
when you touch yourself, when you think
your dirty little thoughts about Susie, he’s
a bit like Santa Claus, only real, and he
can make you go to hell. Worship fear.
Fear acne. Fear wearing dumb shoes, cliques,
being left out, getting turned down
for dates, for a part in the play, being
the last one chosen for softball or soccer,
fear showing you care. Fear yourself.
Fear sex. Fear girls, fear women, fear boys.
Fear hairy palms, syphilis, wet dreams,
not knowing how to undo a bra, sweaty hands,
coming too soon, not coming. Fear desire.
Fear getting a job. Fear losing it. Not knowing
the right word, saying the wrong thing, gossip
and office intrigue, drug tests, the boss.
Fear candor, fear secrecy. Fear everyone.
Fear aging, fear skin growing slack, joints
getting stiff, eyes weak, desire limp, thought
thick, memory thin. Fear nothing
to do, fear loneliness. Fear
Bio:
Chris Brandt is a writer, activist, translator, carpenter, furniture designer, theatre worker. He teaches in Fordham's Peace and Justice Program. Poems and essays have been published in Spain, France, Mexico and the US; translations in The New Yorker and by Seven Stories Press, UC Berkeley, and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Stephen Jarrell Williams
.
.
Black Crude
Doing her dance
on a plastic tarp,
she calls herself
Mother Earth...
A high stage
above a packed house,
cheering wildly
they want her to strip...
She curses,
tearing her expensive dress,
hissing at them
getting what they deserve...
Black oil pouring from her grin,
gushing out between her legs,
flooding the isles,
drowning the gauntlet of men,
out the windows and main doors
a river of black crude,
submerging their shiny cars
and butt of their city,
down street after street
waves deep into the farmlands...
She's gyrating now,
laughing,
lighting a match
to her slick body,
the whoosh of flames
cauterizing the entire planet.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.
(author retains copyright)
.
Black Crude
Doing her dance
on a plastic tarp,
she calls herself
Mother Earth...
A high stage
above a packed house,
cheering wildly
they want her to strip...
She curses,
tearing her expensive dress,
hissing at them
getting what they deserve...
Black oil pouring from her grin,
gushing out between her legs,
flooding the isles,
drowning the gauntlet of men,
out the windows and main doors
a river of black crude,
submerging their shiny cars
and butt of their city,
down street after street
waves deep into the farmlands...
She's gyrating now,
laughing,
lighting a match
to her slick body,
the whoosh of flames
cauterizing the entire planet.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.
(author retains copyright)
Return
David D. Horowitz
.
.
River
You ban all airplay of my music, sales
Of my CDs. You stab with rumor, spy,
Harass, and stalk. Yes, power: stuff your jails
With dissidents. Denounce those who defy
Your puppetry, and ruin their careers.
You order marches of obedience;
A grinning beat, not joyful pulse; canned cheers
And cued applause; in short, ingredients,
Not art. I listen to the sparrows tweet,
The vireos and warblers, and I hear
The rainstorm, river, breezes through the street
Of elms, a woman's whispered fear
And symphony LP, and your commands.
The moment yields a melody; my blood
Tunes silence into song, despite your plans
And charts, your rumors' bullet, spear, and blade.
They boast their guns who are themselves afraid.
Bio:
I founded and manage Rose Alley Press, which primarily publishes books featuring Pacific Northwest rhymed metrical poetry. My newest poetry collection, from Rose Alley Press, is Stars Beyond the Battlesmoke. Other collections from Rose Alley include Wildfire, Candleflame; Resin from the Rain; and Streetlamp, Treetop, Star. Many of my poems have been published in fine literary journals, such as The Lyric, Candelabrum, and The New Formalist. My essays often appear in Exterminating Angel. In 2005, I won the PoetsWest Achievement Award. In 2007 I edited and published the poetry anthology Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range. My Web site is www.rosealleypress.com.
(author retains copyright)
.
River
You ban all airplay of my music, sales
Of my CDs. You stab with rumor, spy,
Harass, and stalk. Yes, power: stuff your jails
With dissidents. Denounce those who defy
Your puppetry, and ruin their careers.
You order marches of obedience;
A grinning beat, not joyful pulse; canned cheers
And cued applause; in short, ingredients,
Not art. I listen to the sparrows tweet,
The vireos and warblers, and I hear
The rainstorm, river, breezes through the street
Of elms, a woman's whispered fear
And symphony LP, and your commands.
The moment yields a melody; my blood
Tunes silence into song, despite your plans
And charts, your rumors' bullet, spear, and blade.
They boast their guns who are themselves afraid.
Bio:
I founded and manage Rose Alley Press, which primarily publishes books featuring Pacific Northwest rhymed metrical poetry. My newest poetry collection, from Rose Alley Press, is Stars Beyond the Battlesmoke. Other collections from Rose Alley include Wildfire, Candleflame; Resin from the Rain; and Streetlamp, Treetop, Star. Many of my poems have been published in fine literary journals, such as The Lyric, Candelabrum, and The New Formalist. My essays often appear in Exterminating Angel. In 2005, I won the PoetsWest Achievement Award. In 2007 I edited and published the poetry anthology Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range. My Web site is www.rosealleypress.com.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Allene Rasmussen Nichols
.
.
Srebrenica Massacre
The 7,000 murdered will never breathe again,
and the thousands raped will never sing again,
and the thousands terrorized will never speak again,
but breath and song and voice
will rise from the damp earth
and ravaged bodies
and frozen throats
and this spirit will suffocate ethnic hatred
and from that blackened pile
it will bring forth a rose for each person
who suffered
until Srebrenica is covered with wild roses
that impale the murderers and rapists
and provide sweet sanctuary
for those who can’t forget.
Those who remember will whisper a curse
and a blessing
on the rest of us, on we who said “never again”
until never again demanded that we act
and again we did nothing.
The blessing-curse will go like this:
We will know that we are all Serbs and
we are all Bosnians; we are all Muslims
and we are all Christians; we are all killers
and we are all victims; And this struggle
in our hearts will last until
the roses of Srebrenica bleed tears
to water the graves of the massacred.
Bio:
Allene Rasmussen Nichols lives in Arlington, Texas. Her poems have been published in regional and international journals and the anthology Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa. Her plays have been produced in Dallas, California, and New York.
(author retains copyright)
.
Srebrenica Massacre
The 7,000 murdered will never breathe again,
and the thousands raped will never sing again,
and the thousands terrorized will never speak again,
but breath and song and voice
will rise from the damp earth
and ravaged bodies
and frozen throats
and this spirit will suffocate ethnic hatred
and from that blackened pile
it will bring forth a rose for each person
who suffered
until Srebrenica is covered with wild roses
that impale the murderers and rapists
and provide sweet sanctuary
for those who can’t forget.
Those who remember will whisper a curse
and a blessing
on the rest of us, on we who said “never again”
until never again demanded that we act
and again we did nothing.
The blessing-curse will go like this:
We will know that we are all Serbs and
we are all Bosnians; we are all Muslims
and we are all Christians; we are all killers
and we are all victims; And this struggle
in our hearts will last until
the roses of Srebrenica bleed tears
to water the graves of the massacred.
Bio:
Allene Rasmussen Nichols lives in Arlington, Texas. Her poems have been published in regional and international journals and the anthology Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa. Her plays have been produced in Dallas, California, and New York.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Joseph DeMarco
.
.
Happy Harvest
He who toils,
shall unearth something,
that mankind has,
long since lost.
And he shall go to bed,
with a heavy head,
And sleep without worry.
Or whimper.
Or whim.
It is easy to forget.
(When MAGIC is beamed to a screen on your wall)
That our Mother the Earth,
Nourishes us,
It's easy to forget,
that beans and corn don't come from cans,
Can we allow ourselves to see,
the folly of our development?
Can we allow the children,
to remember that,
Bread isn't created in a factory?
And apples don't grow on shelves?
Concrete gives little back,
So why plant so many buildings?
So why plant freeways and parking lots?
You ever heard of a parking lot sandwich?
Plant a tree,
Plant a whole vegetable garden,
And have a
Happy Harvest.
Bio:
Joseph DeMarco was born in New York City; he lived most of his life in Buffalo, NY. He now teaches seventh grade on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. He is the author of the novels Plague of the Invigilare, The 4 Hundred and 20 Assassins of Emir Abdullah-Harazins, At Play in the Killing Fields, and Blind Savior, False Prophet. He is currently working on several new projects.
(author retains copyright)
.
Happy Harvest
He who toils,
shall unearth something,
that mankind has,
long since lost.
And he shall go to bed,
with a heavy head,
And sleep without worry.
Or whimper.
Or whim.
It is easy to forget.
(When MAGIC is beamed to a screen on your wall)
That our Mother the Earth,
Nourishes us,
It's easy to forget,
that beans and corn don't come from cans,
Can we allow ourselves to see,
the folly of our development?
Can we allow the children,
to remember that,
Bread isn't created in a factory?
And apples don't grow on shelves?
Concrete gives little back,
So why plant so many buildings?
So why plant freeways and parking lots?
You ever heard of a parking lot sandwich?
Plant a tree,
Plant a whole vegetable garden,
And have a
Happy Harvest.
Bio:
Joseph DeMarco was born in New York City; he lived most of his life in Buffalo, NY. He now teaches seventh grade on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. He is the author of the novels Plague of the Invigilare, The 4 Hundred and 20 Assassins of Emir Abdullah-Harazins, At Play in the Killing Fields, and Blind Savior, False Prophet. He is currently working on several new projects.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Claudia Serea
.
.
To my native country
Country, where I grew up in untouched rooms
with furniture covered with crochet,
windows covered with lace curtains,
and the past covered by silence,
Country, that suffers from a disease
of truth dappled with lies,
Country, where the former informants,
the political prison guards,
the ones who beat and spit,
the ones who prosecuted,
who tortured,
who murdered,
are now retired grandpas strolling the parks
enjoying fat pensions,
one of them might even offer to push my daughter on the swing
while I run to the kiosk to get water,
Country, where the judges who doled out years
of political prison to my family
to advance their careers,
now sign memoirs in the central library,
Country in which the old people still hope
to be saved by Americans,
and the young ones hurry to leave it all behind,
Country, where the sparrows still chirp
about the Socialist achievements,
the biggest one being the smashing of spines,
Country, where justice is not only blind,
but also deaf and dumb,
and rides a donkey through the ditches,
Country, where twenty years have passed
and no one was convicted,
no one found guilty,
while witnesses die,
addresses change,
the buried bodies dissolve,
the mass graves disappear,
Country, where it’s no secret
the former secret police are disguised
as prosperous business men and politicians,
Country, where the priests are still priests
after years of filing informants’ reports,
Country of perpetual Halloween,
where I’ve seen my father cry
and the gravediggers laugh,
Wake up.
Wash your face with the blood
of your young.
And show
who you really are.
Bio:
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in Mudfish, Main Street Rag, Oberon, The Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Exquisite Corpse, Fourth River, The Red Wheelbarrow, and in numerous other anthologies and journals. She is the author of two poetry collections: Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and To Part Is to Die a Little, selected as a contest finalist by Main Street Rag in 2009. She also writes creative nonfiction, published by The Rambler and The Writers’ Workshop Review. Claudia lives in New Jersey and works in New York for a major publishing company.
.
To my native country
Country, where I grew up in untouched rooms
with furniture covered with crochet,
windows covered with lace curtains,
and the past covered by silence,
Country, that suffers from a disease
of truth dappled with lies,
Country, where the former informants,
the political prison guards,
the ones who beat and spit,
the ones who prosecuted,
who tortured,
who murdered,
are now retired grandpas strolling the parks
enjoying fat pensions,
one of them might even offer to push my daughter on the swing
while I run to the kiosk to get water,
Country, where the judges who doled out years
of political prison to my family
to advance their careers,
now sign memoirs in the central library,
Country in which the old people still hope
to be saved by Americans,
and the young ones hurry to leave it all behind,
Country, where the sparrows still chirp
about the Socialist achievements,
the biggest one being the smashing of spines,
Country, where justice is not only blind,
but also deaf and dumb,
and rides a donkey through the ditches,
Country, where twenty years have passed
and no one was convicted,
no one found guilty,
while witnesses die,
addresses change,
the buried bodies dissolve,
the mass graves disappear,
Country, where it’s no secret
the former secret police are disguised
as prosperous business men and politicians,
Country, where the priests are still priests
after years of filing informants’ reports,
Country of perpetual Halloween,
where I’ve seen my father cry
and the gravediggers laugh,
Wake up.
Wash your face with the blood
of your young.
And show
who you really are.
Bio:
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in Mudfish, Main Street Rag, Oberon, The Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Exquisite Corpse, Fourth River, The Red Wheelbarrow, and in numerous other anthologies and journals. She is the author of two poetry collections: Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and To Part Is to Die a Little, selected as a contest finalist by Main Street Rag in 2009. She also writes creative nonfiction, published by The Rambler and The Writers’ Workshop Review. Claudia lives in New Jersey and works in New York for a major publishing company.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Tom Snee
.
.
Separated At Birth, Part I
Separated at birth,
Mother dead,
Grandparents too old,
Father fled.
Up for adoption,
However, apart.
Tom became a Johnson,
Tim became a Hart.
The Johnsons lived in Chelsea,
The Harts in Camden Town,
The Johnsons lived in high luxury,
The Harts much lower down.
Tom was raised,
With nanny and tutor,
Then Eton and Oxford,
Then debutantes' suitor.
Tim grew up
All by himself,
Truanted school,
Risked his health.
Tom had all he wanted,
Parents indulging every whim,
Wealth, contacts and good looks,
A fabulous life awaited him.
Tim had nothing but his looks,
Parents, battered and beaten by life,
A home blighted by alcoholism,
And constant domestic strife.
Tom followed Dad into the City,
Married into aristocracy,
Became a safe Tory candidate,
A job in Her Majesty's Treasury.
Tim followed Dad into drinking,
Fathered a child but left the mother,
Saw no point in working,
Drifted along from one pub to another.
Twelve years later, in the Daily Mail,
Two reports lay, side by side;
One about the new Prime Minister,
The other a victim of suicide.
The reports were of 39-year-old twins;
One who had achieved
Beyond his wildest dreams,
And one of life tragically relieved.
As Tim Hart left his limousine
And entered number 10,
A funeral was being prepared,
Tom Johnson's requiem.
Bio:
A 61-year-old retired teacher from Cheshire, UK, my poems are the result of lifetime's journey of learning and experience; a journey that still goes on.
(author retains copyright)
.
Separated At Birth, Part I
Separated at birth,
Mother dead,
Grandparents too old,
Father fled.
Up for adoption,
However, apart.
Tom became a Johnson,
Tim became a Hart.
The Johnsons lived in Chelsea,
The Harts in Camden Town,
The Johnsons lived in high luxury,
The Harts much lower down.
Tom was raised,
With nanny and tutor,
Then Eton and Oxford,
Then debutantes' suitor.
Tim grew up
All by himself,
Truanted school,
Risked his health.
Tom had all he wanted,
Parents indulging every whim,
Wealth, contacts and good looks,
A fabulous life awaited him.
Tim had nothing but his looks,
Parents, battered and beaten by life,
A home blighted by alcoholism,
And constant domestic strife.
Tom followed Dad into the City,
Married into aristocracy,
Became a safe Tory candidate,
A job in Her Majesty's Treasury.
Tim followed Dad into drinking,
Fathered a child but left the mother,
Saw no point in working,
Drifted along from one pub to another.
Twelve years later, in the Daily Mail,
Two reports lay, side by side;
One about the new Prime Minister,
The other a victim of suicide.
The reports were of 39-year-old twins;
One who had achieved
Beyond his wildest dreams,
And one of life tragically relieved.
As Tim Hart left his limousine
And entered number 10,
A funeral was being prepared,
Tom Johnson's requiem.
Bio:
A 61-year-old retired teacher from Cheshire, UK, my poems are the result of lifetime's journey of learning and experience; a journey that still goes on.
(author retains copyright)
Return
F. I. Goldhaber
.
.
Separation of Church and State
Epigraph: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
One of this country's founding fundaments,
is the separation of church and state.
A civil union, marriage brings hundreds
of legal rights, responsibilities,
established by filing certificates
with GOVERNMENT entities. There is no
"sanctity" involved, just a business deal.
Men invented marriage to protect their
property. Throughout the millennia
marriages aligned countries, preserved trade
relationships, enriched nobility.
In some countries if you have religious
rites, you must have civil ceremonies
as well to obtain legal benefits.
All laws should apply equally to all
U.S. citizens. The constitution
has no provisions to deny rights or
privileges based on one's sexual
orientation. We need church and state
separate. Allow EVERYONE civil
union certificates and benefits.
Individual churches can decide
who may have religious ceremonies,
but those should provide NO LEGAL standing.
Any who want the tax and civil rights
must go through the civil process. Dump the
word marriage, let the churches have it, but
without denying anyone their rights.
Bio:
F.I. Goldhaber's second poetry collection, Pairs of Poems was ranked number three in the Preditors & Editors readers poll for poems. Writing has been her vocation for more than a quarter century and she has won a number of awards for her fiction and poetry. She has had short stories, novelettes, poems, news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews published in magazines, e-zines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies. www.goldhaber.net
(author retains copyright)
.
Separation of Church and State
Epigraph: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
One of this country's founding fundaments,
is the separation of church and state.
A civil union, marriage brings hundreds
of legal rights, responsibilities,
established by filing certificates
with GOVERNMENT entities. There is no
"sanctity" involved, just a business deal.
Men invented marriage to protect their
property. Throughout the millennia
marriages aligned countries, preserved trade
relationships, enriched nobility.
In some countries if you have religious
rites, you must have civil ceremonies
as well to obtain legal benefits.
All laws should apply equally to all
U.S. citizens. The constitution
has no provisions to deny rights or
privileges based on one's sexual
orientation. We need church and state
separate. Allow EVERYONE civil
union certificates and benefits.
Individual churches can decide
who may have religious ceremonies,
but those should provide NO LEGAL standing.
Any who want the tax and civil rights
must go through the civil process. Dump the
word marriage, let the churches have it, but
without denying anyone their rights.
Bio:
F.I. Goldhaber's second poetry collection, Pairs of Poems was ranked number three in the Preditors & Editors readers poll for poems. Writing has been her vocation for more than a quarter century and she has won a number of awards for her fiction and poetry. She has had short stories, novelettes, poems, news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews published in magazines, e-zines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies. www.goldhaber.net
(author retains copyright)
Return
Kelsey Outman
.
.
Slope = Mind
Your Spirit is thought
Free Thinking is constrained
Risks slide down and never rise again
The risk to be unknown
Rebelled against society
One is what they are
What they think you can be
No choice, only reality
They already chose for you
Everyday, every moment, they choose for you
Uniqueness is not a curse
Not a privilege, nor a right
Conformity has emerged
Has risen from the mountain of diversity
The mountain, the slope from which we slide
The powder of original thought that burns our faces
This is only what they wanted, what they perceived
What they intended for us
Begin to slide down
Bio:
I am an undergraduate student at the University of Denver, studying Journalism.
(author retains copyright)
.
Your Spirit is thought
Free Thinking is constrained
Risks slide down and never rise again
The risk to be unknown
Rebelled against society
One is what they are
What they think you can be
No choice, only reality
They already chose for you
Everyday, every moment, they choose for you
Uniqueness is not a curse
Not a privilege, nor a right
Conformity has emerged
Has risen from the mountain of diversity
The mountain, the slope from which we slide
The powder of original thought that burns our faces
This is only what they wanted, what they perceived
What they intended for us
Begin to slide down
Bio:
I am an undergraduate student at the University of Denver, studying Journalism.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Heather Derr-Smith
.
.
Interrogation IV
When he sits in the chair
It’s my job to open him up. He transforms into you.
Unrecognizable as the resurrected,
Worm casings shed, azaleas blooming from the closing wounds--
In person your voice sounds nothing like this.
I hear you, otilith swinging on its diminutive thread, singing.
Your lips look like candy, blown like glass.
In real life your morning body
Is stretched out, mouth opened,
Full of night’s dew,
.....................................a cup spilled,
...............................................................sometimes blood.
Bio:
I am a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. I have two books of poems dealing with international/global themes, including political poems about the war in Bosnia and the Iraq war. In 1994 I volunteered in a refugee camp in Gasnici Croatia. In 2008 I interviewed Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Syria. The following poem is from a series of poems dealing with issues of interrogation and torture. Five Interrogation poems have been published at Brink and Diode.
(author retains copyright)
Return
.
Interrogation IV
When he sits in the chair
It’s my job to open him up. He transforms into you.
Unrecognizable as the resurrected,
Worm casings shed, azaleas blooming from the closing wounds--
In person your voice sounds nothing like this.
I hear you, otilith swinging on its diminutive thread, singing.
Your lips look like candy, blown like glass.
In real life your morning body
Is stretched out, mouth opened,
Full of night’s dew,
.....................................a cup spilled,
...............................................................sometimes blood.
Bio:
I am a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. I have two books of poems dealing with international/global themes, including political poems about the war in Bosnia and the Iraq war. In 1994 I volunteered in a refugee camp in Gasnici Croatia. In 2008 I interviewed Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Syria. The following poem is from a series of poems dealing with issues of interrogation and torture. Five Interrogation poems have been published at Brink and Diode.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Jon Parry
.
.
Too big to fail
how on earth does one become
larger than all the Caesars who came before
bigger than any dinosaur
or the Aztec civilization
in slavery we trust
to its whip we beg
to be devoured is divine
by the unquenchable thirst
of the sandstone prophet
these dower days of winter
shrieking prayers of lost sandals
begging gifts untouched by masters
guiding ships of dreams unseen
plowing fields never broken
speaking tongues of unborn infants
calls me to wonder
how big is too big to fail?
Bio:
I was driving home late one night after playing in a bar in Seattle, WA and listening to an NPR story on the bank bailouts and this term, “too big to fail” kept me up the rest of the night. What did it really mean? Was it possible to be “too big to fail”? Those sad and ever increasing numbers of homeless folks I’d passed heading to my car weren’t I guess, or perhaps they were just “too insignificant to matter.” So I wrote this poem. I am a musician by profession and you can find me and my violin on several cds with other artists including Hank Williams Jr., Goose Creek Symphony, and others. Published poems to date are, “Where are you living”, and “Dancing Round this Sawdust Floor” accepted by Barnwood International Poetry Magazine as well as “Bed of Stone” by Word Salad.
(author retains copyright)
.
Too big to fail
how on earth does one become
larger than all the Caesars who came before
bigger than any dinosaur
or the Aztec civilization
in slavery we trust
to its whip we beg
to be devoured is divine
by the unquenchable thirst
of the sandstone prophet
these dower days of winter
shrieking prayers of lost sandals
begging gifts untouched by masters
guiding ships of dreams unseen
plowing fields never broken
speaking tongues of unborn infants
calls me to wonder
how big is too big to fail?
Bio:
I was driving home late one night after playing in a bar in Seattle, WA and listening to an NPR story on the bank bailouts and this term, “too big to fail” kept me up the rest of the night. What did it really mean? Was it possible to be “too big to fail”? Those sad and ever increasing numbers of homeless folks I’d passed heading to my car weren’t I guess, or perhaps they were just “too insignificant to matter.” So I wrote this poem. I am a musician by profession and you can find me and my violin on several cds with other artists including Hank Williams Jr., Goose Creek Symphony, and others. Published poems to date are, “Where are you living”, and “Dancing Round this Sawdust Floor” accepted by Barnwood International Poetry Magazine as well as “Bed of Stone” by Word Salad.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Kim M. Baker
.
.
Queery Letter
Dear President Obama,
I know you didn’t ask,
but I am writing to tell you
that I am afraid to ask
(because I already know the answer)
whether you have told anyone
in your administration
that you told us during your campaign
that you would do something
about “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
But I hear tell
that you have not asked
and you have not told.
That we are put on hold.
Again.
And I am too old for waiting.
Too leery of queer behavior in my presidents
that makes them honorable
only on the stump.
So instead of asking,
let me tell you.
You are the president.
You don’t have to ask.
You just have to tell the colonels and generals and chiefs
that you want to stimulate the economy of equality,
that you want to reform the health of our military,
that you want to stand by
all the brave women and men protecting our country
and once and for all
stand down the offensive military action of hating your own.
Sincerely,
Gay USA
Bio:
Kim M. Baker has been teaching writing in academe and business for 19 years. Currently the Writing Specialist at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, RI, Kim also works to end violence against women, including performance performed in the annual Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence. Kim’s poetry has been published widely in print and online. In November 2008, Kim won an honorable mention in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest, and her essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio of Rhode Island. Kim’s first play was stage read at the Culture*Park Short Plays Marathon in New Bedford, MA in November 2009.
(author retains copyright)
.
Queery Letter
Dear President Obama,
I know you didn’t ask,
but I am writing to tell you
that I am afraid to ask
(because I already know the answer)
whether you have told anyone
in your administration
that you told us during your campaign
that you would do something
about “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
But I hear tell
that you have not asked
and you have not told.
That we are put on hold.
Again.
And I am too old for waiting.
Too leery of queer behavior in my presidents
that makes them honorable
only on the stump.
So instead of asking,
let me tell you.
You are the president.
You don’t have to ask.
You just have to tell the colonels and generals and chiefs
that you want to stimulate the economy of equality,
that you want to reform the health of our military,
that you want to stand by
all the brave women and men protecting our country
and once and for all
stand down the offensive military action of hating your own.
Sincerely,
Gay USA
Bio:
Kim M. Baker has been teaching writing in academe and business for 19 years. Currently the Writing Specialist at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, RI, Kim also works to end violence against women, including performance performed in the annual Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence. Kim’s poetry has been published widely in print and online. In November 2008, Kim won an honorable mention in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest, and her essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio of Rhode Island. Kim’s first play was stage read at the Culture*Park Short Plays Marathon in New Bedford, MA in November 2009.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Allene Rasmussen Nichols
.
.
Oil
Oil has never tucked a child in at night
or laughed at a blue jay
as it chased smaller birds
from its food.
But oil has sealed lips
as surely as death.
It has wrapped its arms and legs
around tender necks
and strangled the laughter.
It leaves war zones
littered with human bodies with lidless eyes
that ooze black viscosity
onto the sidewalks.
Bio:
Allene Rasmussen Nichols lives in Arlington, Texas.. Her poems have been published in regional and international journals and the anthology Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa. Her plays have been produced in Dallas, California, and New York.
(author retains copyright)
.
Oil
Oil has never tucked a child in at night
or laughed at a blue jay
as it chased smaller birds
from its food.
But oil has sealed lips
as surely as death.
It has wrapped its arms and legs
around tender necks
and strangled the laughter.
It leaves war zones
littered with human bodies with lidless eyes
that ooze black viscosity
onto the sidewalks.
Bio:
Allene Rasmussen Nichols lives in Arlington, Texas.. Her poems have been published in regional and international journals and the anthology Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa. Her plays have been produced in Dallas, California, and New York.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Lynn Ciesielski
.
.
Jesus Didn't Carry A Rifle
Buy in bulk. They're throwaway weapons,
multi-million dollar contract.
And the scopes are scribed with Jesus
so the soldiers blame his words.
They take a downright twisted view
through cloudy smeared up lenses
with their dry and arid conscience
in an empty barren land.
They see cross eyed through the scopes of
a days long gone by prophet.
Their beliefs are sinking faster
like the sucking of the sand.
And he needs some wet refreshment,
a replenishing oasis.
He's longing to be nourished
with the values of his youth.
The scriptures that were coded
on the one way rifle eye-scope
have nearly turned him into
a cynic not a saint.
He points the barrel at his brother,
not an enemy or a bully,
just a human when he sees him
and looks into his eyes.
If he shoots the bullets now
he knows he'll never go to heaven.
The light his scope refers to
casts a shadow on his sin.
There are no verses in the shrapnel,
only sacrilege on Jesus
and in feeding this hypocrisy
we grind our rock to sand.
We shoot scriptures at this jihad
and if words don't penetrate it
we'll stop it with our Jesus rifles,
make them see our way.
Author's note:
You may be familiar with a phenomena that the Muslims and some other non-Christian groups are terming "Jesus Rifles". The U.S. military signed a $600 million multi-year contract with a company called Trijicon. They purchased rifles for use in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally, many people were very concerned by this and implied that we were simply perpetuating a Holy War and likened the situations to the Crusades. Apparently, there was enough flack for Trijicon to end this procedure.
Bio:
Lynn Ciesielski is a recently retired Special Education Teacher. During her eighteen year teaching career she raised her daughter who is now nineteen years old. Now Lynn spends most of her time writing, publishing, performing and traveling. Her poem "Ruling Through Terror" appeared in a June, 2009 edition of Protest Poems.
(author retains copyright)
.
Jesus Didn't Carry A Rifle
Buy in bulk. They're throwaway weapons,
multi-million dollar contract.
And the scopes are scribed with Jesus
so the soldiers blame his words.
They take a downright twisted view
through cloudy smeared up lenses
with their dry and arid conscience
in an empty barren land.
They see cross eyed through the scopes of
a days long gone by prophet.
Their beliefs are sinking faster
like the sucking of the sand.
And he needs some wet refreshment,
a replenishing oasis.
He's longing to be nourished
with the values of his youth.
The scriptures that were coded
on the one way rifle eye-scope
have nearly turned him into
a cynic not a saint.
He points the barrel at his brother,
not an enemy or a bully,
just a human when he sees him
and looks into his eyes.
If he shoots the bullets now
he knows he'll never go to heaven.
The light his scope refers to
casts a shadow on his sin.
There are no verses in the shrapnel,
only sacrilege on Jesus
and in feeding this hypocrisy
we grind our rock to sand.
We shoot scriptures at this jihad
and if words don't penetrate it
we'll stop it with our Jesus rifles,
make them see our way.
Author's note:
You may be familiar with a phenomena that the Muslims and some other non-Christian groups are terming "Jesus Rifles". The U.S. military signed a $600 million multi-year contract with a company called Trijicon. They purchased rifles for use in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally, many people were very concerned by this and implied that we were simply perpetuating a Holy War and likened the situations to the Crusades. Apparently, there was enough flack for Trijicon to end this procedure.
Bio:
Lynn Ciesielski is a recently retired Special Education Teacher. During her eighteen year teaching career she raised her daughter who is now nineteen years old. Now Lynn spends most of her time writing, publishing, performing and traveling. Her poem "Ruling Through Terror" appeared in a June, 2009 edition of Protest Poems.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Simon Peter Eggertsen
.
.
Mass in Arabic
In the language of Islam, I imagine, mass is called
for the charcoal faces from the Nubian Mountains—
near El Obeid, praises in Arabic.
Bism Ellah al Rahman al Rahim.*
Or so I heard it. An unexpected oddity. An estranged cant.
In the midst of those sounds the lights sputter,
darkness grabs out, worship obscures in night-black.
In shadowed silhouette still, a response rises.
An orphaned tutorial line, clear as water from snow,
from the thinning, timbrel frame of the choral master.
The note strikes. Who will aid? Who will assist
in the tune carrying? Above the shaky rhythm beat,
another language's words loft, shaken loose from
some believers by a beaded drum’s questions—
the first notes an irritating shrill uulalaying,
feminine voices. The misses have amassed this night.
After the clamor, a solitary flame fights alone
to revive the spoken scripture sound. Again,
a strangeness. Arabic, I imagine, or was it Latin,
from a white European mouth? Then,
comes the single light, first haloing a head,
then glazing from the page, reflecting from the face
of the white bishop onto the gathered black.
The Allelujah! rises feather light. Allelujah!
Allelulu! Allelulu! Allah akbar. Allah akbar
God is Great, or so all present would want to believe.
Nothing is said of the smoldering, dark, body-shaped
spots of ash flaking the desert floor in Darfur, to the west.
The lights have gone out there also. Who will condemn
the jagged edges of worry only for their own salvation,
......not that of other’s?
Someone, even God, should say something, loudly in
......the dark. Any language will do.
*In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Bio:
I was born in Kansas, raised in Utah, educated in Virginia and England, now live part of the year in Montreal. I have degrees in literature, language and law. I spend most of my time working and teaching in the field of international public health. My pedigree in poetry is recent and modest. The word "emerging" comes to mind. Poems have been published, or will be, in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Vallum (Canada), Salt River Review, Dialogue, Lunarosity, The Writers Post, Istanbul Literary Review, The Catholic News (Trinidad), and Wordbridge.
My work has won 1st Prize for Poetry at the Whidbey Island Writers Conference (WA, 2008), been named a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry (Nimrod International, 2009), received a Publication Prize from the Atlanta Review (2009), and been a semifinalist for the Barthelme Prize at Gulf Coast (2009).
(author retains copyright)
.
Mass in Arabic
In the language of Islam, I imagine, mass is called
for the charcoal faces from the Nubian Mountains—
near El Obeid, praises in Arabic.
Bism Ellah al Rahman al Rahim.*
Or so I heard it. An unexpected oddity. An estranged cant.
In the midst of those sounds the lights sputter,
darkness grabs out, worship obscures in night-black.
In shadowed silhouette still, a response rises.
An orphaned tutorial line, clear as water from snow,
from the thinning, timbrel frame of the choral master.
The note strikes. Who will aid? Who will assist
in the tune carrying? Above the shaky rhythm beat,
another language's words loft, shaken loose from
some believers by a beaded drum’s questions—
the first notes an irritating shrill uulalaying,
feminine voices. The misses have amassed this night.
After the clamor, a solitary flame fights alone
to revive the spoken scripture sound. Again,
a strangeness. Arabic, I imagine, or was it Latin,
from a white European mouth? Then,
comes the single light, first haloing a head,
then glazing from the page, reflecting from the face
of the white bishop onto the gathered black.
The Allelujah! rises feather light. Allelujah!
Allelulu! Allelulu! Allah akbar. Allah akbar
God is Great, or so all present would want to believe.
Nothing is said of the smoldering, dark, body-shaped
spots of ash flaking the desert floor in Darfur, to the west.
The lights have gone out there also. Who will condemn
the jagged edges of worry only for their own salvation,
......not that of other’s?
Someone, even God, should say something, loudly in
......the dark. Any language will do.
*In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Bio:
I was born in Kansas, raised in Utah, educated in Virginia and England, now live part of the year in Montreal. I have degrees in literature, language and law. I spend most of my time working and teaching in the field of international public health. My pedigree in poetry is recent and modest. The word "emerging" comes to mind. Poems have been published, or will be, in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Vallum (Canada), Salt River Review, Dialogue, Lunarosity, The Writers Post, Istanbul Literary Review, The Catholic News (Trinidad), and Wordbridge.
My work has won 1st Prize for Poetry at the Whidbey Island Writers Conference (WA, 2008), been named a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry (Nimrod International, 2009), received a Publication Prize from the Atlanta Review (2009), and been a semifinalist for the Barthelme Prize at Gulf Coast (2009).
(author retains copyright)
Return
Bridget Nutting
.
.
Rebuttal
You say you speak for me
and countless others;
your perverted words hung loosely
on a wooden cross stained with the blood of innocents…
You lie.
No parent who truly loved his children
would wreak devastating death and destruction…
punishment for sins past…
tremors thrust violently into the earth…
Quivering…
Shaking…
Trembling…
Vengeance fraught with fear.
What loving god would rob
husband from wife,
child from parents,
or parents from child,
leaving behind emptiness and sadness
to forge fault-lines through the purest hearts?
Do not cast your cloak of joy at someone’s suffering,
all the while claiming others do also.
I personally and vehemently renounce any perceived connection
to your Robertsonism or Limbaughism cults –
Pseudo-religions professing retribution as a godly act.
You hide behind our first amendment.
You pretend to defend holy covenants.
You rejoice in the suffering of others.
Do NOT speak for me…
Your hate is a poison…
Your arrogance a travesty…
Your ignorance of all that is pure, and true, and holy
screams loudly each time you speak.
Where is your compassion?
Where is your empathy?
Where is your love?
The greatest of these is love.
I choose Love…
You do NOT speak for me!
Bio:
I am a high school English/Language Arts teacher and visual artist. I especially enjoy teaching at-risk students to use their writing and art as a means of reclaiming their power and voice. I have personally been writing poetry and lyrics since I was four. I continued writing throughout my teens as an escape from the horrors of daily abuse. Much of this writing was purposely destroyed by my mother. In addition to poetry and art, I currently dabble in short stories and non-fiction. I am slowly gaining the courage to share my writing with the world. Most publications have been along my journey in junior high, high school, and college literary journals.
(author retains copyright)
.
Rebuttal
You say you speak for me
and countless others;
your perverted words hung loosely
on a wooden cross stained with the blood of innocents…
You lie.
No parent who truly loved his children
would wreak devastating death and destruction…
punishment for sins past…
tremors thrust violently into the earth…
Quivering…
Shaking…
Trembling…
Vengeance fraught with fear.
What loving god would rob
husband from wife,
child from parents,
or parents from child,
leaving behind emptiness and sadness
to forge fault-lines through the purest hearts?
Do not cast your cloak of joy at someone’s suffering,
all the while claiming others do also.
I personally and vehemently renounce any perceived connection
to your Robertsonism or Limbaughism cults –
Pseudo-religions professing retribution as a godly act.
You hide behind our first amendment.
You pretend to defend holy covenants.
You rejoice in the suffering of others.
Do NOT speak for me…
Your hate is a poison…
Your arrogance a travesty…
Your ignorance of all that is pure, and true, and holy
screams loudly each time you speak.
Where is your compassion?
Where is your empathy?
Where is your love?
The greatest of these is love.
I choose Love…
You do NOT speak for me!
Bio:
I am a high school English/Language Arts teacher and visual artist. I especially enjoy teaching at-risk students to use their writing and art as a means of reclaiming their power and voice. I have personally been writing poetry and lyrics since I was four. I continued writing throughout my teens as an escape from the horrors of daily abuse. Much of this writing was purposely destroyed by my mother. In addition to poetry and art, I currently dabble in short stories and non-fiction. I am slowly gaining the courage to share my writing with the world. Most publications have been along my journey in junior high, high school, and college literary journals.
(author retains copyright)
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