Poetry – Page 16 – Writers Resist

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.

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

We 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—

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.

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.

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.

Complications

By Michael Peck

there were too many complications
too many forms of behavior expected
nice right angles meant to shape
your life and opinions
nobody else seemed to mind
or maybe the shaping process
had worked more effectively on them
having started earlier
before the individual character
had formed roots
freedom and independence were valued
as slogans on posters
and in speeches
but not valued in the individual
not in daily life
unless you had the money
to remove yourself
from the working-class reality
which demanded a much more
tight-fitting social uniform
and mindset
schools were to train a workforce
not educate a thinking population
people who think are dangerous
acting independently of the expected norm
only a few very wealthy individuals
were allowed into that room

I am a gregarious loner who lives in the desert in the Utah Four Corners area. I love getting up early in the morning and drinking coffee and writing poetry. I call it a coffee meditation. Writing helps to distill all the local and national political problems that are fermenting in my mind into a usable and drinkable spirit.

Photo credit: Ian Cook via a Creative Commons license.

Simone de Beauvoir Sends Trump a Sext

By Sandra L. Faulkner

“A man is in the right in being a man.”

I’m going to pull you by the power tie
and drag you through the rooms of my mind
like a man beg me for the boot in your face
my foot imprint eye-black smudged on your cheeks

“and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.”

Then, I will top you    like a cork-stopper
screw the cap on tight   tighter than your golf grip
small balls streaming past a wet bunker
scoring high    on the way      to your hole in one

“And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex.’”

I will be the bottom of your form
sign my name in permanent blood
as you like it and should like it
my stain a sheet of satin in your drawer

“For him she is sex—absolute sex, no less.”

Let me talk you all night
grab your         midnight part
until we      see the wee           hour sparks
and glisten       in the TV light

“He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.”

I’m going to    punt and peel   the layers
push my fingers          into your dough
the middle of us like a big-bigger pie
my box            of plums tucked inside my pants

Sandra L. Faulkner is Professor of Communication and Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Bowling Green State University. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Mama, Ithaca Lit, Gulf Stream, damselfly and elsewhere. She knits, runs, and writes poetry about her feminist, middle-aged rage in NW Ohio with her partner, their warrior girl, and two rescue mutts. Read more at https://bgsu.academia.edu/SandraFaulkner.

Black Lives Matter

By Joel Fisher

The black pain explodes
Where he dropped
Disintegrating to flowers

And in that moment
Shot and shot and shown
The heavy-gauged

Is a mourning of
Its blue-grey trigger
The reality that

On this pavement
Stained just as red
We hold, self-evident

Black Lives Matter

Joel Fisher is currently an undergraduate reading Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Photo credit: “Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge” by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters.

Human Profiling

By IE Sommsin

To spot a fascist requires no great skill.

Note the curl of the lip, the smirk, the sneer,

the glint in the eye, the stare and the leer,

the look of contempt that aspires to kill.

Something in their faces, odd, off and wrong,

something missing under the skin and bone,

and in their voices a metallic tone

that makes a tuneless and relentless song.

Then how is it so many seem puzzled?

Why is the obvious that hard to name, when

the cruel children piss on the flame and

the mind of a nation is muzzled?

People have little need for eye or ear,

if they will not see and refuse to hear.

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

Image credit: DonkeyHotey via a Creative Commons license.

Basta!

A ghazal by Andrea Fry

Is there a common measure of enough?
And which increment morphs into “enough?”

A subjective voice must name the limit—
masochist signals when his pain’s enough,

The politician who keeps on smiling—
What’s his tipping point? When’s he heard enough?

I’m so confounded by all the excess,
yet the clamor says I don’t have enough.

Get more stocks, sex, friends, technology.
Worry that I’m not fit or thin enough!

Then lift my jowls into emoticons.
Despair that I’m no longer young enough.

The crooks in office sold their souls en masse.
The scale of their enrichment not enough.

Drill the oceans. Shaft the poor. Go for more!
Get more guns, never tragedy enough.

Do I need to list the suffering? Is
violence to children not vile enough?

And now a crude, corrupt and greedy thug,
marbled lobbies, bikinis—not enough—

tweets rage, misogyny, intolerance.
His world’s not white and masculine enough.

While I can’t find refuge from his squalor,
for him the spotlight can’t be big enough.

I swear now is that elusive frontier.
That universal measure of “enough.”

Perhaps it’s got nothing to do with man,
and what we think is or is not enough.

Global warming, germs, the San Andreas…
Instead, might the earth say to us?—Enough!

Andrea Fry was born in Dallas, raised mainly in New York City and the Catskill Mountains, and educated at Union College and Columbia University. She published her first collection of poems, The Bottle Diggers, in May 2017 (Turning Point Press). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem “Murder,” which was published by J Journal. She was a finalist in Georgia College’s Arts & Letters Prize 2010 contest, a semi-finalist in the 2010 Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry, and a semi-finalist in River Styx 2010 International Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Ars Medica (University of Toronto Press), Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, The Comstock Review, Graham House Review, Reed Magazine, Stanford Literary Review, St. Petersburg Review, and the chapbook Still Against War, Poems for Marie Ponsot. Andrea is also a nurse practitioner at NYU Langone Medical Center. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two formerly feral felines. Visit her website at www.andrealfry.com.

Photo credit: Thibaud Saintin via a Creative Commons license.

Why He Said It

By Don Krieger

He knew what he was getting into
— US President during a bereavement phone call

Telling a dead soldier: You knew what you were getting into
is simply saying: Don’t blame me.
It’s cowardly, which is why our president said it.

Telling the soldier’s family: He knew what he was getting into
is more nuanced.
It still says: Don’t blame me,
a coward’s statement
which is why our president said it.

It also says: Blame your son for your sorrow,
a brutal statement
which is why our president said it.

It also says: Though this is a bereavement call,
I offer you my excuse from responsibility as your son’s Commander in Chief
and a brutal sentiment to add to your grief,
an incompetent and vicious statement
which is why our president said it.

Don’s poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine and Uppagus, VerseWrights, Neurology, and in English and Farsi in Persian Sugar in English Tea.

Image credit: Morning Calm Weekly Newspaper via a Creative Commons license.

“Why He Said it” previously appeared in Tuck Magazine.

Not Dear Mr

By Elisabeth Horan

Let’s get something straight.
This pussy is not for you.
Pussy is for me and my sisters.
Pussy is something I eat for breakfast lunch and dinner.
You might eat vaginas.
Poor those vaginas.

Pussy is something that sits on my lap and purrs and is
soft and sweet and hunts mice for me.
I suppose you could have a cat.
I hardly bet you would stroke it though and
it might scratch you too like us sisters would do to you.

Pussy is nice.
Pussy is mine.
But I am not a pussy.
There is a pussy in my pants but it’s only for my sisters.

You may not grab me or my sisters by the
pussy or vagina or cunt or beaver or cootch.

You may not.
You have no access.

“Cunt” is what I get to say when I stub my toe.
You may say, “Gosh darn it!”

Beavers are in my pond slapping their big wide tails and
eating trees with their sisters.

Cootch – is for cootchie-cootchie coo – I see you!

A pussy-bow, well I just don’t know.
Let’s rename it penis-testicle tie.
More apt for its inverted upside-down shape and the ridiculousness of it all.

We don’t want you.
Us sisters and all our pussies together, are stronger than you.
And our pussies will sneak up behind you and
ask you if you want to go furniture shopping and then eat you alive.

Sincerely not yours:
The pussy, cunt, beaver, cootch, vagina, et al. Sisterhood.

Elisabeth Horan is an imperfect creature from Vermont advocating for animals, children and those suffering alone and in pain—especially those ostracized by disability and mental illness. She has two sons. She is trying very hard. She teaches ESL and community college liberal arts. Elisabeth is at Moonchild & Occulum & Burning House & Milk & Beans & Blanket Sea and other pro feminist places. Her chapbook Pensacola Girls (with Kristin Garth) was published by Bone & Ink Press, October 2018. She cries a lot, but is learning to smile 🙂 She loves being a poet and a mom. Follow her on Twitter at @ehoranpoet and visit her website: ehoranpoet.com.

Photo credit: Cosimo Roams via a Creative Commons license.

Six Bells

By Carron Little

for Judie Anderson

Life started with a brush,
Caressing pigments over fibres
Joined in hands, two became four,
Horns grew life through walls.
Sacred milk became six,
Six pairs of hands became eight
The light keeps pouring,
Milk over water, water over stone

Six shifts, Six pairs of golden horns
Six plates at Six am
The bell rings
Stamping the pigment
The sound rings like a marching band
Printing the daily news
Each letter a historic imprint
The headline “Printers Quit!”
Replaced by the blue ghost

The digital machine moves in to take hold
A hydroponic change brings in a new age
Stacking the cairns in geo formation
Learning quark and illustrator
Library halls become digital walls
The marching band of the newsroom
Loses its song
Between black ink and micro-chips
The Newsroom quits!
The battle of industry and monopoly play
While the last song of the marching band fades

The bell rings at Six am
Six horns, Six stones and Six hands
The mighty Sioux stands over history
The walk begins
A slow march
As the tectonic plates shift again
The design world appears in a blue screen,
Microchips become flies,
Silently watching, silently listening
Stamping the stories into history

Six stones, Six bells, Six golden horns

Based in Chicago, Carron Little grew up in Britain receiving a BA First Class Honors from Goldsmiths College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has been teaching in Performance since 2014. Little starts her practice by interviewing people and that becomes the starting point for poetry and performance. She has exhibited, performed and screened films of her work locally and internationally. She is currently working on the public engagement project Spare Rib Revisited that she developed in Lucerne, Switzerland (2016) and Liverpool U.K. (2017). This year she has performed her poetry at Burren College of Art, Ireland; Sarajevo Winter Festival, Bosnia; Grand Rapids; Berlin Performing Arts Fesitval, Germany; and Loge Theater, Lucerne, Switzerland. Follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/carron.little.5 and visit her website: carronlittle.com.

Digital newspaper stands image courtesy of Mosman Library, Australia.

Where the dem things were

By Cheryl Caesar

The day Don wore his Shutdown Mantle
and made mischief of one kind

and another

the Washington Post called him “BOTTOMLESS PINOCCHIO!”
and Don said, “I’LL SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT!”
so he went off to bed with 2 Big Macs and Fox and Friends.

That very night in a junk food and Adderall crash
some green turf grew

and grew

and grew until his room became the Bedminster golf course
with undocumented workers standing all around

and a golf cart puttered by just for Don
and he puttered off through night and day

and in and out of weeks
and almost, dear God, two years
to where the dem things were.

And when he came to the place where the dem things were
they roared their terrible facts and gnashed their terrible stats

and showed their terrible logic and literacy skills

till Don said, “NANCY CAN’T TALK SHE’S A GIRL!”

and tried to tame them with his magic trick

of stamping and sulking and shouting over them

but they weren’t frightened of him and Chuck laughed at him instead of ganging up, boys against girls. NOT FAIR!

“And now,” cried Don, “let the Tall Wall be built!”

“Oh, stop,” said Chuck and Nancy, laughing.

“You’re acting like a clown!” “I don’t care!”
“We can’t shut the country down!” “I don’t care!”
“Don’t hunch sulking in your chair!” “I don’t care!”
“Is that syrup in your hair?” “I don’t care!”
“I would think that you could see – “I don’t care!”
“your ass is where your head should be.” “I don’t care!”

So the dem things left him there.
They wouldn’t build walls anywhere.*

And Don stomped into the antechamber and threw his magic blank papers on the floor and had a wild rumpus all by himself.

But Don the King of the Tall Wall, Tariff Man, was lonely and wanted to be where everyone shouted “Lock her up!” “ICE!” and “Build the wall!”

Then all around from far away across the world
he smelled Big Macs and KFC
so he gave up trying to be king of where the dem things were.

And the dem things cried, “Oh, won’t you go—
we’ll vote you out – we loathe you so!”
And Don said, “No!”

The dem things went out and talked to reporters
and laughed with their terrible facts and terrible stats
and terrible logic and literacy skills and new names for Don
but Don stepped into his private golf cart,
muttering, “I’ll be back,”

and puttered back over two (endless) years
and in and out of weeks
and through a day

and into the night of his own room
where he found his Big Macs waiting for him

and they were still hot.

Fox and Friends were starting to cool down, though.

*Sorry, wrong Sendak.

Cheryl Caesar lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for twenty-five years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. She has published her poetry and translations of Jean Tardieu’s in Blackberry, The Coe Review, Labyris, The Wayside Quarterly, Stand and The Dialogue of Nations.