Gerardo Mena
.
.
Good Pilgrim, I Beseech You
Buckets of flame, handfuls
of tongue, a pocket full of spit
and dagger words.
Good pilgrim, I beseech you.
Do not sleep upon
..your throne of
teeth.
Be feral.
Climb the
towers of jet and cinder.
Dance at their
coming.
Good pilgrim. Oh Pilgrim.
Lay your head upon
the roadside. Drink
..to the levees. Shed your
sinew and let it wash to the spillway.
Rejoice at the coming ash.
Bio:
I am a decorated Iraqi Freedom Veteran. I spent six years in Special Operations with the Reconnaissance Marines and was awarded a Navy Achievement Medal with a V for Valor for multiple acts of heroism while under enemy fire.
I won the "2010 War Poetry" contest sponsored by Winningwriters and I have poems published or forthcoming in Diagram, The New Mexico Poetry Review, the Nashville Review, the Barely South Review, and War, Literature & the Arts.
(author retains copyright)
.
Good Pilgrim, I Beseech You
Buckets of flame, handfuls
of tongue, a pocket full of spit
and dagger words.
Good pilgrim, I beseech you.
Do not sleep upon
..your throne of
teeth.
Be feral.
Climb the
towers of jet and cinder.
Dance at their
coming.
Good pilgrim. Oh Pilgrim.
Lay your head upon
the roadside. Drink
..to the levees. Shed your
sinew and let it wash to the spillway.
Rejoice at the coming ash.
Bio:
I am a decorated Iraqi Freedom Veteran. I spent six years in Special Operations with the Reconnaissance Marines and was awarded a Navy Achievement Medal with a V for Valor for multiple acts of heroism while under enemy fire.
I won the "2010 War Poetry" contest sponsored by Winningwriters and I have poems published or forthcoming in Diagram, The New Mexico Poetry Review, the Nashville Review, the Barely South Review, and War, Literature & the Arts.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Elvira Basevich
.
.
The Fire of History
My grandmother clasped the feathers
that were loosened from her pillow
until they fused into a damp tuft;
her words find me as the radio blares.
A clock cannot help the sound of its ticking
and the robins, their diurnal chirping.
‘What good was
.............this life
that even in its final, weak
........flicker
...........wounds me?’
.......‘Where is your father?
..............................together we can remember
the garden of the wooden, plain-faced town
............we fled from, where I passed my girlhood.
................How those blossoms, knots of
..orange and green bulbs, emanated
a dim, confused radiance!
I want to remember that garden
before it was
consumed
by the fire
..........that
...............fell
....................from German airplanes.’
‘He’s not here, Babushka.’
‘O.’
‘my girl, I love you.'
................‘I know.'
'O.'
'Then there was that woman with your name, Elvira, the daughter of a Kazahki neighbor
with three babes as thin as boards who gave herself to soldiers in exchange for bread and
..................dark sugar she measured out in quarters of a gram.
.................................She died
..................in a field of cauliflower-colored airplane parts
..................clutching
her infant son,
.................................and even now I can feel her
.....................................dying
...............beneath the endless sky, and that foliage,
beneath that foliage that lazily
......hung
........where the oak tree bloomed igneous metal.
............She was a
..................good woman but life doesn’t deliberate virtue
..............and it
......too is hard
for good women like us.’
Virginal and cold, as if blown in from the Volga,
an augury of fire ignites all the channels
on the radio dial. ‘Are they really preparing
for another war?’ she asks. The robins
suddenly fly off the lindens crowding the windows,
as if to avoid her visage as I begin to answer.
Bio:
I am a philosophy student finishing her BA in June at CUNY Hunter College and will enter a doctoral philosophy program in the fall at the CUNY Graduate Center. I principally research German Idealism, Marx and the Frankfurt School. I have worked as an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and the Journal of Social Philosophy. Although I pursue philosophy professionally, I have been writing poetry since I was fourteen, drawing considerably from history and my family members’ experiences in the former Soviet Union and as immigrants in the United States. I have never published.
(author retains copyright)
.
The Fire of History
My grandmother clasped the feathers
that were loosened from her pillow
until they fused into a damp tuft;
her words find me as the radio blares.
A clock cannot help the sound of its ticking
and the robins, their diurnal chirping.
‘What good was
.............this life
that even in its final, weak
........flicker
...........wounds me?’
.......‘Where is your father?
..............................together we can remember
the garden of the wooden, plain-faced town
............we fled from, where I passed my girlhood.
................How those blossoms, knots of
..orange and green bulbs, emanated
a dim, confused radiance!
I want to remember that garden
before it was
consumed
by the fire
..........that
...............fell
....................from German airplanes.’
‘He’s not here, Babushka.’
‘O.’
‘my girl, I love you.'
................‘I know.'
'O.'
'Then there was that woman with your name, Elvira, the daughter of a Kazahki neighbor
with three babes as thin as boards who gave herself to soldiers in exchange for bread and
..................dark sugar she measured out in quarters of a gram.
.................................She died
..................in a field of cauliflower-colored airplane parts
..................clutching
her infant son,
.................................and even now I can feel her
.....................................dying
...............beneath the endless sky, and that foliage,
beneath that foliage that lazily
......hung
........where the oak tree bloomed igneous metal.
............She was a
..................good woman but life doesn’t deliberate virtue
..............and it
......too is hard
for good women like us.’
Virginal and cold, as if blown in from the Volga,
an augury of fire ignites all the channels
on the radio dial. ‘Are they really preparing
for another war?’ she asks. The robins
suddenly fly off the lindens crowding the windows,
as if to avoid her visage as I begin to answer.
Bio:
I am a philosophy student finishing her BA in June at CUNY Hunter College and will enter a doctoral philosophy program in the fall at the CUNY Graduate Center. I principally research German Idealism, Marx and the Frankfurt School. I have worked as an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and the Journal of Social Philosophy. Although I pursue philosophy professionally, I have been writing poetry since I was fourteen, drawing considerably from history and my family members’ experiences in the former Soviet Union and as immigrants in the United States. I have never published.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Frances Drabick
.
.
Can I Buy An O?
Obama, OPEC, Oprah, Omar,
Osama, Oz, Orman, O’Reilly.
They shoot for the moon, moolah, mogul-hood,
blind-bombing, false freedoms, body benefits,
busts to boons, and pointless positions
of antagonisms; for power points over: your thoughts,
your votes, your decisions & delusions,
your oil, your rights, your spiritual and health paths.
Some are poltroons, orators, confessors, popular,
oppressors, and nearly all, are self-ordained oracles:
an ‘oligon of the millionaires who want to sell you
an idea as they run the boob-tube like a school room
where we sit and stare, as typhoons of debt blow overhead,
and floods knock our homes off their footings;
where poorness pools at our feet, and too many nations of
citizens and soldiers ooze their marrow on dry sands
for a question no one knows and no one answers.
I’d like to buy an E and A, for Enough Already.
Bio:
I am a grassroots, emerging poet. Pushcart nomination in '09. Poems in Off the Coast from '09-'11.
(author retains copyright)
.
Can I Buy An O?
Obama, OPEC, Oprah, Omar,
Osama, Oz, Orman, O’Reilly.
They shoot for the moon, moolah, mogul-hood,
blind-bombing, false freedoms, body benefits,
busts to boons, and pointless positions
of antagonisms; for power points over: your thoughts,
your votes, your decisions & delusions,
your oil, your rights, your spiritual and health paths.
Some are poltroons, orators, confessors, popular,
oppressors, and nearly all, are self-ordained oracles:
an ‘oligon of the millionaires who want to sell you
an idea as they run the boob-tube like a school room
where we sit and stare, as typhoons of debt blow overhead,
and floods knock our homes off their footings;
where poorness pools at our feet, and too many nations of
citizens and soldiers ooze their marrow on dry sands
for a question no one knows and no one answers.
I’d like to buy an E and A, for Enough Already.
Bio:
I am a grassroots, emerging poet. Pushcart nomination in '09. Poems in Off the Coast from '09-'11.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Eve Lyons
.
.
Our Doughboys Aren’t Rising Today
The last surviving
World War One vet
died in West Virginia today.
Corporal Frank Buckles was
one hundred and ten years old.
Born in 1901, he lived long enough
to see two centuries,
two world wars,
two police actions,
two more undeclared
illegal wars.
Have we learned our lesson yet?
What was the lesson we were learning?
The last surviving
World War One vet
died in West Virginia today.
Today, we have no draft.
Today, our wars are fought by paid militia,
the battle scars are kept
off our television screen,
out of newspapers.
Yet still soldiers keep on fighting,
poor people still sign up to battle,
since it’s the one way they can get
health insurance and go to college.
We’ve learned war is good for business,
bad for public relations.
Frank Buckles was born by lantern light in Missouri,
Dropped out of school at sixteen,
Lied and snuck his way into the army
Only to outlive all the other doughboys.
The doughboys fought when war meant something
even if what it meant made no sense.
War is just another business venture
lining the pockets of corporations,
making citizens into indentured servants.
This isn’t what anybody dies for.
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.
(author retains copyright)
.
Our Doughboys Aren’t Rising Today
The last surviving
World War One vet
died in West Virginia today.
Corporal Frank Buckles was
one hundred and ten years old.
Born in 1901, he lived long enough
to see two centuries,
two world wars,
two police actions,
two more undeclared
illegal wars.
Have we learned our lesson yet?
What was the lesson we were learning?
The last surviving
World War One vet
died in West Virginia today.
Today, we have no draft.
Today, our wars are fought by paid militia,
the battle scars are kept
off our television screen,
out of newspapers.
Yet still soldiers keep on fighting,
poor people still sign up to battle,
since it’s the one way they can get
health insurance and go to college.
We’ve learned war is good for business,
bad for public relations.
Frank Buckles was born by lantern light in Missouri,
Dropped out of school at sixteen,
Lied and snuck his way into the army
Only to outlive all the other doughboys.
The doughboys fought when war meant something
even if what it meant made no sense.
War is just another business venture
lining the pockets of corporations,
making citizens into indentured servants.
This isn’t what anybody dies for.
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.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Martin Willitts, Jr
.
.
How Can I Be Silent?
There are so many things that are wrong,
it is impossible to wring my hands of all of them.
They need to duck tape my mouth.
They are probably reading this.
Nothing is secret anymore.
It hasn’t been secret for a long time;
we just chose to ignore it.
They do not want us to remember the past.
They tell us to brighten our teeth and keep to the right.
But what is right?
They tell me what is right, in my sleep,
when I eat cornflakes, when I tie my shoes.
There are many things to believe
but only if you believe in the right things.
I will dental floss my car.
Some of the messages I tend to get confused.
Greenhouse gas is good for you.
Unions are causing the collapse of millionaires.
We should accept third world wages
and perhaps secretly dream we all become slaves.
This is right-thinking.
If this is right-thinking, then I want none of it.
When a nuclear power plant releases gas in Japan
hovering over the world like a glowing dragon, the press
pretends it is not serious. When genocide continues,
it is considered good business practices. When we drill
for natural gas with carcinogenetic chemicals
which makes water fizz out of the tap, the companies
say it is safe to drink but will not drink it themselves.
We all allow this to happen.
It is simple to ignore the news, be glazed
in front of the television, drink tepid tea and vote
whatever we are told is right.
We believe whatever we are told.
If you are reading this then you are being subversive.
You will be investigated and you will enjoy it.
You are being followed. Don’t look.
Act like everything is normal.
Drink wholesome milk.
Guess the right price along with the Price Is Right.
Buy a vowel from Vanna.
Drive the biggest gas guzzler and be proud.
Stand in the unemployment line and hope you're acceptable.
Worry about the poor misfortunate billionaires.
They have it tougher than the rest of us.
Pity the poor billionaire.
Right makes Right.
Left makes everything dangerous.
Get it right; or get out.
If you are reading this, you are “undesirable”.
If you stopped reading this a long time ago, you are lying.
Corrupt greed is good for you.
Just remember that and you will be OK.
Silence sounds like this…….
Bio:
Martin Willitts Jr recent poems appeared in Naugatuck River Review, MiPOesias, Flutter, Atticusbooks.net, Muse Café, and Caper Journal. He was recently nominated for two Best of The Net awards and his 5th Pushcart award. He has four new chapbooks: “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “True Simplicity” (Poets Wear Prada Press, 2011), and “My Heart Is Seven Wild Swans Lifting” (Slow Trains, 2011).
(author retains copyright)
.
How Can I Be Silent?
There are so many things that are wrong,
it is impossible to wring my hands of all of them.
They need to duck tape my mouth.
They are probably reading this.
Nothing is secret anymore.
It hasn’t been secret for a long time;
we just chose to ignore it.
They do not want us to remember the past.
They tell us to brighten our teeth and keep to the right.
But what is right?
They tell me what is right, in my sleep,
when I eat cornflakes, when I tie my shoes.
There are many things to believe
but only if you believe in the right things.
I will dental floss my car.
Some of the messages I tend to get confused.
Greenhouse gas is good for you.
Unions are causing the collapse of millionaires.
We should accept third world wages
and perhaps secretly dream we all become slaves.
This is right-thinking.
If this is right-thinking, then I want none of it.
When a nuclear power plant releases gas in Japan
hovering over the world like a glowing dragon, the press
pretends it is not serious. When genocide continues,
it is considered good business practices. When we drill
for natural gas with carcinogenetic chemicals
which makes water fizz out of the tap, the companies
say it is safe to drink but will not drink it themselves.
We all allow this to happen.
It is simple to ignore the news, be glazed
in front of the television, drink tepid tea and vote
whatever we are told is right.
We believe whatever we are told.
If you are reading this then you are being subversive.
You will be investigated and you will enjoy it.
You are being followed. Don’t look.
Act like everything is normal.
Drink wholesome milk.
Guess the right price along with the Price Is Right.
Buy a vowel from Vanna.
Drive the biggest gas guzzler and be proud.
Stand in the unemployment line and hope you're acceptable.
Worry about the poor misfortunate billionaires.
They have it tougher than the rest of us.
Pity the poor billionaire.
Right makes Right.
Left makes everything dangerous.
Get it right; or get out.
If you are reading this, you are “undesirable”.
If you stopped reading this a long time ago, you are lying.
Corrupt greed is good for you.
Just remember that and you will be OK.
Silence sounds like this…….
Bio:
Martin Willitts Jr recent poems appeared in Naugatuck River Review, MiPOesias, Flutter, Atticusbooks.net, Muse Café, and Caper Journal. He was recently nominated for two Best of The Net awards and his 5th Pushcart award. He has four new chapbooks: “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “True Simplicity” (Poets Wear Prada Press, 2011), and “My Heart Is Seven Wild Swans Lifting” (Slow Trains, 2011).
(author retains copyright)
Return
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
.
.
the angle of history
What symbols shall we use now to describe the end of time?
The old ones are dessicated and impotent;
the eagle plummets from its gyre;
the hollow man totters in his wasteland.
Time reaches its apogee and the world shudders imperceptibly
as its momentum shifts to adjust for the angle of descent.
We are not in the time of the fall but instead are merely mundanely
sliding down the slope of an unimagined history.
We plunge down this history without coordinates,
benjamin’s angel tumbling behind us
along this history without end;
this history without significance.
We confess that the future is a construct to comfort ourselves,
clinging to it as a child clutches her blanket.
Now speechless and stunned in the presence of death,
we reinvent immortality, we become cyborg and virtual.
Long-ago, poiesis sufficed but now we makers defy death
by becoming that which we make, impatient to rise again,
resurrecting the old myths of rebirth and regeneration,
disdaining to ask what manner of monster arises from our ashes.
We design ways to penetrate time and space.
We elevate our tools as icons, their use as sacrament.
Machines appear to us in our dreams
and we put them on as once a bride donned her gown and veil.
We lay down upon the altar of technology,
offering ourselves as sacrifice to an unknown god.
Bio:
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her most recent collection of poetry is the award-winning Work Is Love Made Visible (West End Press, 2009) She is the Editor of Mongrel Empire Press and a member of the faculty of the Red Earth Creative Writing MFA.
(author retains copyright)
.
the angle of history
What symbols shall we use now to describe the end of time?
The old ones are dessicated and impotent;
the eagle plummets from its gyre;
the hollow man totters in his wasteland.
Time reaches its apogee and the world shudders imperceptibly
as its momentum shifts to adjust for the angle of descent.
We are not in the time of the fall but instead are merely mundanely
sliding down the slope of an unimagined history.
We plunge down this history without coordinates,
benjamin’s angel tumbling behind us
along this history without end;
this history without significance.
We confess that the future is a construct to comfort ourselves,
clinging to it as a child clutches her blanket.
Now speechless and stunned in the presence of death,
we reinvent immortality, we become cyborg and virtual.
Long-ago, poiesis sufficed but now we makers defy death
by becoming that which we make, impatient to rise again,
resurrecting the old myths of rebirth and regeneration,
disdaining to ask what manner of monster arises from our ashes.
We design ways to penetrate time and space.
We elevate our tools as icons, their use as sacrament.
Machines appear to us in our dreams
and we put them on as once a bride donned her gown and veil.
We lay down upon the altar of technology,
offering ourselves as sacrifice to an unknown god.
Bio:
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her most recent collection of poetry is the award-winning Work Is Love Made Visible (West End Press, 2009) She is the Editor of Mongrel Empire Press and a member of the faculty of the Red Earth Creative Writing MFA.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Janice D. Soderling
.
.
Easter 1983
(i.m. Marianella Garcia-Villas, de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos)
A gaping gunshot wound in the side of morning.
Broken limbs sprawled
like abandoned nestlings.
O sister!
A defoliated tree nailed tight
to a brown sky.
Lips braver than instruments of torture
have stopped moving.
The grass burns blood-red.
The heavy steps of the earthquake
come ever closer.
Author's noteMarianella (sometimes spelled Marianela) García Villas, was cofounder and president of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, a non-governmental watchdog organization that covered the violence committed by government forces and right-wing death squads. In March 1983 she was captured in a conflict area where she had gone to document the use of chemical weapons by the army and was murdered after being tortured. I think of her every Easter.
Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to Protestpoems. Her poems with political themes have appeared in Montréal Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Apple Valley Review, New Verse News, nth position, and the sadly now defunct journals Green Fuse and Babel Fruit. Recent work at Studio, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Literary Bohemian, Lighten Up Online, The Flea, Orbis. She received the Harold Witt Memorial Award for 2010 Best of Volume from Blue Unicorn.
(author retains copyright)
.
Easter 1983
(i.m. Marianella Garcia-Villas, de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos)
A gaping gunshot wound in the side of morning.
Broken limbs sprawled
like abandoned nestlings.
O sister!
A defoliated tree nailed tight
to a brown sky.
Lips braver than instruments of torture
have stopped moving.
The grass burns blood-red.
The heavy steps of the earthquake
come ever closer.
Author's noteMarianella (sometimes spelled Marianela) García Villas, was cofounder and president of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, a non-governmental watchdog organization that covered the violence committed by government forces and right-wing death squads. In March 1983 she was captured in a conflict area where she had gone to document the use of chemical weapons by the army and was murdered after being tortured. I think of her every Easter.
Bio:
Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to Protestpoems. Her poems with political themes have appeared in Montréal Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Apple Valley Review, New Verse News, nth position, and the sadly now defunct journals Green Fuse and Babel Fruit. Recent work at Studio, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Literary Bohemian, Lighten Up Online, The Flea, Orbis. She received the Harold Witt Memorial Award for 2010 Best of Volume from Blue Unicorn.
(author retains copyright)
Return
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