Tag: Poetry

Jump

By Yazmin Navarro

There was always an ache.
A pain that filled the inside of my belly.
A pain that engulfed me.
Of missing something.
Of missing someone.
Of missing my mother.

It was the times.
It was the need.
It was seeing the hunger in her children’s eyes.
It was the fear of watching her children die.
She pried my hand from hers.
She looked away.
She feared my wounded face.
She didn’t look back.
She feared my face more than she feared the abyss.

She didn’t know how.
She didn’t know when.
She didn’t know where.
But she knew the answers lay ahead.
In a foreign land.
With a foreign tongue.
She could feed her children from there.
She could sustain her children from there.

She lost her children.
And I lost my mother.
Fuck you fence.
Jump.
No one wins.

 

Yazmin Navarro holds a BA in English and a Masters in Public Administration. She was born in Northern Mexico and immigrated to the United States as a 7-year-old. In her spare time, she writes about growing up as an undocumented immigrant—the hardships faced as a child brought to a country she didn’t know and her difficult path to authorized status—and she’s currently working on a children’s book. Yazmin has been a Marine Corps spouse for the past twelve years, has a daughter and two dogs, and resides in Southern California.

Photo credit: Jonathan McIntosh via a Creative Commons license.

 

The Salt March

By Howard Richard Debs

“We are entering upon a life and death struggle” —Mahatma Gandhi

 

The oldest, Gandhi himself, then 61
the youngest among those at
the start, 18. There were but 80 in all
to begin. It took 24 days, 240 miles
on foot to reach the coast.

2500 would next march on the Dharasana saltworks,
60,000 were in jail by year’s end.
Salt is basic to life they implored, do not keep us
from our needs. The salt laws are not just.

Gandhi claimed
the salt of the sea on
the shore of Dandi. He said “With this
I am shaking the foundations …”

 

Author’s note: When I saw video and photos of protesters in wheel chairs being dragged from the halls of the U.S. Congress I was at first enraged. Then I read Alan Catlin’s poem, “Mixed Message: A History Lesson 2017.” I felt the need to provide a complementing piece, “The Salt March” is my contribution to the colloquy. You can read Catlin’s poem here.

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of a finalist award in the 28th Annual 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His work appears internationally in numerous publications such as Yellow Chair Review, Silver Birch Press, The Galway Review, New Verse News, Cleaver Magazine, and his essay, “The Poetry of Bearing Witness,” is published by On Being. His photography can be found in select publications, including in Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His full length work, Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing), is forthcoming in latter-2017. Read more about him in the Directory of American Poets & Writers.

Photo credit: Will Power via a Creative Commons license.

Season of American Lupine

By Lucille Ausman

 

he is out extinguishing wild fires
lost in the smoke
digging lines in the ground trying to trap her behind the wall before she can reach him
suffocating in her fury
he’s strong and brave and all American
I guess
but she doesn’t want protecting
she doesn’t want to cool down and calm down
the report reads
0% containment
try to break out the fire hoses and hold her back
but you can’t
her power and heat cover the landscape
filling it with blackness
and everything changes
life as it was
is destroyed

only weeks later
the color purple
emerges
once again
beautiful delicate and full of new life
out of the flames
grow the roots of hope.

 

Lucille Ausman recently graduated from Smith College where she studied Anthropology and Government and where her interest in activism and social justice took root. She has spent the summer living in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in the Pacific Northwest and working with the Forest Service during one of the most dangerous fire seasons on record, in part due to climate change. She dedicates this poem to the activists whose own flames cannot be contained by our current political climate.

Photo credit: Alan Levine via a Creative Commons license.

 

Washing Instructions

By Brenda Birenbaum

 

You raise your hands to hush the crowd, you raise your hands america america, you raise your hands palms out to hush the crowd to give it voice, translate primordial hoots and jeers and lewd youtubes—flip off the camera, yeah, thrust that pelvis forward, yeah—the gun swells in your pants and you kick out ’em riffraff that ain’t starched n’ proper ironed, that air the laundry in public and trespass on us united bleachables coast to coast and I forget …….. like totally being mute being wrung out in the spin cycle being all ears in dark alleys as I raise your garbage (can after reeking can) above my tired shoulders, shaking the thang, cajoling the ejaculate, over the side of the dumpster. I don’t peer in when I bring it back down to check for leftover crap—my eyes are shot no kidding all I see are plastic shadows and streetlight glare splintering off patches of greasy film on the asphalt. I raise my hands america america always the man, palms out, gold face slathered in foundation, raise ’em hands, fake face, pink smile, maw full of porcelain no kidding full of chowed-down kill, fake longing to rewind to the spot embracing the same kinda shit as empty words (swallowtails had left their cocoons) ready set hit play

It’s love, I think, picking off tears of joy from the stubble above my neck tats, blowing murky soap bubbles into the rowdy dusk. Laundry instructions say not to mix the colors with whites, throw ’em black brown n’ yellow in the wash (red, too), get ’em all proper hot n’ agitated, and fuck it like it is, they still mud after rinse and repeat, not a jury of my peers no kidding no joe sixpack, the one that obeys, that cashes his pathetic paycheck at the end of the week to help with the economy to help drown his sorrow in suds, fess up to the barman how he ain’t got insurance to fix his kid, worse, dough for his clunker, which means he’s gonna lose his job as my fingers twirl ever so lightly over the handgun laying next to his brew to soak up the warmth and the glory, ain’t that just swell, chin tilted up bloodshot eyes reflecting the cool from the wall-mounted TV that gives its all in red white and blue, amerika amerika, and I just love ya for telling it like it—it like it—it like it—is, I could lick the podium under your feet wrap my arms around your legs tickle your nipples gobble your golden dick as you suck the loaded mic, all together now, take it all in take your balls into my hands follow your lead a rampage of rape ’em all bitches and the earth the west coast is burning (they had it coming those godless faggots) and I forget …… like totally the heat rising from the inferno, fire n’ brimstone, skyhigh flames leaping across ridges on the tube, place’s going down the tube, you gotta show those dipshit bleeding hearts that love ’em brown migrants and green trees more than me, ’em that say we can’t stay unextinct without water and bees, you tell ’em, yeah, you tell ’em, my gun is bigger than yours, my territory spans the words over and believe me, I’m telling it like it is, I’ll make your cock great again and it ain’t gonna be internet spam

Hold on to the railing as you stumble down the dark stairwell, the elevator is down (what’s going on, ask clueless neighbors evacuating their east coast cocoons), uniformed technicians stringing detonation wires across the sleepy neighborhood, trucks waiting out on the street to take us away no kidding it’s not men with guns, just police to serve and protect black lives matter like road kill as-seen-on-cop-shows-on-TV, surely that ain’t us. Don’t listen to that nonsense kiddo, no way they had internment camps in america, nah, genocide never happened in america, nah, and water boarding I believe is a laundering technique from a bygone era when women with big behinds in heavy canvas garments were folded over a stream banging the bedding in pristine water free and clear of pharmaceuticals neonicotinoids PCBs fluoride nuclear waste before my tastebuds turned metallic. I’m all thin and diluted and depleted and I really please would like to keep my in-unit washer and drier and I forget …….. like totally that I got the 3 strikes, I’m the bitch I’m the queer and the nigga jew like whoa obsolete stuff that didn’t receive the upgrade to muslim and mexican and hate two-point-o, and in the rising heat I’m the vanished butterfly and the hollow tree, my eyes dim out, I’m like one of ’em pathetic souls that can’t read the fine print in the manual, I apologize in advance on my knees on the wind swept asphalt, random trash slapping my face as it blows past, and I’m pleading and sobbing america america I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry, I’m with y’all in the hot arena, cheering and shrieking proper until the huge screens shatter and the blood that was up to my ankles a minute ago is lapping at my face and keeps rising steady in the dark, washing in red the great unwashed—that kinda stain never comes out—until it bursts the walls, dumping a mangled sopping mess of guns and banners and body parts and bits of screens and platforms and POVs in the pitch-black street where the lights are photoshopped out and I no longer see shit

 

Brenda Birenbaum’s short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Vignette Review, Random Sample Review, Low Light Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an editor for Unbroken Journal and can be followed on Twitter at @brbirenbaum.

Photo credit: Rod Brazier via a Creative Commons license.

Our Lady of the Hurricane

By Jackleen Holton Hookway

 

wears knifepoint stilettos

that she fashioned

from the skin of water

moccasins that slide

underneath the dark slip

of brackish floodwater

when she takes them off

and wades in up to her neck

as the twin snakes slither ahead

guiding her through

a maze of underwater suburbs

where she shatters windows

frees entire families

from waterlogged houses

gathers dogs and cats

in a Hermès alligator bag

slung over one sculpted arm

as the reptiles slide onto her feet again

and she springs to the surface

a crowd gathering to bear witness

she steps ashore

the floodplain her runway

a mother and baby in tow

yes she’s come to float us

out of this misery

of biblical proportions

to deliver us to a new riverbank

the arms of our grateful children

our saved neighbors

encircling us

 

Jackleen Holton Hookway’s poems have appeared in American Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, North American Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Rise Up Review, and are forthcoming in the anthology Not My President: The Anthology of Dissent (Thoughtcrime Press).

Photo credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via a Creative Commons license.

 

Costumes

By Stephanie Williams

 

I didn’t shave all month
Quiet, itchy rebellion.

A silent wind-chime
Should at least look the part.

They marched
I had prior commitments.

I connected my daughter’s brows
Put flowers in her hair.

I posted pictures
They asked if we’re Mexican.

This year she’ll be a princess
$40 on a pink tulle dress.

 

Stephanie Williams writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and daughter.

Photo credit: Nina A. J. G. vis a Creative Commons license.

Silk Purse I: An Erasure

from Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC 3/21/16

 

By Douglas Wood

 

The bomb clock
doesn’t require a number
but zero,
No matter,
The wiped face
of the earth

What kind of minds write
in twisted missiles
and the swirling terms
imposed by disaster—
disaster repeated
in the hope
it didn’t happen?

But it’s precisely
the opposite population
that will rise
and move the eternal,
knowing the unbreakable
will forever exist

It could be happening now

 

Douglas Wood’s work has been published in Narrative Magazine, The Rattling Wall, Rise Up Review, Coachella and TheEeel (formerly Newer York) among others. He received his MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert and also workshopped with renowned editor Tom Jenks. As a playwright, lyricist, or composer, he’s had twelve plays produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere, including the Expense of Spirit which was selected for presentation in New York for the Gay Games IV. A child of the Midwest, Douglas lives in Los Angeles, and, while he does not miss the change of seasons, he does miss gluten.

Photo credit: The Meat Case via a Creative Commons license.

The Night Journey

By Jonathan May

A found poem from: FBI Guantanamo Bay Inquiry // The Night Journey, Sura 17, The Koran //
Department of Defense Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual – 1983

 

The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist.

on several occasions, witness (“W”) saw detainees (“ds”) in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor w/no chair/food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves, and were left there 18, 24 hrs or more.

Invite men to the way of the Lord, by wisdom, and mild exhortation; and dispute with them in the most condescending manner: For your Lord knows well him who strays from the path, and He knows well those who are rightly directed.

d was kept in darkened cell in Naval Brig at GTMO, then transferred to Camp Delta where he gave no info. Then taken to Camp X-Ray and put in plywood hut. Interrogators yelled and screamed at him. One interrogator squatted over the Koran.

If you take vengeance on any, take a vengeance proportional to the wrong which has been done you; but if you suffer wrong patiently, this will be better for your soul.

As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships, or to cope with repeated frustrations.

civilian contractor asked W to come see something. There was an unknown bearded longhaired d gagged w/duct tape that covered much of his head. W asked if he had spit at interrogators, and the contractor laughingly replied that d had been chanting the Koran nonstop. No answer to how they planned to remove the duct tape

Wherefore bear opposition with patience; but your patience shall not be practicable, unless with God’s assistance.

The use of most coercive techniques is improper and violates laws.

W observed sleep deprivation interviews w/strobe lights and loud music. Interrogator said it would take 4 days to break someone doing an interrogation 16 hrs w/lights and music on and 4 hrs off.

And be not aggrieved on account of the unbelievers; neither be troubled for that which they subtly devise;

W heard previously that a female military personnel would wet her hands and touch the d’s face as part of their psych-ops to make them feel unclean and upset them. W heard that in an effort to disrupt ds who were praying during interrogation, female intelligence personnel would do this

for God is with those who fear Him, and are upright. Whosoever chooses this transitory life, We will bestow on him beforehand that which We please; on him, namely, whom We please:

The torture situation is an external conflict, a contest between the subject and his tormentor. The pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance.

occasionally ds complained of inappropriate behavior i.e., incident in which d alleged female guard removed her blouse and, while pressing her body against a shackled and restrained d from behind, handled his genitalia and wiped menstrual blood on his head and face as punishment for lack of cooperation

Afterwards We will appoint him Hell for his abode; he shall be thrown in to be scorched, covered with ignominy, and utterly rejected from mercy.

As soon as possible, the “questioner” should provide the subject with the rationalization that he needs for giving in and cooperating. This rationalization is likely to be elementary, an adult version of a childhood excuse such as:

  1. “They made you do it.”
  2. “All the other boys are doing it.”
  3. “You’re really a good boy at heart.”

But whosoever chooses the life to come, and directs his endeavor towards the same, being also a true believer;

loud music and strobe lights

the endeavor of these shall be acceptable unto God.

 

Jonathan May grew up in Zimbabwe as the child of missionaries. He lives and teaches in Memphis, Tennessee, where he recently served as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. In addition, May teaches writing as therapy at a residential facility for women with eating disorders. Read more of Jonathan’s work at his website, memphisjon.wordpress.com.

Abu Ghraib drawing by Katie Gressitt-Diaz.

The poem was previously published at Heavy Feather Review.

Black Birds

By Jennifer Stein

Black birds the size I dream dinosaurs would be
Cloud-cutting straight flying unflapping arms
Like if you asked a kid to draw a bird
Who never saw a bird, and threw his bulky crayoned visions to the clouds
and here they are in soundless flight.
Black birds, black and ominous as octopus ink made blacker still
By the coral colored brushstroke sky at sundown
This is the way it happens, of course it is, because man’s nature is reactionary
And our worlds are often governed by boys whose diplomacy
is playing chicken on the jungle gym while teachers scream “Timeout, Don”
but they are beyond policing, now.
In the air space above a country I live in are laws
That say no birds but ours can soar here–
should never crowd the sky
But here they are, with the flash they said they’d bring.
No trumpets trump-trump-eting, no angels heralding, no hero’s good-bye
Only mute fury, flash-bang, I didn’t even have a chance
to close my eyes

 

Jennifer Stein is an aspiring writer, which means right now it’s a hobby she’s trying to accelerate into a habit. She’s lived in a major swing state for the past four presidential elections and after this last one, she is happy to add her voice to the resistance.

Photo credit: Jon Bunting via a Creative Commons license.

On a Side Street in Tehran a Woman Watches the Protest of Neda’s Death

By Penny Perry

“Make up should be for your
husband only,” my mother
says in my head. In real life,
she is home in her apartment,
blowing cool air on her second
cup of tea, filling out her grocery list.

“You don’t need a clock,
you can tell time by the tasks
she performs,” my father always half-
grumbles, half praises.

From the secret pocket of my hooded
black coat, I pluck
a small tube, too big for a bullet,
too small for a gun. I daub color
on dry lips.
Half a block away, a few women,
some young, some my age, shout slogans,
wave posters of Neda.

I promised my mother I wouldn’t
come anywhere near here. I tell myself
I will stay on this street. Spoiled olives
drop like bruises from the tree
on the sidewalk.

In this ten o’clock Saturday sun
the lipstick is the tentative pink
of a small smudge in a white
apple blossom.
Before Western books were banned
I bought Brontes and Austen from the book
store with the faded awning.

Those days, I walked to work
in heels, tilted my painted face
like a flower to the sun.

No policeman here to copy
my license plate, shatter
my windshield. I could climb
back in my car, drive by
the protestors, honk my horn,
wave two fingers in a victory V,

and speed home to my husband
and son. I pocket my lipstick, walk
toward the women,
one of them in a tight coat,
nervous streaks of eyeliner
like winding streets on her lids.

Two Basijis so young,
and not wearing their helmets,
stroll around the corner.
They are laughing, sipping sherbet.
Their truncheons loose in their hands.
They are like my cousin Isar
who believes women deserve
cut faces, split bones.

I should turn back. On this warm
day my head is hot under the hood
of my coat. I think of the night
my son was born, my prayer
of thanks that he was not a girl.

One of the men tosses the last
of his sherbet on a poster of Neda
abandoned on the sidewalk. I slide
behind a tree. I hope the Basijis
will rush past.

In my secret pocket, my phone rings.
Rubinstein’s sweet piano playing Chopin.
My mother’s Saturday call.
It is eleven o’clock.

 

Author’s note: When I was working on the poem I wasn’t thinking of myself as a white woman writing about an event from an Iranian woman’s first person point of view. I was caught up in Neda’s bravery and the bravery of the women protesting Neda’s death. Only now, looking back at the poem, I see there is a question in the poem that is personal to me. How brave would I, an American, middle-class white woman, be if protesting and marching meant not just the threat of arrest, but the possibility of dying and leaving a child motherless. That’s a question that I haven’t had to face and maybe that is one of the reasons I admire the Iranian women protestors so much.

Penny Perry is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee in poetry and fiction. Her work has appeared in California Quarterly, Lilith, Redbook, Earth’s Daughter, the Paterson Literary Review and the San Diego Poetry Annual. Her first collection of poems, Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage (Garden Oak Press, 2012) earned praise from Marge Piercy, Steve Kowit, Diane Wakoski and Maria Mazziotti Gillan. She writes under two names, Penny Perry and Kate Harding.

Photo credit: Anonymous.

Paul Ryan in Effigy

By Gigi Wagg

You, Paul Ryan, who imagine yourself an emerging monarch,
are really a moth—bat food, with the base, serviceable body
of a military cargo plane: dusty, dull and fueled by heavy diesel.
You circle the towers of Trump power, crashing your dumb head
into pane after pane of trash-TV limelight, dutifully peddling
disaster for poor countrymen you disdain as crawling ants.

This paean is not about sticking pins, Voodoo-like, into a doll,
but it serves up the sheer joy of swatting you in moth-body effigy,
giving metaphorical relief to the opposition. How will it go for you,
Mr. Fake-Christian Politician? Swat after swat, your frenzied orbit
will be turned into breeze-buffeted free-fall, those terrible dark wings
tilted and torn, finally unable to raise the useless weight of your torso
and guts to anything but erratic grasshopper leaps, you, too earthbound
to escape the final swat. Then, “Whap!” will go the pink plastic tool and
“Squish!” the picnic napkin on what remains of you, ugly lepidopteran!

Alternatively, you could be left hanging on the glass, your greasy guts
spilled, a sticky residue just enough to hold the shell of carcass
and denuded wings in full view of both power-crazed luminescence
and climbing, scourging ants—a suitable effigy, in nomine Domine …

Better yet, your maimed and flailing body could be left, still pulsed
by your beating heart, as steak tartar for the ants (bats would be too
quick)—and yes, you’ll be on your back. Go ahead and flip your frantic
Altar Boy wings (or Dumbo ears) all you can, but you will only prolong
the pain. This is mete (so meat!) and justice for the pain you inflict upon
the least among us, Herr Bat!

May you feel the myriad bites of your crooked social justice
and various hypocrisies as the ants dismantle you, limb by limb
and clot by clot of slowly drying blood. No anesthetic, no mercy,
no P.A.S., just the excruciating chomp-chomping of ant masses and
the belching of curses from survivors of your death-care plan.

Sparing cemeteries the dump of your greasy guts, let Formicidae
clean up crews feast until there is no gore left, then carry off
your Dumbo wings, cleaned to their skeletal lightness. They’ll glide
as if on a parade float, with now and then a triumphal dip, a pause to
proclaim, “Ha-ha! We have won full bellies and a fan for the den!”

Imagine this scene as the hunters carrying home the dead wolf, to a
familiar sound track by Prokofiev … only the creature’s hide is so small
this time that nobody remembers why the beast seemed frightening, once.

 

Gigi Wagg is a pen name of an adjunct faculty writer and activist who claims, in solidarity with the California Part-Time Faculty Association founders’ jingle, “I’ve taught everywhere!” The 2016 election cycle derailed Gigi’s other writing projects in the interest of resistance to the neocon agenda and ultimately, the neocon-cum-fascist con of the Donald Trump Presidency. The submitted poem compares Paul Ryan, the Conservative antagonist of human rights and healthcare for all Americans, to a moth, a greasy, ugly, pest that is infesting the body politic—and, yes, Gigi swatted hundreds of moths in a real infestation.

Photo credit: Ervins Strauhmanis via a Creative Commons license.

Protest personalities

By Ruth McCole

Women’s March, Boston, Massachusetts.
Grim determination turns to gladness turns to awe
We leave too early
Afterward bells ring.

Muslim Ban One, Boston, Massachusetts.
A roiling, boiling storm-crowd
Makes waves.
A man shouts “You’re all going to hell”
A sign reads “Jesus was a refugee.”

Muslim Ban Two, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Nighttime scholar’s vigil
“Not because we are good
But because we are people”
Tears spill.

Tax March, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Village fete, bright and white
“I’m a raisin in a bowl of oatmeal”
“Too many laws killed Freddie.”

March For Science, Washington, D.C.
Rain lashes curious queues
She admires my waterproof placard
I shock her with the PhD Posters price tag
My privilege shows.

Climate March, Boston, Massachusetts.
Rainbows and windmills
My allergies soar
The happiest protest.

Fight Supremacy, Boston, Massachusetts.
A coalition crowd self segregates
Angry men, bandanas, moms
Cameras and screamers dart and shoal
After swaggering flags
Gazebo Nazis through the trees
Unseen, unheard.

 

Ruth McCole is a scientist from Brookline, Massachusetts. She studies the way genomes evolve to be as they are today. She is resisting and persisting in the new America and tweets about this @Ruth_persists. This is her first poem as an adult.

Photo credit: Haris Krikelis via a Creative Commons license.

Terabytes of Bullshit

By Jon Wesick

There’s a poetry reading in Victorville
so I drive to the land of football and gang tattoos.
The hotel room TV is wall to wall commercials.
I realize my life has been one long scream into a firehose,
a protest against terabytes of televangelists
fad diets, get-rich-quick schemes, and kitchen gadgets
in a nation of bad ideas
with its new, infomercial president.

I love the drafty theater
but the chairs are empty as interstellar space
with light years between audience members.
The national anthem plays and we stand
for a country that no longer exists.
On stage, my words murder platitudes.
Metaphors blast dogma with double-aught buckshot.
Images take chainsaws to propaganda.
Stone faces     stone silence
Books sleep on the table
unsold

 

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

Photo credit: Sarah Ackerman via a Creative Commons license.

After Charlottesville

By Nancy Dunlop

And may one be
happy in the face of bad things?
And may one make
art or knit or bake a bundt cake in the face of bad things?
And may one have a hopeful
meditative life, a restful prayer life, an active inner life in the face of bad things?
And may one laugh, make jokes in the face of bad things?
Is one allowed to have a sense of humor,
keep her charming, darling self alive and thriving,
in the face of bad things?
And may one take a walk, looking at the princely tops of
the white pines, remembering
the bald eagles over the lake, bulleting across the sky,
instead of reading another
article, another perspective, another call
to action, in the face of bad things? Is one
allowed to delete the emails screaming
“URGENT! We need YOU more than ever!
We haven’t heard from you, in a while. LOOK
at what just happened, NOW.”
May one skip the upcoming March Against Whatever-It-Is-Today because
she is tired, just
tired. And distressed by all the distress. Just for today,
may one keep her
dental appointment, go about her business, hold on to that
deep and abiding
crush on George Harrison in the face of bad things?
May one let down her guard in the face of bad things and feel safe doing so?
Or how about this:
Can one be outraged, scream, hurl
curses like fire balls from her mouth, be a dragon and a good person all at once?
And while we’re at it, can one feel
simple, straightforward outrage, all the while knowing she has privileges others do not?
Is one allowed to own her fury, even with her blind spots?
Or how about this, and this sounds dangerous: May one just let things
be, in the face of bad things?
May one seek silence for a little while, without
feeling complicit in enabling bad things?
May one feel love for some very specific reason or person or animal or love
for no reason at all, in the face of bad things?
May one maintain a sense of wonder in the face of bad things, a sense of yearning, of
eros, of beauty too large to encompass, in the face of bad things?
Can one hear past the static of bad things? See past the constant
interruptions of bad things?
May one write poems
about, say, one’s mother, or that young grackle at the feeder, which have
nothing to do with some kind of bearing witness to bad things?
Is one willing to be censured
but speak up anyway in the face of bad things?
Is one willing to make a fuss at a quiet dinner party
in the face of bad things?
May the poet claim oracular sanity in the face of bad things? 
May she say, “I see you,
more than you see yourself”?
May she see what she sees and say, “This is my truth and it is valid”?
Is one willing to be yelled down
by a cop in the face of bad things? Is one willing to be shoved
to the pavement? To be imprisoned for pushing back in the face of bad things?
Is one brave enough to put the sign back up
at the end of the driveway
in the face of bad things?
May one not smile back, although she was groomed to do so,
in the face of bad things?
Is one allowed to dance for two hours a day
in the face of bad things? Or pet the cat, losing all track
of time?
Can one maintain her mental fortitude, her faculties, her intellect, her sense of purpose, of moral compass, her connection to Source
in the face of bad things?
Does one need to forgive one who does bad things
because she senses he hates himself?
May one just avoid the one who does bad things?
May one simply trust that there is a very large God, a larger reckoning, which will take care of the one who does bad things?
May the poet do her job, surveying the Universe, swooping into galactic wormholes, caves of newly formed words, like spores, waiting to be plucked at their most pure?
May one just. Just just just watch
the new family of grackles whooshing
by the kitchen window, and, not even thinking about bad things,
consider how different she is from them, and how
much the same? How it’s all about
wing power?
Can one say to herself, I am an Artist, capital “A,”
and that matters most right now, and mean it? Really
mean it? Believe it?
Believe that is enough? Believe
that Art is what is needed more than
anything in the face of bad things?
May one hold a pen in one hand, a sword in the other and still
recognize herself?
Or is one given the wisdom to know
what to hold, when to hold it, when
to hold on, when to loosen
her grip and stop
just stop
thinking
that she must embrace
all the suffering in this bruised world, just stop
assuming that is, somehow, her job,
a joyless one, a dark and lethal one.

Is there joy seeping out, seeping out, seeping not weeping? Is joy
still there, waving to us, in full sight?

Can one feel joy despite
Joy despite
Joy despite
Joy despite

 

Nancy Dunlop is a poet and essayist who resides in Upstate New York, where she has taught at the University at Albany. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in print journals, including The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge, 13th Moon: A Feminist Literary Magazine, Works and Days, and Nadir, as well as online publications such as Swank Writing, RI\FT, alterra, Miss Stein’s Drawing Room, Truck, and Writers Resist. She has forthcoming work in Free State Review and the anthology, Emergence, published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Her work has also been heard on NPR.

Photo credit: Meal Makeover Moms via a Creative Commons license.

Then There I Was

By Harry Youtt

Then there I was, cold again,
flipping tossed blankets and a moist sheet
back over, and wishing for another,

knowing this time it must be
the fever leaving;
this time it might be finally over,

hearing at last
the caw of the morning crow
that’s made the night worth listening through

in spite of chaos
and Donnie Trump
and now all the ravens in the yard at sunrise

talking, talking,
telling me
today might be the day.

 

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 poetry. He has authored numerous poetry collections, including, most recently, Getting Through, Outbound for Elsewhere, and Elderverses. All of them are available via Amazon.com. The sentiment behind his title: 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 our 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 credit: Haley Finn via a Creative Commons license.

 

Introducing our newest poetry editor, Laura Orem

Writers Resist is delighted—again—to introduce a new poetry editor: Laura Orem is joining Ruth Nolan in our pursuit of resistance poetry.

Laura is a poet, essayist and visual artist. She’s the author of Resurrection Biology (Finishing Line Press 2017) and the chapbook Castrata: a Conversation (Finishing Line Press 2014). Laura received an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College and taught writing for many years at Goucher College in Baltimore.

A featured writer at the Best American Poetry blog, Laura’s poetry, essays and art have appeared in many journals, including Nimrod, Zocalo Public Square, DMQ, Everlasting Verses, Blueline, Atticus Review, Barefoot Review, OCHO, and Mipoesias. She lives on a small farm in Red Lion, Pennsylvania with her husband, three dogs, and so many cats she’s afraid to say.

Laura’s gift for our readers:

New Year’s Poem for the American Government

Well, things are changing, no
question there, so as a patriot
in the land of the free
I thought it would be nice
to help you when the new admin
istration sends you forth
to save the world from democracy

I’m on the phone a lot
with my poet friends
and you might be confused
by the jargon you hear.
Prosody has its own code,
but not the kind
you’re thinking of.

An anapest is not a gun
A dactyl not a religious war
Synecdoche is not an ancient rite
of setting fire to government buildings
Prose is not the professional cadre
of trained assassins of poetry.

A masculine endstop is not a boy
who slits the throat of the enemy
A villanelle is not
a female suicide bomber
A quatrain isn’t a terrorist cell
A rhyme scheme isn’t jihad

Sestinas and sonnets,
neither are headscarves
Taha Mohammed Ali
was not an imam
Rumi was never a soldier.
A ghazal is not an RPG
A madih is not a mortar.

Scansion is metrics
which is counting
which is not
a sect dedicated
to executing a coup
on the boss.

Take off your earphones.
What he’s told you is lies.
Dear listeners dear spies
remember that, please.

 

Photo credit: “Private Poetry” by John Jones via a Creative Commons license.

Confederate Monument

By Luke A. Powers

High above
Courthouse square

Atop an impossibly
Tall pillar

He has stood
Sentinel now

A hundred years
Summers, winters,

Facing a South
Always farther away

Waiting for word
Signal, reinforcement

Until he’s gone
Blind in alabaster

In cap and gloves
His buttons smooth

Leaning on a rifle
That like his face

Is losing definition
The vestige of history

He wants to come down
He can’t remember

The high deeds
The sacred cause

The ideas that make
Blood turn to stone

The sky is swept
Clean of martyrs

Clouds fray in bliss
In sweet nothingness

He wants to come down
Laid in cool earth

Like a dark seed that
Will never grow anything

But a deep forgetfulness
Past echoes of rumor

Where none of this
Ever happened

None of this, not
A single minie ball,

Ever was—

But still he stands
At his post

Sun and moon
Unmourned, undead

Waiting only for
This past to be done.

 

 

Luke A. Powers teaches English at Tennessee State University, an historically black university in Nashville. He is a singer-songwriter who has worked with Garth Hudson (of The Band) and Sneaky Pete Kleinow (of The Flying Burrito Brothers). He’s also a member of The Spicewood Seven, who have released two protest albums: Kakistocracy (2006) and Still Mad (2016), both of which are musical acts of resistance of the dumbed-down, low-information culture that elected George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Image credit: Yelp.

Empty Plinths

By Robbie Gamble

That history was cast, it had its time
to patina publically, those grandiose bits:

goatees, greatcoats and spurs all sober
and saddle-erect, hauled down amid

conflicted outcries of righteous mobs, or
unbolted and forklifted away into the night.

Let the sullen air settle. In municipal
plazas, the plinths remain stolid,

their bare cornices uplifting
nothing, explaining away nothing.

Let their marble shoulders relax.
Give some time for the charged space

above them to reassemble, and not
in the chaos of clubs and torches,

cars-as-projectiles. History is messy
enough. Meanwhile, catalogue

the bronze artifacts, arrange for them
a suitable warehouse. Honor instead

the stories of the statueless, the diasporaed,
the not-as-yet-emancipated. Let these

coalesce and flow into awareness beyond
plinths, beyond rancor, beyond dispute.

 

 

Robbie Gamble lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston. He recently completed an MFA in poetry at Lesley University.

Image credit:Copyright Philip Halling and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Trooper

By Emmett Forrest

 

Was told I was a trooper
from the time
I was a little girl

Shoulders square
chin raised high
I said
goodbye
my father
stepped onto a plane
and I couldn’t
bear to watch
my eyes downcast
from the window frame

it takes
a strength
to become
a purple heart
to hide horrors under
your pillows
to say goodbyes
that clog in your throat

I lived in
an era of
don’t ask
don’t tells
if there
are no questions
why should you mention

I never stood
about face
but inside
I lost face

broken
rules
were repealed
and shoulders relaxed

at ease soldier

but we marched
one step forward
and two steps back
you weren’t making enough
progress
walling out immigrants
so you took
your fire to the frontlines

and now I hide
behind
masked
masculinities

It was an honor, sir
to be
your honorable sir

 

 

Emmett Forrest: I am a student at MIT studying Mechanical Engineering as well as minoring in Writing.  I enjoy walking along rivers and working with machines three times my size.

Asphalt

By Suzanne O’Connell

Your arms waved for help.
The policeman bent down, hand on gun.
“No!” you shouted.
He fired.
The sound, an exploding beehive.
I looked at your fragile skull, resting
on the sharp leaves of fall.
Your eyelids blinked.

Helicopters circled, sirens came.
Your blood kept pooling.
It was the color of mine.
I saw the snow catch in your curly hair.

You had something in your hand,
a Black Cow caramel bar.
“It Lasts All Day,” the wrapper said.

 

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

Photo credit: Mycatkins via a Creative Commons license.