Editor – Page 14 – Writers Resist

For E.G.

By Matt Barnsley

there’s a drip
drip
drip
that comes with being
american

it soaks DuBois’ veil
and smothers the mouth
the nose
a personalized waterboarding
half dead, half alive

there’s a gasping
gasp
gasp
that echoes in our
ears

it drowns out the cries
the gunshots
the standby videos
and a man who can’t breathe

Matt Barnsley is the editor and founder of New American Legends, an online literary journal aimed at uplifting underrepresented voices in the genres of sci-fi, horror, and adventure. He is also the author of several plays, most notably The Play My Mother Hates, which garnered positive reviews from City Pages, A/V Club, and others. He holds an M.F.A. from Concordia University and his work has also been featured in SPIRES, and NGY Review. As a freelance copywriter, his words have been featured on product packaging, social media platforms, and advertisements. He is currently working on his second novel. He resides in Minnesota with an assortment of domesticated animals.

Photo by Raphael Lovaski on Unsplash.

Women Wearing White

By Carol Sadtler

not just for purity but justice
as suffragettes wore white
for the vote, as Hillary’s
white pantsuit honors them,
as all the women of every
color in the House wear
white one night and the
Speaker claps back to power,
as on the day Madame Speaker,
in white bespoke pantsuit, begins
to impeach, as a pushy newsman
tries to put the word hate
in her mouth, as she says
“Don’t mess with me
when it comes to words like that”
as she strides away
her white suit unsullied.

Carol Sadtler is a freelance writer and editor who does her best thinking on, near, or in the water. She lives in Chicago with her family. Her poems have appeared in Rhino Poetry, where she served as associate editor 2018-19; Pacific Review; The Tishman Review; and other publications.

Photo of the Victory Column by Goke Obasa on Unsplash.

Sonnet for the Woman in Walgreens

By Diane Elayne Dees

It’s been a week or two since our encounter,
yet your voice haunts me, and I see your face
in waking dreams. There, at the checkout counter,
you yelled and gestured as you made your case:
“It’s all a hoax!” you shouted, while the clerk
delivered a lecture on government regulations,
declaring—as she put aside her work—
that we are so much cleaner than other nations.
I wonder if you’re staying safe inside,
washing your hands, and canceling your cruise—
or are you spreading the virus far and wide,
and getting tips from experts at Fox News?
I think of you, your rage, your blind belief;
there’s no vaccine for that, and no relief.

Diane Elayne Dees has two poetry chapbooks, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died and Coronary Truth, forthcoming. Her microchap, Beach Days, can be downloaded from the Origami Poems Project website. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Visit her author site, Diane Elayne Dees, Poet and Writer-at-Large.

Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash.

I Do Not Wait

By Trish Hopkinson

—for Walt Whitman

nor am I dismissed.
I set myself apart, do not tremble
beneath terms—cold

manly, butch, ball-breaker
bitch—do not determine my worth
by whom I am kept.

I ratchet skyward
take my place at the sun’s table
lifted by turquoise bone & bladed wings.

My scarab shell snubs boot heels
scurries and flutters solo
& yes, I possess myself.

I will not be held in a fist
pinned or stuffed in a case
pierced beneath glass.

I seat you in a room waiting
nude, simple & flaccid, unable
to siphon one more drop of sap.

My body is not yours to be dammed
instead, it releases grace in white waves
& demands nothing of anyone

but myself. I penetrate no one.
I illuminate the paths
of the unwaiting.

Trish Hopkinson is a poet, blogger, and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and provisionally in Utah, where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets and folds poems to fill Poemball machines for Provo Poetry. Her poetry has been published in several lit mags and journals, including Tinderbox, Glass Poetry Press, and The Penn Review; her third chapbook Footnote was published by Lithic Press in 2017, and her most recent e-chapbook Almost Famous was published by Yavanika Press in 2019. Hopkinson will happily answer to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.

Photo by Ines Álvarez Fdez on Unsplash.

Good Night

By Angela Costi

In 1993,
I walked the night
through Alma Park, St Kilda, from 10 pm
to 4 am, no chaperone, no iPhone,
the poetry gig would end
I would leave
take the tram
no taxi, no text-talk, no self-talk,
and walk
for blocks
through city lanes, urban parks, industrial streets
half a city and two suburbs of walking
to clear the day’s debris.

It was night who befriended me
when my house was slashing and stabbing,
I kept clear of the family room,
unpacked my tantrums
with insomniacs, nurses
and night feeders.

Now 2019, I walk
with no moon for witness
my steps are the loud protest,
I hear muffled blasts
of his outrage
her resentment
in a house I pass.

A hunched figure
sparks the path,
slows down
to show
a girl.

We nod
like soldiers
at the frontline.

Angela Costi’s poetry collections are: Dinted Halos (Hit&Miss Publications, 2003), Prayers for the Wicked (Floodtide Audio and Text, 2005), Honey and Salt (Five Islands Press, 2007) and Lost in Mid-Verse (Owl Publishing, 2014). An award from the National Languages Board in 1995, enabled her to study Ancient Greek drama in Greece. She received funding from the Australia Council to work in Japan on an international collaboration involving her poetry, which she documented as poetic narrative and essays at: http://cordite.org.au/author/angelacosti/

Photo by Krzysztof Kowalik on Unsplash.

Letters Then and Now

By Patricia McTiernan

A few weeks after a stay-at-home advisory was issued in Massachusetts, I turned 60. As someone with a chronic illness, I felt I had jumped head first into the high-risk pool. With a long-planned vacation cancelled, I reconciled to staying home a lot and tackling projects I had long put off.

There are, for instance, the letters. My father wrote them to friends at home while serving in the Infantry during World War II. I’ve wanted to transcribe them, to share with family. They have faded with time, but his handwriting is clear. With no deadline, I work in the quiet of my suburban home’s third floor at my makeshift desk: a heavy, laminated board set upon two metal file cabinets.

My father used to say, “I was no hero,” whenever he spoke about the war. He did not rush to enlist after Pearl Harbor, as many younger men did. He was drafted, spending the first two years training stateside before shipping overseas. His company arrived at Omaha Beach two weeks after the famous D-day landing, to fight in the Normandy countryside and on into Austria and Germany.

I often think of World War II as the last great challenge that truly affected everyone in one way or another. Certainly some sacrificed more than others, and inequities abounded. But unlike other wars and national crises that followed, in WWII, no one was completely shielded from the effects—whether food and gas rationing or being sent overseas to battle.

In the letters from Europe, my father is 34 years old and single. He is writing to close friends, a married couple who live in the same small town where my father grew up. He is chatty about their shared acquaintances, happy for another young couple expecting their first child.

But when he writes about the Army, which is often, he is frustrated. The best years of his life are being consumed by war. The point system used to determine when enlisted men can be discharged is unfair. He is having no luck in getting an emergency furlough to visit his sick, aging father back home.

When he recovers from injuries sustained in the Battle of the Bulge, he is sent, not to H Company, the comrades he has been with since the start, but to a tank battalion. “I know as much about a tank as you know about running a submarine,” he writes.

This summer marks 35 years since my father died. I’ve spent far more time on the planet without him than with him, yet he hovers as an influencing presence in my life. I knew him as congenial and calm, the peacemaker in our family. He was the brother that his siblings called upon when they needed help, the father who read three newspapers every day and wanted more than anything for his daughters to love the game of golf.

Yet the voice in the letters, for the most part, is not a voice I recognize. He is 11 years away from becoming a father, and 15 years from becoming my father. He is stuck. His life is not his own. He has no control—over the war, over his place in it, over his father’s health.

This summer also marks 75 years since the end of World War II.

Here in the pandemic, I feel a kinship with the lack of control that my father and others must have felt back then. While my comfortable life is nothing like war, I am stuck in a situation not of my own making. I embrace the privilege of staying home to be safe, yet I also feel the constraints of not being able to do much else.

But in the heat of summer afternoons, I move to the first floor. Sitting at the dining room table I work in the present, writing my own letters. Like my father, I am no hero.

Unlike my father’s letters, mine are addressed to complete strangers. I channel my horror at my country’s decline over the past three years into something I have to still believe in: voting.

Through get-out-the vote organizations, I am writing to people in Texas and Michigan. I’m sending postcards to Pennsylvanians.

I write the same message again and again. I’ll never meet the people I am writing to; we’ll never get to celebrate a victory together. And as deaths from the virus mount, I have to wonder: Are they still healthy; are they still alive?

Many will no doubt toss my correspondence in the recycling bin. But it’s possible that my efforts, however small, may be meaningful to some.

In one of his letters to his friends my father wrote, “I am well and have gotten thru a lot and hope to be lucky enough to continue thru the battles that lie ahead.”

That’s the voice I knew. And the hopeful message that resonates today.

For now, I am safe and well. The country has gotten through a lot. But in this time when so much is uncertain, I hope that those who receive my letters will understand how important they are to winning the battle that lies ahead.

Patricia McTiernan recently retired as a communications director in the nonprofit healthcare sector. She is an editor and writer in the Greater Boston area. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Sun magazine, and The Examined Life Journal. Follow her on Twitter: @AceMct.

Photo by Kari Sullivan on Unsplash.

Humanity

By Steven Croft

Wants to believe kindness, its namesake, can still a morning rain
of bombs, calm the lightning strike of artillery shells on cratered streets
scorched hot and unlivable as the surface of the sun

Wants to believe foresight will quiet the chainsaws’ outcry against
ancient trees in the last remaining rainforests, make abandoned
the coal-fired cooling towers as monuments to itself, leave at least some
of the fish in the sea

Wants to believe in the white sorcery of hope: we will never be starving
animals on a dying planet, we are not tongueless to stop a world’s
unraveling, wants to believe in good hearts joining us together in time
like a savior walking out of a desert, the world as scry bowl of better angels

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation. For the last thirteen years he has worked in a library. He has recent poems in Sky Island Journal, As It Ought to Be Magazine, Poets Reading the News, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, and other places.

Photo credit: Xavier Vergés via a Creative Commons license.

The Fire Still Burns

By Gary Priest

Fire makes us all believers.

There’s a unity in fear that allowed science and religion to merge into a rational hysteria that swept us all along on a wave of koala memes and apocalypse FOMO.

The eco-inspired crimewave started in the mid 2020s. This was not just shutting down airport runways or protest hashtags. This was something darker, primal and all persuasive.

My first assignment as a rookie eco-cop was crowd control at the murder of an oil company CEO. He was castrated and hung from a lamppost outside a petrol station on New Year’s Eve, 2028. Six months later, I found myself first on the scene of a luckless idiot who discarded a burger wrapper on a Soho street and was kicked to death by a passing group of vegan death metal kids.

Ten years after those first deaths, “ecoslaughter” was written into the rule of law. By the early 2040s, it was impossible to get a conviction on any death that could show a motive related to saving the planet.

The skies got a little bluer and the oceans were more saltwater than cellophane again.

We saved the world.

Twenty years came and went. I remained on the force.

On a dull evening patrol, I drove past a group of teens waited in an orderly line to get into the hippest of the town’s vice-free nightclubs. I could probably find some reason to take them in. The smallest violations were now offences. Sneaking an outlawed carbohydrate, wearing leather shoes without a permit, and, of course, loitering with intent to pollute, which could be twisted to cover anything anyone did and was great for keeping arrest numbers up.

Hoping there might be some meatier infractions inside the club, I parked my bright green smart car and with one flash of my badge at the door, strode inside the large hall. The whale song and bird tweets were a long way from the old days of EDM and rock ’n roll, but after the Bank Holiday Modular Music riots of ’44, the influencers decided that all human-made music was ecologically unsound.

I still remember the day they executed Keith Richards. The lethal injection didn’t work, so they beheaded him live on the nine o’clock news. The tattered illusion of humane deaths for musicians was put aside. They crucified Miley Cyrus, fed Alfie Boe to a pack of feral hogs and kept going until every last one of them was dead.

Groups of pious youth swayed back and forth to the somnolent sounds of nature. These were the inheritors of the planet.

I hated them and I hated what the world we saved had become.

That was my secret.

Back in the early 21st century, there was a gestalt shift that left no room for doubt in anyone’s mind. They called it Twitter-logic. You never expressed doubts, you never backed down, and if there was a mob, you had better be part of it or you would find yourself its next target.

That shift pulled us back from the brink of global catastrophe. Who’d have thought all those armchair environmentalists would one day bring about the Plastic Purges of 2042, the Meatless Monday Massacres of ’55.

I played along, said all the right things and became the perfect symbol of the new age of woke warrior.

Don’t get me wrong, I was glad the planet had been saved, and I admit that the draconian means were probably the only option we had left by the end of the 2020s. But now that the planet was yet again an Eden, it seemed we had forgotten how to enjoy its bounty and grace.

I clocked up a few arrests in the club. Minor violations of recycling laws and dental hygiene directives. The Prius prison vans came and took the offenders away, and I went back to my patrol.

It was a quiet night and I was nearing the end of my shift when the call came in to investigate a code 411, “possible youthquake in progress.”

She sat alone on a wall by the burnt-out shell of a public library. Hardly a youthquake, but certainly a curfew violation to start with.

She wasn’t much older than fourteen. Her hair was a messy nest of blonde and pink. I could have taken her in for the hour and the highlights, but those abuses were the least of her transgressions.

Smoking a cigarette. In public! A goddamn roll-up! That was a twenty-year minimum sentence right there. At her feet, a small pile of cigarette butts, an empty bottle of bootleg vodka and what looked like the remains of a highly illegal kebab.

I got out of my car. She didn’t look up, just puffed out a plume of smoke and started singing.

Instinctively, I drew my gun. Still, she didn’t react.

The song came from way back in the 1980s. “Are you singing a Russ Ballard song” I asked.

She stubbed out her cigarette on the wall and tossed it to the ground.”‘The Fire Still Burns,” she said. She did not smile but assaulted me with eyes granite grey and defiant.

“How do you even know music? It was outlawed before you were born.”

Her laugh was flat and without warmth. “It’s all still out there in the dark cloud if you know where to look.”

Another violation.

“And is that how you want to die? Singing some forgotten power ballad from the eighties?”

She shrugged. “You remember it.”

“That’s not the point, you dumb fucking kid. I have to kill you now. You get that, right?”

After the first few years I no longer enjoy the killing, nor did I feel anything other than a grim certainty that to disobey an eco-statute would mean my death as well as the offender’s.

“I have to kill you”’ I repeated.

‘Of course, you do. Been waiting half an hour for one of you green-booted arseholes to come and end me.’

My grip tightened on the gun. There was no arrest protocol for this many violations.

“Why are you doing this”’ I asked.

The kid smiled for the first time. “Because extinction is the only rebellion I have left, green-boot.”

I shot her twice in the head and once in the chest. Her smile reddened as she toppled over the wall to the ground. I called the cleanup squad and went home.

For the first time in years, my heart soared. I was too old and too scared to rebel, but that kid hadn’t given it a second thought, and if there was one of her, there were probably more. One kid smoking cigarettes and singing outlawed songs might do little else but give hope to her embittered executioner, but a thousand of them could become a trending topic, a hashtag, a movement, and that was how the world changed these days. In her grey eyes I saw the rebirth of the natural revolt of youth. Our generation saved the world, and now maybe, just maybe, the next one could save us.

Later, in the surveillance dead-spot of three a.m. I started singing “The Fire Still Burns,” softly, in the cold solitude of the night.

Gary Priest writes short fiction and poetry. He has over thirty publications online and in print including Daily Science Fiction, The Eunoia Review, and Literary Orphans. He lives in the UK at the end of a dead-end road, which may explain everything.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

Donald Trump’s Titanic

By Cassandra Henken

The world today
is like watching a shipwreck in slow motion.

Donald Trump
is the iceberg, and America is
the Titanic. We laughed
about being able to smell ice
when it’s near—

Iceberg, right ahead!
We elected him anyway.
Just as they said,
“God himself could not sink this ship!”
when they knew there were not enough lifeboats,
it takes someone equally cold-hearted
to hold the Bible in one hand
and smite the lowly with the other.

Now we’re bobbing in the water,
our ship asunder,
and still, there are those
who say the ship is unsinkable,
even though thousands of people have died,
(even as the cold settled in
choking on their own breath
and they swallowed the Atlantic).

Listen closely enough,
and bullets sound like Morse code.
Men desperate to get into a lifeboat,
to live,
were shot even as they drowned.

Imagine the headlines—

“Titanic Hits the Same Iceberg Twice!”

We accept prayers via memes
or monetary compensation.

Cassandra Henken is a mother of three living in Minnesota. She has her Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology and Early Childhood Development. She worked for almost five years as a Behavior Therapist for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now she is going back to school for a Bachelor’s of Arts in English and Fiction Writing. She has always loved the written word and been interested in politics, the culmination of which resulted in “Donald Trump’s Titanic.”

Photo in the public domain.

¡Despierta!

By Ada Ardére

She lies rotting in saltwater that thrashes about white resorts
that in their time and in their place drown out her voice
as it would otherwise be heard begging, pleading, screaming
for the lives of her children as they sit in wards without power,
diabetic comas consuming the elderly and children equally
while Brooks Brothers suit clad Epstein socialite collaborators
avert their eyes from her teary visage in slave-maintained
golf clubs across the sea refusing to acknowledge her
in any way but kicks and spit upon the whore they sell,
upon the bloodied lips and cracked teeth of a mother of millions
without water or food or even the dignity of acknowledgement!

She is remembering for them all the counts and strikes upon their bodies
in the century since forced annexation where experiments
upon illiterate women gave rise to mainland women’s endless fucking and
the cessation of hormonal migraines and acne for little girls in elite schools
who would never see the effects of nuclear testing on her northern coasts,
oh she remembers for them, she refuses to let death or time erase
the millions of hours of modern indentured servitude that her
children were deceived into for the cost of a boat ride to a land
they were already citizens of but still not yet seen as anything
but the dark skinned/too pale inbetweeners of a failed negro kingdom
the lazy, laid-back rapists, thieves of virtue, papists thirsting for jobs!

She is listening to the century long echoed call and response of the tired
cry from Lares whose drone was cannons and drums from
the hearts of those who still remember the Taíno name, to those
as they roar the name of both tormentor and consoler, ¡Maria!,
to the silence of supposed compatriots in congressional halls
whose only gestures are public prayers for miracles they
could manifest themselves in otherwise forgettable acts
of mercy if only they did not reduce her and her people
to lesser than dogs, and she listens to the swelling response:
a beast cannot be made more beastly nor can its cry
be muted as it awakens to the only means that is left to it!

Ada Ardére is a Puerto Rican poet from New Orleans, who now lives in Kansas City. She studied philosophy of art and Plato, and loves beat poetry. Her poems have recently appeared in 34th Parallel Magazine and online in Wussy Mag.

Map of 1863 Puerto Rico from New York Public Library.

75th Remembrance Poem

By Michel Steven Krug

Another night, so far beyond famished,
the stubby pencil rescued from gravel

sharpened by secret pebbles to
write about the ingredients of normalcy.

Ilona from Budapest narrates:

two cups of flour, 3/4 cup sugar,
an egg or two (depends on size),
a finger of baking powder,
touch of vanilla,
crushed sugar cubes,
1/2 cup diced tart cherries.

The mind travels to a Shabbat dinner
leaving the nihilist barracks, taste of torts

and coffee displacing arid mouths
and acrid hope, imagination baking cakes of

liberation served at future tables
where the progeny is not just from two but of a

whole collection of souls deprived of morning.

A note from the poet: This 75^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz remembrance poem is inspired by uncountable sources, but most recently an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune.

I’m a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist, Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate, and practicing lawyer. I’m also Senior Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. My poems have appeared in Mizmor Anthology 2019, PRTN, Sheepshead, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven’s Perch, Tuck Magazine, Poetry24, 2 Elizabeths, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review and others.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

my body, my choice

By Kitty Anarchy

jesus said?
jesus is dead.
jesus don’t
have what’s
between our legs

our cavities
ovaries
fallopian tubes
uterus
cervix

not just
vagina!

could you
even name
the parts
tucked deep
inside us?

jesus’
mary magdalene
history
erased

resurrected
in us
now who’s
two-faced

men
preach
and give mandates

not to have their
dicks altered
but to do things to us

because jesus said.
but jesus is dead.

Kitty Anarchy is an anarchafeminist, chicana womyn poet and short story writer. She has a background in social work, having earned her MSW from California State University, Long Beach, and listens to KPFK radio. She has seven cats, her favorite being ChiChi, and two dogs named Nibbit and Chato. She is published in Chiron Review, Rabid Oak Journal, Los Angeles Review, Ghost Town Literary Journal, and in anthologies through Arroyo Seco Press and Picture Show Press. Learn more at www.kittyanarchy.com.

“Maria Magdalene” by Jan van Scorel, 1530.

Eulogy for the Unfriended

By Jon Wesick

We gather to mourn the loss of
Alice stroking her brown-and-white Saint Bernard,
Barbara embracing her acoustic guitar,
Cheryl who tipsy on Chianti flirted with me
at Don’s going-away dinner,
Roberta who toured Chinese Zen temples,
Brad who worked nonviolence into his martial arts
when evicting drunks from a topless bar,
Jeff whose poems meander from sarcasm to irony and back,
Jerry the pot-smoking Vietnam vet always quick with a joke,
and Rob who volleyed batshit ideas with me on the improv stage.

Holding cognitive dissonance
in respect for nonconforming facts,
I’ve paused over the unfriend button for years but
what do I say to Harriet who wants me booted
out of the country for not praying to her god?

Scratch a profile picture. Get a noxious gas
of racist dog whistles and totalitarian sympathies –
praise for Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist, beating protestors,
and banning the press from exposing politicians’ deceit.

Skepticism turns on science and medicine
while leaving hype and spin unquestioned.
Deadly lies infiltrate like a puppy
with a suicide bomb. Measles and whooping cough
back in style. Bound feet, lead makeup, whalebone corsets.

Friendship wears a warning sign.
Trust, an electric fence.

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom, several novels, and, most recently, the short-story collection The Alchemist’s Grandson Changes His Name. Learn more at http://jonwesick.com.

Playing Possum

By Phebe Jewell

Mama won’t let us leave the house, and MJ is furious.

After dinner we form a line at the kitchen sink, Mama on one end, up to her elbows in dishwater, MJ in the middle, rinsing each bowl and plate. I wait at the other end of the line, ready with a towel.

I’ve always been Mama’s favorite. I sit in the middle of the classroom and only speak when I’m called on. During parent-teacher conferences my teachers have nothing to say about me. Mama smiles at my neat homework, tells my teachers “Jackie’s my Mini-Me.”

MJ’s teachers complain about her asking too many questions and arguing with their answers. Whenever Mama and me watch America’s Got Talent we snuggle. “You’re my baby girl,” she says, smoothing loose hair from my forehead. She has no idea what goes on in my head.

MJ turns the faucet off. “Why can’t we go?”

Mama stops scrubbing, lifts her hands out of the water.

“How many times do I have to tell you,” she says in her you’re-on-my-last-nerve voice. “Don’t let anyone know your business. It’s not safe. Don’t let anyone know what you think. Or feel.”

She turns to face MJ, and continues, prodding her chest with one finger. “When you speak out of turn at school, on the bus, wherever, you’re playing with fire.”

MJ steps back, a wet spot dotting her tee shirt where Mama’s sharp nail poked her.

“But people are getting killed,” MJ whispers, like she’s asking a question.

“If nobody knows you’re there, they can’t get you.” Mama turns back to the sink, plunging her arms into the water.

MJ turns the water back on, rinses the silverware. She passes a handful of forks and knives to me, and I pretend to inspect the blade of a butter knife, raising an eyebrow. Our signal.

I dry the last pan and set it on the counter.

Mama presses my hand in hers. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Jackie? This is not the time to make waves.”

I nod because that’s what Mama wants. She’s sure I’ll go upstairs, wash my face and brush my teeth, say my prayers before slipping into bed.

Later, when the house is dark and still, and MJ whispers, “It’s time,” I know Mama won’t be waiting to catch me sneaking out. She’d never dream I’d stand with MJ outside the police station, raising my fist.

Phebe Jewell’s recent flash appears or is forthcoming in XRAY, Literary Heist, Ellipsis Zine, Bad Pony, Crack the Spine, and The Citron Review. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for women in prison. Read more of her work at PhebeJewellWrites.com.

The Bean Peddlers

By Matthew Moniz

an ekphrasis of the Trumps’ Goya photos
after Gwendolyn Brooks

They count beans mostly, this vain green-eyed pair.
Ruling is a casual affair.
Stretched stares on stretched and creaking smiles,
Desks bare.

Two who are Mostly Vile.
Two who have wasted days,
But keep on wanting more
And wanting things their way.

And remembering…
Remembering, with hunger and hate,
As they pose over the beans in their white-
washed offices that
are full of iron collars and green pockets and
red hands,
red hats that say America was Great.

Matthew Moniz is a metaphysical anthropologist and incoming PhD student in poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi. Originally from the DC area, he holds a BA from Notre Dame and an MFA and MA from McNeese State University. Matt’s work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review and has been awarded the SCMLA Poetry Prize. He served as Poetry Editor of The McNeese Review’s 2020 issue and Poetry Panel Chair for SCMLA’s 2019 conference. He is left-handed, is allergic to cheese, and knows Adam West is the only good Batman.

Photo credit: Counse via a Creative Commons license.

Gurū Testimonial #1843

By Wendy Lee

“I hope you don’t make me regret finding you a job. Will is a good friend of mine,” Dad says.

“I’ll do the best I can,” I say.

“Are you still playing bass?”

“No, Mom threw it away.” Mom always said bass guitar was not ladylike. She didn’t like the thick, dark strings and the weight of it.

“Good. Your cover of ‘Stand by Me’ really sucked,” he says.

“It wasn’t my best work.”

“You really shouldn’t be thinking of anything but your job. Any pleasures or conceits you had before—gone. Don’t even try to relegate that to the five minutes you spend folding your towels. Understand?”

I nod.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to get any calls from Will about you. We go way back.”

I know that my father is right, but he is a hypocrite. He never folds any towels.

“You don’t need to worry. I’ll be the maven of estate planning. My modest sweater will shine as the noonday sun.”

“I’m glad to hear that. But for God’s sake, wear a jacket your first week. Will is an old-fashioned guy.”

I know I must seem sarcastic, but I really am grateful. I feel so lucky to have a job before I’ve even passed the bar exam. Will must have a lot of confidence in my dad.

• • •

What if I told you that you’re not the problem?

My eyes fill with tears, but not enough for Mom to notice.

“Skip the ad,” she growls.

“No!” I say.

It’s Roger Singh, the CEO of Gurū. He’s wearing a navy blazer and jeans and a sandalwood bead bracelet.

What if I told you that by reprogramming your subconscious and resonating with your ideal frequencies, you could say goodbye to loneliness, sexual repression, nostalgia, and lost productivity? In a recent study, Gurū was found to be more effective than medication at treating anxiety.

Mom yells at me in Korean, a language that I was taught to not understand. I pick up my laptop and carry it away, still watching.

Each day, we are surrounded by energy, from ourselves, from those around us, and our many handy devices. This can be a great thing, but it is also very confusing for our bodies. If you don’t have the right tools to ground yourself, you can easily get swept up in the chaos.

“That’s so true,” I say. “So many wavelengths, amplitudes.”

I started Gurū because I wanted to help people live up to their full potential. Gurū combines cutting-edge technology and exciting new breakthroughs in neuroscience to help you do just that.

It’s Jeanette from Tempe, Arizona. She has a golden retriever and works in an office.

Ever since I started using Gurū, I’ve been able to think so much clearer. For years, I thought, oh, I can’t afford to go back to school. I can’t pay off my house, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. But after a few weeks of wearing Gurū, working through the positive affirmations on the app, I ran the numbers again and realized I could do it. Now, I’m working part-time and studying to become a physical therapist. It’s always been my dream to help people achieve mobility, and now I’m right where I need to be.

“It’s always been my dream to help people too,” I say.

I look up the price of Gurū. It’s only $999.00. And it comes in three different colors.

• • •

“It’s always just one thing or another with you, isn’t it?”

Dad is super mad. My eyes fill, lungs ache and quake.

“I know I’ve been a failure. I know I have an unfortunate personality and an unremarkable GPA. I’m the blank sheet, the model minority misfire. But I can make all of that go away.”

“A shitty little pulsating headband is going to change the whole trajectory of your life?”

“The device only takes eight hours to sync.”

“Fucking millennials.”

“I’m Gen Z.”

“Makes no difference.”

“Just give me your credit card, and you’ll see. Tomorrow, I’ll be like the sun. Just the right amount of happy for ho hum.”

“Is she still bitching about Hulu?” asks Mom.

“It’s Gurū.”

“I think it’s a gimmick,” says Dad.

“You always spend your money on me just the way you like. But what if you’re wrong? Look, I told you I didn’t need golf lessons. I tried to tell you in a nice way that no one likes us because they think you’re just a couple nouveau riche assholes. And I was right! I didn’t need golf lessons.”

“She’s got a point there,” says Dad.

“If we get you this toy, will you be happy forever and try to look good with the new mid-century modern aesthetic around here?” asks Mom.

“Yes!”

“And make partner by twenty-six?” asks Dad.

“My very synapses shall echo with virtue and honor and praise,” I say.

“We should get her Hulu,” says Mom. “She is our daughter, after all.”.

• • •

I have read the Amazon reviews, and I believe I have a more sober (haha) view of things now. Gurū is not safe with certain medications. One reviewer reports that a glass of wine is fine, but you’ll hardly enjoy it because your brain chemistry will be so different. I already don’t like most things anymore, so maybe it’ll work out well for me.

One thing that makes me sad is the thought of Michael Stipe not visiting me in my dreams anymore. Maybe I’ll become so present and leaning in that I’ll never think of any of that ever again.

“I won’t let you be a humanoid-android. You can’t just stop being Jenny,” says Tyrell.

“Easy for you to say. Everybody loves Tyrell. No one loves Jenny. No one ever wants to play with Jenny.”

“I want to play with Jenny.”

I hold his hand, and he holds the shopping basket.

“So, it’s arriving tomorrow?” he asks.

“By eight a.m.”

“Shit.”

“You know, supermarkets make me anxious, but ethnic supermarkets, less so.”

“You’re cute when you’re cagey,” he says, meeting my gaze as we stroll through the rice aisle.

“Shut up and shop.”

“What’s this drink we’re looking for?”

“I’ll know it when I see it. It’s wanderlust in a plastic bottle.”

We linger at the refrigerated shelves.

“Here it is. The nectar of my fatherland,” I say.

He reads the label.

“Looks like some kind of persimmon juice.”

We take it to the car. I show Tyrell the super cool foreign packaging. The cap twists off in a slow, satisfying way. He takes a swig and makes a face.

“This isn’t right,” he says.

“You don’t like it?”

“This is no way to celebrate your last night as a real girl.”

“Well, that’s just it. That’s the point. I don’t know how it is that people handle these things. That’s where Gurū comes in.”

Tyrell sighs and gives me the Korean soft drink.

“I know you don’t understand. If I were you, I’d romanticize my disease too,” I say.

“You don’t have any disease.”

“How do you know? You don’t see what they see. I am the blank screen of fear. Behind the screen I’m dark, caving in, too yin. Upon me, they can project whatever they want.”

“They can go to hell.”

“It’s different with you, Tyrell. With you, I can eject. I don’t need to deflect.” How we did intersect.

I close my eyes to laugh, and when I open them, he’s not there anymore.

• • •

Today, I made a joke at work, and Will laughed. I said, “Well that’s another thing they don’t teach you in law school.” Gurū is really helping me discover my sense of humor in a healthy and work-safe way. I think my six-month review is going to bring to light a lot of things I can improve on. I am still only a human, after all.

I don’t think of Tyrell much anymore. We’re both very busy, and I know it’s better this way.

Sometimes, I like to walk outside, under a canopy of oak trees. I like the parable of the grape ivy. It just expands everywhere, takes in light and sucks up CO2. I suppose it does remind me of the album cover of Murmur, but I don’t have those dreams where I ask Michael Stipe questions anymore.

I do have to take Gurū off every few days to clean it. I also have to wash my hair without Gurū. They’re working on a water-proof model, but that won’t come out until Fall 2020.

“No one’s going to finance your bullshit, lingering over café au lait and Apple News like a bum.”

I know the voices aren’t real, and I try to breathe deeply. But they won’t stop.

“Did you ever have any childhood trauma related to carnivals?”

Michael Stipe looks at me like I’m a moron. I hear the water running and feel the cold of the tile running up my hands, but I can’t stand and can’t stop crying. Greg was rude to me today. Real abrasive when he said, “Maybe after lunch.” But I shouldn’t have bothered him because I knew he was preparing for the conference call. Dumb, inconsiderate bitch.

I want to scream. I want to scrape off all my zits. Withdraw my application from the California State Bar. I wish I could call Tyrell, but I deleted his number already.

I grab the little handle of the cabinet under my sink. There’s Clorox behind there. I can hardly see through the water and I know my face is folded up. I want to rip the nub off the cabinet. I want to rip myself apart, piece by piece.

Mom runs in.

“Come on. It’s not so bad. Stop crying, Jenny.” She has her arms around me. I have my arms around my dumbass ribs, squeezing my lungs out. She lets go and places the cool crown of plastic rationality on my head.

These incidents usually last about half an hour. We in the Gurū community affectionately call it “withdrawal.” It’s harmless, really. Some users report that they can significantly reduce the duration and intensity of these episodes by adjusting down “lucidity” under the Delta Dreams tab on the Gurū app. That’s not something that works for me personally, but I do take a little CBD oil before bathing.

I’m usually not one to review products, but I would totally do a testimonial for Gurū. I just want everyone to know that recovery is possible. I’ve been sober for two months now. I’m great at my job and my dad finally loves me. The pH of my urine is 7.3. My life is finally worthwhile, and it’s all thanks to Gurū.

Wendy Lee lives in San Diego, California. She is an attorney by trade, dabbles in beading, and is an aspiring curator of clichés.

Photo by Maximalfocus on Unsplash.

Boilermaker

By Kari Gunter-Seymour

In January Australia caught on fire. Was that fire put out?
Who knows because America decided to play Russian roulette with Iran, then
Prince Harry & Megan flipped off the Royal Family shortly before 45’s
impeachment debacle, John Bolton trading his testimony for a book deal
& just as Corona Virus began to whisper its ugly name the U.K. stepped out
of the European Union. Somehow, in spite of himself & his sleezy
law team, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty & wonks & dweebs
started asking if Corona beer was safe to drink & everyone on Facebook
became a flu expert or zealot.

In a shocking Hail Mary before Super Tuesday,
Buttigieg & Klobuchar decided to pass, then Warren accepted the inevitable
& Sanders did a jig, but the flip-flopper poles gave Bernie no choice
but to leave it to Biden, fence-straddling in his basement,
Viva la Revolución! via Zoom. Italy shut its whole self down & pandemic
became a scary word but not a motivator until the DOW took a dump
& then even the wealthy were washing their hands. NYC became Zombieland
just as it dawned on us there were no face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper,
then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs & has anyone seen Kim Jong-Un?

With predictions of murder hornets & millions of deaths,
we locked down & model citizens rebelled, middle fingers at full salute,
plus camo & AR-15s. Sports events were cancelled & Koby Bryant flew
forever into the mountains & one sleepy, dusty, Minneapolis afternoon
a police officer kneeled a man to death, smug as any school yard bully,
yes, I said it & the new word was protest, all colors marching incognito
behind totally hip masks & the president made arrangements to gas
a peaceful gathering for a photo op.

Somewhere in the ruckus, a giant asteroid
narrowly missed earth & a troop of monkeys in India snatched Corona Virus
blood samples as if they were Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean Candy & what
the hell with the trans hate J.K. Rowling? Suddenly not wearing masks
&/or protecting certain statues became a God-given right to the same clan
who think Gone With the Wind is fiction.

Meanwhile, the Congo’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak is over & I
personally am like, There was an Ebola outbreak? & a strange radio signal
is being broadcast from somewhere in the universe & I’m almost certain
James T. Kirk or Mr. Spock already took care of this back in December 1979.
To prove a point & wrack up points with the Prez, Florida was like, Hold my beer,
opened beaches & bars, made it all the way to number one on the virus hot spot map
& that self-same Prez picks the middle of a pandemic to urge the Supreme Court
to strike down Obama Care.

It’s only July & if this is not enough for you rough & rowdies,
a massive dust cloud came straight at us from the Sahara & Iran just issued an arrest
warrant for “Mr. Trump” & do you know, people in America can actually buy beer
that is purposely mixed with fruit-flavored seltzer? I will warn you straight up,
if you drop a shot glass full of whiskey into one of those carbonated beasts, you better
be ready for more than a boil-up.

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s current collection is titled A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020). Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, Still, The LA Times and on her website at www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. She is the founder and executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project, at www.womenofappalachia.com, and editor of the project’s anthology series, Women Speak, volumes 1-5. She is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year, and Poet Laureate of Ohio.

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Tail of Masculinity

By Ben P. Effiòng

I was born into a society
Defined by fraternities
In a hospital ward decorated with partiality
My birth, celebrated like African obesity
This was the privilege attached to my sexuality
I was born a male, with the tail of masculinity

Birthed into this artificiality
Characteristic of ma/pa-triarchy
I sat on the throne of gender roles
Nodding to the rhythm of privilege carols
Sowing seeds of sexism without parole
While getting used by the “second sex” I tagged as whores

I was born into a fraternity
Malignant to femininity
Where being a “man” meant wearing the identity
And non-membership equated with docility
Where ability was defined by “controlling” your family
And the symbol of manhood entrenched in brutality

I was born into patriarchy
The shameless face of matriarchy
That demonizes “courtesy” as a weakness
And being unmarried by women a sickness

I was born a male, with the tail of masculinity
But, I’ll die a rebel, with tales of equality.

Ben P. Effiòng is a philosopher, award-winning poet, and a debater whose articles and poetry have been published in both national and international newspapers and anthologies. Ben believes in using the power of creative expression to create social change. Follow him on Twitter @Benblag.

Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash.

woman king

By Emily Mardelle

I cut my hair off because my father would slide

his hands over my stomach and tell me how fat I was getting

and I

I think sometimes I want to make a woman king

so the moon can finally avenge the girls in the nighttime

imagine her thick hair long and her breasts full

and free

Emily Mardelle is an emerging writer whose essay “The Monster in My Corner” was published by the online magazine Sweatpants & Coffee in April 2019. She previously worked as a blogger for Arizona’s Superstition Review, where she was a liaison between national writers and the magazine. She graduated from Arizona State University in the spring of 2020 with a degree in English Literature and a minor in Sociology. Emily’s work draws from her experiences with PTSD, bisexuality, and womanhood. She currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona. Follow her on Instagram @emilymardelle and Twitter @emmardell.

Hangakujo, female samurai, from the U.S. Library of Congress.