The Candidate

By Bebe Kern

Out of television into living daylight, like
the nightmare demon of my Southern girlhood,
the specter is everywhere: dirty ballcap man
in the pickup with a truck-size Rebel flag flying
over Mardi Gras; salesman with a leer;
frat boy drunk on Dewar’s and privilege
mocking a sissy, marking territory on the lawn
before he grows up to poison a town’s water;
accidental mom, defiantly obese, raptured
on the couch by a blue screen while children
drink sugar by the can and sing battle sounds;
tank gunner banker broker laying waste to marsh land;
old man in camo dreaming in Walmart
of creamy girls and automatic weapons;
grade school bully laughing at my simple shoes.

Bebe Kern lives in the North Carolina Piedmont region, drives a Ford truck, works a day job, and listens to poets and musicians including Donald Justice, Miroslav Holub, Jane Hirschfield, Charlie Smith, Tom Waits, Mary Gauthier, Drunken Prayer, The Handsome Family and Loretta Lynn. She had a poetry class at the University of Alabama under Hudson Strode, and studied at the University of South Alabama with Walter Darring and Stephen Mooney. Her poem, “Pray Mississippi,” was named a finalist by The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. Novelist Julie Edelson reviewed Bebe’s original CD, No Twirling, saying, “Bebe Kern is a lunch pail sort of poet … her work is fresh, with a good strong bite.”

Better Than Truth

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By Jens Köhler

We had hoped
that truth
would set us free

We believed
“If you See Something, Say Something”
applied
to things deadlier
than misplaced luggage.
Things like:
the destruction of habitats,
human and other;
systems that punish
blackness and brownness and femaleness;
“alternative facts”.
We Saw, We Said.

We had hoped
that truth
would set us free

But in reality
that freedom
is hard to see

Wiser souls than ours
knew the truth
as they prophesied
the end of bees
the end of flowers
the pitiless hungers
of unchecked powers

Better men than me
knew the truth
of their humanity
while a noose
weighed a curse upon a tree

Our years and labors extracted
attentions redacted
we saw faintly
then with clarity
the denial
of our humanity

No
the truth
plain to see
did not
cannot
will not
set us free.

But,

better planning
better alliances
better training
better complaining
better whistleblowing
better faith
better BS-calling
better elections
better never, never, never, never, never, never, never stopping
better ball not-dropping
better logistics
better heuristics
better self care
better standards of care
better sex
better checks and balances
it’s a long list
and should be longer
with the stuff
that makes you you
and makes us stronger
better diction
better encryption
better privacy
better transparency
better leadership
better followership
better rituals
better victuals

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better jokes
better pancakes
Come on,
what am I missing?
Fill in the blanks
better kissing
better music
better hospitality
better advocacy
better lobbying
better structural redundancy
better data
better stories
better questions
better showing up
better voting
better tricks
better mortgage lending
better garden tending
better humus
better HUMINT
better humor
better breath mints
better knitting
better maps
better lawyers
better coffee dates
you go out for coffee
come back
I’ll still be going
better investing
better endowment growing
better divesting
better boycotts
which are truly terrible weapons
against feudalism
named for a landowner’s agent named Charles Boycott
who couldn’t even get his mail delivered in the end
better genius
better plod
better art
better succession plans
better representations
better representation
better participation
better capital formation
better information
better fintech
better listening
better policy
better long term memory
better philanthropy
can we please
not use charity
to keep other people’s kids down?
better bets
better interview gets
better farming
better charming
better handshakes
better prepare for earthquakes
better French drains
better benchmarks
better supply chains
better first aid
better patience
better impatience
better exercise
better love letters
better manners
better resolve
better spirit
better aid
better comfort
better gumption
better getting back up

and

the truth

will set us free.

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I live in L.A., grew up in Toronto, and lived in NYC and Montreal. I am a dad to the most amazing, wonderful lads. I have always been an ideas guy. I get excited about the act of creation and organizing people around interesting ideas. My professional background includes writing, nonprofit management, performing and producing. It all feels like the same thing to me. (Well, no. Staying up late to finish a grant proposal does not feel the same as making an audience laugh. But I am always aware of the connection between the grant that raised the money that helped get the butt in the seat so the performer could try to get that laugh.

“Better Than Truth” was first published on the poet’s website, at jenskohler.com.

Photo credit: Jason Eppink via a Creative Commons license.

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No More Cream Puffs

By Darrell Petska

Can’t you feel it?
That chokehold on our throats—
write like this
say it like that
be dignified, calm, aloof—
Hell, today’s hands demand poems
hard as a brick.
Frilly little rhymes?
Maybe Sundays with tea.

Something afraid of us
wants our words meek, not defiant:
“Go ahead, throw your cream puffs.
Now aren’t you a rebel!”—
hoping we won’t throw bricks.
Don’t fall for that.
Now’s not the time for nice.
Something needs to learn
what pissed-off poems can do.

Darrell Petska‘s writing appears in Whirlwind, The Missing Slate, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red Paint Hill, Right Hand Pointing, and numerous other print and online publications. Darrell worked for many years as engineering outreach editor, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He left the university to be the arbiter of his own words. He lives near Madison, Wisconsin.

Photo credit: Way Tru via a Creative Commons license.

Patriotism Reconsidered

By Lucinda Marshall

My anthem is the serenade of birds,
sung without regard for map lines
delineating human assumption of dominion
over that which cannot be possessed,
and I will not pledge allegiance to,
or defend a flag of illusory freedom.

As the sun greets each day,
I will bravely stand up—against
racism, gendered hate, and xenophobia.

I will join in solidarity
with those who block pipelines
and protest gun violence,
those who feed the hungry
and work to stop the school
to prison pipeline,
and with every person who works
for the common good.

Solemnly I swear not to tolerate
the revision of history to fit
a fraudulent justification for
perpetual war or
wanton destruction of Earth.

This is my oath of citizenship,
because to do anything else is treason.

Lucinda Marshall is a writer, artist and activist. Her recent poetry publications include Sediments, Ground Fresh Thursday, Stepping Stones Magazine, Columbia Journal, Poetica Magazine, and ISLE. Her poem, “The Lilies Were In Bloom,” received an Honorable Mention in Waterline Writers’ Artists as Visionaries Climate Crisis: Solutions. She is the Founder of Feminist Peace Network and the author of numerous published essays and articles, and the blog, Reclaiming Medusa. Lucinda co-facilitates the award-winning Gaithersburg, Maryland Teen Writing Club. She is a member of the Maryland Writers’ Association, and Women, Action, and the Media.

Image credit: “Patriotic League” by Howard Chandler Christy, 1918, from the Library of Congress.

New Madonna

By Celeste Schantz

Visiting a gallery of religious art

I can no longer relate to these dusty
framed virgins and whores. Your Madonnas
are too beautiful; poor, pale, mute dolls
propped against empty cerulean skies.

I want to see some new Madonnas. Of the scars,
of the streets. Our Lady of Goodwill, hunched
at the donated clothes bin. Show me
Madonnas of the long dark night. Our Lady

of Trafficked Saints, protector of school girls
stolen on the cruel road to Damascus.
Render me defenders of girls shot in the head
for being girls. Show me the Malala Madonnas.

Take the apple from Eve’s hand. She never
asked for that prop in the first place, obvious
as a smoking gun thrust into a pedestrian’s hand
as the robber runs away. Feel free

to put that snake away, too. Eve lives with you
amidst earth’s clatter, sewage, bullets.
Eve is Sarajevo, Sudan, Syria, South Central L.A.
and Appalachia. I could show you

the bleak chiascuro of a sister trudging home
from her second job in night’s dull neon; I’d
shade asymmetry and contrast in her unequal pay.
Color it in napalm, cinder, cement. I’d blend

warm color into her skin…give her some sturdy hips.
Ah, men, you should have shown them as real
women. For this hour, this unjust afternoon,
wags on. Eve and Mary, step down

from that cracked canvas. The distant sun
is lowering behind the trees. Go put on something
bright, happy and yellow. It is time, high time
for these weary sentences to be done.

Celeste Schantz’s work appears in Stone Canoe, One Throne Magazine, Mud Season Review and others. She recently studied in a workshop with the author Kim Addonizio, has studied with the author Marge Piercy, and was a finalist in a worldwide competition co-sponsored by Poetry International, Rotterdam and The Poetry Project, Ireland. She edits The Thornfield Review, which celebrates women authors whose work has often been disenfranchised by the great white male western academic canon. She lives in Upstate New York, with her son Evan, and is currently working on her first book of poetry.

Photo credit: Mother of Syrian Martyr by Lilian Wagdy via a Creative Commons license.

Declaration of Defendence

By Conney D. Williams

I save my tears for weddings and presidential elections
while America the beneficent thrusts anthems up our spleens
the pasty ballot of deprecation without representation
please GOD, bless Ol’ Glory with sufficient stars and stripes
to vandalize my person until even bowels lose their allegiance
I am a casualty of domestic terrorism and
the transparency of America’s image casts no reflection
although lynchings are no longer the rage at picnics
state sanctioned genocide statistics suffice
prison systems compete with the Atlantic
for who holds the most slaves on death row
we live in an error of democracy
afflicted dissidents borrow retribution
then blow up U.S. entitlement and self-appreciation
the three blind mice are completely outraged
there is no spare change for self-imposed tragedies
this nation was bankrupt before its depression
misconceived foreign citizens sweated this economy
through the blood and flesh of capitalisms

let me sign, let me sign
please let me sign on that dotted line
let me sign then make my mark
below the signatures of Jefferson and Hancock

silhouettes and profiling require you know your place
so assume the nigga position please
keep your eyes on the national policy
you are getting sleepy and will not see what you really know
clasp your hands behind your head
lift every voice and sing
join in the organ grinder’s tune
because this is America’s favorite sing-a-long
“o’ say can you see by the dawn’s early plight“
new political pimps occupy opaque condominiums
federally funded on Pennsylvania Avenue
they pray like pious prostitutes but don’t use condoms
they train and arm their adversaries to kill their offspring
we are third world soldiers who don’t cry in public
mis-taken identity is what aborts freedom
the national opinion is infected by syphilis of patriotism
preaching the eminent eulogy for just-us
we are the offspring of Emmett Till, and
still breathe the muddy water of his incarnation
the purple color of our tattered existence
is the congealed breath of intended victims

let me sign, let me sign
please let me sign on that dotted line
let me sign then make my mark
below the signatures of Jefferson and Hancock

we are America’s unsolved national homicide
where is the milk carton campaign to locate lost ancestors
their admonition is forget your holocausts
and continue to smile for the camera
while the republic eats its young to support humanitarian efforts
balance the budget for their domestic foreign policies
in order to sacrifice their homegrown aliens
this is the bastard image of U.S. hypocrisy
but things will be different
when we get back to normal
things will be different
when get back to those ideals
of the baby daddies of the constitution
then I remember
that we didn’t have founding fathers
only mother-fuckers

let me sign, let me sign
please let me sign on that dotted line
let me sign then make my mark
below the signatures of Jefferson and Hancock
let me sign on that dotted line

Conney D. Williams is a Los Angeles-based poet, actor and performance artist, originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, where he worked as a radio personality. Conney’s first collection of poetry, Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet, was published in 2002. His poetry has also been published in various journals and anthologies including Voices from Leimert Park; America: At the End of the Day; and The Drumming Between Us. His collection Blues Red Soul Falsetto was published in December 2012, and he has released two new poetry CDs, Unsettled Water and River&Moan, available on his website. Conney has performed his poetry on television, radio, galleries, universities, grade schools, coffeehouses, and stages around Southern California and across the country, including the Black Arts Festival. He is a talented public speaker with more than thirty years of experience. Read more about Conney at conneywilliams.com.

Photo credit: Adapted from the original by Robert Couse-Baker via a Creative Commons license.

Consoling My Poem

By Rebecca L’Bahy

Imagine him at night, sleepless in his tacky golden bed.
How he tosses, turns, finally rising
at 3 a.m. to check his phone,
its glow a salve to his tiny soul.

What if it were you lighting up his screen,
what would you say?
Think hard, dear poem, be brave.
It’s true you will never be appointed
to his cabinet or asked to be an aide —

you are a simple, humble poem
but forget all that now — we need a hero,
to hunt down the most powerful image,
believe in words as if they matter, break lines
without mercy, and cast a spell so beautiful
it will do nothing less than save the world.

Rebecca L’Bahy is a writer from central Massachusetts. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Emerson College, freelance correspondent, and mother of three. She has had previous work published at Brain, Child magazine and elsewhere.

Photo credit: Jon Seidman via a Creative Commons license.

Winning Campaign, a poem by Karthik Purushothaman

I wear 140 characters
as pinstripes and say
what I think

without thinking.
My superpower is fitting
both feet in my mouth

and projectile vomiting
the stuff between my toes.
I save the reporters

from jumping off buildings,
leaping across canyon
-deep cracks and swimming

upstream to the source
where the current is strongest
and I am the current

world record holder
for the tallest bungee-jump
into a smoldering hot

Geisha, doing three and a half
twirls on the way down
3D-printing

Escher knots
with my throw-up,
bringing samurai swords

to gunfights, and writing
the book of moonlight
so vote for me.

Karthik Purushothaman hails from Chennai, India, is currently an MFA candidate at William Paterson University of New Jersey, and reads submissions to Map Literary. His work has recently appeared or will soon appear in Subtropics, Rattle, The Common and elsewhere.

Where to turn when the truth burns our retina

By Sarah Bigham

down

they

fall

face-planted spread-eagled side-sprawled knee-buckled

skull-cracked gut-shot arm-splayed gaping-mouthed

tears fall

and hopes fall

and families on coffins fall

and believers on knees fall

and children’s dreams of fathers’ pride fall

but fists rise and knees bend and

arms link and eyes memorize and

voices boom and feet M A R C H

for we have not forgotten how to M A R C H

as we chew on the hardtack of history and M A R C H

as an apology to the children

who bear the inheritance

of this f

Sarah Bigham teaches, paints, and writes in Maryland, where she lives with her kind chemist wife, their three independent cats, and an unwieldy herb garden. Her work appears in Bacopa, Entropy, Fourth & Sycamore, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, The Quotable, Rabbit, and elsewhere. Visit her website at www.sgbigham.com.

Photo credit: .tafo. via a Creative Commons license.

The Streets

By Raya Yarbrough

My aunt took me down to Harlem, down to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

She talked to me about history, and struggle,

and my head took it in, as the history of struggle.

And my life went on.

Colorless conversations.

Happy white-noise.

Then I woke up, and her words were not history.

Place your hand on the asphalt.

The streets are hot.

They never cooled.

Raya Yarbrough is a singer and composer from Los Angeles. Though she is recognized most notably as the singer in the opening credits of the Outlander TV show, Yarbrough’s original music has also been featured in numerous films and televisions shows. In the last three years, she has performed/collaborated with pianist Billy Childs, and Van Dyke Parks. After three independent albums and countless live performances, including opening for Terence Blanchard at The Jazz Standard in New York City, Yarbrough made her international debut on Telarc (Concord) with her self-titled album, Raya Yarbrough. She is currently in the studio working on an album version of her original musical, North of Sunset West of Vine, a spoken-word influenced stage piece, about growing up on Hollywood Boulevard in the late 1980s. Visit her website at www.RayaYarbrough.com.

Listening recommendation: Raya Yarbrough’s eponymous album.

Photo credit: “Harlem Neighborhood” by Fett via a Creative Commons license.

Don’t Make America Great Again

By Tawana “Honeycomb” Petty

I got a fever for the flavor of liberation,

a quenching for the thirst of vindication.

A country built on slavery must pay reparations,

or at the very least stop their racial propagation.

Black bodies still suffer from redlining,

and segregation,

then get displaced from safe havens by gentrification.

They poison our water and attack our education,

shut down our schools, then call us uneducated.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

“I believe that we will win,”

but we must resist the racism

calling us to “make America great again.”

Tawana “Honeycomb” Petty is a mother, social justice organizer, youth advocate, poet and author. She was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and is intricately involved in water rights, digital justice and visionary organizing work in Detroit. Tawana is a past recipient of the Spirit of Detroit Award, the Woman of Substance Award, the Women Creating Caring Communities Award, and the Detroit Awesome Award, and she was recognized as one of Who’s Who in Black Detroit in 2013 and 2015. She is the author of Introducing Honeycomb and Coming Out My Box. Visit her website at honeycombthepoet.com.

Reading recommendation: Tawana “Honeycomb” Petty’s Come Out My Box, in which “Don’t Make America Great Again” was originally published.

A Drop of Water

By James Schwartz

Land of lapping lakes,
Peninsula
&
Pine.
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Frontiersmen
&
Forefathers.

Detroit flood
&
Detroit debt
Our kingdom for a drop of water.

James Schwartz is a gay ex-Amish poet and slam performer. His poetry has been published by various poetry journals including Poetry 24, Babel, The New Verse News, Nostrovia! Poetry, piecejournal, Silver Birch Press blog and Eris Magazine. His book, The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America, was published by inGroup Press in 2011 and his poetry is anthologized in Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets on the Midwestern Experience (2012), Milk and Honey Siren (2013), The Squire: Page-A-Day Poetry Anthology 2015, Writing Knights Press 2014 Anthology, QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology (2015), and various chap books, including Alpine Suite (2013), Poetry 4 Food 2 (2013), Poetry 4 Food 3 (2014), Arrival and Departure (2014), Secular, Satirical & Sacred Meditations (2016), Michigan Meditations (2016). He resides in Michigan. Visit his site at Literaryparty.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @queeraspoetry.

Image: Flint Water Drive, courtesy of the author who is second from the left.

Reading recommendation: The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America by James Schwartz.

“A Drop of Water” was previously published in Secular, Satirical & Sacred Meditations.

Double

By Harold Jaffe

The perils are vast, the receptors are slick, seductively small.
The perils are not vast, the receptors are not slick, seductively small.

I see the homeless huddled against the steel-glass wall of the stock exchange.
You do not see the homeless huddled against the steel-glass wall of the stock exchange.

I see for-profit prisons filled with colored poor.
You do not see for-profit prisons filled with colored poor.

The semi-invisible line defining (relative) civility is effaced.
There is no semi-invisible line defining (relative) civility.

The semi-invisible line that kept undisguised cruelty toward the disadvantaged partially in check is effaced.
There was no semi-invisible line that kept undisguised cruelty toward the disadvantaged partially in check.

Once effaced, an epidemic of police violence is unleashed against black young men and women.
There has been no epidemic of police violence unleashed against black young men and women.

I see first-world jets bomb from above the cloud line.
You do not see first-world jets bomb from above the cloud line.

Collateral damage? The pilot consults his monitor and yawns.
There is no collateral damage. The pilot does not consult his monitor and yawn.

When is terror called righteous assault? When first-world ethnociders say it is.
Terror is not called righteous assault. There are no first-world ethnociders.

Ethnocide morphs into entertainment. I see a non-stop circus engendered by lies and money.
Ethnocide does not morph into entertainment. You do not see a non-stop circus engendered by lies and money.

The world as we know it perishes / humans take selfies.
The world as we know it does not perish / no one takes selfies.

Born in New York City in 1942, Harold Jaffe’s writing career spans more than 35 years. His novels and stories have been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian. He has won two NEA grants in fiction, two Fulbright fellowships, a New York CAPS grant, a California Arts Council fellowship in fiction, a San Diego fellowship (COMBO) in fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes in fiction. Jaffe teaches literature at San Diego State University (San Diego, California) and is editor of Fiction International. Jaffe’s fiction has appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review; City Lights Review; Paris Review; New Directions in Prose and Poetry; Chicago Review; Chelsea; Fiction; Central Park; Witness; Black Ice; Minnesota Review; Boundary 2; ACM; Black Warrior Review; Cream City Review; Two Girls’Review; and New Novel Review. His fictions have also been anthologized in Pushcart Prize; Best American Stories; Best of American Humor; Storming the Reality Studio; American Made; Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation; After Yesterday’s Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology; Bateria and Am Lit (Germany); Borderlands (Mexico); Praz (Italy); Positive (Japan); and elsewhere. Visit his website at haroldjaffe.wordpress.com.

Reading recommendation: Goosestep: Fictions and Docufictions by Harold Jaffe.

To the Man Who Shouted “What does your pussy taste like?!” as I Ran By

By Courtney LeBlanc

It tastes briny,
like the ocean.
It surges, waves pounding
the surf, punishing
the sand simply for always
being there, for always
being present, for never
leaving well enough alone.

I keep running,
ready to drown him
in a sea of my pounding
feet.

Previously published by Rising Phoenix Review.

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of chapbooks Siamese Sisters and All in the Family (Bottlecap Press), and she is an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Public Pool, Rising Phoenix Review, The Legendary, Germ Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Brain Mill Press, and others. She loves nail polish, wine and tattoos. Read her blog at www.wordperv.com, follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

Reading recommendation: All in the Family by Courtney LeBlanc.

Two poems by two poets

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Trump Tower

By Marvin Lurie

I left the truth on the sidewalk
when I went into the tall office building.

It was on wheels but heavy.
I couldn’t take it to an upper floor
even on the freight elevator.
And it might not get past the metal detectors
in the lobby.
I hoped no one would take it.

When I came out,
people were walking around it,
trying not to look.

Marvin Lurie is retired from a career as a trade press editor, president of an association management and consulting firm, and senior executive in an international trade association. He began writing poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. In 1998, anticipating retirement and with the desire to reinvest time and effort writing poetry, he took several week-long and shorter poetry workshops taught by established poets and started over. He and his wife moved to Portland, Oregon in 2003 where he has been an active member of the local poetry community including service on the board of directors of the Oregon Poetry Association for two terms, as an almost perpetual poetry student at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland and as a participant in several critique groups. Visit his website at marvlurie.com.

The Demagogue

by Cyrus Parker

he stood atop
the fifty-eight story building,
built on the backs
of the very same people
he had spent sixteen months
scapegoating,

and looked on
as his new America
ripped out the very
foundation
of what had made it great
in the first place.

Cyrus Parker is a New Jersey-based poet, originally from Michigan, where he had spent four years wrestling on the local independent wrestling circuit. On a hiatus from the squared circle, Cyrus is taking the time to pursue his other passion—writing. A creative writing major at Brookdale Community College, Cyrus’ work has been published in the college’s annual literary magazine, Collage, and he is currently revising his first poetry collection, DROPKICKpoetry, which he hopes to release sometime in 2017.

Follow Cyrus on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo credit: Brad via a Creative Commons license.

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America the Beautiful

By Brenda Davis Harsham

Shoulder to shoulder
with people determined
to be heard,
holding up signs
in weary arms,
speaking in tweets
to a man who cannot
turn his back
and ignore millions
around the country
and around the world.
No one can expect
to be heard
if he will not listen.

I hear all of you,
America the Beautiful.
Your voices matter:
We Will Not Be Silent.
Love Trumps Hate.
Insist on the Impossible.
Make America Think Again.
We are ALL Immigrants.
Black Lives Matter.
Don’t Make America Hate Again.
No One is Free If Anyone is Oppressed.
A Woman’s Place is… Wherever She Wants.
Show Up. Dive In. Persevere.
Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.
We’re Lawyers. We’re Ready.
Real Men of Quality Don’t Fear Equality.
Women’s Rights aren’t up for GRABS.
Disability Rights are Civil Rights.
Respect for Existence or Expect Resistance.

Indivisible Under God.
With Liberty and Justice for All.
Healthcare for All.
Words NOT Weapons.
Make Love Not Walls.
Resist Hate.
Roar.
Nasty Women.
Roar.
Never Surrender.

Brenda Davis Harsham marched in Boston. Her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies, online and in journals including Silver Birch Press, NY Literary Magazine’s Awake anthology, the Best of Today’s Little Ditty Anthology, The Writing Garden and The Paperbook Collective. One poem won First Place in NY Literary Magazine’s Poetry Contest. America the Beautiful was previously published on the poet’s website, Friendly Fairy Tales.

Photo credit: Carly Hagins via a Creative Commons license.

Funhouse

By Dick Eiden

A pity such a sparkling world
fell into our clumsy hands, soiled
with petroleum and blood, slippery
as a swindler leaving town at night
past rows of homes for sale, scrawny
trees tied to stakes on the boulevard.

A pity our shoes were untied, our feet
not planted, we didn’t look up in time.
As the power grid blinks and sputters
we wait in long lines, owe money
to bail bondsman, can’t afford sandbags
for the rising of extreme consequences
murky and corrosive, lapping at our feet.

A pity we now stand before a full-length mirror
curved like the Funhouse, eyeing our big heads,
the flowing lines of our long, twisted bodies,
the crooked path behind us.

Dick Eiden is a retired lawyer and lifelong activist for peace and social justice. He came of age in the sixties, tried to make the world a better place, failed. He has three grown children (one grandchild) with wife Kathleen Cannon. He’s writing a memoir about his life as a lawyer for rebels titled Go Into Banking Instead.

Reading recommendation: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Digital Dust

By Pattie Palmer-Baker

The agent sifts digital dust,
not like stardust sprinkled
on profound black,
instead gray-brown specks
leaking out of ATM machines,
trickling from laptops,
dribbling out of phones.

He shapes the particles
into a digital fingerprint,
blots out truth messy with color,
paints the grooves black and white.

When the wind blows
through a Sitka Spruce,
he hears the whisper As-salam alaykum.
He whips the gun
from the back of his waistband
and shoots the words.
He doesn’t know they mean
peace be upon you.

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

Reading recommendation: Kohl & Chalk: poems by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Kindred, a poem by Dave Parsons

Blindness will only make him see better. Broken bones will sharpen his wit.

–Karl Shapiro

On 9-11, we were 1^st stunned into numb dazes—I remember the same—in the early sixties and there are the many other days … personal to each of us … that stick like bad cooking to our dead-pan minds, they are the memories that scurry about like ants kicked from the order of their hilly homes. I remember the day that Larry Williams’s photo appeared in the Austin Statesman obituaries with the same confident expression I had seen countless times caged under a baseball Catcher’s mask. There he was—set jaw—Green Beret announcing to his known world that he was finished with games, with this life and his name would become the source of rubbings on a long black wall in Washington. Larry had witnessed the same numbness in the dazed moiré moon faces of a kindred people trapped in their country’s anguish while an Army clerk in Saigon and at his homecoming party, he said to me in a whisper, like a prayer, he had to go back, and this time, he had to be in the thick of it … he must be part of an answer, action, not awe—Whitman’s body electric, to Hell with the angst, the numbness … embrace the pain … fire the spirit—eyes wide open to it all—the same wide and kindred eyes that sent Alison, William, Sandra, Jeffery with a throng of students to the Kent State quad in 1970—demonstrating their outrage over their country, the very home that had seeded them with knowledge and the pride of being raised in a land of gallant freedom fighters, a peopled history of grand idealism that somehow had mutated: it was as if there had been a stock take over—war became a corporate boardroom game; where, moves to erase thousands players was taken in the cool air conditioned minds of executives and politicians thousands of miles from the heat and stench of the jungle factory, changing from a war of rescue to a daily body count. So the students did what they could and the pointing of their single fingers were no match for the rifles; but here’s another legacy for us, the pointed single finger even in its fall, still fired the flame that is the inherent instinct burning like a star in the craw of this nation, where ever we single souls abide, we are steeped in the parables found in our many sacred stories; our monumental buildings may fall to the warped logic of our enemies; and this cornucopia of a planet we so treasure, may turn on us, like some old jaded lover, bringing on us all matter of apocalyptic weathering pain rivaling Old Testament curses —We the People—do not sit long sanguine on the comfort of our couches before the gnashing media poor-sayers or dig head-holes of rationale to bury our worst fears in—We the People—are on the march, on the move from our every beach, plain, forest, hill, or cove, on the phone with our support, in the mail with our personal treasures, we are on the many roads and byways with our pyrotechnic presences, in the hot stink of it with our time and boundless talents—brilliant spirits burning white hot— igniting truth deep in our brethren’s breast—We the People—are truly omnipotent—

Dave Parsons, 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate, is a recipient of an NEH Dante Fellowship to SUNY, the French-American Legation Poetry Prize, the Baskerville Publisher’s Prize (TCU). He was inducted into The Texas Institute of Letters in 2009. Parsons has published seven poetry collections. His latest are Reaching For Longer Water (2015) and Far Out Poems of the ’60s (2016), co-edited with Wendy Barker. He has taught Creative Writing at Lone Star College since 1992. Parsons has four grown children and lives with wife Nancy, an award winning artist and graphic designer in Conroe, Texas. The title and many lines of this poem were taken from a poem that first appeared in his collection, Color of Mourning (Texas Review Press/Texas A&M University Press Consortium, 2007), edited for the Writers Resist movement.

Visit his website at www.daveparsonspoetry.com.

Reading recommendation: Color of Mourning by Dave Parsons

Resiste / Resist, a poem and translation by Mariana Llanos

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Resiste

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Resiste, hermana, resiste.
Levanta el puño y resiste.
Resiste, hermana, resiste.
Sube la voz y resiste.
Resiste, hermana, resiste.
Eleva la frente y resiste.
Resiste, hermana, resiste.
Hincha el pecho y resiste.
Resiste, hermana, resiste.
Planta los pies y resiste.
Resiste hermana, resiste.
Entrelaza los brazos y resiste.
Resiste, hermana, resiste
Avanza tu cuerpo y resiste.
Resiste, hermana, resiste.
Con puño, con voz, con frente, con pecho,
Con brazos, con pies, con todo tu cuerpo,
resiste.
Resiste hermana, resiste,
Aunque corra tu sangre
Aunque tiemblen tus huesos
Aunque sangre tu alma.
¡Resiste!
Hasta tu último aliento
Hasta tu último paso
Hasta tu último beso.
Hasta que tu sudor se mezcle en el agua.
Hasta que tu puño brille en el cielo.
Hasta que tu grito se oiga en el viento.
Resiste, hermana, ¡resiste!

Resist

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Resist, sister, resist.
Thrust your fist in the air and resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Raise your voice and resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Lift your forehead and resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Bloat your chest and resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Stomp your feet and resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Intertwine your arms and resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Push forward your body and resist.
Resist, sister, resist
With fist, with voice, with forehead, with chest,
with feet, with arms, with all your body,
resist.
Resist, sister, resist.
Even if your blood runs,
Even if your bones tremble,
Even if your soul bleeds.
¡Resist!
Till your last breath,
Till your last step,
Till your last kiss.
Until your sweat blends with the water,
Until your fist shines in the sky,
Until your scream is heard in the wind.
Resist, sister, ¡Resist!

Mariana Llanos is a Peruvian writer, author of seven award-winning children’s books in English and in Spanish. Her first book, Tristan Wolf, was published in 2013. Her newest book, Poesía Alada (poetry in Spanish for young people) will be available in April 2017. She studied Drama in her native Lima. After moving to Oklahoma, she worked as a preschool teacher, standing out for her creativity and passion for arts education. Mariana visits schools around the world through virtual technology to encourage students to read and to spark their love for writing, while building bridges of understanding. Visit her website at www.marianallanos.com.

Reading recommendation: Como Cambiar el Mundo Sin Perdernos /How to Change the World Without Losing Ourselves by Virginia Vargas (1992).

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