Author: Editor

The Prescription

By Carolyn Ziel

My friend Jill posted a picture of Steve Bannon on Facebook with his quote, “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.” Jill’s comment was “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” My response was “hash tag medical marijuana.”

I was kidding when I wrote it. But on Tuesday afternoon at 4:30, as the sun skidded the sky with Caribbean color, I pulled into a strip mall in Wilmington, off Pacific Coast Highway, for an appointment to get my prescription. Five storefronts lined the parking lot. A liquor store and the medical clinic were the only two that weren’t vacant, and a guy with his hands in his pockets loitered in a shadowy corner. I thought about driving away, but I got out of the car, put my purse on my shoulder and walked to a door with white block lettering: PCH Medical Clinic.

The office was cold. The walls were ghost white. My boots clicked on the dark brown parquet floors.

“Hi,” I said to the twenty-something girl sitting at a desk in a small office behind a window. “I called earlier.”

She looked up at me and smiled. “I’ve never done this before,” I said. I’d googled medical marijuana doctors. This place had 5 1/2 stars on Yelp.

The girl gave me some forms to fill out. I checked off the symptoms anxiety, stress and insomnia, and ticked depression and back pain for good measure. I signed several waivers promising not to drive under the influence or operate heavy machinery, and not to sell, redistribute or share my marijuana.

When I gave her my completed paperwork, I noticed an ATM in the corner. “Do you take credit cards?”

“No,” she said. “The appointment is $50 cash, if you have the coupon. It’ll be $65 without it. You’ll need cash for the dispensary, too.” I got $200 from the machine.

I didn’t wait more than five minutes before she called for me. As I followed her into the back I heard the ring of a Skype call. She brought me into an office with an oak desk. On it sat a computer monitor and a mouse.

“He’s not here?” I said.

She wiggled the mouse, connected the call and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. I sat down and smiled at myself in the small box at the bottom of the screen, pale in my black Equinox t-shirt. My mouth was dry. I put my purse on my lap and folded my hands over it.

“Hello,” said a face on the screen. He was bald, shiny and overexposed. He wore a white lab coat and looked up at me through gold wire-framed glasses. I took him to be in his early 70s. “Can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes, hello.”

“So.” He looked down at the forms twenty-something girl must have faxed to him. “How long have you had insomnia?”

“On and off for a couple of months.” I lied.

“And you have some back pain?” He was writing.

“My lower back,” I said. That was true, I’d just come from the chiropractor.

“How long have you been depressed?”

One of the definitions for depression is low in spirits. Another is vertically flattened. I felt both. My anxiety was real. But I didn’t want him to think I needed a shrink and meds or I wouldn’t get my weed.

I made the decision to get the prescription after a white delivery truck barreled toward me in traffic that morning. I had to swerve and jump a lane to get out of its trajectory. That’s when I burst. I couldn’t stop crying. The level of the swamp out there is getting high and there’s a riptide pulling me out to sea. I didn’t want to cry here, in front of the Skype Doctor, let my guard down. I needed to be calm. Explain in a mature tone that I just needed a little soft focus.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m not officially depressed. It’s more like I’m stressed.” I paused. He kept writing. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. I wanted to be cool. “It’s not like I want to be stoned all the time. I mean I heard that there’s this stuff that just takes the edge off, you know, without being super stoney.” My heart skipped and slipped into my stomach. I felt awkward. I looked at myself on the screen and took a breath. Tried to gather my thoughts. Stay calm.

“The truth is,” I said, “this election, well, the outcome and everything has me really freaked out.” Shit, I didn’t mean to say that. What if he voted for the guy? He could be one of those people that says, “Hey we put up with Obama for eight years and we survived.”

A penny lay on the desk by the monitor. If a penny lands heads up, its good luck. If it’s tails, I flip it over, give someone else a chance to find a little luck. I needed some luck. These days, everyone I care about, that I’m close to, can use a little luck. A little softness. A little kindness. A little ease. Luck that lets you know you’ll be fine. Everything will be okay. Gives solace. The kind of luck that’s light. Light like compassion, peace, hope. I reached for the penny. Tossed it. Tails. I flipped it over.

The doctor stopped writing and looked up at me. I hoped he’d give me my prescription and I could buy some liquid miracle and a vape pen. Some Acapulco gold, purple haze or amnesia. That’s what I needed.

“Tell me about it” he said. “These are some crazy times.” He smiled a soft smile. “You can pick up your prescription at the front desk.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” he said, and the call was disconnected. I took a deep breath and exhaled for what felt like the first time in weeks.

Carolyn Ziel is a writer, a workshop leader and a member of Jack Grapes Los Angeles Poets & Writers Collective. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Diverse Voices Quarterly, CRATE Literary Journal, Cultural Weekly, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Edgar Allen Poet, ONTHEBUS and FR&D. She has studied with Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, Richard Jones and Pam Huston. Her collection of poetry, as simple as that, is available on Amazon. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and Ariana Huffington’s Thrive Global.

Visit her website at www.carolynziel.com.

Reading recommendation: as simple as that by Carolyn Ziel.

 

Gentle Bones

By Suzanne O’Connell

I.

Darkness is upon us all.
The old tree kneels
like always
to sip from the water.

Poison pen letters
were returned
for insufficient postage.
Girls wear safety pins
and march in the street.

The house is dark.
The dachshund-shaped lamp,
is steadfast,
sitting in its halo of light.

II.

Darkness is upon us.
Search for the tiny miracles
close enough to touch.
Your ears for example,
those workaday wings.

Hello gentle bones,
hello flexible trumpets
made for listening.
You can touch the silken skin,
move them as in flight.
Their perfect rims
are crimped like pies
for our tarnished Thanksgiving.

Suzanne O’Connell is a poet and clinical social worker living in Los Angeles. Her recently published work can be found in Poet Lore, Forge, Atlanta Review, Juked, Existere, Crack The Spine, The Louisville Review, and Found Poetry Review. O’Connell was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2015 and 2016. Her first poetry collection, A Prayer for Torn Stockings, was published by Garden Oak Press. Visit Suzanne’s website.

Reading recommendation: A Prayer for Torn Stockings by Suzanne O’Connell.

President Truman calls on all liberals and progressives

Address in St. Paul at the Municipal Auditorium.
October 13, 1948, worth revisiting today

Mr. Mayor, and fellow Democrats of Minnesota:

Tonight, I pay tribute to the liberal spirit of the people of Minnesota—in the cities, on the farms, in the forests, and in the iron country of this great State.

In this center of practical liberalism, I am proud to salute a fighting liberal—the next Senator from Minnesota, Mayor Humphrey of Minneapolis. I am also glad to greet the next Governor of Minnesota, Charles Halsted.

Through them, I salute the liberal and progressive forces of this whole region—the forces which are once again on the march against special privilege.

Before I say anything else, I want to take this opportunity to recognize the splendid record which was established by labor and management in Minnesota throughout the war years, and nobody knows any more about that than I do, for I made an investigation of it.

Through those long dark months of war never once was a blast furnace kept a single minute, because of lack of ore. Men who mined the ore and those who manned the trains and the ore boats worked day and night, Sundays and holidays, and there was no work stoppage.

This was also true of the thousands of loyal men and women who labored in your mills and on your farms, and in your foundries and in your forests.

On behalf of the Nation, I congratulate the working people of Minnesota on their splendid wartime performance.

In view of that record, it is all the more strange to me that your senior Senator showed such fanatic zeal in helping to push the shameful Taft-Hartley law through the Congress.

I’m afraid the same thing happened to Joe Ball that happens to most Republicans with a streak of liberalism when they get down to Washington. That’s what I call the “Potomac fever.”

The Republican Party either corrupts its liberals or it expels them. It drove out Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. It drove out fighting Bob LaFollette of Wisconsin in 1924.

It was the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, not the Republican Party, that held out the hand of welcome to Floyd B. Olson, and to that hero of progressive idealism–George Norris of Nebraska.

And those liberals who have not been driven out of the Republican Party have been changed, like Joe Ball, from fighters on the people’s side to champions of reaction.

True liberalism is more than a matter of words. It demands more than sound effects. It cannot hide behind the catch phrases of the Republican candidate for President-catch phrases like “unity” and “efficiency.” Unity for what cause? Efficiency for what Purpose, I wonder ?

The American people, in this critical year, are entitled to a full and open discussion of the issues. They are not getting it from the Republican candidate for President.

Unity on great issues comes only when the voice of the people has been heard so clearly, so strongly, so unmistakably, the no one … can doubt what the people mean.

It is no service to the country to refuse, in the name of unity, to discuss the issues. It is no service to democracy to conceal the difference between the major parties.

Unity in a democracy cannot be produced by mealymouthed political speeches.

Unity on great issues comes only when the voice of the people has been heard so clearly, so strongly, so unmistakably, that no one—not even the second guessers—can doubt what the people mean.

Thomas Jefferson did not seek unity by concealing the real issues between himself and Alexander Hamilton. He made the issues clear, so that the people could reach a decision. And their decision determined that democracy rather than autocracy should prevail in this great country of ours.

Andrew Jackson did not seek unity with the moneymakers in Philadelphia. He made the issues so clear that the people decided to place the control of the money in the Government of the United States, and not in a few private banks.

Abraham Lincoln did not seek unity with Stephen A. Douglas. He made it clear that this Nation could not continue to exist half slave and half free.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, did not seek unity with the economic royalists. He proposed the New Deal.

And today, I do not seek unity by concealing the issues between me and the special privilege groups that control the Republican Party.

I never will seek that sort of unity.

Real unity is behind basic principles and concrete programs. Real unity cannot be achieved without a definition of the issues, and a decision by the American people.

Our foreign policy is an example of this.

I had hoped that foreign policy would not become an issue in this campaign. To that end, I have refrained from taking partisan credit in campaign speeches for the policies which were organized by a Democratic administration, and which others are now claiming credit for so loudly today.

But I serve notice here and now that I shall feel at liberty to correct distortions and keep the record straight.

And when I do that, I shall be glad to give full credit for the significant contributions which have been made by some farsighted Republicans.

We have a large measure of unity in foreign policy now. But it was not always that way. We achieved this degree of unity, only after world-shaking events had made it clear that the vast majority of the people of the United States would no longer tolerate isolationism.

Now, we had no unity in foreign policy in the first national election after World War I. The Democratic candidate for President in that year stood clearly for the League of Nations, and for Woodrow Wilson’s idea of international cooperation.

But the Republican candidate, although he misled the people into believing that he stood for unity, was actually opposed to the League of Nations.

So, when the election was over, the people found themselves with a Republican administration and a Republican Congress that were completely unified–but unified in favor of the wrong policies.

And so the world started down the road to World War II.

We did not have unity in foreign policy in 1940. Even then, with half the world in flames, the Republican leaders were mainly isolationists. They were against aid to the democracies, and they called Roosevelt a warmonger.

The man who is now the Republican candidate for President said that the idea of producing 50,000 airplanes a year was fantastic. And we got to ‘produce 100,000. a

Even in 1944, in the midst of a we did not have unity in matters relating to, foreign policy. During the election campaign in that year, the Republican candidate, who is now running once more, charged again and again that it was the administration’s arbitrary desire to keep men in the Army after the war was over. You all remember that.

He had so little foresight about postwar problems that he felt we could completely demobilize our military strength the minute that hostilities ended.

Now, as a matter of hindsight, he says, “me, too” about building up our Armed Forces.

The unity we have achieved in foreign policy required leadership. It was achieved by men—Republicans as well as Democrats—who were willing to fight for principles before these principles became obvious to everyone.

It was not achieved by the people who copied the answers down neatly after the teacher had written them on the blackboard.

Here again, as in so many other cases, the American people should consider the risk of entrusting their destiny to recent converts who now come along and say, “Me, too, but I can do it better.”

In the meantime, there are other issues in this campaign—big issues. All those issues cannot be hidden or brushed away by pretending they don’t exist.

The issue in this election is not unity. It is not efficiency.

Efficiency alone is not enough in government. Maybe the Wall Street Republicans are efficient. We remember that there never was such a gang of efficiency engineers in Washington, as there was under Herbert Hoover. We remember Mr. Hoover himself was a great efficiency expert.

We remember how he selected one of the richest men in America to be his Secretary of the Treasury. But efficiency wasn’t enough 20 years ago, and efficiency isn’t enough today.

There must be life and hope in government. We must achieve and pioneer in the great frontier of human rights and social justice.

Hitler learned that efficiency without justice is a vain thing.

Democracy does not work that way. Democracy is a matter of faith—a faith in the soul of man—a faith in human rights. That is the kind of faith that moves mountains—that’s the kind of faith that hurled the Iron Range at the Axis and shook the world at Hiroshima.

Faith is much more than efficiency. Faith gives value to all things. Without faith, the people perish.

Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living—a decision, which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us:. … The Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party. [Or] the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party. Of course, the Democratic Party is not perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But the Democratic Party believes in the people. It believes in freedom and progress, and it is fighting for its beliefs right now.

Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living—a decision, which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us.

On the other side, there is the Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party.

Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.

Since they won’t tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.

They approve of the American farmer—but they are willing to help him go broke.

They stand four-square for the American home—but not for housing.

They are strong for labor—but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.

They favor a minimum wage—the smaller the minimum the better.

They endorse educational opportunity for all—but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.

They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine—for people who can afford them.

They approve of social security benefits—so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.

They believe in international trade—so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.

They favor the admission of displaced persons—but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.

They consider electric power a great blessing—but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.

They say TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] is wonderful—but we ought never to try it again.

They condemn “cruelly high prices”—but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.

They think the American standard of living is a fine thing—so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.

And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way—there is another way—the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party.

Of course, the Democratic Party is not perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But the Democratic Party believes in the people. It believes in freedom and progress, and it is fighting for its beliefs right now.

In the Democratic Party, you won’t find the kind of unity where everybody thinks what the boss tells him to think, and nothing else.

But you will find an overriding purpose to work for the good of mankind. And you will find a program—a concrete, realistic, and practical program that is worth believing in and fighting for.

Now, I call on all liberals and progressives to stand up and be counted for democracy in this great battle. I call on the old Farmer-Labor Party, the old Wisconsin Progressives, the Non-Partisan Leaguers, and the New Dealers to stand up and be counted in this fight.

This is one fight you must get in, and get in with every ounce of strength you have. After November 2d, it will be too late. It will do no good to change your mind on November 3d. The decision is right here and flow.

Against us we have the best propaganda campaign that money can buy.

But we are bound to win—and we are going to win, because we are right! I am here to tell you that in this fight, the people are with us.

With a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, you will have the right kind of unity in this country.

We will be unified once more on the great program of social advance, which the Democratic Party pioneered in 1933.

We will be unified in support of farm cooperatives, rural electrification, and soil conservation.

We will be unified behind a housing program.

We will be unified on the question of the rights of labor and collective bargaining.

We will be unified for the expansion of social security, the improvement of our educational system, and the expansion of medical aid.

Moreover, we will be unified in our efforts to preserve our prosperity and to spread its benefits equally to all groups in the Nation.

Now, my friends, with such unity as this, we can secure the blessings of freedom for ourselves and our children.

With such unity as this, we can fulfill our God-given responsibility in leading the world to a lasting peace.

Note: The President spoke at 9:33 p.m. at the Municipal Auditorium in St. Paul. His opening words “Mr. Mayor” referred to Edward K. Delaney, Mayor of St. Paul. Later he referred to Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey of Minneapolis, Democratic candidate for Senator, Democratic candidate for Governor Charles L. Halstead, Senator Joseph H. Ball, and former Governor Floyd B. Olson, all of Minnesota; former Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin; and former Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska.

The address was carried on a nationwide radio broadcast.

Photo credit: U.S. Library of Congress, President Harry S. Truman campaigning in 1948.

Citation: Harry S. Truman: “Address in St. Paul at the Municipal Auditorium.,” October 13, 1948. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13046.

I Voted: 2016

I Voted 2016

 

By Diego Barrientos

Acrylic, medical tape, aluminum wire, and sticker on canvas board.

Artist’s statement

I created “I Voted: 2016” after voting on November 8. This perfectly illustrates how it felt to participate in a rigged system. I am a Guatemalan-born California resident and an Iraq War veteran who voted for Bernie Sanders, the true Democratic nominee.

 

First Snow Following the Election

By Shawn Aveningo

There’s a hush—a stillness—

that muffles the groundswell,

as flurries flutter and whiteness

blankets our sleep. We weep

for truth, its heartbreaking loss

akin to a missing dog from our youth.

Our boots etch fractals in fresh powder

and we search our neighbor’s eyes

for a sign—hoping we are still

on the same side.

Shawn Aveningo is a globally published, award-winning poet who can’t stand the taste of coconut, eats pistachios daily and loves shoes … especially red ones! Shawn’s work has appeared in over 100 literary journals and anthologies. She’s a Pushcart nominee, co-founder of The Poetry Box, managing editor for The Poeming Pigeon and journal designer for VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices and visions. Shawn is a proud mother of three and shares the creative life with her husband in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Visit her website.

Reading recommendation: This Connection of Everyone with Lungs by Juliana Spahr.

 

 

Our Hitler

By Eduardo Santiago

In our house, November 25 is called Markmas because it is exactly a month previous to Christmas, and it is my husband Mark’s birthday. He loves all holidays and adding another one is a tradition the rest of the family and all of our friends support.

What should we call November 25th now that the day has been tainted by the death of the tyrannical Cuban dictator Fidel Castro? His passing is politically irrelevant, yet “mourned” by many in the streets of Havana, whether they want to or not. Nine days of mourning have been ordered, which means anyone caught listening to a radio or watching television or just humming to themselves—even in the privacy of their own homes—will see consequences. So if you were grappling with the terms “tyrannical” and “dictator” this should resolve that conflict.

Simultaneously, in Little Havana, the tiny Cuban heart of Miami, there is joyous celebration. Enormous Cuban flags are paraded down 8th Street alongside the U.S. flag, a commemoration of the country that provided more than a million of us with food, shelter and opportunity.

Although Cubans are known around the world for their music, there wasn’t a musical instrument in sight. Instead, it was the traditional beating of pots and pans, and I was delighted that tradition includes banging on electric rice makers. We are, after all, Americans now.

During television coverage of Little Havana on November 26, an English- speaking Cuban man put down the celebratory pots and pans just long enough to deliver a provocative sound bite: “He was our Hitler.”

The comparison, which gets bandied about quite frequently, has never felt appropriate to me. There is no comparison between the systematic extermination of more than eight million people, with the inconveniences caused by a charismatic and arrogant Latin American dictator. Fidel Castro was not a brilliant man, but he had some remarkable talents, such as talking out of both sides of his mouth, earning the blind trust of millions at mandatory rallies, and making political deals that, above all, lined his own pockets.

If there is to be a comparison between the Cubans and the Jews, it might be their sentient cry of, “Never forget.”

But is not forgetting enough? How has not forgetting served us? As a sinister new administration steps into the White House, the muffled cry in too many hearts appears to be, “Could it happen again?”

For those of you grappling with the word sinister, you need look no further than alt-right leader and Trump’s incoming chief strategist, Steve Bannon. As for the rest, all but two are white, all but two are men, and just one—Elaine Chao, AKA Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife—has run a federal agency before. For George W. Bush, and we all recall how well that went.

So, could it happen again, here? The answer will be clear come next Markmas.

Eduardo Santiago was born in Manzanillo, Cuba and is the author of the novels Tomorrow They Will Kiss and Midnight Rumba. Visit his website.

Reading recommendation: Midnight Rumba by Eduardo Santiago.

 

A Poem by Lisa DeSiro

Pride Party

the Aging Bisexual insists his ass is still tight and invites everyone to touch it
the Military Gentleman takes off his shirt and explains his tattoo and weeps
the Lesbian Artist describes the found objects used for her installations
the Fabulous Host kisses guests both male and female on the lips
the Funny Guy imitates his mother’s Boston Irish brogue
the Drag Queen hands out cocktails and condoms
the Straight Girl mingles and listens and thinks
no one can tame these lions roaring
laughter spilling drinks filling
bodies dancing music
playing loud and
proud

Lisa DeSiro is a writer and a pianist. Her poems have been set to music by several composers, and have appeared in various print and digital publications. Her chapbook Grief Dreams is forthcoming from White Knuckle Press (June 2017). Along with an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, she has degrees from Binghamton University, Boston Conservatory, and Longy School of Music. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is employed as Production & Editorial Assistant for C.P.E. Bach: The Complete Works. Visit Lisa’s website.

Reading recommendation: Running for Trap Doors by Joanna Hoffman.

 

Sleeping With the Enemy

By Marcia Meier

I have been sleeping with the enemy for more than two years. Rob is a Republican. But on the morning after the election, he held me close as I sobbed and promised, “It will be okay.”

He promised. But he doesn’t know. And nothing that has happened since that morning has made either of us feel better.

He didn’t vote for the president-elect; having worked with him once, Rob said he’d never vote for a man who had no scruples or conscience. I have accused Rob and his old-school Republican conservatives of abandoning their own principles. Of allowing white men whose only interest is money and power to cede their party to extremists bent on undoing everything we’ve fought for, for more than fifty years. Women’s rights. The right to marry whomever we please. The right for people of color to be free of the tyranny of a police state. (Though we have a way to go on that one.)

Now, we two read the news each morning with incredulity. A Republican and a Democrat united in disbelief. The difference is I see the potential for our country to be forever altered, and not for the better, by a man who is so very obviously unhinged—drunk with power and ego.

Rob sees the possibility of change that might turn out to be good. That people of goodwill and right-thinking will not allow the president-elect and his corrupt cabinet to destroy us. That our constitution and our government can certainly survive four years. How much damage could he do? Rob asks rhetorically.

A lot, I say. More, perhaps, than this country can withstand.

We argue, we debate, we fight, we agree. We make love—it seems the only thing we can do that reminds us of the good. The hope we cling to despite the evidence to the contrary.

It is a time of great uncertainty. When I allow myself to dwell on the events of recent weeks, I weep. I mourn. And Rob is there to hold me and comfort me. Even though I know his optimism will never replace my fears.

I veer from vowing not to read the news to allowing myself to release the grip of terror I feel, to breathing and trusting, to pounding out angry, incoming-administration diatribes calling for resistance and vigilance and marches in the streets. I cheer on Keith Olbermann and obsessively read The New York Times and Washington Post. I listen every day to NPR and cling to every little tidbit that glimmers with hope. And then I realize it is a pipe dream, and I have to consider how I will get through the next four years. Truly, how will we all get through the next four years?

If my sweet Republican lover is right and the president’s power is limited to such an extent that he can’t do any real damage, I wonder, how much damage is okay? A Supreme Court nominee who will shape the next thirty or forty years of jurisprudence, especially with regard to abortion and gay rights? I will be long gone, but the lives of my daughter and her future children will be unalterably affected. I can’t let that go. The reversal of environmental and economic policies that have made our lives and our world better and safer and cleaner? The abolishment of health insurance that for the first time covers most Americans?

So, I write and I call congressional offices and I send letters. And I pray that some of it will somehow matter.

Marcia Meier is an award-winning writer, developmental book editor and writing coach. Her books include Heart on a Fence, (Weeping Willow Books, 2016); Navigating the Rough Waters of Today’s Publishing World, Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders (Quill Driver Books, 2010); and Santa Barbara, Paradise on the Pacific (Longstreet Press, 1996). Her memoir, Face, is forthcoming, as is an anthology, Unmasked, Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After Fifty, co-edited with Kathleen Barry. She is also at work on another book of poetry and photography, titled Ireland, Place Out of Time. Marcia is a member of the Author’s Guild and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Visit her website.

Reading recommendation: Zhuangzi Basic Writings  by Master Zhuang Zhou.

 

To Gerry Mckinley

By Mark A. Murphy

If poetry is not social then it ceases to have a function beyond perfume.

–André Gide

A life time ago in a rage

of mourning, my mind bent on self-doubt

and self-loathing, drudging up

the many injustices of a social system

hell bent on the destruction of life,

         I read a poem

about a child in Soweto

who had been beaten with such malice

his heart gave up, his bare feet still dirty from playing

on a mound of clay after school.

 

These words were not written

for an astounded world to wrestle with,

nor yet for the rich to sniff at

by that wise poet, Mazisi Kunene,

         but by my old friend, Gerry Mckinley,

an obstinate Irish rebel, a man not unlike Kunene,

a man accustomed to madness,

who dared to tell the truth, imposing on our solitude

forbidden words and abounding optimism—

though a million hearts might break.

Mark A. Murphy’s first full-length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse was published in 2013 by Salmon Poetry (Eire). His poems have appeared in over 160 magazines worldwide. Lit Fest Press in America will publish his latest manuscript, The Ontological Constant, in early 2018.

Reading recommendation: Night-watch Man & Muse by Mark A. Murphy.

“To Gerry Mckinley” was previously published by Dead Drunk Dublin.

Breakfast

By Amanda Gomez

The couple next to me is finishing their breakfast.
Between a bite of grits and eggs, the woman asks:
how do they let in trash like that these days? staring

at the television screen, where clips of protestors
gathered at the Trump Tower flash across.
The news anchor covering the story chuckles

nervously, as an interviewee raises the topic of race.
She blushes as if it’s inappropriate. Maybe
I shouldn’t be talking about politics the lady beside me

continues. When her husband makes no response,
she turns towards me. I keep my mouth shut; put myself
in her place. I wonder what would make her America

great again. I think of my mother, my grandmother
and her sisters: where they were when they realized
they were uninvited guests. As for me,

I was in line for recess. A boy called me spic
in the third grade. I didn’t know what it meant.
If I did I would have called him caulkie* back.

Let him have it; ensure he never used that word
with me again. It’s moments like this still happening,
happening right now, which is why I refuse to respond

when she wants me to engage.
It’s simple: I want her to know
that what she’s searching for, she can’t have.

 

Amanda Gomez is an MFA candidate in poetry at Old Dominion University. Her work has been published by Eunoia Review, Ekphrastic Review, Manchester Review, Expound Magazine, San Pedro River Review, and Avalon Literary Review.

Viewing recommendation: Zoot Suit, starring Daniel Valdez and Edward James Olmos; written and directed by Luis Valdez, 1981.

*Caulkie refers to a person so white, they resemble caulk.

Wise Counsel From a Lecture Course Grader

Dear Undergrads,

As the poor soul who has been grading for this class for two semesters, suffering through countless horrifying exam answers and weak-ass essays, I have decided to share some useful exam tips with you all.

  1. WRITE LEGIBLY. If I cannot read your writing I obviously cannot understand your answer, which means I cannot determine if your answer is correct or not, which in turn means I cannot give you points.
  1. WRITE COMPLETE SENTENCES. You are adults. You are in college. You can legally vote. You can legally purchase cigarettes with which to kill yourselves and porn to ruin any chance of having a realistic and mutually pleasurable sex life. If you can do all of these things, then you can also write complete freakin sentences on your exams.
  1. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ASKED OF YOU. I think it’s great if you know lots of information about what Jean Jacques Rousseau liked to eat for breakfast, but unless you are specifically asked to relay that information, it is useless. Listen, I was an undergrad not too long ago. I know this trick. You write as much as you can on a question’s subject, hoping to keep the professor from noticing that you didn’t actually answer the question. Believe me, I have pulled that stunt plenty of times, and I did it better than any of you, and I still didn’t get points for it because IT DOESN’T WORK.
  1. USE YOUR BRAIN. When you are trying to answer a question about the Reformation, and you start writing about how Martin Luther King Jr. was pissed with the Catholic Church so he wrote 95 theses called “I Have a Dream,” put your pen down and take a moment to use your brain. Martin Luther King Jr. is a name that everybody who grew up in the United States should have embedded in some part of their brains. It’s a name that should evoke some memory of that week in high school when you learned about the Civil Rights Movement, , or at the very freakin least you should remember that we celebrate him once a year on MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY. You should put that pen down, stop, and think, “Hmm, I know the name Martin Luther King Jr., and I know that the Reformation occurred, like, a really long time ago and this midterm covers only stuff until the Industrial Revolution and Marxism, because that’s what it said on the study guide. If the Reformation happened, like, a really long time ago, then Martin Luther King Jr. probably had nothing to do with it since he’s only from a long time ago, not a really long time ago. I must be confusing Martin Luther King Jr. with someone who has a similar name.” Unfortunately, what so many of you did was NOT put your pens down and use your brain, but instead, you continued to write about Martin Luther King Jr. instigating the Reformation 412 years before he was born. Use your brain.
  1. GIVE AT LEAST ONE FUCK. Out of the entire class only three of you turned in exams that received passing grades. THREE. Everyone else got Ds and Fs. Look around the room right now. This is a room of failures. And this is not because the class is hard or the professor doesn’t make sense or Grandma died or your dog ate your homework and then pissed all over your textbook. No. You failed because you don’t care. I know that most of you give zero fucks about U.S. history. Your apathy is deplorable. But we are entering an era in American history when apathy will very quickly become this country’s downfall. It has already begun, as was made crystal clear by the results of the election. If you people don’t open your eyes and start paying attention to things that are more important than your own lives you’re going to wake up one day and you won’t have any civil liberties left. You won’t be able to dick around online during class because Trump will have bought the Internet and turned it into a giant cyber shrine to himself. It is exponentially easier to strip people of their freedoms when they are lulled into complacency by their own pathetic apathy and ignorance, and right now you all might as well be wearing signs on your chests that read, “Lock me up in an interment camp, I give zero fucks.” So please, if not for the nation’s sake, then for your own, give at least one fuck.

Sincerely,
Your anonymous grader

Reading recommendation: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

California Least Tern Eggs

California Least Tern Eggs

 

By Anna Stump

Artist’s statement:

I have painted birds periodically throughout my life, mainly as a symbol for fragility, both personal and political. “California Least Tern Eggs,” from my Terrariums series, is mixed media on paper. Terrariums began as a series depicting Passenger Pigeons, which are extinct. I’ve expanded the subject to include endangered birds, their eggs, and other natural elements from the San Diego-Tijuana border, where I live.

The forced-perspective boxes of the series suggest architecture, coffins, and permeable borders, in which the natural elements are both trapped and preserved. I want to both hide, through camouflaged backgrounds, and decorate with flashy metallics. Formal qualities of abstraction, gridding, and figure/ground flipping, combined with political subjects dressed with decorative tropes, are important elements of all my work, which includes nudes, narrative interiors and portraiture.

California least terns are endangered and, at one point, only 600 nesting pairs remained. They nest on the sand where beach goers and the military, which has bases on the coast, can crush the eggs.

Anna Stump is an artist and arts educator living in San Diego. She earned her Bachelor’s degree at Occidental College and her Master of Fine Arts at San Diego State University. She was a Senior Fulbright Scholar to the Fine Arts Department at Anadolu University in Eskisehir, Turkey in 2006-2007. She teaches studio and art history courses at San Diego City College and Grossmont College. She also teaches drawing and painting at Donovan State Correctional Facility. Her work can be viewed here.

Anna’s New York Times reviewed blog of three years, Kloe Among the Turks, examines the art scene in Southern California and Turkey, and issues of arts education. In 2009, she curated an exhibition of 130 artists from Southern California and Turkey, presented in San Diego, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Ankara.

Anna is the founder of the San Diego Feminist Image Group. She is a member of Mid-Air Trio, an improvisational group that combines painting, dance and soundscapes in live performances. She is one-half of the painting team Hill&Stump. The artist is represented by MLA Gallery in Los Angeles, Sanatyapim Gallery in Ankara, Turkey, and Sparks Gallery and Sergott Contemporary Art Alliance in San Diego. She was recently profiled in the Huffington Post by Mat Gleason for her new work, “Sexy Jesus.”

Citizen

By Susan Arthur

The day, as I write this, is November 9, 2016. Yep, the day half of us in America wander about in nearly lobotomized shock at Trump’s win. We look for solace from each other, wonder what to do. There have been whispers for some time about moving to Canada. I hear the Immigrate to Canada website crashed.

I’m fortunate. I don’t need that website. I’m a dual citizen: United States and Canada. I live in the U.S., born here to Canadian parents. I was invited to get my Canadian citizenship under the Lost Canadians law as a child of expatriates. I’ve been looking at property in Canada online all morning, land in Cape Breton, cottages in New Brunswick. An apartment in Montreal? Or maybe one in Toronto, where my father went to college. …

It soothes me to look. This could be something of a return home, a return to a motherland. I’ve never been as popular among my friends. “Take me to Canada with you!” (Am I leaving?). “Marry me!” (I am married, but thanks for the offer.) “Buy property so all of us future ex-pats can form a little community!” (Because Utopian communities always work out so well?)

My husband, an American whose family goes back generations in Massachusetts, is a board certified oncologist and clinical research doc. Canada would lay down the red carpet for him, whereas me, I’m just an artist. My French is awful, although my health is good, but if they didn’t have to take me, who knows what would happen?

Three years ago, we made a wrenching and grueling move from the Pacific Northwest, after decades there, back to New England. I’d lobbied for a move to Canada then, wanting to settle in a place that seemed more like the country I wanted than the country I had (forgive my backward paraphrase of Donald Rumsfeld). I was tired of flirting with Canada. I wanted a real relationship, a committed one. Instead, we’ve settled on coastal New England because a desirable job was here for my husband and he was uncertain about expatriating, especially in the face of what seemed like a solidly progressive U.S. We had, after all, an intelligent, progressive man in the White House. We were safe.

Today, I am sad and embarrassed, scared and angry. The U.S. has always been my home. I work here, raised my sons here, vote here. All those years of supporting and working for human rights—women, minorities, LGBTQ—are they—those rights, my years—about to disappear? My hope that we will finally address income inequality is withering, dying. My husband and his workmates are concerned about the Affordable Care Act being dismantled; what will happen to those people needing cancer treatment? Any treatment? And then, there is our fragile, threatened environment. Without a habitable earth, all of these questions are moot.

Like so many of us, probably all 65-plus million who voted for Clinton, I am looking for a path. If I were to take up residence in Canada, I would forfeit my right to vote here, to have any impact on future elections. And I am coming up on my 66th birthday. How much time and energy do I have? How many times can I engage in the same battles, the battles I thought were over and won? What can I do that will have some effect?

Hiding in Canada won’t do it, although I long to live in a place that shares my values. And oh, how I envy them Justin Trudeau.

But as I write this, it gets clearer and clearer, what I need to do. Will do.

I’ll take the weekend off. I need a moment.

And then, I will begin again.

Susan Arthur is a photographer, sculptor and writer, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She hides out in the very blue wilds of Massachusetts. Her work can be viewed here. Writers Resist previously publish a photograph by Susan, “Left for Dead Barbie Visits the Capitol.”

Reading recommendation: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

To do list

By Daniell Cohen

    1. Get out of bed
    2. Brush teeth
    3. Get dressed
    4. Breathe
    5. Apply for citizenship
    6. Confront your male friend for claiming your sexuality is “a waste” because you fit his “ideal partner criteria”
    7. Confront a cisgender white woman in class about why “we can’t just accept that we have different opinions,”
    8. Reply with “what do you have at stake?”
    9. Nurse a sore throat
    10. Move past uncompromising panic attacks and cry bursts
    11. Hold your friends as they fall apart
    12. Hold yourself as you fall apart
    13. Tell your brother it will be okay even though you worry about his safety even more now than ever
    14. Meditate
    15. Create
    16. Gather … strength
    17. Silence a middle-aged white man with a bandana wrapped around his fat head and cigarette in his impulsive, pathetic, dirty fucking mouth as he whistles at you
    18. Re-evaluate your privilege
    19. Accept
    20. Repeat

Daniell Cohen is a Somerville, Massachusetts-based artist, born and raised in Israel. She earned a BFA in photography from SUNY Purchase College, and her work has been featured in The Journal News, and at Merge Arts, Artbar, +KG, and Tea Lounge. Daniell is pursuing her Master’s degree in Art Therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge, and she is a social activist, a feminist and queer artist, and an aspiring holistic art therapist who strives to inspire, connect and move others toward equality and radical acceptance.

Reading recommendation: Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns by Andrea Gibson.

Turns Out

By Sam Sax

all the holocaust books we read
in grade school weren’t enough.
the class outraged, youth shouting
never again. in the texts i became

brave, resistance child, stalking
the night’s antique shadows, disproving
a devil’s arithmetic, lettering every star.
easy to be righteous in the face

of tyranny so dead, the terror’s just
an old rope of letters, a photograph
developed in a darkroom, the tattoo
on a family member’s leathered arm

but even he smiles as you dance
around like the goofy animal you are.
what then when the terror lives?
when the cabinet’s filled with poison bread?

when they come for my friends,
when they come to my bed, when
they come, they come. come stars
to guide our meat across the night’s

opera of skulls. come letters brave
enough to harvest joy from the coming
darkness. come art sharp as a knife
tearing the blood from the white

in our flag. you can say there is no road
map for the red mattress, for the police
—bag forced over a chanting head. but look
to any history & there’s the path

an outraged flood, a million bodies
in the street, a fence between blood & money,
a government shaking. for our lives & our love
we must do all we can before we’re forced

back below the floorboards.

…………………………………………………………..

Sam Sax is the Texas-based author of Madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of the 2016 National Poetry Series, Bury It (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), and four chap books: All The Rage (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016) Straight (Winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, 2016) Sad Boy / Detective (Winner of The Black Lawrence Chapbook Prize, 2015), and A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button Poetry, 2014). Sam has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, and The Michener Center for Writers, where he served as the Editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He has poems published or forthcoming in Agni, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Guernica, Poetry Magazine, and other journals. Visit his website.

Reading recommendation: Maus by Art Spiegelman

“Turns Out” was first published by The Awl.

Nightmare on Elm Street

By Cassandra Lane

Dylann Storm Roof invades my dream space in the days after he murders nine African Americans at a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina.

His spirit travels 2,480 miles to reach the interior of my imagination in Los Angeles. Like a bloodhound, he finds my Southern black body hiding out in the desert. As though terrorizing his victims and their families were not enough, as though destroying the sanctity of an historically black house of worship were not enough, he comes to me, the girl who grew up kneeling beside her elders in anointed prayer at St. Paul Baptist Church down the street.

Unshackled and smug, he comes to me.

He comes for me. For us.

The dream begins under the cover of night, full of silence and a pregnant, starless sky. My heart pumps into this blackness. The blackness responds, alive and aware.

The scene switches to a clear afternoon, where sunlight slants between two buildings that stand on a hill. I am walking down a slope to pick my son up from school when I catch a glimpse of a man lurking next to a string of parked cars. He is wearing a soiled white t-shirt and jeans. Something in my spirit tells me that this man is wrong. All wrong.

I rush my son home, which turns out to be the home I grew up in on Elm Street in Louisiana. I am back in the South, after all. In the 1980s, this house was the object of constant teasing.

“It’s Freddy Krueger’s house,” the same gaggle of kids would yell day after day when the school bus pulled up to 202 Elm Street. “Yeah, and there’s his girlfriend: Frederica!”

In my dream, I pause on the porch to finger the empty spot where the third address number should have been: 20_.

But the gunman is on my trail, so I yank open the front door that was always unlocked, get my son and myself inside and turn the locks. Roof shows up seconds later, trying to get in, rifle in hand.

As my son and I look for safe places to hide, I am both terrified and furious. I am tempted to ignore the possibility of death and unleash my rage on Roof’s face, tear at his skin, the mask over hate (what does it look like?).

Roof continues to point his rifle, its snout peering at the front door’s window. He could easily shoot out the glass and work his way in. Instead, his strategy is to drag out the terror with painstaking patience and steadiness—tinkering with the door handle, making threats, stopping completely, and then starting up again. I hold the product of terror in my hands; it is in my son’s small shoulders. His shoulders are bare and brown, full of naked fear.

I carry his tremors in my fingers, dialing first my husband and then the numbers that I have forgotten to constantly reiterate to my son: 9-1-1. In bursts of hysteria, I appeal to the operator: “He wants to kill us.”

“Ma’am,” the operator says calmly, “someone is on the way to help you.”

When the sheriff shows up, I look out the living room’s side window, facing west. The sheriff and Roof stand outside the patrol car, face to face, their arms at their sides, relaxed.

Roof is suddenly in a business suit—navy blue, immaculate. I see his rifle, hiding under the sheriff’s car. I hear the sheriff talking to him in a low, calm tone. I make my way outside to get inside this, their intimate conversation.

With a screech, my husband drives up, jumps out of his car and lunges for the terrorist, but I lunge for him to restrain him. I envision the handcuffs glaring against his brown wrists. Click. Guilty. Assault. Attempted murder.

I hold him down and he holds me down, and in this holding we begin, slowly, to regain our composure.

We are statues of self-restraint.

……………………………………

Formerly a newspaper journalist and high school teacher, Cassandra Lane has published essays, columns and articles in The Times-Picayune, The Source, TheScreamOnline, BET Magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bellingham Review and Gambit, and in the anthologies Everything but the Burden, Ms. Aligned and Daddy, Can I Tell You Something. She is an alum of Voices of Our Nation Arts (VONA) and A Room of Her Own Writing Retreat (AROHO). She received an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. A Louisiana native, she now lives with her family in Los Angeles.

Peace Dreams

By Pattie Palmer-Baker

Teacher:

Stop hissing orders.
Streamline your body into a fish shape,
float with your students in a sound-stilled ocean,
flash love notes with your sequined eyes.

Stockbroker:

See the half-dressed man crumpled
on the trash-littered sidewalk?
Brake your black Mercedes, carry him to your car,
rest him on the leather backseat beneath a cashmere blanket.

Biker:

Push away the tequila shot,
speed across town to the crumbling care center.
Listen all day, into the night
to you father’s war stories
until you both fall asleep, heads touching.

President:

Lie down on half-mown grass
with all the ISIS leaders of the world.
Take turns guessing the shapes of the clouds.
Push ivory feathers out of your pores

longer than the shine of the moon.

………………………………………….

Pattie Palmer-Baker is a Portland OR artist and poet. Over the years of exhibiting her artwork—a combination of paste paper collages with her poems in calligraphic form—she discovered that most people, despite what they may believe, do like poetry; in fact many liked the poems better than the visual art. She now concentrates on writing poetry and personal essays.

Reading recommendation: Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out, edited by Fawzia Afzal-Khan.

Radio Jockey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Carl Dimitri

Carl Dimitri, a Providence, Rhode Island-based artist, is committed to drawing one cartoon a day until the Trump era is over. Carl has received fellowships in painting from the Vermont Studio Center and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He was also elected in 2012 into The Drawing Center in New York City. “Radio Jockey” is from his series “Hello, Mussolini.”

Tornado

By Eve Lyons

This is me:
protected but trapped
while the industry twists around me.
This is a factory:
churning out medications and patients
on assembly lines
but leaving them scattered like
a devastated trailer park,
they must conform to a list of behavioral criteria
in the DSM-V and they must
have problems that can be solved in
twenty-four sessions or less.
This is me:
Sitting in my office, my degree,
my world of art and poetry and music
that do not fit
into this system.

Tell me how a fifteen-year-old Black girl
who has been bounced from family member
to family member, who has lost her hearing
without knowing how, who believes that
meeting with a therapist means she is stupid,
tell me how she fits into this system.
Tell me what kind of drugs could best
solve her problems.
Tell me how this system can help the
eighteen-year-old boy who just came out,
only to find himself raped by two men
who were supposed to be friends?

Isolation of affect: The ability to talk about trauma
without any emotional expression.

It is a survival skill in this system
that re-traumatizes us
every day we live in it.
There are days when I feel useless
against the tornado
which sends my paycheck every month.
Twisters are deceptive,
I learned that in Texas,
which has the most tornadoes,
and deadlier ones.
You could watch one
wipe out your neighbors.
You never know
if it will destroy you
till it already has.

………………………………………………………………….

Eve Lyons is a poet and fiction writer living in the Boston area. Her work has appeared in Lilith, New Vilna Review, Word Riot, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, Mutha magazine, and several anthologies.

Reading recommendation: Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly.

Flimflam and Uncle Sam

By Neil Ellman

Don’t try me, no condescension. please,
no more, it’s over, kaput.
there is no certainty in this life:
neither truth nor validity:
the blue jay isn’t blue
except for a certain trick of light
nor is the earth as seen from space
a shade of verdant green
but bluer than a turquoise ring
and Pluto just a piece of rock.

I’ve had it with so-called miracles:
a granite statue bleeding from its eyes
the face of the Savior in a piece of toast
or the billionth birth of a child
as a miracle, of miracles, its parents say,
while it happens every day.

I huddled in my bombproof shelter
when the Russians were coming
prepared for my computer to crash on Y2K
ate only figs to fight hoof-and-mouth disease
and waited for the Messiah’s arrival
in April, then May, then June
and every month and year since then.

I’ve learned that full employment means
thirty million people out of work
that the One Percent runs everything
except the movements of my bowels
that a tweet is bigger than a thought
and a thought is nowhere to be found
in any politician’s head.

I’ve had it, I quit, I’ll go to my cave
or even my grave
one of many who have been fooled
bamboozled, flimflammed
and deceived by the powers that be
but never, never again.

……………………………

Neil Ellman is a poet from New Jersey. He has published numerous poems in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.

Viewing recommendation: Network, starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Robert Duvall; screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote, “Television is democracy at its ugliest”; and directed by Sidney Lumet, 1976.