A Friability Test

By Kimutai Allan

You can try
muzzling the press
and stifling healthy discourse.
They are actions, easy.
It’s a different tale
down in our hearts.
You can’t break us.
We aren’t as friable as
your petty thoughts deem.

Kimutai Allan is an emerging Kenyan writer. His works have been published previously by The Active Muse, The Writer’s Space Africa, the Kalahari Review and the Naluubale Review. He is currently working on a collection of poems.

Photo credit: The image of “Censor” by Eric Drooker was shot by Luciano, via a Creative Commons license.

Reading Aloud in Kidjail

By Jill McDonough

The boys in my local juvie want to work one
on one, write stories, poems, mark up the stuff
I give them. More than one kid at a time’s less fun:
more fussing, more holding back to show how tough
they are. When one of them writes on the other’s paper
the germophobic one loses his shit; I get it, sit
between them while they write their poems. Later
I read them aloud so they can hear how good they are; it’s
like a magic trick, their words in my grown-up voice.
They still and listen, hear themselves, lean in on me
like children, because they are children. Two boys,
one on either side, a slow relax from anger in to breathe.
Their warm weights, cool of classroom, fresh pencils, stacks
of paper. Me feeling them thinking That sounds pretty good. Dag.

Jill McDonough is the author of Here All Night (Alice James, 2019), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), and Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and started a program offering College Reading and Writing in Boston jails. Her website is jillmcdonough.com.

Image from Ideas.TED.com.

The Notorious

By Alex Penland

Do you remember Yad Vashem? How
the path that leads you through the
exhibit is chronological and single
lined, each point presented on a hair
pin turn of events: here is where a new
legislation was passed, here is where
some diplomat died, here is where the
people thought oh, one more degree
in this pot won’t make the water
boil yet. But then you cross the river
gap to the next section of the exhibit
and are suddenly granted a perception
of time as a whole, not a part, and when
you reach the section where it gets so
bad that you think you must be near the
end you look down the line at all the
bridges and no. You’re half through.
Half through the voices saying we
thought they wouldn’t dare, thought
people were better than they were or
human goodness was more ubiquitous
than it is or some protection was more
sturdy than the flimsy social contract
it turned out to be and things get so
much worse, and the hope of it becomes
less a light in the tunnel and more a
light in the eyes blinding us from the
things that live in the darkness. She
was one of those protections, I think
now, a stone wall painted on paper,
and through the fire it’s amazing she
held the line as long as she did, but
that greasy burning and a squealing
that is not pigs is coming closer now,
and for the moment I am on the safe
side of the shower door, but I can’t
help but look down the crack in the
exhibit hall and think we aren’t even
close yet, we’re not even close to the light.

Alex Penland was a museum kid: a childhood of running rampant through the Smithsonian kicked off a lifelong inspiration for science fiction, poetry, and science-inspired fantasy. Their work has been internationally published in The Midwest Review, Story Cities, and the upcoming Strange Lands anthology by Flame Tree Press. Their poetry has been awarded by Writers’ Digest and previously appeared in the December 2018 issue of Writers Resist. They currently live in Scotland studying for a PhD in Creative Writing. You can follow Alex on Twitter @AlexPenname or visit their website at www.AlexandraPenn.com.

Yad Vashem photo by Anders Jacobsen on Unsplash.

Contingency Plans

By Sara Marchant

My husband recently retired. His anxiety had increased over the last four years (whose hasn’t, right?) and a few months ago he was having a bad day at work, when he abruptly stood up, announced, “I retire,” and walked out the door.

It’s been an adjustment.

At first, he didn’t know what to do with his day. As I was unemployed by the pandemic, not even teaching from home, I was available for him to ask for direction or inspiration. I was available all day, every day. He questioned me like a kindergartener on a long road trip; the situation soon was fraught. This changed when I received a phone call from friends down South making contingency plans for the post-election end times. They were worried; they were scared; they didn’t know where to plan on going if they should have to flee. They know my husband has survivalist tendencies.

We live in a southern red zone of the blue state of California, but we own our acreage, have an artesian well and electrified fencing, and are prone to paranoia. We keep our house well provisioned in case of emergency. It’s known that we like to plan ahead. My friends had called to ask our advice.

Now my husband no longer asks me for direction in the morning. Instead, he gets up every day and prepares to take in refugees from red states. I won’t go into too much detail here. We are all safer that way.

My fingers are crossed for a peaceful, smooth, safe transition of power—power once more in sane heads and hands—and my husband claims he wants and prays (he’s the believer in the family) for that too, but just in case. … Then he goes back to fortifying the property. He wants to be a good host, you see.

• • •

When I was a little girl and we’d go to look at open houses for weekend fun, my mother always told us, “Find the hiding space!” She didn’t say this in front of the realtor or the homeowner; she taught us it was a private game. The hiding space would only safe if we were the only one’s who knew it existed. “Every house should have a space to hide when they come for you,” my mother said. When, not if.

Other games we learned were equally different from our friends’ family pastimes. Our mother taught us to seek out all exits when you enter a building, keep your back to the wall when eating in public, always carry something sharp in your pocket and “aim for the cojones.” Other children played lava floor and we did too, but we also played count your steps with your eyes closed, in case we ever had to escape in the dark.

My siblings and I are surprisingly well-adjusted, considering.

• • •

Shortly after November 9, 2016, my mother made me drive her to the post office to renew our passports. My husband refused. He’s Native American. He belongs to the land, he said. He’ll never leave.

“That’s nice, but short-sighted,” Mom told him. “We’re Jews. We’ve been through this shit before. Always have an exit strategy.”

When the pandemic caused all borders to close to United States citizens, my mother wept. She was born in 1940, but in Denver’s Little Italy; my mother is not a Holocaust survivor. However, her parents didn’t believe in censorship, so her siblings took her to the movies and no one thought to cover her five-year-old eyes when the newsreels showed the camps being liberated.

Now, when reading about the camps at our southern border, the concentration camps committing crimes against humanity in our name, my mother doesn’t weep. She’s too angry. It’s gone on too long, been allowed to perpetuate, descended into genocide. Now my mother curses the perpetrators. Each morning as she pricks her finger to check her blood sugar levels, my mother damns every member of this administration, every enabler, every supporter—even those of us standing by watching helplessly in horror. “We’ve damned ourselves,” she tells me.

“We’ve no longer the right to weep tears of anything other than shame.”

• • •

Four years ago, I didn’t believe it could happen—and that’s shame on me. I was a history major; I’m married to a Native. This country was founded on violence, conquest, cultural genocide, germ warfare; we’ve been ripping children from their mother’s arms from the time the first boats arrived—and kept arriving full of stolen men, women and children. Why wouldn’t I believe it could happen again—only this time live-streaming? How dare we become complacent?

None of us knows what will happen the first week of November 2020, but I don’t believe any of us are still complacent—that’s been burned away. This household’s ballots have been mailed and counted, the pantry is stocked, the fence is fortified, space has been made for our friends.

My fingers are crossed, my husband is praying, and my mom is practicing blood curses with her back to the wall. My most fervent desire is that soon we’ll all be dancing in the space we’ve created for ourselves, but if not … I’ve got a plan. I hope you do, too.

Sara Marchant received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert. She is the author of The Driveway Has Two Sides, published by Fairlight Books. Her memoir, Proof of Loss, was published by Otis Books. She is a founding editor of Writers Resist. Her website is TheSaraMarchant.com.

Photo credit: Mitchell Haindfield via a Creative Commons license.

Target Practice

By Geoffrey Philp

After Jericho Brown

I ride around this city feeling as if I’m always a target,
like the one at a gun range where cops used mug shots
of African-American men to improve the shots
of their snipers—photos of black men who weren’t dead,
but whose images would be useful to kill the soon-to-be-dead,
on the way back from the library, a party or even a drag race.
For although I don’t trust the spokesperson who said that race
had nothing to do with the department’s choice of pictures,
I believe him when he said they would be adding pictures
from the database of suspects that they’ve arrested,
so when I’m pulled over, I know I’m going to be arrested.
I ride around this city feeling as if I’m always a target.

Born in Jamaica, Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two novels, two collections of short stories, and three children’s books. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp’s work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy in an homage to twelve writers who shaped Miami culture. Through DNA testing, Philp recently discovered his Jewish ancestry and his poem, “Flying African,” has been accepted for publication in New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust. He is currently working on a collection of poems, Distant Cousins.

Image: North Miami Beach Police. Masking added to protect the victims.

I Manage My Dread of the Election by Reading About the Eradication of Murder Hornets

By Debbie Hall

In November we inched closer to the ledge over which one only falls once.
—Mary Jo Bang

One definition of dread (noun): great fear in view of impending evil.
As a verb, it can mean to be in shrinking apprehension of.

Derived terms include: dreadable, dreadly, and dreadworthy, as in:
the specter of four more years of Trump is dreadworthy indeed.

It may seem counterintuitive to read about murder hornets
as an anti-anxiety strategy, but re-reading Poems for Political Disaster
only reinforced my terror of the possible.

When the first murder hornets were spotted, U.S. scientists warned
they could decimate honeybee populations and establish such a deep presence
in our country that all hope for eradication could be lost.

In May, the onslaught on just one colony: thousands and thousands
of bees, heads torn from their bodies, hives plundered, the remains of bees to be
harvested as food to sustain and grow more murder hornets. Dreadworthy.

But yesterday a reason for hope: Crews located and vacuumed out
a basketball-sized nest of murder hornets in Washington State.

Imagine watching this mass of orange-faced invaders, still spitting venom
as they are overthrown and dispatched to the netherworld—

Oh honeybees, oh Earth, oh people—imagine the sweetness of that moment!

Debbie Hall, a poetry editor at Writers Resist, is the author of the poetry collection, What Light I Have (2018, Main Street Rag Books) and award-winning chapbook, Falling into the River (2020, The Poetry Box). She received an honorable mention in the 2016 Kowit Poetry Prize and won second place in the 2018 Poetry Super Highway Contest.

Photo used via a Creative Commons license.

Sing the Songs of Our Youth

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

24 October 2020

Uncle Jack died this morning.

The stroke, the collapse, the surprise mass on his brain? Whichever or all, at least he went faster than Aunt Peggy and Mother. Not as fast as Father—the gift of a heart attack. The comparison? I don’t know, perhaps it’s a futile attempt to lend context to Jack’s death, to the loss of the last of his generation on our closest family branch, my siblings and mine, an attempt to accommodate one loss among many. So many, it’s easier to focus on only one, and it is one that changes us.

My cousins now join us in our adult orphanage—a disregarded subset of parentless offspring. We are left to follow six or seven decades of memories down lanes straight and twisty, dead-ended and endless. To quietly mourn and slowly, slowly recover.

In the meantime, “At least it’s not the COVID,” some will say.

This will enrage me, and not only because of the unnecessary article, but because COVID-19 persists and worsens while too many leaders fail us, abandoning us to the ravages of the virus. But I’m prepared, having practiced my rage for so long—on occasion with Uncle Jack—perfecting it with each onslaught of ignorance and hate and … I don’t know, sociopathy?

Before Uncle Jack lost the strength to place his large hands on either side of my head and lift me to wonderfully frightening heights, before he could no longer deliver his trademark jokes with aplomb, before he was unable to name the seated president, we would share disdain for the corruption of our democracy, revile the sinners and their sins. And when my rage was about to consume me, Jack would swoop me out of its reach with one of those jokes or grab a ticklish, tender knee and draw a giggling yelp instead of a bitter profanity.

Sometimes we would even gather up a friend of Jack’s, the wounded survivor of a Baltimore scandal, and calm ourselves on an early Sunday morning, beside a misted pond. As day broke, we’d fish for bluegills, fry the fillets with hushpuppies in a well-seasoned skillet, and tipsily toast the Fall of the U.S. Empire with Bloody Marys.

That was forty years ago. And that toast was a half-assed joke.

Just a few days ago, Jack didn’t know who I was, but he could still shuffle at least a few feet off to Buffalo, strum an occasional ukulele, and sing our family songs, the sometimes bawdy, sometimes silly songs that have bound us, that overcome schisms and sorrows, that entwine distinct generations and personalities and beliefs into a fun and fabulous choir.

Today, though, the loudest voices we hear are discordant.

Today, I’m thankful for the dementia of Uncle Jack’s last years. I’ve said the same of my parents: I’m grateful they didn’t live to see the corruption that now divides us, that drives people to the polls or away from them, that forces us to don masks or deny they are needed, that keeps us from family deathbeds or exposes family to potential death.

Today, Uncle Jack has died, and I wonder what else we might lose. I don’t know, but I think it’s time to sing the songs of our youth—the cheery songs, the ribald songs—and to hope.

Please vote with love, please encourage others to do the same,
K-B

Kit-Bacon Gressitt is a founding editor of Writers Resist and the publisher. Her website is KBGressitt.com.

Poster art by Holy Mole UK, available from amplifier.org.

Artist’s statement: “My 2 cents on the US election, and of course an ode to the amazing Robert Indiana, the creator of the iconic LOVE sculpture (a global symbol for hope in 1960s) and Obama’s ‘HOPE’ presidential campaign (2008). [Indiana] once said ‘I’d like to cover the world with hope,’ and, with sculptures popping up all over the world, he did just that.

“Sadly, Indiana died in 2018, but I think if he were here he would have felt his voice was needed more urgently than ever. My design uses ‘VOTE’ this time (as he did himself in 1976) and aims to encourage voting in the upcoming US election. I wanted the message to be vibrant, to sing with colour and positivity for the future. There is still hope, but we need to make very bold decisions regarding the environment. The US needs a leader that is more focused on global issues than their own twitter feed! US friends, if you are reading this please vote, it is so, so important!”

These Poems Don’t Come Out Right

By Bunkong Tuon

The virus breathes like fire over city streets
and farmland, across oceans and mountains,
over YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.

The president suggests injecting the body
with disinfectant to kill it. Maybe
he could go first; it’s his idea after all.

I’ve become a hack, ranting as if the world
will heed my words and stop spreading
violence through fear, hate, and ignorance.

Mix misinformation with racism, greed, and ego,
and you get 2020, a reality show you didn’t know
you were a part of until it is too late. Oh,

These poems don’t come out right and
my poor wife is asleep, hands clutching
the crib where the baby was fussy all night.

I cut slices of cucumbers and strawberries,
spread apple wedges on a plate for my daughter.
Our beautiful baby is crying again.

I fetch my coffee and a baby bottle,
run up the stairs, cradle our newborn in my arms,
watching his desperate eyes look up at me for comfort.

But I have no words for him, and this ending
is not right, but I don’t know what is anymore.

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of Gruel and And So I Was Blessed (both published by NYQ Books), The Doctor Will Fix It (Shabda Press), and Dead Tongue (a chapbook with Joanna C. Valente, Yes Poetry). He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, New York. He tweets @BunkongTuon.

Photo credit: m anmia via a Creative Commons license.

Voting in the Time of Climate Change

By Ying Wu

The tide swallows most of the beach these days.
Sunbathers take refuge in the reeds.
And children wade in the new lagoons
that stretch across the soft, loose sand.
Our poles are melting.
The bay spills over the sidewalk sometimes
and breaches the steps of private homes.

Today, in Texas, voters spill down the sidewalk too.
Six-hour lines in Georgia.
Our world is changing.
Queues before dawn in Tennessee.
Crumbling ice shelves in Antarctica.
Thwaites Glacier has destabilized.
Voters defy the rain in Philadelphia.
Lines in Ohio reach the interstate.
Voters a quarter mile deep form a double wrap in Brooklyn.
The sea is rising.
We are the People.
Our tide is sweeping in.

Ying Wu, a poetry editor at Writers Resist, is a poet and cognitive scientist, and host of the Gelato Poetry reading series in San Diego (meetup.com/BrokenAnchorPoetry). She is also a proud member of the editorial team of Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual. More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry and Art at the San Diego Art Institute (poetryandartsd.com), in the Serving House Journal, and in Writers Resist, as well as in the material world at the San Diego Airport and in print journals, such as the Clackamas Literary Review.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Closet Rules

By Avra Margariti

The first rule of sex doll club is,
you get used to getting used.
The second rule is,
you will be forgotten by your human
before your super-realistic, horsehair-eyelash, colored-glass eyes
can blink.

And blink we did. Here in the storage closet:
slumped, folded, no longer expected to perform.
The darkness a reminder of the factory we once lived in,
the ship that ferried us in foam-stuffed crates
laid side-by-side, coffin-shaped twin beds for me and you.
Air runs out, yet our decorative lungs breathe at last.
Here, dust and lavender—a safe smell, don’t you think?

The coats and furs overhead don’t carry his scent
(small mercies, small mercies)
but that of a woman long gone.
Did he make us in her likeness, I wonder, face, hair, body selected
from a never-ending online catalogue?
Were her eyes the blue of our eyes,
her skin the cream of our skin, our bodies incapable of bruises
whereas hers would have bloomed black and blue
with how roughly it was handled?
We are silicon smoothness, us.
We are cornsilk hair and peach lips cracked open by bare hands.
Everything or nothing like her;
no matter the answer, now we, too, are forgotten.
(The second rule of sex doll club—
yes, yes, we remember.)

He used to arrange us across the coffee table
bed kitchen island carpet hanging from the chandelier, once.
Were you ever envious of the attention he was pouring
on me, and not on you?
You can tell me, I won’t ever judge you for it.
Did you ever feel like peeling your skin
right off your lightweight, hollow bones?
In the dusk of his bedroom where we flanked him in sleep,
two curled apostrophes facing each other over the bulk of him,
did you ever feel love drifting in the still air?
It was me.
I was trying to learn how to love myself
and accidentally encompassed you in the process.

This is no accident now, in the soothing bluedark,
no product of etiquette or factory settings,
a different function than the one we were made for.
We were never a she or he or singular they
but a possessive his, a sibilant hiss.
So I say, and forgive me if I’m being too forward,
why don’t we call ourselves an I, an each other’s?
Here, you can lean on my shoulder if you’d like,
stretch a bit until your precious head slots against my collarbone.
You can move fast or slow, or stay as you are.

It’s easy to forget sometimes
(believe me, I know)
but the only rule of the storage closet
is agency, is choice.

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Forge Literary, Longleaf Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and other venues. Avra won the 2019 Bacopa Literary Review prize for fiction. You can find her on twitter @avramargariti.

Photo by Daniel Clay on Unsplash.

Mother’s Letter to Her Best Friend

By Penny Perry

June 5, 1942

Dear Isabel,

I drove my sister to the doctor’s
in Los Angeles. It all happened
so quickly. I promised to bring her
a chocolate phosphate when
it was over.

She joked with the nurses.
Told them if she puked
from ether she would buy
each of them a pair of nylon
stockings.

She insisted on ether because
her friend Hannah had told her
an abortion would be too
painful without it.

In the waiting room, I picked
up a movie magazine.
During the next ten minutes
I heard a harsh breathing
as though she were gasping.
I told myself she would breathe
differently under ether.

A nurse rushed to the telephone
to call emergency.
My knees collapsed.
I remember the sounds of sirens
on the street, footsteps on the stairs,
the horrible hissing sounds
of the oxygen tent.

I remember words like
“her pulse rate is low.”
“She has a seven-month-old baby
at home.” “Isn’t it a pity?”

Finally, the doctor came out
and said “Your sister is dead.”
The bastard didn’t even have
the sense to shut the door.
I could see her head thrown back
on the table.
He told me to stop screaming.

Penny Perry has received six Pushcart nominations. Garden Oak Press published her first novel, Selling Pencils and Charlie, and a collection of her poetry, Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage. New poems are forthcoming in Earth’s Daughters, Lips, the Paterson Literary Review, and the San Diego Poetry Annual. She is the fiction/nonfiction editor of Knot Literary Journal online.

Your vote is your voice. Su voto es su voz.

Be loud—vote!

We are often told that our votes don’t matter. But if our votes held no power, no one would try to silence us. That’s why we partnered with artists and MoveOn to create “Your Vote is Power,” an art-centered initiative to inspire young people and people of color to register and vote in November. We want to reclaim our visual landscape with messages of empowerment, with images reminding us that we are stronger when we act together and that our democracy depends on us all taking to the polls this November.

Poster art by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya.

Please support Amplifier Art.

Stringing Them

By William Palmer

He catches them each day,
stringing them through their gills,

his trumpeteers
trailing in dark water,

mouths drawn open,
eyes puckered shut.

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in J Journal, Poetry East, and Salamander. He has published two chapbooks—A String of Blue Lights and Humble—and has been interviewed by Grace Cavalieri for The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress. Recently he published an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel on the need for political candidates to embody a life-giving core. He lives in northern Michigan.

Photo credit: Helen Penjam via a Creative Commons license.

Unknowns

By Robin Q. Malin

There’s a lot of things I don’t know.

I don’t know what I believe.
I don’t know who I love.
All I know right now is that
when I look into her eyes
I long to trace her cheekbones,
to touch her lips,
to stroke her cherry colored hair
under the stars.
I know that she is beautiful,
that I am not supposed
to want what I think I might want.

I want to write to my father’s god,
to tell him that
I just want to dance with her,
to ask him why the sound
of his silence is so deafening.

I’m sorry.
This poem was supposed
to be about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
That’s where I started,
because I remembered
the soft sighs, the dissenting
voices of my parents
on the day when marriage
became a fuller and more
encompassing word,
and I don’t remember their
words but I remember
that they felt heavy
and red and broken
and I didn’t know why.

I remember a debate,
a debate that should not
have needed to be a debate
about if because
my name is Woman
it is also Meek, it is also
Equal (But In A Different
And Lower Way).
I remember that Ruth
said let there be nine,
there’s been nine men,
and I wonder if the disciples
were all women,
would scripture be called
blasphemy?
I don’t know.

So now I will tell you what I do know.

I know that the divinity I know
is there in the flickers
of light that shine on her hair,
in the sunset heavy clouds,
in the weight of words
that deny hatred a place
of power.

I know that if there is a heaven,
I want to weave a crown of flowers
and send them up to Ruth,
and ask her how she knew
that life was worth the tears
it took to make it worth living.

Photo credit: Miss Ayumaii Kawaii via a Creative Commons license.

Welfare Check East of Downtown

By Christie Valentin-Bati

“It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.”
–Nick Estes

They said close down everything
non-essential: The coffee shop,
blue trimmed with a green porch,
white-potted flowers that hung down
from the awning,
closed – so I roasted my own coffee.
The outlet mall
with high-waisted jeans,
gold-plated, pearl earrings
I’d been saving up to buy
closed too. So I wore nothing
in my ears, dug deep into my closet
and cut my own shorts instead.
They told me to stay home. I stayed home.
I used Instacart. I worked remotely.
I bought surcharged surgical masks off Amazon
though I knew, it wouldn’t help much
to block the droplets should they come.
Still, I was young, white.
I washed my hands regularly,
soaping around the thumb,
between the fingers,
even around my wrists,
I scrubbed clean.
I sexted, watered the plants,
and when I tired, I turned on the TV,
watched the news do its count
of another thousand people dead,
which meant only 100,000
were left to die.
Every now and again
I would peak over the fence,
happy to see my neighborhood
silent and unmoving,
the cars parked, quiet, in the driveways.
If any noise ever did pass through,
a construction truck, police sirens,
I’d pull down my windows
to mute out the sound,
certain that the noise was headed
to another place. I never worried
about any strangers in uniforms
coming to knock on my door,
carrying with them
something more deadly than a virus.

Christie Valentin-Bati is a poet and photographer based in small-life suburbia Hollywood, Florida, and soon big city Chicago. She is a co-author of Existential Quandary, a book of haikus from the perspective of a chicken, and her poetry has been featured in Columbia Journal. More of her work can be found on Instagram @_christieos_, Twitter @christiee0_0 or her website christievalentinbati.com.

Photo credit: Alachua County via a Creative Commons license.

The Spectators

By D.A. Gray

We’d grown thin during the pandemic.

I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and lock all three locks behind us, and turn on Box—the friend who understood us.

We would post jokes about lost drivers on Robertson Road, the coworker who couldn’t seem to do anything right, Texans and their beer hands that kept them from reaching the turn signal, or the lady in her bunny slippers at the H-E-B.

It was funny then, right? We meant no harm.

Faces from our angle seemed forever stuck in a moment of worry, or maybe lostness.

When the pandemic hit we noticed more in the mirror—or less—the way we almost disappeared from the side was cause for slight alarm. We vowed to eat better, to exercise. Then we sat down with Box, who loved us as we were and flashed pictures of pets, of stories curated for us.

Anyway, there’s still this pandemic. But it’s been so long since you’ve taken in a game.

In the stands, we notice faces frozen, you might say with “pasted on smiles.” Or frowns. Or maybe screams. Who knows. Everyone is silent here.

We’ve forgotten how to enjoy a simple game.

But the game itself is good, right? Slow moving, sure. But we watch the strategy unfold. There are outfield shifts, signals from the sides, pitcher and catcher in their esoteric talk. We never noticed when we used to talk.

Now the action has us glued to our seats.

And the sky has become an orange haze.

Players run through the motions. The stop and start drama, the overthinking, the occasional sprint after a collision of hickory on cowhide. Someone yells “Yes” as the ball drops onto the green grass.

Here the orange sky gets brighter.

Back home, Box tuned to something more pleasant. I hope it’s just conspiracy talk.

My skin is feeling thin, papery, which has me a little unsettled. My chances of surviving a combustible world were not good before this development.

What was that? Another crack of the bat. Maybe. No one’s moving. Perhaps the crack of timber from a nearby hill.

We keep watching. No one’s speaking to each other anymore and the faces seem to carry a look of perpetual anxiety. I think of the time we could have spent talking but never did. We assumed those around us were nothing but cardboard cutouts of something we feared. Now I fear we’ve become that, while watching other things.

And outside this place an orange menace lumbers—I can’t ignore it anymore—slow and clumsy, but steady. Its fingers—it seems to be feeding—grabbing at everything, as if our silence were consent.

D.A. Gray is the author of Contested Terrain (2017). His poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Writers Resist, Comstock Review, Still: The Journal and Wrath-Bearing Tree among others. He holds Master’s degrees from The Sewanee School of Letters and Texas A&M-Central Texas. Gray now teaches, writes, and lives in Central Texas.

Photo credit: Eric Drost via a Creative Commons license.

What Gnaws My Bone

By Ronda Broatch

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.” – New York Times 5 June 2020

There are days that ache
so loud.

I see from a distance
a black man deprived
of the rest of his life

because : :

he fits the description, is a person
of interest

Sometimes the poem is not ready to be written.
Sometimes I need to just shut up and listen.

“Please, I can’t breathe.”

Sometimes I’m driving alone in my car yelling
Whose fucking great day is this?

(the president)
(who has no decent bone in his body)
(can’t hear me)

And how detached
his words

. . . looking down right now
and saying this is a great thing
that’s happening for our country . . .

how disembodied Floyd’s words

“My stomach hurts.”

“My neck hurts.”

“Everything hurts.”

I fog up my windows, yell NO NO NO
it’s Fucking. Never. A. Great. Day.

to be dead —

“They’re going to kill me.”

and how disconnected
I am in my green garden
paradise, my adult children
here with me,

and no one worried about going out
into the world, save for COVID-19
which doesn’t discriminate

from my little patch of privilege
I see
from a distance

the fires the broken glass the rubber bullets the flash bang the water

They’re going to kill me.

and milk to douse the sting. These facts

(They’re going to kill me)

gnaw
and gnaw and gnaw and gnaw —

Poet and photographer Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). Ronda was a finalist for the Four Way Books Prize, and her poems have been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. Her journal publications include Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered, among others.

O Captain! Some Captain!

By Mark Williams

after Walt Whitman

O Captain! Some Captain! Our fearful trip’s not done,
The ship is foundering, front to back, the prize we sought’s not won.
The port is far, the chants I hear, the people all protesting,
While follow eyes the unsteady keel, the vessel grim and shaking;

But O heartless, heartless heart!
O the beating blood as red
As the MAGA hat that lies,
On your self-serving head.

O Captain! Some Captain! Rise up and hear the news;
Black Lives Matter flags are flung, for you the bullhorns shrill.
Not for you, bouquets and wreathes—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you we call, the marching masses, our angry faces burning;

Some Captain! Some leader!
You nearly fell on your head.
It’s a nightmare: if on this deck,
You wobble yet next year. O dread!

You Captain answer not our questions, your lips are pale, speak swill.
A leader who intends us harm, your pulse beats all for ill,
The ship’s not anchored safe and sound, its voyage far from done,
If from this trip this vanquished ship does not come in, you’ve won;

Exult not O shores, ring not O bells!
I walk with mournful tread, where
If you steer this ship next year,
our nation sinks cold and dead.

Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the Trump administration have appeared in Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, The New Verse News, and Tuck Magazine. He lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Photo by zhao chen on Unsplash.

Presidential Seal

By Jennifer Shneiderman

Slipping into Cadillac One
Gliding on lies and half-truths
Trump greets supporters
waving off warnings
and all that is humane.
He is the clear and present danger.

The SUV
a mobile panic room
used for political theatre
could be the Secret Service
Presidential seal of death.

The truth is a ghost
a shadow
an inconvenience
an artifact
dismissed out of hand.
Turn around and
White House portraits have been replaced
with funhouse mirrors.

Secret Service
doing their duty
following orders.
Only an enemy
would define them as expendable.
The devil is in their detail.

Before the fate is sealed
the future insular, fanatical
overrun by white supremacy
ruled by the stunningly irrational—
Vote like Jim Jones is standing over you
with a syringe.

Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now, The Rubbertop Review, Writers Resist, the Poetry in the Time of COVID-19, Vol 2, anthology, Variant Literature, Bright Flash Literary Review, Wingless Dreamer, Trouvaille Review, Montana Mouthful, the Daily Drunk, Sybil Journal, Unique Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Terror House, Thirteen Myna Birds, Potato Soup Journal, Awakened Voices, GreenPrints, and The Perch. She was the recipient of an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Laura Riding Jackson poetry competition.

Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash.

When I Am Asked to Be More Like the Good Women of Sparta in the Movie ‘300’

By Abby E. Murray

The colonel sends a letter
to the families of Tiger Battalion
at the onset of global pandemic.

I am a Tiger spouse now,
which means I am dignified,
according to the colonel.

The tigers in the zoo closest to us
have paced so long in their habitat
they communicate in sunken spirals,

insane, glaring past their fence
with eyes the color of honey
or fossilized sap, the color

of sweetness or preservation,
maybe both. I assume they
continue to speak in circles

without shrinking from human chaos
not because they are dignified
so much as they cannot shrink.

But this is not about tigers or a name
thrown to me like a new toy,
a bloody chop to chew.

The colonel asks us to remain calm,
be more like the good women
of Sparta in the movie 300:

supportive, exemplary,
confident in their warriors.
He says we must be the foundation

upon which our soldiers succeed
and I imagine myself painted
in orange and black on an urn

in some museum,
my placard purring about
how I’m allowed to be wise,

allowed to own land,
allowed to speak,
permitted, given, blessed.

Now I’m pissed. Now I’m hungry.
On behalf of Spartan women
I want to ask the colonel:

what is there for me to praise here?
Is it the good of the state,
balanced on my head like poisoned meat?

or is it my beloved himself,
who lets me grow strong?
I send no response to the colonel,

who probably translates silence
as agreement, the sound of a tame woman
pacing the earth—fearsome

but composed in her containment.
See how I wear a grave into the earth
just by walking on it?

Abby E. Murray is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. She teaches rhetoric in writing military strategy for army officers on fellowship from the Army War College at the University of Washington, and she offers free creative writing workshops for immigrants, soldiers, veterans, and their loved ones around Tacoma, Washington, where she is the city’s poet laureate. Her book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was released in September 2019. You can reach her at www.abbyemurray.com.

Image of Greek amphora, 540 BC, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.