Author: Editor

what’s happening with the boys

By Lou Ella Hickman

 

what’s happening with the boys

our prayers & thoughts

bullied?

bang, bang you’re dead

a moment of silence

easy access?

what’s happening with the boys

new laws won’t help

video games?

bang, bang you’re dead

our prayers & thoughts

absent fathers?

what’s happening with the boys

a moment of silence

movies, tv?

bang, bang you’re dead

new laws won’t help

copy cat?

what’s happening with the boys

our thoughts and prayers

a. none of the above
b. all of the above
c. some of the above

flood gates break open voices into the streets

we’ve had enough    we’ve had enough

listen    please listen     how can we get you to listen

to what’s happening with the boys

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director, poet, and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including, America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets, edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry, entitled she: robed and wordless, was published in 2015 (Press 53).

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.

On Sending Her Back

By Abby E. Murray

for Ilhan Omar

 

The man with no back
to return to—
which is to say there is
no path to safety
from the cliff where he clings,
no escape to remind him
the way back is his—
has wished to banish,
send back, cast out
a woman whose back is
all of us, whose back is
her body, a root, a beam
that bears the weight
of home and all its backache,
walls built up and smashed
around the same tree
that makes its rings
into shelters for shelter
and the origin of leaves
that backflip in the sun,
their dance of gratitude—
which is to say
this woman’s back is a gift,
given to her once
by her mother, a stack
of crowns stuffed
with the nerve to rise
and remain and never
turn back toward a time
when she was not,
when her steps
couldn’t be traced
back to the place where
she is, here, with us,
an orchard of spines
that grow deeper
each time a woman
is told to go back.

 

Abby E. Murray is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal publishing work concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. She is the poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, where she teaches community workshops for veterans, civilians, military families, and undocumented youth. Her first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and will be released in September 2019.

Photo credit: Chris Devers via a Creative Commons license.

The Rainbow Sign

By Sara Marchant

 

We went, my mother and I, to get haircuts. The previous appointment was still there, standing in front of the mirror, talking. This woman’s hair made her look like a pretty Afghan dog; her large green eyes did little to compensate for wearing clothes too dowdy for a woman in her forties. The stylist fluttered around nervously, her curly black hair disheveled, her small dog, barking with anxiety, twining around everyone’s feet. Later, the stylist would tell us that the green-eyed woman had been talking for two hours.

Mom sat in the chair, received the apron, and we all listened to the previous appointment, a white evangelical woman, talk about Jesus saving her from a rattlesnake the week before. She stepped out her kitchen door, right on its middle, and it wrapped around her ankle, striking. She said, “I don’t want to alarm you ladies,” but she was the one she was reassuring.

James Baldwin said, “White is a metaphor for power.” White evangelicals seem to take this as encouragement lately. That is, they would if they knew who James Baldwin was or what he wrote or what his work signified with its mere existence.

I know nothing of my hairstylist’s belief system. I know about her children, her grandchildren, her boyfriends, the kind of clothing she shops for and that she likes those excursions where people drink wine and paint. She knows that I am an atheist Mexican-Jew who teaches critical thinking and hasn’t much patience. And she knows my mom will talk to anyone about anything and comes from the generation that will never tell strangers that her family is Jewish. My mom finds it convenient (and by that she means safer) to be Catholic outside the home because of things like World Wars I and II and the Shoah.

The white evangelical woman was sure that it was Jesus who saved her from the rattlesnake, but it sounded like Jesus was her name for her Adidas and thick denim jeans.

She really didn’t appreciate me pointing that out. Standing, one hand on the doorknob, she talked and talked and talked the entire duration of my mother’s haircut.

Then it was my turn. The hairstylist and I helped my mother from the chair and walked her across the room. The white evangelical woman didn’t break verbal stride, but her talk abruptly devolved from her personal relationship with Jesus into an indictment of Catholicism. The stylist paused, her hands shaking, a probable sign that her belief system includes Catholic teachings or did at one time. The hairstylist studied my mom intently, worried for her I believe. She underestimated my mother’s intense distrust of institutionalized power and her particular dislike of priests. (Ask my mom how many times priests sexually harassed or assaulted her in her youth. Or better yet—don’t.) Mom knew how to deal with the white evangelical woman’s bigotry. She placated her, she played along.

My haircut commenced.

While the hairstylist and I discussed the fact that my hair was growing according to our plans– Meryl Streep’s hair from The Devil Wears Prada— I could hear the White Evangelical woman getting bolder. Her statements (because her entire belief system, to her, are absolute statements) oozed closer to objectionable. My mother stopped placating her; her responses now tended toward, “Well, dear, if that brings you comfort …”

“She’s handling her so well,” the hairstylist whispered as she tried to clip up one side of my hair in order to cut the back. “I’m so relieved.”

Just then the rhetoric got louder, more paranoid. The liberal elites were coming for this woman’s religion, they were coming for her faith; they were the reason this country was in such a mess, such a lack of values; the liberal atheists were the ones letting riff-raff into the country, dangerous foreign elements.

My body turned to solidified rage. My blood was lava oozing through fury.

The hairstylist gave up with the hair clips when the third one flew from her shaking hand. She grabbed both my hands and guided them to the weight of my hair.

“Hold this up, okay?” She grabbed her clippers. “I can’t—”

She was applying the clippers to my neck when White Evangelical woman said, “And of course, you can’t trust the world to be safe for honest Christians anymore. Anywhere you go, anywhere, could be filled with atheist liberals who want to take down my cross. They could be anywhere.”

“That’s right,” I said, pulling the hair straight up from my head with both hands. “We are everywhere.”

“Oops.” The hairstylist had run the clippers up the complete length of the back of my head.

“She’s joking, right?” the woman asked my mom.

“Oh no, dear,” Mom said. “She’s not joking at all.”

“We are everywhere. We are sitting in this very chair, in this very room, listening to your nonsense.” It felt like the stylist might have taken my hair down to regimental length. “And thus far, I’ve listened to your nonsense very politely. But no more.”

My mother giggled nervously in the corner; the small dog ran out of the room.

“I didn’t mean to offend your daughter,” the woman said. She let go of the doorknob to wring her hands.

“Well, you did,” I said as the rest of the back of my head was shaved.

“She’s joking, right?” The woman just couldn’t get it that we weren’t like her. “She’s just joking.”

“No, no,” Mom said. “No, dear. She’s dead serious.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s not one of the atheist liberals who are taking down my cross.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. Still holding my hair, yanking it really. “Every day, I wake up and I say to myself, ‘What cross can I destroy today? What cross is just asking for it?’”

“Now she is joking,” my mom said. “That’s called sarcasm. She’s got much better things to do. She’s a very busy woman”

“I didn’t mean to offend anyone.” The woman’s voice was thickening with tears.

“You didn’t, dear,” my mother said. “Don’t cry, you have such pretty green eyes.”

“I am offended,” I said. “You offend me.”

The hairstylist removed my hands from my hair, tried to comb it down over the shaved parts. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “It looks great. I can fix it.”

“I am offended that you would assume that everyone shares your stunted beliefs. I am offended by everything you said. I am.” I turned to the hairstylist. “Did you just shave the back of my head?”

“It looks great!” She patted me on the shoulder.

The White Evangelical woman was trying to stifle tears, still insisting she’d meant no offense, that she didn’t understand what had just happened. Why was I being so mean to her?

That week, in my critical thinking class, we’d gone over DARVO. Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. I promised myself, this would make for a great object lesson for my students. Eventually, I could explain it calmly and rationally. Right then, though, I wished for a nearby cross to destroy. I was capable of ripping it apart with my bare hands. I wanted to pick my teeth with its splinters after biting this woman’s head off.

My mother was helping the White Evangelical woman to the door, still telling her not to cry. Mom opened the door, gently pushed the woman through it and shut it in her face. The little dog ran back into the room.

“I thought I’d better show her out,” my mother said, “before you started quoting Tom Waits.”

“‘Come down off your cross, we could use the wood.’” I said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

The hairstylist scooped up her dog and dropped into the shampooing chair, cuddling him on her lap. We all three sat and looked at each other for a while. I couldn’t stop touching the back of my shaved head. It felt naked, exposed. It should have made me nervous; it should have made me empathetic to those who feel they require some sort of magical protection from the dangers of our world. It didn’t. It made me feel belligerent, powerful, capable of pulling crosses from the raped earth and chopping them to firewood with my anger. Maybe I should have thanked that sad, bigoted woman. She knew not what she’d done.

Another work of James Baldwin’s contains an epigraph having to do with the biblical story of Noah and his ark, God’s promise that the water would recede. I’ve no pity for that woman’s tears. What weight do her tears have compared with the tears of the “foreign element” she described? The tears of the children in cages, the tears of the mother’s writing their names and birthdates in Sharpie ink on the flesh of their babies in hopes of having a chance at reunification when the children are wrenched from their arms, the tears of the sick ones dying in the hielera? I save my sympathy for the more deserving, but I do wish I could go back and confront that woman again, using language that maybe she’d understand.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign: No more water, the fire next time.

Then again, maybe she wouldn’t.

 

Sara Marchant, a prose editor at Writers Resist, received her MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert. Her work has been published by The Manifest Station, Every Writer’s Resource, Full Grown People, Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Coachella Review, East Jasmine Review, ROAR, and Desert Magazine. Her work has been anthologized in  All the Women in My Family Sing, and by Running Wild Press. Her novella, The Driveway Has Two Sides, was published by Fairlight Books. Her memoir, Proof of Loss, was published by Otis Books.

Photo credit: Forsaken Fotos via a Creative Commons license.

Longing to Belong

By Elizabeth Weaver

 

girl with eyes too large and
milky teeth fairies must wait
years for in country that ripped
her from Mama locked her in
metal cage no laughter crosses
her howl swells into lost
others’ sounds for families
babies resounds past soiled
dreams strips belonging as
those ripping teach children
how arms are weapons

 

Elizabeth Weaver, M.A., is a Squaw Valley Community Writer whose work appears in dirtcakes, RATTLE, 5AM, and other publications. Visit her website at ElizabethOakleyWeaver.com.

Photo credit: United Nations.

We Are Not America

By Diane Elayne Dees

 

America is Mexico, Columbia, Brazil,
Argentina, Canada. It is Paraguay,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Uruguay, Venezuela,
and Chile. America is Ecuador, Nicaragua,
Bolivia, and Honduras. It requires a lot of nerve
to take the name of two huge continents
and make it your own. We are the man
who stands against the bar, sprawling
his arms and legs so wide that no one can sit.
We are the woman who takes up three seats
with her body, her purse, her computer,
and her yoga mat. We are the truck
that occupies two parking spaces,
the teenager who sits in the middle of the floor
and makes everyone step around him.
We are a lot of things, both good and bad.
But we are not America.

 

Diane Elayne Dees’ poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her chapbook, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died, is forthcoming form Clare Songbirds Publishing House. Also forthcoming, from Kelsay Books, is Diane’s chapbook, Coronary Truth. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees.

North Pole Bombshell: Elves to Be Shelved! by Marcy Dilworth

MEMORANDUM

TO:                 The Elf Consortium

FROM:           Kris Kringle, aka Santa Claus

RE:                 Downsizing1

DATE:            November 24, 2019

******************************************************************************

After extensive thought and countless sleepless nights, it is with great sadness and disappointment that I announce the downsizing of our North Pole headquarters. Physical, marketplace, and socio-political changes factored into our decision, as outlined below.

Physical

Our physical headquarters sits on a mass of ice. No one can deny that both the thickness and the breadth of our ice-home have shrunk over the last couple of decades, more rapidly over the last several years. Our prayers and support remain with the families of the elves lost when the Mr. Potato Head facility submerged through unprecedentedly-thin ice that fateful August night.

Efforts to lobby “the most powerful country on earth” to lead the world on a better path appear to have backfired; all evidence points to them worsening the warming. We will continue to commit resources to the solution of this global problem, but with their current leadership, we remain pessimistic. In fact, the U.S. administration suggested that we relocate our operation to Florida, purchasing our land through them. Their “science” resources don’t acknowledge that melting ice turns into more water in the ocean—and that water will continue to encroach on and flood Florida’s coastline.

Marketplace

You know it, I know it: Amazon. We deliver countless gifts, on-time, every-time, one night a year. They offer one-day service (same-day service for select items, for heaven’s sake) every %$+*@& day. Instant gratification is no longer the exception—it’s a way of life. For those with plenty, there’s not much left for their Santa wish list.

Socio-political

The well-being of our business and the Santa Claus brand is fueled by customers’ belief—the sleigh runs on it! Unfortunately, the erosion of faith in long-trusted institutions has bled over into even our loving, giving organization. And then last week’s fake news happened.

Grinch News aired this ridiculous announcement: “U.S. President is Santa Claus! All good2 boys and girls to receive double the gifts this year.” To our astonishment, more than 40% of the country believed it, and re-routed their gift demands from The North Pole to the White House. On Christmas morning, when these promises go unmet, we’re confident the White House will announce that the blame lies in a conspiracy cooked up by the Democrats, Stephen Colbert, and me. Instead of believing in Santa, after a lifelong and joyful association, the 40% will believe that.

Recommendations for your next challenge

The skills you elves have honed over centuries will serve you well in the modern world. Here are a few suggested bullet points to add to your resumes/job applications:

  • Career-long history of on-time delivery.
  • Logistics expertise.
  • Adept at discerning and fulfilling customers’ desires.
  • Deep product knowledge in toys, consumer electronics, and jewelry.
  • Capable of working long hours.
  • Great teammate—cheerful, gregarious, hardworking.

I’d be delighted to serve as a reference for any of you.

A specific recommendation: Take a look at Target. They value customer service and warehouse-related skills such as package organizing, handling and distribution. Plus, they require that their employees wear red attire throughout the year. Who’s got more red coats, sweaters, polo shirts, and pants than Santa and the Elf Consortium? Nobody!

Additionally, for any of you who may have been bitten by the acting bug: Given the wealth of movies and TV shows featuring folks of your description, demand for your services has never been higher. Break a leg!

Looking to the future

As long as we can safely do so, we will conduct operations out of our North Pole location. Large manufacturing will be outsourced and/or moved to places that have declared themselves not for sale to the U.S. president (Greenland being one such example). We will focus less on toys and, within our limited budget, more on providing the basics to those who have the most need.

As devastated as we feel today, let us keep our hope alive. I believe we can effect positive change regardless of our place of work. I pray we will prevail soon. I have faith in the many truly good people in the world. Let’s make it better together, and take care of each other during the holidays and all the rest of the year.

A subdued but heartfelt “Ho Ho Ho” to each and every one of you,

Santa

1 “Downsizing” is not a height-ist term; it is widely accepted as the appropriate word for what ensues when circumstances force an organization to reduce workforce, capacity, etc.

2 “Good” definition applies to those children with parents who have: standing monetary commitments to the president, at least gold-level Frequent Guest cards for the president’s properties, and incomes greater than $250,000. Santa’s Note: Only a tiny percentage of the folks directing their Christmas letters to the White House will meet these criteria; the rest will not benefit.

 

Marcy Dilworth writes short fiction and non-fiction. Her stories have recently been published in Blink-Ink’s 10th Anniversary edition and Literary Mama. She earned her English degree at the University of Virginia, and her sense of humor at the hands of four older siblings. She lives in her recently emptied nest with her husband and their precocious rescue pup, Kirby. Marcy can be found on Twitter @MCDHoo41.

Daughteret is not a made-up word

By H. E. Casson

        for Tarana Burke

 

Your whisper met with stone and echoed back
“A cave is not a prison,” ricocheted
Ancestors live in each abraded crack
A line from renegade to renegade

I see your eyes are tired, heart is sore
Body bearing scar and gash and grit
In counting these eleven years and more
For all the voices to escape the pit

But thunder brings deluge to drown them out
And scavengers come picking at their bones
The repercussion grows into a shout
A hundred thousand you-are-not-alones

And even as my echoes hit the wall
I’m thankful that you chose to speak at all

 

H. E. Casson lives in a very small house in Toronto with one human, no pets and 28 plants. They are a library technician and writer whose work has been published in Room, Cricket, Jones Av., (EX)Cite, Smart Moves, and Today’s Parent Toronto, among others.

Poet’s note: When I chose to use the classic form of the sonnet, I realized that, even though sonnet means little song, it sounds male. I imagined the line of daughters going back generations, much the way we have linked histories father to son. As a bit of an aside to myself, I started calling my poem a daughteret instead of a sonnet. This made me think about how quickly women and genderqueer people are mocked for creating words that include us or scratch at the surface of the status quo. I see criticisms that our words are “made up” as though the existing words sprung from nature or were handed down by god. Daughteret is an organic expression of an idea I had when writing about a woman who takes care of so many daughters. When I realized the poem needed a name, I could think of nothing better than to share a word that grew out of my admiration for her.

Photo credit: Lynn Friedman via a Creative Commons license.

 

Not Today, Satan

By David Martinez

 

I was suspected of heresy the first day of the class I’d picked up at the Christian university, which I suppose is valid. This was after I introduced the course, the topics, and how we would focus on critical thinking as a way to progress and achieve in college, and explained we were going to talk about current events, history, literature and philosophy. In essence, we were going to think.

I looked out at the students, smiled wide and said, “To be able to think critically, we need to be able to question everything we believe and everything we have ever been taught. We need to consider what we have been told might be flawed. We have to search for ourselves so we know for ourselves. We need to understand that everything we’ve been taught comes from people, and people can be mistaken. It doesn’t mean that what you currently believe is bad or incorrect. It means that we have to think about it. Question everything: what I talk about in class, what your parents have taught you, what your pastors have taught you, your schools. Everything. Including your faith.”

The room went dead.

This class was required for honors students entering the school, and almost all of them were between eighteen and nineteen and away from home for the first time. I know many had been warned about professors like me. I know because I’d been warned about professors like me when I was a student—by religious and conservative family members. I was the socialist professor who would turn students into bleeding hearts, the reason many of those same students in that Christian university had been homeschooled, the reason that many were going to a Christian school to begin with. And here I was, the man their parents feared they would encounter, spouting dangerous and blasphemous ideas.

A small, teenage girl who came up to me after class looked terrified. With wide eyes filled with the courage of the faithful, she said, “Um, excuse me, sir. I just … I want to know, what do you believe? It’s just that, as I’m sure you’re aware, this is a Christian school, and we have certain beliefs and values and I just … I don’t know. I just don’t know if I’m going to like this class, and I just want to know what you believe.”

She breathed deeply. I could see she had been brooding over what she was going to say. I admired her nerve. She was polite and she was honest, and I respected that.

“Well,” I said, “what do you believe?”

“I just,” she said, “I just believe in the Bible. Everything that’s in the Bible.”

“Ok, good.” I was sitting in a tall, black, swivel chair and I rocked from side to side. “Why?”

“What?” she said.

“Why do you believe in the Bible? Is it because you were brought up in a Christian home, in a Christian society? Is it because that’s what your parents and pastors have told you to believe? Or do you have some deep relationship with the book that you have personally cultivated over time? Why the Bible versus the Qur’an or the Torah or any other texts considered sacred?”

“Well, I mean … I guess … I don’t know,” she said. “The Bible is the word of God.” She was put off.

“It’s perfectly fine not to know,” I said. “This class is not about knowing. It’s about questioning and considering. You want to know what I believe? I believe that religion is not bad. In fact, I think that faith can be wonderful and has inspired many people to do great things. But it has also inspired horrific acts and thoughts. And sometimes, it doesn’t inspire anything at all. What I want to know is what is behind our beliefs and motivations, and do we have the courage to honestly examine ourselves? It’s ok to be religious. It’s beautiful to be religious. But if we are, then why?”

•

I was apprehensive about teaching the class because I knew I had serious difficulties with institutionalized faith, but I still wanted to believe that religion could be beautiful. I didn’t want to augment my growing contempt. I didn’t want to go in with preconceived notions. I didn’t want my spiritual core to become tainted by too much proximity to the type of church people I had been trying to avoid—the ones who preached hellfire and damnation, the ones who preached equality and love, but blinded themselves so they could follow the bile and hate that poured out of recent far-right groups. But it was only one course, the school was desperate, my wife and I needed the money—she’d been diagnosed with thyroid cancer—and I thought it might be a good experience.

Unlike the community college where I work, the university didn’t allow me to create my own syllabus. I had to use a tightly-controlled one with a predetermined course schedule. Everything pre-assigned. I could add nothing. Subtract nothing. I couldn’t give students anything extra to read. The grades had to be put in on time, and, to make sure, the system would be monitored. No shenanigans. If so, Dr. C, who was responsible for the course, and I would be sent a warning. Dr. C didn’t like warnings.

He had a history teacher’s office, cluttered with maps and timelines on the walls. Photos of his favorite students. Photos of family. Bibles and books about the Bible. He kept repeating how the university could pick me up if I worked hard and followed procedure. “Just three things,” he said. “Make sure you grade on time—they hate it when you’re late. Never miss a class—they’re very strict on that here, and they get after me if you miss. It’s very bad. And don’t disparage the Christian faith.”

“I try not to disparage anybody’s faith.”

“Of course,” he said. He ruffled through papers on his desk to find a syllabus for me. “Oh, right,” he said as he handed me the schedule. “Make sure you stick to the syllabus, and don’t do anything too out of the ordinary. The students talk. You know how it is. ‘This professor is great. That professor is boring.’ They complain. Parents call the school to see why little Johnny hasn’t been put in the cool teacher’s class.” Dr. C shrugged. “Once, we had this professor come in and do a jeopardy game in leu of a midterm, the next thing you know we had a load of concerned parents.”

“That happens?” I said. “At a university?”

“Freshmen. You know.”

I didn’t. He gave me a pen drive and Polonius-style advice. “This has all my PowerPoints. Use them. Make sure you blow their minds. Give them plenty of ah-ha moments, but be approachable, too. You have to switch it up. When you read Brave New World, make sure you mention how we’re letting technology control our lives—just like in the book, except through our phones. It’ll blow their minds. You’ll do well. Don’t sweat it. They’re good kids. They’re good students. Just give them As unless what they turn in is really bad.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t. Instead, I made a conscious decision to make the students bleed for their grades.

•

It was halfway through the semester by the time we hit Brave New World, and I had been parking behind the same car every day. It had a bumper sticker that read “Not Today, Satan.” I wondered more than once if it meant me. But the students and I had developed an understanding of each other. Some of them loved the class, others hated it. There was a group who sat toward the back and off to the side. They tried, but never could, hide their disdain for the questions I asked.

We had already gone over the Bhagavad-Gita and Plato’s Apology and how Socrates was executed. Most agreed that his arguments made sense, that his questions were valid. His courage to take on the establishment of the time was pointed out, and his grace in the face of his accusations of sacrilege. Of course, they said, that was a long time ago. Things were better now. Also, Socrates was a pagan so he couldn’t have been any more sacrilegious than his accusers, plus his accusers were corrupt. When I showed them Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman,” some students said, “What does that have to do with us now? That happened like a really long time ago. Women are equal now. The slaves were freed.” A few students argued against. Most were disinterested. Brave New World wasn’t all that different.

We watched an interview with Aldous Huxley in which he states, “If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled. … [W]hat these … dictatorial propagandists … are doing … is to try to bypass the rational side of man and to appeal directly to these unconscious forces below the surfaces so that you are, in a way, making nonsense of the whole democratic procedure, which is based on conscious choice on rational ground.” This was when Bolsonaro, Brazil’s own megalomaniac president, had just been elected, and I wanted to show what “bypassing the rational side of man” looked like from an outsider’s perspective.

I showed clips of Bolsonaro telling a female politician that she didn’t deserve to be raped by him, another where he tells a group on TV that if his son were to show homosexual tendencies that he would beat him straight, and an interview in which he said the problem with Brazil’s former dictatorship was that they hadn’t killed enough people. In one of the videos it mentioned how Bolsonaro considers himself the Brazilian Trump, and, like Trump, Bolsonaro also charmed the Christian voters by touting family values.

“The country voted for him,” I said. “They voted for a man who is racist, sexist, and who praises the military dictatorship that murdered countless people. Why? What makes a person vote for a candidate who says those types of things and acts that way? What does this have to do with Brave New World? What does this have to do with you as Americans?”

“Nothing,” one of the students from the back of the class said. He wanted to know why I was talking to them about stuff that happened in some other county. It’s not like Brazil is the United States. It’s a third-world country. It’s not like something that crazy could happen here.

Most the students wanted to stay safe and talk about how sex and drugs and technology are evil. In fact, most the students wanted to stay safe from any topic. “Our generation doesn’t like to talk politics,” one of the girls said.

“Your generation?” I said. “What about Emma Gonzalez? The marches? A couple years back, I taught seventh grade and many of my students walked out in protest over the treatment of DACA recipients. Isn’t that your generation?”

“Well, where a lot of us went to school we didn’t talk politics,” she said. “We just don’t want to make people mad. We don’t want people to think we’re racist or sexist or something. I mean, there are people that always get offended by the facts.”

One student always had the same argument: “The law is the law.”

“What about unjust laws?” I said. “It used to be legal to own other people. It used to be illegal to aid those escaping slavery.”

“That was a long time ago. There are no more laws like that. Plus, laws have to be followed or there would be chaos,” he said.

His classmate turned to him and said, “So, what about speeding? That’s against the law. Have you never sped before? If you speed and no one catches you, should you turn yourself in and pay the fine?”

“I don’t know,” the student said. “That’s different, I think. I don’t know.”

During some discussion, I said, “Jesus Christ was a brown, Middle-Eastern man. He was a Jew. He was a refugee in Egypt, an immigrant there. He preached unbridled love. He told his followers to sell all that they owned and give it to the poor. He rebuked the Pharisees for burdening the people with excessive and superfluous doctrines and regulations. According to scripture, Christ was a critical thinker.”

There were emphatic nods and smiles from the few who spoke out, eye-rolls and the blank expression of disconnect from the hard-right group, and confusion and angst from the silent majority.

•

The next time I saw Dr. C was when I walked into the office to say that I was going to be out a few days while my wife had surgery to remove her cancerous thyroid.

Dr. C was surrounded by papers at his desk. “That’s not good,” he said. “That’s not good. You can’t be missing classes. That’s not good. They don’t like to see people missing classes.”

“You have to know that my wife means more to me than this job,” I said.

“Of course! Of course! Do what you have to do,” he said. But he was irritated.

I turned to leave, hoping I would never have to speak to him again. “Oh, David,” he said when I got to the door, “we’ll be praying for your wife.”

•

At the end of the semester, we had presentations on controversial topics. One polite and quiet girl wanted to talk about gay marriage.

“What about gay marriage?” I asked. “It’s legal. What’s the controversy?”

After some discussion, she wanted to go with whether or not homosexuality and Christianity were compatible. I thought it might be a learning experience for her and I said, “Fine. As long as you focus on the human aspect. Focus more on how certain Christian sects view and treat homosexuality, and the individual stories of those involved. A good place to start would be looking at suicide rates among LGBTQ youth in Christian communities. Make sure to look at the human aspect. Make it personal. If Christianity is about the human, then make it human.”

“Ok,” she said.

In the end, her presentation was about how a person couldn’t be gay and Christian because it was against God’s commandments. She gave percentages and statistics on LGBTQ suicides, but swept over them to make room for dogma. No personal stories. The idea was that homosexuals couldn’t be Christian because it went against scripture.

“What if it were your sexuality that was under scrutiny?” I said. “In many Christian sects, the only options for people who are not heterosexual are either celibacy or marrying someone they may not be sexually attracted to or compatible with. In other words, either a life without an intimate relationship, or a marriage without physical attraction. What if it were you?”

“Well,” she said. “I believe that God would take that sin away from a true believer. A true believer would get over homosexuality.”

The poor girl was terrified and shaking when I asked her that question, as if her eternal soul was at stake. I was depressed. The intense need to clutch onto creeds and doctrines over the human was demoralizing. And for her, her soul was at stake. That was why she detached the human element. To try and understand the other was too threatening.

•

One day, while teaching at the community college, I heard a student laugh while staring down at her computer.

“What?” I said.

She had pulled up my Rate Your Professor page. “Look what this person said about you.”

“What?”

I looked on her screen, and there was a comment under my profile, “Professor Martinez can be friendly some days and very confusing and angry others. … I would not recommend him.”

“I can’t even imagine you being angry,” she said. There were others under my name at the Christian university:

Professor Martinez doesn’t seem to understand what he’s doing. First of all, he’s at a Christian school, and he seems to push his personal political agenda on the students in his class. Second, the class he is teaching is university success. This class is meant to be an easy A for students, and he makes it the hardest class I’ve had this semester.

Mr. Martinez grades harshly… He seemed to utilize his class time to push his political agenda on the impressionable minds of students. Conducts himself in a very unprofessionally manner.

Most of the class time was him throwing out random controversial topics or opinions and sitting back as the class had heated discussions. The class became a philosophy and current events course instead of university success. Success? He did everything but teach us how to succeed.

… most of the information given is irrelevant …

I wasn’t angry. I was sad at the dread that acted as a chasm between the students and critical thought. I wondered if I had done my job—not to make it an easy class, but to make them think.

•

Sometimes, exhausted at the end of the day, I would sit in my car, read the bumper sticker in front of me, “Not Today, Satan,” and think of the mythical, red creature with horns, the monster, the inhuman. What was the temptation the car’s owner feared?

James Baldwin, writing about his prolonged religious crisis in “Down at the Cross,” says of Christianity, “The principles were Blindness, Loneliness, and Terror, the first principle necessarily and actively cultivated in order to deny the two others.”

My Christian students were taught to feel terror at critical thought, taught that they were morally alone in an increasingly liberal and immoral world, taught to wear blinders to obscure the humanity of the other, rendering others less than human and therefore easy to disregard or reject—or else risk God’s wrath. Critical thinking must be avoided at all cost.

The surgery came and went, mood swings and tears were inevitable from both my wife and me. Even a small cancer is a heavy thing. It weighs on the back of the mind no matter if the doctors are confident everything is all right. There are some more tests coming up, but it should be fine. From now on, we’ll pay more attention just in case.

But what can be done when a cancer is thread through a nation that refuses to recognize it, thread through people who refuse to look at lives that do not reflect their own, thread through children who are taught that questioning and examining comes from Satan? Whatever it is, it’s not going to come from a system that predigests and distributes easy problems, easy As. It will only come from the kind of rare thinking that is unafraid to confront discomfort.

 

David Martinez writes from that space between worlds that exists for so many multi-cultural and multi-racial people. His essays often explore this space while also investigating his own experiences with displacement, mental health, addiction, and family. His fiction is often strange, focusing on characters who search for the beautiful in inimical environments. David is half-American, half-Brazilian, and has lived throughout the US, Puerto Rico, and Brazil—his places are imperative and central to his writing. David earned his MFA from UC Riverside at Palm Desert and currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Glendale Community College in Arizona.

Suspension

By Mandy Brown

 

When their skins have thinned with age,
they will still tell the story: thirteen people
suspended over Portland bridge
to stop a Shell tanker. “I was one of them,”
she will tell his children. “I regret
nothing,” he will tell hers. Living
sometimes means hanging at the end
of a knot. Some dangle by their necks,
counting the breaths. Others ride the swings,
pumping their knees. I have been both,
but these days all I can think about is
how I haven’t come out to my parents
or friends, how my husband and my
poetry are the only beings who know
I am queer and poly, how life was simpler before
I noticed all the oil. He invited a friend
over who could answer so many of my
questions. He teased me as he helped
me choose an outfit and cooked us dinner.
I spent the whole time wondering what
love he must have to expect nothing and
still knot his fingers in mine while I—like the thirteen
lives spinning in air underneath commuting
cars—suspend in limbo to watch her eyes dilate.

 

Mandy Brown (she/her) is a queer Central Texas poet, a 2019 Poetry Half-Marathon winner, and the 2013 recipient of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Tillie Olsen Fellowship. Her poetry has been published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Extract(s), Eunoia Review, and more. Mandy currently teaches at an alternative school for high-risk students and loves it! Read more at mandyalyssbrown.weebly.com.

Photo credit: Steve Dipaola, Greenpeace.

Hymn of Thanksgiving

By IE Sommsin

Rejoice now, thou Christian boldly sneering.
Thine nation is ruled by one most holy
who in deed mocks the sick and the lowly,
but who knows what thou hate and art fearing.
Hark! For he hath come to enrich the rich
and bring comfort to the brazen craven
with their condos, yachts, and idols graven.
Truly they whine and cry; they also bitch.
It’s members only in his promised land,
now going through major renovation
to bring a little class to salvation;
lo, the righteous must come with cash in hand.
About the weak and strange we need not fret.
Be at peace and get all that thou can get.

 

IE Sommsin, a writer and artist from Kentucky, lives in San Francisco and has a fondness for sonnets

Illustration: “Tower” by IE Sommsin.

Reverse Existential Crisis

By Emmett Forrest

My mom used to tell this story all the time
When the nurses tried to give me yet another shot
I glared at the nurses until they cried
When the doctor tried to slip in another IV
he needed 3 nurses to hold down a blue faced baby
By the time I was 6
I had more IVs prick my veins than I could count
To be fair
I couldn’t count very high
You see, Death and I are quite acquainted.

Many of my friends are beginning to realize
That death will knock on their door one day
I am already used to hearing death
Breathe outside the window

There is a problem with familiar morbidity
I run myself ragged trying to make my days “worth it”
Trying to make ripples into waves
I forget that this body is a body
To this day I am reminded of the sacrifices
My parents made to keep this body alive
The cigarettes my dad put away
The job my mom lost
The cost of my medications

When my friend asks me if I want to be
A 90 year old with boobs
I am shocked at the premise
That I could be 90 one day
You see, when doctors tell you
You’re lucky to be alive
You believe them
And wonder when you’re luck will run out

I am staring out of a bus window
The noise in my head clears, for a moment
Like the sun creaking in between clouds
I admit to myself that I want to be a teacher one day
That I want to be the adult at the front of the classroom
Guiding the next generation into their tomorrows
Like my teachers of yesterday’s gently guided me
I want students to see me as a glimmer of the future

It is 2AM
I wake up crying
Because I dreamt that I was a father
I adopted a son
Taught him what it could mean to be a self made man
Showed him gentle masculinity

I am crying because
I realize that I’ve been living with
other people’s dreams in the space of my own
I am crying because
I wonder if people will regret their cigarettes, the job, the 150$ a month
If I cannot become a woman, a wife, a mother
I am crying because
I am afraid I won’t get to see my own dreams
Now that I am holding them in my hands
Like fragile hatchlings
I am crying because
For the first time I realize
I don’t want to live every day like it’s my last
I don’t want to just survive, just staying above water
I want to see many more tomorrows
And I am crying because
For the first time I realize
This life is mine

 

Emmett Forrest is a transmasculine engineer working in the Boston area. He got his bachelor’s at MIT and currently spends his days writing poetry, playing with their lizard, and enjoying the little bit of sun that Boston spring has to offer.

Photo by Alexis Fauvet on Unsplash.

St. Donald, Patron Saint of Denial

By Laura King

The tweets come to rest
on his chest and shoulders
as he gives a first-light
audience to the Presidential roses.

Last night’s dream still shimmers:
a waterfall, biggest ever, in New York,
backsplashed with diamonds,
applauded by palms, lush as a vulva.

He won’t say “climate change.”
That would break the spell
of the present moment, who,
like a beautiful woman, stands

petal soft, her head turned.
No one sees the future striding
toward her, hard as diamonds.
No one shouts until he grabs.

 

Laura King litigates climate change cases from Helena, Montana. Her poems have appeared in 14 by 14, Goblin Fruit, Lucid Rhythms, and Inlandia, and have been nominated by the Science Fiction Poetry Association for the Dwarf Stars award.

Do Stupid Things Faster With More Energy

By Sasha Ockenden

Stanley pressed the “on” button on his monitor, pulled the keyboard towards him and entered an uninterrupted series of keystrokes for fifteen minutes, followed by six mouse clicks. Then he stood up.

Two people worked in the office: Stanley, whose ID card on the desk in front of him read “Communications Innovator,” and Charlotte. Assistant Communications Innovator Charlotte wasn’t at her desk. This was odd, because the company’s mandatory working hours, under the latest “Making Work Work For You” directive, began at 9:30. The digital clock high up on the wall read 9:45.

Stanley went over to the laserjet printer and entered three more keystrokes. He laid the card with his clean-shaven, smiling face on the printer, which emitted three beeps and began printing. Stanley extracted the page from the tray: blank. He sighed, and repeated the process, with the same result. He looked up. The clock still read 9:45. Why did these things never work the way they were meant to?

He walked back past Assistant Communications Innovator Charlotte’s desk, which had an empty mug with the words: “Drink Coffee: Do Stupid Things Faster With More Energy.” He passed his silver flatscreen computer with its ergonomic keyboard and went out to the corridor. Or, rather, he tried to, but the door wouldn’t open. He banged on it in case anyone was passing, but head office had soundproofed the doors to improve concentration. Well, he could get something done in the meantime. Stanley looked around the grey-walled office, and back at the mug. There was always time for a quick coffee.

The coffee machine offered six types of coffee. He pressed the button for a black Americano and placed a paper cup under the spout. The cup filled up, overflowed, and Stanley snatched it away, scalding his hand. He looked for a stop button on the machine, but there wasn’t one. Ridiculous. He set the cup down and pressed buttons at random as coffee splashed off the metal and soaked into the geometric patterns of the carpet.

Stanley returned to his office chair and opened up his company email account. As the coffee puddle continued to grow, he dashed off a message to his line manager, importance: urgent.

Am locked in office. Coffee machine won’t stop: risk of serious damage to carpet and office. Please send help.
Best wishes, Stanley.

And then, as an afterthought:

P.S. Printer also malfunctioning.

Next: the office phone. He dialed 0 for technical support, but the automated options only covered call forwarding and how to change the ringtone. Stanley didn’t know any of his colleagues’ numbers by heart, and he couldn’t find a directory. Stupid machine.

By 9:45, the piping hot Americano had subsumed the entire carpet and crept up to ankle height. Stanley took refuge on his revolving office chair. At least the room smelled nice, better than that artificial rose air freshener that Assistant Creative Innovator Charlotte was always complaining about. A beep: one new mail.

Oh no! We couldn’t deliver your message. Please check the address and try again later.

Underneath was a sad-face emoji. As the brown-black sea reached the bottom tray of the printer, it began beeping, too. Another blank page was ejected with such force that it overshot the top tray and floated down to the floor, where it began to melt into coffee.

Stanley began Googling the brand name and model of the coffee machine. He found a manual which explained how to make the milk frothier, but nothing about stopping the endless caffeinated lake from rising up the now-ruined grey walls. Using two binders as paddles, he sailed the chair back over to the coffee machine. He looked for a plug in the wall, a cable to wrench out: nothing. Hot angry coffee continued to flood out of the metal spout. In frustration, he smacked the machine with one of the binders. It spluttered for a second, released a puff of steam, and then boiling milk began to waterfall out of the second nozzle.

The sea of coffee, a lighter brown now, had almost reached the ceiling. The printer, floating free, was still beeping and firing out occasional blank sheets. The desk, monitors, and keyboard were jetsam on the bubbling surface. Only the telephone had sunk.

Well, Stanley wasn’t sorry to see it go. Stupid machine. He was more concerned with the merciless tide of Americano surrounding the posture-optimised seat of his chair. His legs were tucked up under his chin, and he was still grasping his cordless mouse out of habit. He’d removed his shirt, tie, jacket and trousers to cope with the sheer heat rising from the surface. His joint-favourite suit, too. The only thing in its rightful place was the clock at the top of the wall, in the few feet of scorching air between coffee and ceiling. He looked at the display as his plastic ID card rose to the surface for a moment and sank again—

A crackle from the intercom. A familiar female voice.

This is a message for Communications Innovator Stanley.

Startled, Stanley lost his balance for a moment and the chair tilted. His mouse dropped into the scalding liquid, which breached the soft black material of the seat. He shifted his weight to the other side just in time.

Please report to Head Office by 9:45 to collect your complementary medium-sized coffee, brought to you by the “Making Work Work For You” directive.

The sodden chair began to sink.

Thank you, and have a productive day!

 

Sasha Ockenden studied French and German literature at the University of Oxford, where one of his stories was published in the Failed Novelists Society’s Failed Anthology and he won an international DAAD prize for creative writing in German. His flash fiction pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in (mic)ro(mic), Flash Flood, Bending Genres, and Riggwelter. He is currently based in Berlin and still working on becoming a failed novelist.

Photo by Karl Bewick on Unsplash.

From the Bottom (of my heart, my head)

By Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah

 

I know I can’t, I won’t, I don’t rebel
although the current Top is not correct.
And I am impotent, cannot expel

the Top. It’s spinning like a carrousel
whose platform and its horses are unchecked.
I know I can’t, I won’t, I don’t rebel.

A beast, the Top is hardly like gazelle
or rabbit. Top is something I reject
but I am impotent, cannot expel

the Top. It surely has a putrid smell
assaulting normal noses. I detect,
but know I can’t, I won’t, I don’t rebel.

A bully, Top will badmouth, trounce and quell
perceived opponents, anyone who’s suspect.
And I am impotent, cannot expel

the Top. It’s mad, it’s bad, the Top is hell,
so totally devoid of intellect.
I know I can’t, I won’t expel,
but impious within this villanelle, rebel
I can. Topple Top. It’s wrecked, I ring its knell.

 

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah, M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D., has received grants from the University of Houston and the Houston Arts Alliance. Shah’s poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies, such as Cranky, Tar River Poetry, The Texas Review, Anon (Britain), Rhino, and Vine Leaves Literary Journal (Australia). Her poetry chapbook, small fry, was published by Finishing Line Press (2017); a full-length poetry book, What to Do with Red, by LitFestPress (2018); and she’s a recent winner of Literal Latté’s Food Verse contest. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her partner Iris and a Persian cat, Eliot. Visit her website.

Photo credit: Manel Torralba via a Creative Commons license.

Monarchy

By Matthew Nelson Hendryx

The warrant for my informant’s arrest meant meeting in a public place where we could keep track of anyone approaching. We settled for the revamped carousel on the National Mall. He could watch in all directions as we rotated. I, freelance reporter Stacy Prickelton, was meeting with a prominent member of the Operation Zap opposition, who suggested I refer to him as “Crazy Cake,” to protect his identity.

He arrived carrying a Bugs Bunny mask. “A good disguise for a children’s area, don’t you think?” he said.

“I don’t think the mask is necessary.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“We’re safe,” I said, not interested in debating the pros and cons of a bunny mask.

The informant was in his early forties, dumpy build, and wide-eyed as a Jack-a-lantern, but he looked scared instead of scary. With my notepad resting on the top of a horse’s head next to his camel, we quickly got used to the fact that he was up when I was down.

“Start the story from the beginning,” I said. “Don’t worry about repeating common knowledge. It’s important for me to hear it all in your words.”

“It started,” he said, “with President Rump’s press conference, the same day the New York Times exposé came out about bug zappers installed on Rump’s Wall. When asked about the Times piece, the president said, ‘I’m taking action to stop the largest wave of undocumented Mexicans of any president.’”

Crazy Cake paused to look around. “At the time, no one knew what he was talking about. Then came the ‘Eleven O’clock Tweet’: ‘The Oyamel forest should be bombed.’ It puzzled everyone. Finally, Jan Gather realized the Oyamel forest is in Mexico, where monarch butterflies stay each winter. Then they fly north, across the border, in the tens of thousands, possibly millions.”

“So, butterflies created a policy problem?”

“An inside source, called ‘Tuning Fork,’ leaked the White House position. None of the monarchs applied for visas and they constituted the majority of undocumented immigrants coming into this country. To stop them required Operation ZAP—Zap All Pests.”

“What do you know about Tuning Fork?”

“The Post knows the details,” Crazy Cake said, “but the scuttlebutt is she’s young and attractive and fed up with his groping. Wants revenge.”

“And your take on the Posse Comatosis?”

“It’s one of those sleeper militias. No surprise they issued a statement that it was about time a president took a stand against wet-back butterflies. But Press Secretary XXIV calling them a reputable organization shocked a lot of people.” Crazy Cake paused for the carousel to do one rotation as he peered across the mall before continuing “That’s when the U.S. Butterfly Society—actually the Lepidopterists Society—pointed out that in the Monarch’s life cycle exactly three generations are born in the U.S. Each Fall the third returns to Mexico. Those three generations are U.S. citizens. Zappers would be killing American citizens returning to Mexico.”

“The Secretary of the Interior sounded befuddled when he announced the On-in-Spring-and-Off-in-Fall policy. What was that about?”

“According to Tuning Fork the Secretary believed the policy was for safe passage of all children of exiled Kings and Queens living in the U.S.”

The merry-go-round stopped, and I went over to give the attendant another couple of tickets.  When I returned, I said, “Give me more background on this visa thing.”

“Monarch butterflies, if they were citizens, were to acquire and carry visas.  All monarchs would be stopped, and those without documentation would be treated as illegal immigrants and deported immediately, without appeal. A sub-committee of the Lepidopterists Society formed the Committee Opposed to Monarch Eviction.”

“They didn’t know that people would abbreviate it to COME?”

“It was intentional—‘COME’ as in ‘welcome.’ COME pointed out the documents were beyond the lifting capacity of any butterfly. The administration countered that monarchs could purchase small drones to perform the task.”

Crazy Cake studied someone in the distance, then his face relaxed. “That’s when I joined COME, just as they filed for an injunction in the Minnesota District Court—their state insect is the monarch. The court issued an injunction against ‘stop and detain’ measures, but the rest of Operation ZAP was allowed to proceed. In other words, the bug zappers would stay in place.”

“Tell me about February thirteenth.”

“The administration announced the success of Operation ZAP. All the zappers were up and running. On the 14th, COME wanted to bring a massive number of monarchs across the border. That’s why the announcement, ‘Valentine’s Day Massacres ZAP.’ The San Antonio Express reported numerous sightings of monarch butterflies and included a photo of one sunning itself on a statue of Sam Houston. The monarchs had obviously found another way across the border.”

“The administration didn’t comment?”

“No. Tuning Fork said they knew it would be a public relations nightmare if the multi-billion-dollar wall failed to prevent the largest wave of immigrants.”

“Do you have any proof that COME was responsible for the smuggling?”

When his camel was in the down position, he grabbed his satchel. Fumbling around in it, a granola bar and a pair of soaks fell out. He was a man on the run. Ignoring the spilled items, he extracted three crumpled pages.

“Here’s a transcript.”  He handed it over.  “You can read it.”

Crazy Cake: Do you know how we’re bringing the monarchs in?

Secretary: Oh, yes. I’m good friends with Mary [Fuddleston]. COME needed a container that had air holes and was big enough for butterflies. Just after we elected Mary for president, she came up with the idea while helping her daughter, Frizzy. Frizzy was in tears because her Suzuki violin teachers said she played “Twinkle Little Star” out of tune. Anyway, Mary realized Suzuki violins would provide the perfect solution. Did you know violins are made with a glue that breaks easily to allow repairs?

Crazy Cake: No.

Secretary: I didn’t either. But it meant taking the back off and putting it back on was easy. Mary experimented with five volunteer monarchs and found the ‘f’ holes allowed sufficient oxygen for the butterflies to remain comfortable. We diverted all Suzuki violins coming from Japan headed for the U.S. to first go to Mexico. The operation started on Valentine’s Day.

Crazy Cake: Didn’t Immigration become suspicious with hundreds of violins coming across the border?

Secretary: It was thousands. They didn’t bother to look inside because each violin had a different shipping address. We pulled it off by having supporters across the country start Suzuki classes. Every time Customs checked to see if the sale was legit, they found a kid’s parents had actually purchased it. The kids loved the fact they were supporting the cause.

The carousel made one of its periodic stops, and five children with birthday hats got on.

Crazy Cake pointed at the kids and whispered, “Spies.”

“Not likely,” I said, “although they might be Suzuki violinists.”

“Then they should be careful.” He gave them a final check and returned to me.

“So how did the administration learn of the smuggling operation?”

“Rump ordered the FBI to investigate. We spotted the agents too late to cover out tracks.”

Crazy Cake scrutinized the Mall as we revolved, his right hand in a nervous quiver. “It was mid-March when Rump surprised everyone with his executive order making owning a violin illegal. All violins were to be turned in at the nearest police station. People found owning a violin after April 1 would be arrested. Most people thought the president was pulling an April Fool’s joke, but given his tweets, it became clear he wasn’t. The FBI acquired warrants for suspected violin owners—orchestra violinists and violin teachers. There was confusion whether the order covered violas, cellos, and basses, but Rump amended the order to include all stringed instruments. Then amended it again to exclude pianos and harps.”

“What was COME’s response?”

“We organized the parade of Suzuki violinists marching up and down the Mall and around the White House playing ‘Twinkle Little Star.’”

The carousel stopped, and I was out of tickets, but the attendant indicated we could stay on. “COME was responsible for the march?” I asked.

“Definitely. I was in a meeting with Mary Fuddleston in the final planning stage.”

“You’re willing to go on the record as a source?”

He hesitated. “Yes, but you can’t use my name until I’m out of the country.”

“Go on.”

“COME thought they had the administration cornered. How do you oppose fourth graders? What a mistake on our part. The Washington D.C. police arrested over one thousand of the violinists until the jails were full. The AP released photos of the police cuffing fourth-graders and smashing their violins. President Rump brushed it off with a tweet: ‘Liberal parents are cowards making their kids break the law.’ We sought support from other organizations around the country. Numerous groups started petitions against ZAP—even the AFL-CIO, which argued there was not one instance of an American worker being replaced by a butterfly. Within a day of Rump’s executive order, members of the House raised objections that the president’s actions were the equivalent of legislating laws, and therefore under the purview of Congress alone. The president tweeted ‘Fuck Congress. See if I care.’ Everything sped up then. The House and the Senate introduced bills to eliminate the ZAP policy. Opposition was limited to the members of the RARE caucus.”

“The Rump is Always Right on Everything caucus?”

“Yes. Despite the caucus, the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader guaranteed passage before dinner. Rump vetoed that evening, and the next morning, the vote to override passed.”

“Then the courts got involved?”

“Not yet. It was the infamous Black Wednesday tweet: ‘They can’t make me stop ZAP.’ The Congressional leadership asked the Supreme Court to address the constitutional breach without going through the appeals process. The Court didn’t want to do it, but COME found evidence that some justices had recently engaged in sexual harassment. We went to the Chief Justice and said, ‘Hear the case or we release the evidence.’ We never expected the 9-0 decision against the President. At that point everyone thought ZAP was dead.”

“That’s when Rump said he’d ignore the court?”

“Yes. And the Supreme Court ordered the U.S. Marshals to use the bug zappers for target practice.”

“The TV coverage was brilliant.”

“No one in COME or Congress or anywhere else expected President Rump would call up the Posse Comatosis to defend his policy against U.S. Marshals.”

“When did COME members know they needed to go underground?”

“It was the tweet, ‘COME members are terrorists.’ We issued a general warning to the membership. Then the FBI arrested the first dozen or so members and any children violinists, including Mary and Frizzy, and sent them to the detention center on Guam. The administration won’t say how many. Nearly all COME members decided to disappear. I’ve been on the run ever since, but they’re closing in on me.”

At that moment, the carousel tune went ‘Pop! goes the weasel,’ and I saw someone looking our way through a pair of binoculars, from the other side of the mall. “We need to leave,” I said. “Put on your Bugs Bunny mask.”

Matthew Nelson Hendryx writes short stories, novels and poetry. He studied at Indiana University, London School of Economics, and the University of Wisconsin. Currently, he is focusing on short stories, but plans to dive into redrafting his first novel. Although he is a resident of Fort Wayne, Indiana, he spends a couple of months a year in New York City. His best writing occurs when one of his four cats is in his lap.

Photo credit: Catseye Pest. Really.

To, Not With

By Sydney E. Beaurivage

 

Most readers associate themselves with the writer

Empathizing with the words

Do not do this

My writing is not for you

It is to you

 

Syd is currently a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in the Philippines as a Coastal Resource Manager. She enjoys writing in her free time and hopes to become a journalist. Follow her on Twitter @SydBeaurivage.

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash.

The Beast Come Round

By J David Cummings

“Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

                                                     —W. B. Yeats, 1919

It is born, it is here, it moves among us,
not as nightmare, the comforts of metaphor,
but in the real of time. Mothers are caged
and raped, girls are raped, children are stolen.
The children die. Close-watched boys are burning
their minds with the faces of guards, the dream of knives…
for the time to come, the time of blood and now.
And I am a silent grave.

On the other side of time, a poet wrote
“magic is afoot, it moves from arm to arm,”
and beautiful losers dreamed sweet forgetting.
What moves here moves by insidious means.
It slaves minds in high office and would-be heroes
in spineless talk, the aggrieved in an ignorance
of mouths, almost the pulse Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.
And I am a silent grave.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…
but tomorrow is drowned. It’s made of infants,
remember? Bereft mothers and chained men.
All the past. Remember? When you knew nothing
except what you dreamed. It’s made of the utter,
consuming dark and the ashes of memory,
the songs of children, light in a lover’s eyes.
And I am a silent grave.

 

Writers’ Resist published 3 a.m. November 11, 2016 Turtle Cove Cottage Po’ipu, Kau’I, a poem co-written with my wife Christine Holland, in Issue 7: 12, Jan. 2017, and my poem If I Could Write a Political Poem, It Would Say, in Issue 72: 04, Oct. 2018. I have one published collection of poems, Tancho, selected by Alicia Ostriker for the 2013 Richard Snyder Poetry Prize, published by Ashland University Press, Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. You can follow me on Twitter @jdc99tancho and Facebook.

Photo by Moira Dillon on Unsplash.

Monster’s Lullaby

By Elka Scott

 

The first time someone called you a monster
you swallowed your own teeth
without chewing
like so many unanswered prayers.
It did not make you more human
but it made silence easier,
made you more acceptable.
You walked into the world without bite
and consumed yourself from the inside out.

The next times this word was uttered
you buried it within yourself
and shed your skin.

If the forest wanted you back you did not show it,
that dark place you came from
impenetrable but by fire.

When their pitchforks pierced your side
you stood still as the moon,
quiet,
waning.
They did not acknowledge your light
but you did,
you had to.

You do not consider it oppression
because it did not hurt enough.
Your scaled and scored skin
had learned to endure by then.
You stuffed your monster deep enough inside
that nothing could beat it out of you

The forest was still dark
but even their fire could not touch it.
It needed a soft touch
like ash over snow
like moonlight on a river

You hid your claws inside your pockets
as you grew, they went with you
longer, sharper, harder.
They became the layers of your soul
telling you that you survived climbing back up the cliffs and the windmills.
You survived
everything that you thought would kill you.
The fire inside you
raged despite the water you shed like leaves

When the forest called your name
you howled back with spit in your teeth
your blood surged but did not boil

When they finally came for you directly
you bared what was left of your teeth against the storm
and stood steady.
You took their blows and did not waver
though it hurt,
it hurt.

You still did not understand why they could not love you
but you did not hate them for it
anymore.
The only fire you wanted was your own,
the slow burn of bitterness had no place under your tongue.
When they finally came for you
you accepted that they may win
but that you,
you were always the one guaranteed sequels,
the one branded invincible by popular vote.
You rose to face each hero
with the knowledge
that your fire
could not be put out.
Your teeth,
swallowed,
never lost their sharp.

 

Elka Scott writes short, novel-length fiction, and poetry. They watch horror movies with the lights on and obsessively read weird comics. They studied creative writing and psychology in university and are currently working to become a creative writing therapist. Elka lives in Saskatchewan and recently received a grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board to write their first graphic novel. They are previously published in The Voices Project. Follow Elka on Twitter @elka_scott, Instagram @inkstainedelka, and on Tumblr.

Image from The Public Domain Review.

The Last Straw

By Corey Miller

 

The entire world was transfixed by the TV. In all languages, the broadcasters described the atmosphere in the room. The camera zoomed in on the lucky woman chosen; next to her, a polished glass and a bottle of Coca Cola. All went quiet. Earth held its breath. The woman cracked the bottle open and decanted the smell of sassafras and caramel. She brought forth the last straw. The humans at home tensed their muscles and observed, not wanting to scare the endangered species.

The woman tore the end of white wrapping paper and the straw poked out of its home. Flashing lights and the sound of awe surrounded the straw. The woman slowly slid it out like a sword from its sheath to slice the Earth down to its fiery core. The straw dove to the bottom and attempted to float its way back out, longing to hop the rim of its cage and return to its unnatural habitat. The woman kinked her head to use the tool that moves liquid six inches and began to suck, her throat pulsating from gulping the sugary juice. The world watched in silence, while the Coca Cola disappeared like the ball dropping on New Years’ Eve. At last, a loud gurgling noise ended an era.

The humans sprung into the air cheering. People ran into the streets shouting and kissing their neighbors in jubilation. Parties broke out and alcohol was consumed. They would tell their children where they were the day of the last straw.

Without notice, while the humans looked the other way, the straw bent and rolled itself out of sight and out of mind. It floated down rivers past parties of people embracing like reunited lovers. It floated past politicians congratulating one another. It floated into the ocean searching for answers. Searching for its origin.

The waves pushed and pulled the straw like an accordion, creating dynamical tones, moving it deeper into the sea. Schools of fish knew all about plastic and carried the straw as servants would carry their ruler. Turtles with plastic belts and snappers with tummy tucks led the way. More and more plastic congregated with the currents. Eventually, the straw washed up on a netting of plastic bags interwoven to catch the guests of Trash Island. Greenhouses constructed from smooth beach glass, hotels of soggy corrugated cardboard, and convenience stores of non-recyclables formed the infrastructure.

The streets were immaculate and travelers constantly flowed in. The beer bottles howled as the wind blew across their lips, the shotgun shells would shoot the shit, and the used condoms got a private beach. The crazy straws arrived by pelican stomach like smuggled inmates who broke out of prison.

They gathered and assembled, first an island, next a castle, then a city for the ecosystem. Straws of all colors connected like Lego bricks to create walls, houses, and districts. The last straw was clear. A looming force banded together. The tides had changed.

 

Corey Miller lives with his wife in a tiny house they built near Cleveland. He is an award-winning Brewmaster who enjoys a good lager. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y, Barren, Cleaver, Bending Genres, Hobart, Gravel, and Cease Cows. When not working or writing, Corey likes to take the dogs for adventures. Follow Corey on Twitter @IronBrewer.

Photo credit: MetroUK.

Brigade

By Alia Hussain Vancrown

 

fireflies talk to each other

with light

 

in some firefly species

only one sex lights up

(but let’s not make that

everything)

in most species

both sexes glow

 

fireflies produce cold light

two chemicals

are in a firefly’s tail:

luciferase and luciferin

and here the story begins

the root of the lightbringer

Lucifer, commanding men

all over the world

to blackout living things

especially women

 

a firefly finds its way

inside Dar-ul-Islah

lands on the green curtain

drawn horizontally across

the entire mosque

to separate the pious men

from the pious women

(but let’s not forget

if we were pious

there’d be no need

for forced separation)

 

from this distance

you can’t tell

the sex of the firefly

I imagine the human brain

emits its own cold light

eating itself

light eating light

in the darkness

 

when you look at a living thing

you don’t consider binaries

you imitate its light and flash

the dark little by little

the two of you lighthouses

signaling the lost safely ashore

the two of you

tunnel and train

the two of you

astonishment

 

these are not acceptable

philosophies of the sermon

or the sermonizer

surahs in baritone

imagine Arabic in soprano

it would be a song

it would be Jannat under our mothers’ feet

 

I could have sworn

the firefly on the green curtain

wouldn’t choose a side

yet there it flits and lifts

well beyond the dome

of the mosque

 

I could have sworn

the acorns scattered along

the cracks in the stone path

didn’t ask to be crushed

by devout children, their light

made up for them

the dusky husks

of cicadas on leaves

a tinny orchestra of autumn

 

yet here we are

the world’s music a cacophony

of destruction and softness

in equal parts

but destruction ever louder

 

would a male god allow

something goddamn else

a male god who gave some of his animals

the ability to create their own light

as a means of survival

 

I’m telling you if I sit in the back

behind men any longer

sectioned off as sin

the darkness will extinguish me

 

and I’m not saying

I should have been born a boy

or that I identify as anything other

than a woman warrior

(though why is it so wrong

to be a scattering)

but I’m telling you if I sit

behind these men making

all of the decisions

for every one of us

 

fireflies are going to charge

out of my mouth

light will cannibalize light

they don’t live long

let this be a warning

 

Alia Hussain Vancrown has published in journals and magazines in print and online. Her poetry has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was selected to participate in Winter Tangerine’s 2018 workshop, Singing Songs Crooning Comets, featuring seminars by Kaveh Akbar and Aricka Foreman. Alia works at the Library of Congress in the Law Division. She currently resides in Maryland. For more, please visit www.aliahussainvancrown.com and Instagram @aliagoestothelibrary.

Photo credit: slgckgc via a Creative Commons license.