Poetry – Page 23 – Writers Resist

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:

“They made you do it.”
“All the other boys are doing it.”
“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, 13^th 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.

Prayer

By I.E. Sommsin

God, will you forgive the sins of our times,
this sad era, its soft habits of thought
and the glib assumptions easily taught
that breed the lying slogans worse than crimes?
We cannot help how the words work to cloud
and clog and flood the forums of the mind.
They build the thick high walls that keep us blind
and kill the calm silence with all that’s loud.
Myth, wild tales, and the clever fools come cheap,
and the boldly stupid prompt great cheering,
while the magical, repeated, jeering
accusation makes the shallow look deep.
You in the future will know what I feel
when your nation’s caught on history’s wheel.

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

Photo credit: donaldjtrump.com

Upon Recognizing Yesterday’s ‘Well-Meaning’ Poem Was Still as Paternalistic as Ever

By D. R. James

—1/22/17

Outside, still January, but 40 not 15,
gauzy, black-and-white woods
from The Wolf Man. Inside,
a gauzy-gray (un?)consciousness
from This White Man, half-reclined
in buttery, dove-gray leather. It’s envisioning
millions of protesting women, now back
perhaps in their individual towns,
their power proclaimed not awakened,
or still making their way back
from D.C., G.R., L.A., NYC,
Denver, Chicago, Baltimore,
Honolulu, Madison, Wichita,
Reno, Boston, Memphis, Atlanta,
Albuquerque, Gulfport, Asbury Park,
Laramie, Ashville, Orlando, Seattle,
Old Saybrook, Corpus Christie, Erie, Roanoke,
Eugene, New Delhi, Vienna, Minsk,
La Paz, Prague, Strasbourg, Botswana,
EX Village des Jeux Ankorondrano,
Dublin, Athens, San Jose, Sofia,
Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Geneva, Liverpool,
Cape Town, Moscow, Yellow Knife, Beirut,
Buenos Aires, Belgrade, Bangkok, Boise …
Will it never, ever learn?

D. R. James is the author of the poetry collection Since Everything Is All I’ve Got (March Street Press) and five chapbooks, including most recently Why War and Split-Level (both from Finishing Line Press). Poems have appeared in various journals, such as Caring Magazine, Coe Review, Diner, Dunes Review, Friends of William Stafford Newsletter, HEArt Online, Hotel Amerika, North Dakota Quarterly, Passager, Rattle, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Sycamore Review, and anthologies, including Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford (Woodley) and Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry (New Issues). James lives in Saugatuck, Michigan, and has been teaching writing, literature, and peace-making at Hope College for 32 years. Read about D. R. James here.

Photo credit: Daniel Oines via a Creative Commons license.

İblis döl salıbdı, Şeytan bələkdə / The devil gave birth, and now Satan is in diapers

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By Mirza Sakit

İblis döl salıbdı, Şeytan bələkdə,
Şərlənən məmləkət yıxılmaqdadı
Altun qolbağılar əyri biləkdə,
Düz bilək qandalda sıxılmaqdadı

Abır da gözləyib çəkdin pərdəni,
Halal buğda əkdin, indi ver dəni
Oğrunun əliylə “Şöhrət” ordeni,
Namərd yaxasına taxılmaqdadı

Dədəsin gizlədən buzda xəlvəti,
Sən də gözləyirsən ondan mürvəti
Tanrının verdiyi Xalqın sərvəti,
Sırtılmış üzlərə yaxılmaqdadı

Mirzə söylədikcə dürüst kəlməsin,
Deyirlər qürbətdən durub gəlməsin
Həqiqət danışan, haqq deyən kəsin,
Başına güllələr çaxılmaqdadı…

Mirza Sakit is an Azerbaijani poet, writer, journalist and satirist. While working for the newspaper Azadliq, he was arrested for his anti-government writing and imprisoned for three years in Azerbaijan. His arrest caused an uproar in the international writers community and among numerous human rights organizations, including PEN America. He was granted asylum by Belgium, and now lives and writes there. He’s the author of four books, critical of the Azerbaijani authoritarian regime.

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English translation by Murad Jalilov and Kevin Rabas

The devil gave birth to Satan, a sign
that this slandered country is about to fall.
Golden bracelets hang from crooked wrists,
and metal handcuffs tighten around righteous wrists.

You closed the curtains to preserve your dignity.
You planted the seeds, and now let us harvest the grain.
But, with the hands of a thief, you hang the medal of “honor”
on the chest of the unkind.

You hide your father in ice, keep him frozen,
wishing his immortality,
while the God-given wealth of our nation
stains bent faces.

Whenever I speak up honestly,
I am told to stay in exile.
Anyone in their right mind
is shot in the head.

Murad Jalilov has recently graduated with BAs in English and Political Science at Emporia State University and is a graduate student in the MA program in Russian and Eastern European Studies at University of Oregon. He has poems published in Quivira and is active in his literary community. He is fluent is Russian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, and English.

Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019), teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and playwriting tracks. He has seven books, including Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner.

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Photo credit: Segment of the sculpture “Shadows of the Wanderer” by Brazilian artist Ana Maria Pacheco.

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Stand Up

By Linda Parsons

Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down,
sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat.

—Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls

Lo these many years,
I the peacemaker, the walker on eggshells,
the biter of lips, the please pleaser, the clay
not the molder, the stream not the bank,
the moss not the rock, the stern not the bow,
queen of if only I’d said, if only I’d done.
Lo I say unto you, I’m done with sit down,
sit down, done with the broom and its dust,
old love and its rust, the future walking right
out the door. Hear me, I’m here with a voice
from the gloom, the moon-filled room, rise
of wing to beat the band, however long
I must stand is how long I’ll rock,
rock, rock the boat.

Grab this, strike this,
be peace in the deafest of ears, be this,
if you can bear the whole of me holding
up half the sky’s the limit, be aware,
O beware the end is near, the end of silence
of reticence of swallowing it down, choking
on what can’t be told in mixed company.
I’ll be clearing my throat, unbending
my knee, strapping my heart to my sleeve.
The one speaking aloud who sings without
pause, the unturned cheek, the unshut eye,
who digs her heels in this wide-awake
moment and lets the mother tongue fly.

Linda Parsons is a poet, playwright, and an editor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She is the reviews editor for Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel and served as poetry editor of Now & Then magazine for many years. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, One, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Shenandoah, in Ted Kooser’s column American Life in Poetry, and in numerous anthologies. This Shaky Earth is her fourth poetry collection (Texas Review Press). Parsons’s adaptation, Macbeth Is the New Black, co-written with Jayne Morgan, was produced at Maryville College and Western Carolina University, and her play Under the Esso Moon was read as part of the 2016 Tennessee Stage Company’s New Play Festival and received a staged reading in spring 2017.

Photo credit: Shivenis via a Creative Commons license.

lavender:

By Lily Moody

Pink or blue

When our daughters are taught to hold their tongues and our sons are taught to hold their tears, when all we want to do is scream and sob.

Pink or blue

When dolls and toy trucks, bows and baseball gloves are used as barriers to separate us,
when femininity and masculinity are shamed from crossing paths.

Pink or blue

When the blood pumps the same through all bodies and these bones cage a fire so much brighter than they will ever begin to understand.

When he paints his lips dark red and finally feels beautiful, when she lets the hair on her body grow into a forest.

Lily Moody is a former yet-to-be-published writing student and an activist, located in Southern New Hampshire and hoping to make a difference through poetry and prose.

Photo credit: Homo Erectus via a Creative Commons license.

Human fatigue

By Eduardo Escalante

1. close into symbols

The city looked full
artery of Santiago choked with cars
a tatted man
was standing in front of a tree
Affirmed to a symbol
in this street
there was no crosswalk
his body jumped
It seemed 3d drawing
We can leave we can look
the tattoo is the sign because he jumps

2. the boy with the gun

The morning opened obscure
The sun had eye closed
I walked for different streets
An old lady looked at me from her window
When the church
men with revolvers assaulting a car
One looked at my head
he was fourteen years old
And with a bullet touched my shoes
While a bus passed

3. winter city

Poor looks poor
Shoes too big
He did have a hat
He lacked affection in his arm
He scratched his head again and again
The city is always indulgent

4. being in the city

it is like swimming in the swamp
it does not walk away
The pain is there
suffering seems a fate
tighter tighter tighter
against an endless swirl of human wind.
the whole world comes to spectacle,
arrive all private woe and
we see the public farce.
Samples of oligarchy even if they are plastic
too much people fill their hearts and lungs with ashes
It is difficult to be a part
of a policy signed and sealed.

Eduardo Escalante is an author, writer, researcher, living in Valparaíso, Chile. He writes about happiness, love, social justice, and current events. Eduardo’s work appears in several Spanish publications and reviews, including signum Nous, Ariadna, Nagari, Espacio_Luke, and Lakuma Pusaki, and in Spillwords Press.

Photo credit: Javier Vieras via a Creative Commons license.

Standing Rock, 2016

By Marydale Stewart

I sent my heart, that figurative muscle,
that metaphor, that emblem,
to go in my stead to Standing Rock

where my feet have never known the steady earth,
that certain sky, the remembered places the wind has been,
where I’ve never known another living being as my own,
where the people came together
building, feeding, singing, hoping,
where grief and hope called them all together,
where they’re showing a nation how to be a nation.

I’ve been to other places where the land I stood on
spoke to me with a blackbird’s call, a silvered silent creek,
where I sheltered in the humming wind for days, nights,
and the long singing years.

Helpless I am in love and grief,
for the earth is my home, wherever I am.

Marydale Stewart is a retired English teacher and librarian. She received her Ph.D. at Northern Illinois University and taught at NIU and community colleges. She has a chapbook, Inheritance (Puddin’head Press, Chicago, 2008), and two poetry collections, Let the Thunder In (Boxing Day Books, Princeton, IL, 2014) and The Walking Man, forthcoming from Kelsay Books, Hemet, CA, October 2017. A novel, The Wanderers, is forthcoming from Black Rose Writing, Castroville, TX, also in October 2017. She has poems in a number of literary magazines.

“Standing Rock” was published in the 2017 “Refugees and the Displaced” edition of DoveTales, Writing for Peace, Ft. Collins, CO.

Photo credit: Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Mirror Shield Project at the Oceti Sakowin Camp near Standing Rock, ND, 2016