Author: Editor

Translated from the Portuguese

By Mark Blickley

 

Artist’s note:

This past fall, I co-curated an exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal, Tributaries, that opened on Sept. 30th and ran for ten weeks, under the auspices of the international artist’s cooperative, Urban Dialogues. While in Lisbon, I went into the oldest continuous bookstore in the world, Chiado Bertrand Bookstore, which was founded in 1732 (the year of George Washington’s birth). I found this Portuguese published book about Donald Trump that I immediately bought because a redacted title of the book jumped out at me, O Me Too, (which piggybacks nicely on the Me Too movement)). When I got home I was able to also redact “A Pee Poem” (alluding to the Steele dossier about the salacious incident of Trump hiring Russian prostitutes to pee on the bed where the Obamas slept in Moscow). And, as I progressed down the book cover, I was also able to redact Go More Anal and then I placed DJ-45 in front of a golden wall.

Mark Blickley is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center as well as the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Scholarship Award for Drama. He is the author of Sacred Misfits (Red Hen Press), Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes from the Underground (Moira Books) and the forthcoming text based art book, Dream Streams (Clare Songbirds Publishing). His video, Widow’s Peek: The Kiss of Death, was selected to the 2018 International Experimental Film Festival in Bilbao, Spain. He is a 2018 Audie Award Finalist for his contribution to the original audio book, Nevertheless We Persisted. Visit his website to learn more about Mark.

The Way You Talk About Love: A Found Poem Like What Is Discovered at Autopsy After a Massive Coronary Thrombosis

by stephanie roberts

            for Shay Stewart Bouley

 

At 1:51PM, on 02 July 2017, @blackgirlinmain said, To all the white
folks who are waking up, stop blocking and ignoring your racist peeps.
Talk to them, work with them. That’s your work.

The first comment was from self described Owner/Attorney, “Learning to
do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the
fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1:17.” Artesia, New
Mexico [population 72.25% white, 1.44% African American*]

That’s not my work, Owner/Attorney/Bible Quoter said, Nope, Thats
not my work any more than it’s your. They won’t listen & I’m not wasting my
breath on them.

Once termed, hang out to dry, when such quaint actions were more
common, now we say thrown under the bus, a strengthened idiom, with
its visual of mangled body inevitable result of washing one’s hands of
one’s responsibility. Pontius Pilate gleams evergreen.

What I’ll never understand about the way white people talk about love is
how it hurts so to hear it and what little energy it has to hold me free.
Love and hate are first cousins, not opposites, and thus shouldn’t marry.
White love bounces as de facto beach ball of indifference. Who doesn’t
enjoy beach ball? The Black and Latinx shuttled from school to prison
wish they could, while good people see having conversation over this
pipeline of tears as, wasting my breath.

At night, I pray love and hate hold hands and strangle indifference in his
bed. Bury the body in the graveyard of Bible Quotations. I am singing,
into a starry abyss, hoping hate outfits love with ice axe, ushering her
toward courage-free suburban ice castles, where love wreaks justice.

 

*Wikipedia

stephanie roberts is a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee and a Silver Needle Press Poem of the Week Contest winner. Her work is featured or forthcoming in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including, Verse Daily, Atlanta Review, The Stockholm Review of Literature, L’Éphémère Review, and Crannóg Magazine. She was born in Central America, grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and is a longtime inhabitant of Québec, Canada. Follow her on the following: twitter: @ringtales, instagram: @ringtales, and soundcloud.

If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. – Debbie Millman

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash.

 

Lazarus Force

By Jemshed Khan

 

That day over lunch, I was going to write about the Yemenites starving while the Saudis build five new palaces on the Red Sea. A poem might make a difference. But the sun was shining, 75 degrees in October, and the outdoor pool is heated, so I went for a swim instead. As I swam  laps, I felt joy and splash with each stroke: thankful for clients traveling to see me in their combustion driven vehicles and for cheap fuel that leverages each shiny day. For three laps I considered the convenience of gasoline and writerly leisure. Okay, yes, a Lockheed Martin missile incinerated another Yemeni school bus, but how could a lunchtime poem make amends for fifty dead school children or eight million starving?

Poetry of angel wings and metrical feet,
I thought you were the steed of change,
that with the right words
we would skywrite the nation’s conscience.
Now I see my words never had Lazarus force
and we are no match to the God of gasoline.

The cardiologist said my heart stopped. The apartment manager says I was pulled blue from the pool: resuscitated with CPR and defibrillator paddles across the chest. I survived the ambulance ride, heart stents, ICU, rehab. Today I put my head back in the game. Read an anthology of resistance poetry. Each work smoldered on the page until my chest burst into flame. I rose from the bed, grabbed my pen, began to write again.

 

Jemshed Khan has published about 30 poems in such magazines as Rigorous, NanoText, Unlikely Stories, and I-70Review, and he is working towards a book-length collection.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash.

Birds of America

By Ellen Stone

 

Deep in the bright red
country of the sun,
the birds of America
raucous, wild, immigrant
gather, having flocked in bands
surged over borders as snow melts.
By July, they rise early to the party
in full bloom – voices piercing
our cottony night dreams –
having taken temporary residence
in tiny wooden boxes, old barns
or the cool, damp woods – for now –
for this uncertain summer
where they can dip & soar & glide
like the purest bit of floating fluff
off the cottonwood down by the river
or the drooping milkweed in the garden.

How odd, really, that we welcome them
with open arms – so unabashedly, like tourists
in our own hometown, peering through binoculars.
Build them sturdy homes, feed them
tasty morsels through all seasons, celebrate
their foreign dress, strange plumage. Mating
habits so unlike our own. Lament a young one
fallen from the nest. We are such humanitarians
to birds. It’s sad they cannot talk to us, thank us
for our gracious hospitality. Here, in America,
all traveling birds are welcome – the more
garish, bright & tropical, the better.

 

Ellen Stone teaches at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared recently in Passages North, The Collagist, The Citron Review, The Museum of Americana, and Fifth Wednesday. She is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.

Photo by José Ignacio García Zajaczkowski on Unsplash.

The Wall

By Tim Philippart

 

what worries me is not

a great one in China.

a razed wall in Berlin,

one for holy wailing or,

the proposed between Mexico and the US but,

the barrier that dams the flow of

empathy, compassion and kindness

between you and me.

 

Tim Philippart: For three years, I have been writing pieces that are kind of frothy. I like to write about love and often end with a bit of humor. In these recent days, I think too much about a guy who said, “I will hire all the right people.” I then wonder why he ends up with hair like he has.

Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash.

Milk Duds

By Marleen S. Barr

 

Baby cages were the last straw for Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction scholar par excellence. She had tears in her eyes whenever she thought about children wrenched from their parents’ arms. Desiring to drown out her sorrows in a morning cup of coffee, she boiled water and placed a skimmed milk carton on her kitchen table. There was nothing unusual about the boiling water. Not so, the milk container. It disappeared. A person-sized breast leaned against the table in its place.

“Okay, I get it,” said Sondra to the breast. “You’re a graduate student engaged in a publicity stunt to garner interest in a Philip Roth memorial event. Great idea to dress up as the sentient breast protagonist in Roth’s ‘The Breast.’ Wonderful breast costume.”

“I am not a costume,” responded the breast.

“Enough already. You can come out of character. I will attend the memorial service.”

“I am a breast.”

“Are you making a #MeToo statement against the harassing male professors in the English department? Attending a department meeting dressed as a breast would be a good protest strategy.”

“Professor Lear, you are a feminist science fiction scholar. You must believe me when I state that I am a breast.”

“I’m open to believing you. But what are you doing in my apartment?”

“I have come to Earth to help the immigrant children Trump is imprisoning. In order to be effective, I need your cooperation.”

“Why?”

“I am a denizen of the feminist separatist planet Mammary. Mammarians patrol the galaxy in search of children whom fascists victimize. Our Maternal Council mandates that we must work in conjunction with at least one native of a planet that requires our intervention. Are you on board?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“Good. My name is Lactavia. Since I would cause a ruckus if I bounced along Manhattan streets, I would like you to drive me to the Lincoln Tunnel’s entrance.”

“Glad to help. But please understand that I need to cover you with a trench coat. I live in a conservative New York co-op apartment building. I don’t what to incur the wrath of the co-op board. Even though New Yorkers keep to themselves, you would be beyond the co-op pale.”

Sondra drove to the Lincoln Tunnel with the trench coat-shrouded breast in tow. She parked and waited after Lactavia exited. Lactavia knew that Air Force One had landed at Newark Airport and Trump and his daughter Ivanka were en route to Trump Tower. When the president’s motorcade emerged from the tunnel, Lactavia positioned herself in the middle of the roadway.

“I have to stop the car,” said Trump’s driver. “We are being blocked by a huge breast.”

“Huge? Huge is priority one in relation to breasts,” Trump said. “But huge or not, breasts do not belong in the street. This must be some sort of feminist protest stunt trap. I’m not going to be stopped by fake news publicity. Keep going!” he bellowed as he looked out the window. “Wow. Big tit. Bigger than Melania’s.”

The limo full frontally hit Lactavia and bounced back. A cascade of milk emerged from her nipple and turned the black limo white. Before the Secret Service agents could stop Trump, he bounded out of the limo and confronted Lactavia.

“I won’t be intimidated by no huge tit.”

Milk covered Trump to the extent that he appeared to be white instead of orange. He was whiter than the homogenous population of Russia.

“People know about your Russian hotel golden shower. Now meet your white shower,” said Lactavia.

“This is a witch hunt,” screamed Trump as he wiped milk from his eyes.

“On the contrary, I am engaged in a fascist monster hunt. I am a feminist extraterrestrial charged with hunting down fascists who hurt children. I am here to close down your baby jails and rescue the children who are suffering for your political benefit.”

Sondra, risking a parking ticket, left the car and walked toward Lactavia and Trump. “I am Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction expert. You are closely encountering an all-powerful alien from the planet Mammary. It’s in your best interest to do what she tells you.”

“That tit alien is a rapist,” shrieked Trump. He slid his hand inside his oversized suit jacket, drew a gun, and shot Lactavia. The bullet bounced back and fell harmlessly to the asphalt.

“Okay, ya got my attention,” said Trump, as Ivanka stepped outside the limo. “Ivanka, meet an extraterrestrial from Mammary.”

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Ivanka whimpered as milk drenched her. “The milk is ruining my outfit and getting my hair wet. I had a bad hair day yesterday. I can’t face another. Do something!”

“You’re supposed to champion mothers,” said Sondra. “Don’t you like milk?”

“I like my appearance and my brand.”

“Why aren’t you doing something to help the imprisoned children? I will echo Samantha Bee: You’re  a ‘feckless cunt,’” proclaimed Sondra.

Ivanka jumped into her father’s arms.

“This isn’t such a bad day,” he said. “I get to grope my daughter and ogle a huge tit.”

“Oh no, you are not,” Lactavia said. “I am going to remove your daughter from your custody.”

“On what grounds?”

“You are illegally crossing the border separating New Jersey from New York. You are subject to arrest. You have to turn your daughter over to me.”

“There’s no such law.”

“I just made it up. I can enforce whatever law I want. I am more powerful than you.”

“Ivanka,” said Sondra, “I suggest that you detach yourself from your father immediately, if not sooner.”

“Daddy, Daddy, help! I don’t want to go god knows where with an extraterrestrial breast. If the alien deports me to another planet, I will never see you again. What if the breasts on Mammary have a poor fashion sense and wear stretched out bras? I won’t be able to live there. Where will I be taken?”

“I don’t know what Lactavia plans for you,” Sondra said. “She might put you in a freezing cold cage and cover you with a foil blanket.”

“Foil blankets are not in style. Daddy, save me. I don’t want to be put in a cage without you.”

“I am not going to cage you,” said Lactavia. “Two fascist wrongs do not make a right. When Trump goes low, Mammarians go high. I am merely going to force you to live in the housing your husband rents to poor people. You will stay there until all the immigrant children are reunited with their parents.” As soon as Lactavia finished speaking, Ivanka disappeared.

“Where’s my daughter?” shrieked Trump.

“She’s residing in a Kushner rental property.”

“Which one?”

“I am not telling. The better for you to feel the pain you inflict upon the immigrants.”

“OK, well, I don’t care. I have another daughter. Tiffany is hot, too. I’ll just have to start paying more attention to Tiffany.”

But Ivanka was already phoning Tiffany to tell her that the Kushner rental property was tantamount to hell.

Unwilling to suffer the same fate and not at all like her half-sister, Tiffany actually proved to be effective. She saved the day by convincing Trump to reunite the immigrant children with their parents.

Lactavia released Ivanka, who kissed the ground when she crossed the threshold of her mansion, and the Mammarian and Sondra returned to the co-op.

“I never had a chance to drink my coffee. Would you like some?” asked Sondra.

“No. Coffee is not healthy for breasts. It was nice to meet you. I’ll be returning to Mammary. By the way, your milk container will always be full. You’ve got milk forever.”

Sondra raised a glass of skimmed milk to toast the real fact that Lactavia had turned Trump’s baby jails into one huge milk dud.

 

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and she teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. She has a piece in the anthology, Alternative Truths, ( B Cubed Press, 2017), and she has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash.

Getting Through

By Harry Youtt

 

Life goes on. Skies turn darker gray,
Lightning has been striking the trees awhile.
We expected the storm, but this hasn’t eased the burden.
Already thunder booms around us,

as we sit down, crouched again together
to another meal, thankful for the way
the fire in the grate keeps us warm enough
through the worst of the storm, and our minds away

from those places outside and down the road,
places we can’t do a thing about right now,
but maybe tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow!
We gaze into each other’s eyes

and understand we’ve been
thinking similar thoughts
as we try not to worry the thunder louder,
or fester the danger of avalanche.

Right now, the mountain is far enough away.
The curtains are drawn to lessen the lightning’s flash.
And we’re well-aware the landslide won’t hesitate
on our account or listen for our advice.

Tomorrow we’ll go outside to what will be new sunlight.
We’ll begin sweeping debris. Then we’ll go over
to check on how the mountain fared in the storm.
We’ll figure out what to do to make things right again.

 

Harry Youtt is a long-time creative writing instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he teaches classes and workshops in memoir writing, narrative nonfiction, fiction, and occasionally, poetry. He has authored numerous poetry collections, including, most recently, Saint Finbarr Visits the Pacific, as well as Getting Through, Outbound for Elsewhere, and Elderverses. All of them are available via Amazon.com. The sentiment behind the title of his collection: Getting Through refers directly to our current ongoing predicament. He assembled the poems there as his effort to assist us to shelter in place and gather back collective wits for the conflicts that are to come. Harry coordinated the Los Angeles Poets Against the War event back in 2003, which, to him, seems like more than a hundred years ago.

Photo by Bethany Laird on Unsplash.

Why Poets Aren’t on TV

By Tori Cárdenas

 

Poets aren’t on TV because they cry when they are asked about their feelings.
Poets are messy.

Poets will tell it like it is. They will tweeze out the words you meant from an argument
& divinate the heart of you by casting your dry fingerbones.

Poets are easily distracted. They will not settle for limited omniscience
and will write a poem from the bottom of the ocean or a planet orbiting a distant star.

Poets are old deep wells with trolls still living in them.
Poets refuse to read from the teleprompter.

Poets will only read aloud with the dangling vocal chimes of generations before them,
the infected & murdered; the drugged, the persuaded, and the robbed.

Poets rewrite erased words.
Poets only own black clothing, and so are hard to fit into certain studio sets.

Poets will not sit through hair & makeup.
Poets are oblivious to commercial breaks. Their ribcages pulse with broken rhythms.

Poets are lie detectors. They unstarch anchors’ shirts with sex & politics & blood.
There is no script for poetry. Poets are still trying to translate it into the vernacular.

Poets aren’t on TV because they are hard roles to cast; they are mirrors.
Who would want to watch a blank screen?

 

Tori Cárdenas is a Tainx/Latinx poet from Northern New Mexico. She is currently working on her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of New Mexico. Follow her on Twitter at @monsoonpoet and on Instagram at @toritillas, and visit her website.

Photo credit: Tina Rataj-Berard on Unsplash.

Judging Silence

By Sheila Ewers

 

Of course he covered her mouth.
Denying her voice,
he could write the story.

We girls learn early
that what remains unspoken
Remains Unreal.
How else could we survive?

And when she swallowed her scream
(as we all do)
it took the words with it
lodging them
into the very parts he
stuffed himself into.

They may have stayed there forever too

Had the scent of his smug victory
not wafted from every screen.

Had his name not been hissed into
her face every day

while he groped his
way under
Lady Justice’s skirt.

The stench
of him growing so ripe
in the spotlight of his glory
that finally
she had to vomit the truth back
to the world

and wait for dozens more of them
to press hands over
her mouth
and hand him
a gavel to cudgel
her sisters.

 

 

Sheila Ewers is the owner of two yoga studios, a teacher, and a writer living in Johns Creek, Georgia. Before opening the studios, she taught college writing and literature for years. She is intrigued by the intersection of yoga, literature, philosophy, and social responsibility and finds her voice growing louder as a result of the current political climate. Her hope is that in finally speaking her own rage and truth, other women will find their voices as well.

Photo credit: Vero Photoart on Unsplash.

Removal

By David Gershan

 

“The problem started when anger itself became criminalized,” he explained behind surgical goggles. “The original purpose of the neural implants was to stymie physical aggression. The focus was on prevention—punishment and rehabilitation became less, well, fashionable.” He turned his head and pointed to the hairless, jagged scar just above his occipital bun.

“Did it hurt?” I asked. “When they took it out?”

“Removal was designed to hurt,” he reminded me. “Hence the implant’s anti-anesthetic properties. Remember, a month after implantation that invisible nanite has replicated to fully encase the amygdala. After that, triggering self-deletion without aggravating the brain’s pain center is tricky.”

I gazed at the room’s sole lightbulb, which hung from the concrete ceiling by a wire, and remembered the digital manual that came with my mandated implantation at age 16—something about “irreversible brain damage” and a “pervasive vegetative state” if the nanobot was forcibly removed while fully integrated with my neural tissue. But I was already sitting on that makeshift operating table, not to mention I had forced down those pocket bottles of gin he’d handed me.

“That happened with me,” he continued, “but there were crude ways around the pain. After all, I was in the back of a pawn shop below a liquor store.” He laughed, then turned and coughed dryly.

My stomach was warm from the alcohol and heartburn crept up my throat. I began to sit up but the surgeon instructed me to lie down and turn my body away from him. I arranged myself in a fetal position and stared at the gray brick wall.

“This shouldn’t take long” he assured me, his voice now muffled behind a surgical mask.

Suddenly the pitch of an electric drill sent adrenaline coursing through me. As soon as I felt pressure on the back of my skull the lightbulb began to flicker.

“Don’t mind that,” he shouted over the drill. I closed my eyes and prayed for the anesthesia to work. “You know,” he continued above the grind of steel on bone, “limbic monitoring was how the garage surgery movement all began.”

 

David Gershan works as a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago, IL. When not at his day job, David can be found indulging in his love of music, literature, and creative writing. David has been published in various literary magazines and has written articles for an award-winning mental health blog. Follow him on Instagram at @gers0031 and on LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Gabriel Matula on Unsplash.

PTSD Pantoum

By Jean Waggoner

 

Me and Apple were out on patrol….
Each story begins with a line like this,
the travesty of its grammar a buddy thing
for the philosopher-boy turned to grunt.

Each story begins with a line like this,
a breath-stopping return to war
for the philosopher-boy turned to grunt,
blank-out humping huge loads, splattered in guts.

A breath-stopping return to war,
newest research blames prior trauma;
blank-out humping huge loads, splattered in guts
(What a nice cost-savings for Veterans Affairs).

Our newest research blames prior trauma;
he saw a brakeman uncle’s three-day death;
(What a nice cost-savings for Veterans Affairs!)
a man’s train-severed leg and wailing from pain.

He saw a brakeman uncle’s three-day death,
not the buddy blown up in WW II:
a man’s pain-severed leg and wailing in pain,
or maimed Civil War vets in Depression soup lines.

Not the buddy blown up in WW II,
not the leap to the trench from your rest:
or maimed Civil War vets in Depression soup lines:
blame it on the screaming child at night.

Not the leap to the trench from your rest,
of your father’s or brothers’ war, or yours;
blame it on the screaming child at night.
Those without prior trauma don’t get PTSD.

Of your father’s or brothers’ war, or yours,
Afghanistan vets trump them all.
Those without prior trauma don’t get PTSD;
(Ah, so many recruits homeland-brutalized.)

Afghanistan vets trump them all.
Maybe our movies can shoulder some blame;
(Ah, so many recruits homeland-brutalized.)
Before “shell shock” and PTSD, the cowards were shot!

Maybe our movies can shoulder some blame
for extreme violence or magical thinking.
Before “shell shock” and PTSD, the cowards were shot!
Me and Apple were out on patrol….

 

Jean Waggoner has sporadically published poems, stories, articles and fine arts reviews and she co-authored The Freeway Flier and the Life of the Mind, a book about the Adjunct Faculty experience. “PTSD Pantoum” references a controversial 2007 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council PTSD analysis discussed in Sebastian Junger’s “The Bonds of Battle” in Vanity Fair, 2016. Jean has retired, no longer leads an Inlandia Institute creative writing workshop, and will soon update her website.

Photo credit: Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash.

In the Time of Avian Politics

By Josh Nicolaisen

 

Attempting to influence opinions
and implement policies
through terse tweets,
it’s clear he sees
himself as the
great golden eagle of
social media,
and America.
Sure, bald would be
more appropriate and
more patriotic,
but don’t we know
appropriateness is
apart
from his concerns
and that the
narcissist would never
ignore gold, nor
allow himself to
be paired with a word
like bald
with such negative,
albeit alternative,
connotations?

Plus, we all already
saw how the
white-headed raptor
reacted to him
prior to his
inauguration.

After just a few months
of following his feeds
we’re sure he’s a predator
but no raptor at all.
Lacking the right skills,
he’s surrounded himself
with generals, and though
he wishes he were a hawk,
he’s more like a preposterously
self-indulged peacock
presumptuously poised
to strut its stuff for an
ever-attentive audience.
An immature and
inexperienced rooster
who can’t secure his flock-
staffers starting to run
from our cock-of-the-walk,
his racist agenda,
and his hate-filled talk.

A raven screaming
and squawking
with no end in sight,
set only on its own story;
adding shrill to silence
for its own sorry plight.

A vulture vociferously
pushing violence
and vending cheap hats,
while working to keep us
fighting each other and
scrounging for scraps.

No, he’s no eagle,
and no robin, wren,
or sparrow with some
sweet songs to sing.
We should now see he’s
a sort of scarlet ibis
or rotting albatross
hung round the neck of the nation,
a disgusting and daily reminder
of what we’ve done
and how far we still
have yet to come.

 

 

Josh Nicolaisen has taught English in both public and private schools for more than ten years. He spends summers as a caretaker on Squam Lake’s historic Chocorua (Church) Island and lives in New Hampshire with his wife, Sara, and their daughters, Grace and Azalea.  Josh has poems in Underground Writers Associations’ anthology The Poets of New England: Volume 1 and Indolent Books’ online project What Rough Beast.

Photo credit: Book Man Film via a Creative Commons license.

House of Worth

by dl mattila 

 

High-pitched brow, purse-proud

veneers: Harry Winston links,

filigreed graffiti, pelts,

cashmeres — your armature, your

lah-di-dahs, your house of worth.

 

dl mattila is a linguist and poet residing in the Greater Washington DC Metropolitan Area.

Welcome Ying Wu, poetry editor

Ying WuWe are delighted to introduce our new editor, Ying Wu, who is joining editor Laura Orem in the Writers Resist world of poetry.

Ying Wu is a poet and cognitive scientist, and host of the Gelato Poetry reading series in San Diego (meetup.com/BrokenAnchorPoetry). She is also a proud member of the editorial team of Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual. More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry and Art at the San Diego Art Institute (poetryandartsd.com), in the Serving House Journal (servinghousejournal.com), and in Writers Resist, as well as in the material world at the San Diego Airport and in print journals, such as the Clackamas Literary Review. Ying currently studies insight and problem solving (insight.ucsd.edu) at UC San Diego and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay.

Please join us in welcoming Ying Wu and celebrating her poem— 

We

breathe the air

name stars

snap photographs

count minutes, kilometers
degrees, Ohms, inches
Herz, decibels, terrabytes
millivolts, microns, pounds

notice
when
the clouds
are turning pink

or thick
and smooth
like blankets

or high
and thin
in rippled wisps

believe
in heaven

speak in
metaphor

speak in
grammar

talk about
infinity

stretch our
hands wide.

 

Caged

By Edytta Anna Wojnar

 

The song of birds outside
pulls her

out of a nightmare
in which chicks hatch

from eggs submerged
in boiling water.

She hastily retrieves them
and not knowing what to do next,

she blankets them with foil
and places in a box.

Outside, the chirping
is gregarious.

A neighbor’s dog
starts a riot.

More birds migrate
to the yard behind her white house

where she fills
a feeder with seeds,

watches chicks with open beaks
hop behind their mothers.

The families nestle
together at night.

By the border,
mockingbirds cry.

Terror traps
children
under space blankets.

 

 

Edytta Anna Wojnar emigrated from Poland in 1986. Her poems have appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Shot Glass Journal, Adanna, and other journals. Finishing Line Press published her chapbooks Stories Her Hands Tell in 2013 and Here and There in 2014.

Photo credit: Marc Falardeau via a Creative Commons license.

Between the River and the Rock

By Liz Kellebrew

 

We were born to this place, to the broad bowl of the sky and the rolling fields of the plains, to the buffalo and wild horses, to the clouds and tall grass. We tore strips of lightning from our sides, and our ribs spread out like the wings of eagles. This is how we fly, from one end of the plain to the other, out where only birds can see.

The buffalo are gone but we are still here, guarding the future with hearts drawn. Arrows will not win this war, nor will guns or dogs or rubber bullets. But when the war comes to you, what can you do?

The soldiers came dressed in black, which doesn’t show the blood. They brought guns and dogs and mace. They told us we had to get off our land, that it wasn’t our land anymore. Some bigwig billionaire had a lot of money invested in this pipeline, they said, and we were standing in the way of progress. Illegal, they said.

The days are long gone when battles are won with arrows or guns, when our men women children lie dead on the cold earth with their still hearts bleeding. These are the days when we have nothing left to lose.

So we are here, with our horses and our songs, with our roots deep as the cottonwood in the river soil, with our memories of rain. It is bitter cold here today, like it was at the day of our birth, and the soldiers will rain freezing water upon us, a prayer for our death.

And we? We pray for the water that brings life, whether that life is ours or another’s, a white man’s or a red man’s or a buffalo’s or a raven’s, and we pray that that life will be long on this good earth, long after our bodies are grass.

 

Liz Kellebrew’s prose has appeared previously in Writers Resist, as well as The Coachella Review, Elohi Gadugi, The Conium Review, and other publications. Her grandfather’s grandmother walked the Trail of Tears. Visit Liz’s website at lizkellebrew.com.

Photo credit: Cat Calhoun via a Creative Commons license.

Behind every shithole country

By RC Wilson

 

Behind every shithole country
Is an act of colonial rape
Behind every terrorist bomb
Is a smiling missionary or corporate agent

Back when Africa was being gang banged
By Leopold II, Stanley and Livingston,
The French Foreign Legion, Firestone Tire & Rubber,
All seven of the seven sister oil giant offspring
Of the titan Atlas, banging away
Back when Africa was being improved, educated, modernized
Tied to a bed and stripped of her diamonds
Stripped of her rubber, stripped of her ivory and ebony and gold
Stripped of her cobalt and uranium
Stripped of her children sent to mines
For the sake of our cell phones
Our tires, our necklaces and engagement rings
Stripped of her languages, the oldest on earth,
Stripped of her boys forced to soldier
Stripped of her girls forced to brothels

Back when Africa was being gang banged
By her own people, pitted against each other
By unseen powers, market forces, commodity traders,
Gang banged and forced to labor
With hands cut off and other mutilations

But that all stopped in 1907, or 1912, you say, or was it 1945, or 1963?
But that all stopped, you say
As African children work to death
Even as we speak
Poisoned while digging for the poisons we need

Back, way back in the dark heart of the past,
When Africa was being gangbanged by Europe
And America and China (sing)

And what are we doing here this time boys?
Is it terror we fight? Or terror we use?
She is there for the taking and
If we don’t do it
Somebody else will
So bang away, bang, and haul away home!

The stuffed animals
The ceremonial masks/ look at the detail!
Amazing what they did with such primitive tools
Not people like us, but clever in their own way
And yet, their countries are shitholes
So best they stay home, for the good of us all
For the good of us all
For the good of us all.

 

RC Wilson is a retired civil servant, living with his spouse and two cats in Kent, Ohio. He has written poetry since he was a teenager. His chap books include: A Street Guide to Gary Indiana; Sex, Drugs, Poetry, and Home Improvement; Down the Back Steps; and most recently, Side Angle Side. He is part of a group who read to each other monthly at Last Exit Books in downtown Kent. RC has been a frequent organizer of poetry readings in the Kent area.

Photo credit: Child miners in the Congo by Enough Project via a Creative Commons license.

I Knew.

By Michelle J. Fernandez

When we arrived we were four footsteps at a time:
his and mine.
Standing on the front steps of a government building
just like all the lovers before us
just to make it official.

There is something about signing on a dotted line
before god and country that somehow
makes it real.
On the morning of your birthday
you don’t feel any different,
it’s not until they start wishing you well
that the day becomes itself.
You walk a little taller,
finally grow into your ears,
start giving advice unasked,
become generous with your smile.
It’s like that.

I knew by the time his heels disappeared
behind the heavy door.
The way your mother knows you have a fever without feeling your forehead.
The way you know one more bite will make you throw up.
The way you know when someone is watching you from across the room.
The way you know in the wrist you fractured ten years ago that it’s about to rain.

I knew
and I stomped for two
and I yelled for two
and I danced for two
and they didn’t even bother to silence me because they didn’t have to.

And he, inside
a man, who like all men
could barely sit up in bed
while battling the common cold.
He, inside
in pieces.

I lived a thousand lives in those hours
walking toe toe heel heel
until they dragged me away
screaming twice as loud and kicking twice as hard.
I knew we’d be leaving as one
but I didn’t know how.
And I will forever be stepping for two.

 

Michelle J. Fernandez is a writer and public librarian from New York. Visit her at michellejfernandez.com and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @meeshuggeneh.

Photo credit: Javier Morales via a Creative Commons license.

Reparative Therapy

By Dein Sofley

 

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you. It’s just that, well, you know … it’s normal to have sexual feelings. Our bodies were made to procreate.

Reproduce.

Have babies.

When you’re married.

It’s just that a man and a woman, they fit together, by design.

See?

A woman provides the egg and a man provides the seed. It’s how God intended it to be.

Yes, Jesus, too.

Well, Mary was a virgin birth.

A virgin is somebody who hasn’t had sex yet.

Sex happens when a man and a woman love each other and they want to make a baby.

Yes, Jesus is God’s son.

No, God doesn’t have sex. Didn’t they teach you anything in Sunday school?

God made Adam out of dust and Eve out of Adam’s rib. “Be fruitful and multiply,” that’s what God said to them.

Do you understand?

You can’t make a baby with two women or two men. You need an egg and a seed.

That’s why I’m here to help you. Me, and your parents, just want what’s best for you. We want you to have a great life.

What you have is a condition.

Yes, it’s kind of like being sick.

No, I don’t have to administer a shot.

We might do some body work and EDMR.

No, it’s not going to hurt.

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing.

Don’t worry. I’ll explain it to you later. I assure you, it doesn’t hurt.

What?

Oh. The condition’s called SSA. Same Sex Attractions.

But, don’t worry. I can cure you.

Look, there’s a lot of changes happening in your body. You’re just confused about your feelings.

There. There. It’s okay. You’re not alone. We all struggle with sin. What you’re going through is just a moment.

Here. Take a tissue.

You see, this is how you know God loves you. He listened to your prayers.

We’re all here to help you and there’s other people, kids your age, who struggle with the same condition. They can help you, too, through support groups and prayer.

It’s called “SSA.”

No, you’re not born with it.

No, an SSN is a different thing.

You see, sometimes we’re attracted to people for different reasons. Say you like Ashley’s hair or the way Danny laughs.

Okay, well, whose hair do you like?

Fine. Sadie’s hair.

Danny snorts when he laughs?

Okay, so maybe my examples weren’t the best, but you get the idea, right? You don’t have to be gay. It’s probably just adolescent infatuation or maybe you felt alienated at some point in your life.

No, not like Lilandra in X-Men.

I’ve never read Sandman.

Loki’s a shapeshifter, that’s different.

Look, we all seek approval. We all need love and acceptance.

Yes, even Blake. Pray for his salvation.

It’s just that sometimes we don’t get enough from our parents, or we get too much, and our imaginations run riots trying to invent what we lack. What you’re experiencing is a call to come back home to God. It’s a test of faith.

Here, why don’t we start with this worksheet?

No, it’s not a potato.

It’s an iceberg. See, those are waves. That’s the ocean. Down there’s a whole lot of stuff we can’t see. Feelings.

Yeah, sort of like your mom’s five-layered bean dip, I guess. More like … hmmm … has a friend ever wanted to play a different game than you at recess and it made you angry? Well, maybe you felt sad, too, down here, underneath.

That’s the stuff we’re here to find out about, so we can sort out your feelings.

It’ll be okay. I promise. You’ll feel better. Happy. You won’t be gay anymore. Godliness just takes a little work. You’ll be a better Christian, you’ll see.  You’ll say, “Thank you Jesus for saving me.”

 

Dein Sofley teaches refugees English in the sanctuary city of Chicago. She earned her BA from Columbia College and her MFA in fiction from UC Riverside’s low-residency program. Her work has appeared in The Coachella Review, Writers Resist and the upcoming Five on the Fifth.

Westboro Baptist Church photo credit: Travis Wise via a Creative Commons license.

Frankenstein

By Christina Schmitt

It is 2018, the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s novel,
Frankenstein.

It is 1818 and mad Chemist Victor Frankenstein steps back from the lab table,
Covered in blood that is not his own.
Instruments of life scattered all over the kitchen floor,
His apartment is a literary landscape of graveyard bodies, when
One of them starts breathing.
Heart being, he stares up from the ground where he lies at his creator’s feet.
Frankenstein decides to play God today.
Plays lab coat dress up
Breathes life into creation and
Abandons it

Frankenstein, the ghost of Mary Shelley’s literary challenge,
Teaches us what happens when
We abandon what we create.

It is 1945 and President Truman steps back from the situation room
Covered in blood that is not his own.
He paints landscapes of obituary innocence, is
Astounded at mad chemist’s ability to animate metal
leaves tools of destruction all over the kitchen floor.
America woke up and decided to play God today
Decides who gets to live today
Peers over the world map chess game
And checks Hiroshima like it is Sunday afternoon, like
We are Frankenstein, like
We don’t have to take responsibility for our creation.

It is 1962 and Rachel Carson slits Silent Springs from her wrists
Watches rivers of red seep into soil
Prays to god to hold America accountable.
When god does not, she does.
She calls America to trial for identity theft.
For playing God.
For abuse.
For using alternative facts
For saying rivers have always run synthetic pesticides
She calls Flint Michigan for an eyewitness account.

She calls America to trial for abandonment
For leaving earth bleeding
All over the kitchen floor
For forgetting what happened to Frankenstein, that
If you do not take responsibility for creation
It will kill you.

It is November 2016
And America steps back from the ballot box
Blood all over the voting booth.
It is January 2017
And poet puts America on trial
For abandonment
For neglect
For not wanting to talk about the mess all over the kitchen floor
For social media crux instead of showing up
When you do not show up
You die at the hands of your creation

It is March 2018 and
17 more students die at the hand of animated metal
Covered in blood that is their own

It is 1818
And Frankenstein cowers from the creature he created
Who killed everyone he loves.
Who will kill him.
Who thunders,
“You may be my creator, but I am your master”

Frankenstein learns the hard way.
That creation is not play-thing.
That playing God has consequences.
Frankenstein does not live to learn from his mistakes.

It is Halloween 2018 and there is a monster at my door.
He is painted green,
bolts protruding from his neck
Hair black and slicked back.
He calls himself Frankenstein.
Silly boy.
Frankenstein is not that monster.
Frankenstein plays lab coat dress up.
Calls himself God.
Is charged with abandonment by the abandoned.
Silly boy, this monster dies
at his hands of neglect
He is mess all over the kitchen floor
Always covered in the blood that is not his own.

It is 2018, the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein.
And what have we learned?

 

Christina Schmitt is a graduate student at Emory University studying Theology and Ethics. She writes around the intersection of theology, ethics, and feminism. She is previously published in Voices of Resistance: An Anthology by Sister City Connection.

Monster image credit: Reclining Nude by Pablo Picasso, 1932.