Poetry – Page 26 – Writers Resist

Going Limp

By Ruth Nolan

It was your favorite story, the one you most loved
to tell me, from the days when you were the star
of your high school football team, MVP, you’d say:

It’s important to go limp after throwing a pass
because you know you’re going to get hit
and that way you’re less likely to get hurt

It was the story you loved to share, long before
I’d left the game. We’d drink beer after beer after
a day on the fire crew, over and over you’d tell

the winning story that became the best advice
I’ve ever heard, although I turned it around
to work for me, it became the rules for how to

receive the pass when you threw the ball, hard.
It became more and more important, each time
that you slugged me and cracked open my lip,

when you snuck up behind me and put me in a
chokehold, just to see how I would react, when
you threw me against a wall, our baby in my arms.

I got so good at going limp that for all these years,
I just knew I would deliver that ball all the way to
touchdown, never getting hurt, never going down.

Ruth Nolan, a former wildland firefighter in the Western U.S., is a writer and professor based in Palm Springs, CA. She’s the author of the poetry book Ruby Mountain (Finishing Line Press 2016). Her short story, “Palimpsest,” published in LA Fiction: Southland Writing by Southland Writers (Red Hen Press 2016), received an Honorable Mention in Sequestrum Magazine’s 2016 Editor’s Reprint contest and was also nominated for a 2016 PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Ruth’s writing has also been published in James Franco Review; Angels Flight LA/Literary West; Rattling Wall; KCET/Artbound Los Angeles; Lumen; Desert Oracle; Women’s Studies Quarterly; News from Native California; Sierra Club Desert Report, Lumen; The Desert Sun/USA Today and Inlandia Literary Journeys. Ruth holds her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside. She may be reached at ruthnolan13@gmail.com and via Twitter @ruthnolan.

Photo credit: Foxcroft Academy via a Creative Commons license.

Uprising

By Janey Skinner

Pink pointed ears popped up everywhere. Skeins in pocket, women knit as they marched, constructing together the greatest pussy hat of all, its oval opening frilled in coral, cinnamon and crimson yarns, too soft and too strong to tear.

Some say the Golem emerged from that hat, a bud of damp clay and fury that shot to full size in a flash, but I suspect it had long slept among us.

Was it us it pulled in its wake, or we who propelled it? Trouncing toward Washington with the pussy hat on its head, a confection of our relentless resistance.

Janey Skinner is a writer, teacher and activist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her story “Carnivores” appeared in Best Small Fictions 2016, edited by Stuart Dybek and Tara Masih. She is at work on a novel about resistance to the war in Colombia, when she isn’t fighting for public education or fuming about encroaching fascism. Check her out at writer.janeyskinner.com.

Der Golem movie poster, 1920, in the public domain.

American Signs

By R.M. Engelhardt

Dead crow in the middle of the road,
Black as death and dark

In the cold November air
When all the trees all sigh

“Remember”

Where there is a change in the scenery
Something different
Like God has suddenly left
The building

A winter without snow
Where a part of your soul

Has departed
From the light

R.M. Engelhardt is a author, poet and writer whose work over the years has appeared in many journals and magazines in print and online, including, Rusty Truck, Thunder Sandwich, The Boston Literary Review, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Dryland Lit, The Outlaw Poetry Network, and many others. He currently lives in Upstate NY and is the creator of such groups as The Troy Poetry Mission and Poets And Writers Stand Against Trump. Visit the poet’s website.

Photo credit: “Fallen” by Rob Nunn via a Creative Commons license.

Porn Government

By Eliza Mimski

One

He undressed the country and grabbed it in his sweaty palms. As the zipper came down, the country split in two. He inserted his finger into the wrath. He inserted his finger into his following but they didn’t notice. He peeled open the law and banged it into the first half. He abraded the tissue. He promised beautiful garments to the second half. He sweet-talked. The country grew grotesque. It took on an absurd shape. It bulged in strange places. His jack-o-lantern smile assured all that everything was just as it was supposed to be.

Two

A cabinet of little boys who hate women.
They dropped my rights down a well.
Men talking about my body. A frat club making rules about my eggs.
He’s an orange glow – radioactive – and I don’t like him.
A long flight of stairs leads to the past you thought you left behind

Three

The men are nails.
They hold locks in their hands.
They are telling us to go to sleep.
But we are awake.
We rise up.
We are healthier than them.

Eliza Mimski is a retired teacher who lives in San Francisco and writes poetry to help her deal with the election. Right now, it’s her sanity. Her work has appeared in Quiet Lightning’s Sparkle and Blink, Fiction 365, Enclave, Anti-Heroin Chic, Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, and other publications. Visit her website at ElizaMimski.wordpress.com.

Photo credit: “Radioactive Geranium” by Garry Knight via a Creative Commons license.

Scent of Mock Orange

A cento by Marcia Meier

The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me

In the west the falling light still glows

but here on earth we’ve got a fair supply of everything

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter

crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,

And now, it is easy to forget

At night, the murmuring calls of chuck-will’s-widows

The moon is a sow

comes home; like he is the Last Emperor

with him in flying collar slim-jim orange

but cops blow him away

Again, brutish necessity wipes its hands

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.

I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries

men drawing lines in the dust.

He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,

I hate them

And the scent of mock orange

(“From the Death of the Fathers” Anne Sexton; “Why is this Age Worse…?” Anna Akhmatova; “Here” Wislawa Szymborska; “At the Fishhouses” Elizabeth Bishop; “Meridian” Amy Clampitt; “Diving into the Wreck” Adrienne Rich; “The Odyssey” Rick Bass; “Song for Ishtar” Denise Levertov; “Spoon River Sadie Louise” Anne Lamott; “The Reception” June Jordan; “DeLiza Spend the Day in the City” June Jordan; “A Far Cry from Africa” Derek Walcott; “At the Fishhouses” Elizabeth Bishop; “Metaphors” Sylvia Plath; “Corsons Inlet” A.R. Ammons; “Tu Do Street” Yusef Yomunyakaa; “Clearances” Seamus Heaney; “Mock Orange” Louise Gluck; “Mock Orange” Louise Gluck)

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

A Brief History

A sonnet by I.E. Sommsin

Into the toilet endlessly flushing

leap the great state and vast empire,

fat and swollen, on schedule to expire,

onward toward oblivion rushing.

They got the loud proud words that prove them strong,

and the firm resolve that works on teevee

and the raw courage made for a moovee—

if you look tough enough, you can’t be wrong!

So fade the golden years of aggression,

as all glory molders to regression.

Led by old children—mean, demanding, shrill,

prone to stumble and forget and to kill—

they never know how they are afflicted

by deep and bloody wounds self-inflicted.

I.E. Sommsin, a writer and artist from Kentucky, lives in San Francisco. He describes this piece as a “hard-hitting sonnet,” written some time ago, “whilst in the grip of a creative fit that turned out to be prophetic.” Indeed.

Photo Credit: Golden toilet image by La Ira Graffx via a Creative Commons license.

The Big Top Comes Down: A Consciousness Poem

By Deborah Kahan Kolb

once the elephants left the crowds stopped coming to the circus but look do my eyes deceive me the elephants are back they are blustering along on Capitol Hill with old white-man creases leathering their skin leaving yuge piles of shit in their wake for the humane rights activists to shovel and yes the crowds are back to see the gilded circus with their very own eyes especially the trumpeting elephants imported from Russia but the parks department submits based on alternative facts that it’s not truly a crowd it’s really fake news it’s a scattered gathering of empty bleachers lining the parade mall of the grand old circus the greatest show on earth headlined by the triumphant return of the elephants their legendary memories faulty somehow remember last year how they snorted and swore and yet oh my god here’s the winning new ringleader just promoted and he’s tripping over the ludicrous length of his tie he used to be an ordinary clown y’know all he did was comb-over the orange wig and shift his makeup from white to perma-tan but some clowns are scary and this one likes water for his next trick he wants to pour gallons of it down Ahmed’s gagging gullet oh yes he’s a self-styled high inquisitor turned into a meme this big league circus ringleader oh look there he’s cracking his golden pen now to tame the donkeys braying out of control in an obstinate corner of the congressional ring ladies and gentlemen hell is empty and all the losers are here the circus is not shuttered it’s terrific it’s tremendous just look at those asses their portfolios prancing ringing round the oval kicking up their heels amidst piles of rubles they imagine they’re stallions able to vault a fantastic wall and see up there the amazing gymnastics of the aerialist acrobats wow they can twist themselves into anything huh the people on the pavement ooh and aah and scratch their heads as they witness hope and change swing upside down from filmy vows of lightweight silk and in the center of the platform can you see the monkeys tilting at that crumbling Mexican windmill or maybe it’s Syrian who really knows and guess what my friend the great cats are back the pink pussyhats no more jumping through hoops or performance on demand hear those fierce felines roar they’re swarming the parade route and chasing this circus act right out of town watch the ringleader ex-clown snatch a bellicose bow amid the hue and cry believe it or not a Ripley themed spectacle is playing itself out on the splendid stage of our nation’s capital

Deborah Kahan Kolb was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and currently lives in the Bronx. Much of her poetry reflects the unique experiences and challenges of growing up in, and ultimately leaving, the insular world of Hasidic Judaism. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetica, Voices Israel, Veils, Halos & Shackles, New Verse News, Tuck, Literary Mama, 3Elements Review, and Rise Up Review, and her work has been selected as a finalist for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. Her debut collection, Windows and a Looking Glass, is forthcoming in April 2017 from Finishing Line Press, as a finalist for their 2016 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. You can read more of the author’s work at www.deborahkahankolb.com.

Photo credit: “Circus elephants and performers parade on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol,” U.S. Library of Congress.

Previously published by Poets Reading the News.

Typing Class

By Susan Elliott Brown

A black, rectangular shield covers the keyboard and my hands
like a censor hides nipples on TV. I type sample sentences,
hundreds more words to go before the bell. When will
the auditor perform the city audit? The fox and the bear
jumped over the logs. The mayor mailed a letter to his aunt
in Pennsylvania. The TV kicks on at a quarter till and a girl
named Tangela sits in front of a makeshift studio, red
high-school letters emblazoned behind her head. She reads
in a monotone, President Bush and war on terror and a sea
of keyboard clicks swallows it up. The clumsy cow stepped
into the chicken coop. Iraq. Baghdad. Saddam. The state
auditor will return on Tuesday. I look to the keyboard
for a sense of place and the black box stops me. Eyes on
the screen. We think they have weapons of mass destruction.
People still wear “I Heart NY” shirts to school. I think
Tangela said we are at war. War with terror. The crafty
attorneys requested a long recess. The black box hides
the delete key. The quick sprinter—no—the quiet sprinkler.
Delete. When will the judge be back in the building?
Planned, authorized, committed, or aided. In order to
prevent any future acts. All necessary and appropriate force.

Susan Elliott Brown is the author of the chapbook The Singing Is My Favorite Part. Her poetry appears in The Best American Poetry blog, Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, and Reunion: The Dallas Review, among others. She received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi, and she lives in Birmingham, Ala. and works in advertising.

Photo credit: Typists in training at the War Production Board, 1942, U.S. Library of Congress

When the Clock Was Smashed

By Julia Stein

Color Juarez White

I was twenty, alone in Juarez and afraid
in a white-walled clinic wearing a white paper gown.
The illegal abortionist took from the drawer
his metal rods, metal knife, metal spoon.
I laid back on the hard, white table.
The gas mask was put over my head.

It was over. They wanted me. To stand up. Walk.
I wanted to fall asleep on the floor.
Stood up. Walked. Got into the taxi.
Collapsed against the taxi’s back seat.
White street lights. The taxi stopped.
The driver’s voice, “Walk across the street
and catch another taxi back to El Paso.”
At the corner, the other side
looked miles away.
I wanted to fall down.
One foot off the curb.
Both feet.
White headlights.
Cars screeched.
I walked slowly,
step by step.
At the corner
I stood
alone in Juarez.

Hemorrhaging

You’re OK,” the doctor said
in the Los Angeles office.
Three days later I bled out blood clots.
Pain exploded in my stomach.
I called the doctor.
“I don’t remember you,” he said.
I was a boat cracking down the middle.
“Take pills,” he said.
All day, the pain, the pills.
I was a boat going down, down, down
in a storm.

The next morning I woke up
to waves of pain,
one after another after another.
I dragged myself to the phone.
I didn’t understand.
The doctor said I was fine.
“Meet me in the hospital,” he said.
My boyfriend drove me down the freeway.
I moaned, “My stomach hurts.”

At the hospital I’m torn away from him
to lie on a table where I float adrift
in a sea-white room.

The doctor loomed overhead,
“You’re twenty.
We need your parents’ consent.
Money down.”
Later he told my mother
I was running out of blood.

The Hall of Mirrors

Eleven years I have carried that summer on my back
and lived like a cripple, curling in on my myself.
I always wanted to take a chalk eraser,
wipe off the whole summer when time stopped,
the clock smashed, the hands wrenched apart.

Down the years I run through
an endless Hall of Mirrors.
I look for my boyfriend down one tunnel,
up another. I never find him.
All I see in the mirrors is the doctors.
Blood is on the floor.
My dress is smeared with blood.

Julia Stein has published five books of poetry and has also edited two, Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Factory Fire Poetry and Every Day Is an Act of Resistance: Selected Poems of Carol Tarlen. Stein’s poetry ranges from love lyrics to explorations of war, peace, women’s lives, and work. She is also co-author of the prose work Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World (Intellect Press, 2015), and she has been an arts journalist and literary critic for years.

This is sections III, IV, and V of Stein’s poem, “When the Clock Was Smashed,” from her first collection, Under the Ladder to Heaven (1984).

Photo credit: Craig Leontowicz via a Creative Commons license.

Just a Short Note to Say Something You Already Know

By Lawrence Matsuda

For Donald’s Daughter, Ivanka Trump

Ivanka, in a different time and place,
you and your children are squeezed into
cattle cars destined for Nazi death camps.
Stars pinned to your coats
and numbers tattooed on your arm.
Religion is your crime, something like
the 120,000 Japanese Americans whose race
incarcerates them during World War II.

If you dodge head shaving,
and starvation, maybe a country
would welcome you.

Angel of death is difficult to slip,
unfortunates are turned away,
chased by verbal brickbats and pitchforks.
You smell freedom’s scent
but only glimpse porthole views
of Lady Liberty’s tantalizing torch.

Doors slam and hands
of kindness withdraw.
You are not among privileged
huddled masses.

Today, as a 1% American demographic,
you are safe by an accident of birth.
Others less fortunate, however,
stand on precipices knowing,
“History does not repeat
itself but it rhymes.”*

When Donald promises
a magnificent Great Wall
and spews religious
hatred to cheering crowds,
you must feel a guilty twinge,
knowing if this were 1943 Germany,
a chorus of incendiary voices
would echo and push innocents
off slippery cliffs into eternal darkness.
Black hole so forbidding victims
would never see their children again,
while self-serving politicians levitate
on bandwagons swerving on and off
a broken highway of eight million bones.

* Quote attributed to Mark Twain.

Lawrence Matsuda was born in the Minidoka War Relocation Center, a concentration camp for Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII. He is a regional Emmy Award-winning writer and an author of two books of poetry, A Cold Wind from Idaho and Glimpses of a Forever Foreigner. Recently, he and Tess Gallagher collaborated on a book of poetry entitled Boogie-Woogie Crisscross, and chapter one of his graphic novel, Fighting for America: Nisei Soldiers, was animated and won a 2016 regional Emmy.

This poem was previously published in Raven Chronicles.

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A Poem and Translation

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By Sima Rabinowitz

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Nuestra Música

Hay silencios sagrados
las pausas frágiles entre palabras

Hay silencios desgraciados
quedarnos mudos cuando hay tanto que exige expresión

Hay silencios inesperados
ya no recuerdo el timbre de tu voz

Hay silencios desanimados
tener que repetir una vez más nuestra petición

Hay silencios que insisten
que resisten
que saben salvarse

Hay silencios que son como museos
archivos de almas desvanecidos

Hay silencios que sueñan
con una noche—una sola noche—sin tiros

Hay silencios que inventan su propia historia
para no dejarnos sin narrativa

Hay silencios que inspiran
una íntima benedición tentativa

Hay silencios que hacen una tregua con la noche
ocultando sus motivos

Hay silencios que nos dan la fuerza
de seguir siendo testigos

Hay silencios robados, fallados, falsificados

Hay silencios engañados, lastimados, dañados

Y hay silencios que ruegan ser llenados
de un canto humilde de amor

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Our Music

Some silences are sacred
the fragile pauses between words

Some silences are disgraceful
we are mute when there is so much to say

Some silences are unexpected
I no longer remember the sound of your voice

Some silences are weary
having to repeat our request, once again

Some silences insist
some resist
some know how to save themselves

Some silences are like museums
archives of vanished souls

Some silences dream
of one night—just one single night—empty of the sound of gunfire

Some silences invent their own history
so we won’t be left without a story

Some silences inspire
a tentative, intimate prayer

Some silences call a truce with the night
hiding their motives

Some silences give us the strength
to carry on serving as witnesses

Some silences are stolen, mistaken, false

Some silences are deceptive, damaged, injured

And some silences beg to be filled
with a humble song of love

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Sima Rabinowitz is the author of The Jewish Fake Book (Elixir Press) and Murmuration (New Michigan Press). Her prose and poetry have appeared recently in The Saint Ann’s Review, Amp, Hamilton Arts & Letters, and Trivia: Voices of Feminism. She wrote “Nuestra Música” for her dearest friends and her community in the Bronx.

Photo credit: K. Kendall via a Creative Commons license.

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When Our Culture Is Los Angeles Instead of Joshua Tree, This Is How We Elect a President

By Peter Brown Hoffmeister

Part I

Sunrise, the first day in Joshua Tree, a Purple-Bibbed Hummingbird
flits and dips into the late March blooms off my back patio, and a male House Finch,
head red as a carpet in Hollywood, chatters with his mate about
mosquito meals and black-fly-bacon for breakfast.
I turn and watch a jackrabbit facing west, somnolent on his haunches,
the dark tips of his ears catching the first warm rays angling across
the desert, when a raven plunges to him, dives to within a foot of his head,
catches the rabbit staring off, and the rabbit jumps, or—more accurately—
jigs, startles, his four jackrabbit feet spraddling in the air, straight
out to the sides, before he reconnects with the earth and bounds
into the Cliffrose and Saltbush.

At Macy’s, this week, in Los Angeles, fur coats are 30 % off.

Part II

First night in Joshua Tree, the stars shift counter-clockwise around Polaris—
Capella, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major—but also
stars and clusters I haven’t yet learned, 3/4 hydrogen, 1/4 helium
thrown from God’s bag, 6000 visible above the Lost Horse Cabin on
any given night. But only 119 miles away
in Los Angeles, the burning wattage of the city pollutes a ground-up whitewash,
as if the people who worship concrete
have painted the sky as nothing.

I’ve heard aspiring actors, aspiring directors, and aspiring producers talk about what
they’ve gained by moving to Los Angeles.

Part III

Cap Rock, walking barefoot back to my car, Cholla spines in the sand and I shuffle
my feet to scuff the spines so they won’t stick.
A coyote yips in front of me, and I try to translate
his yawping whoops,
March Madness, the basketball experts say, would you take Kentucky or the field?
And I say this is the field, right?
Joshua Tree?
Open desert at 4000 feet through the Lost Horse Valley? The coyote
in front of me still, luring me further into the desert, to a pile
of stones I don’t recognize. I follow his yowls for a mile, but
he stays in front of me until
this moment,
now
when coming around a corner to a jamble of orange monzogranite, he’s
in front of me, sitting like a domesticated dog, and I say,
“What was your trick, Trickster?”
But he says, “With them, I didn’t have to. Not at all. People,
they just tricked themselves.”

Part IV

Finally, An Ode to the Red Carpet Itself:

How did you get this job, not a green or blue carpet. Purple
is a royal color and could be the carpet of choice for
stars to stumble across, bubbly and buzzing from limo shots, or
almost stars—the nearly famous—hoping for interviews, cameras, microphones,
anything to reflect their own silicon-enhanced images.
Our president is orange but he was once on that reality show where he always said, “You’re fired!” so emphatically that he must be able to
be a boss
win a game
lead a nation
which is synonymous with
starring in a movie?

If you want to catch a raccoon near a desert spring, drive three-inch nails, angled down,
into a two-pound coffee can, then place something shiny in the bottom:
a silver dollar
a bracelet
a small mirror.
The raccoon, masked and striped as if he’s dressed for a special occasion
will grasp the sparkling object in his small dark hand and he won’t let go, not even after
he discovers that he can’t remove his fist from the trap. Never will this raccoon relinquish the shiny piece of something that he is holding even if he realizes that he
has been caught out in the open, looking like a fool.

Peter Brown Hoffmeister is a poet and fiction writer, and a former Writer-In-Residence of Joshua Tree National Park. His most recent novels include This Is the Part Where You Laugh (Knopf, Random House) and Graphic the Valley (Tyrus Books, Simon & Schuster). His next novel, Too Shattered for Mending, will be released by Knopf in September 2017.

Photo credit: Steve Collis via a Creative Commons license.

i’m sawing off my roots

By Cyrus Parker

watching the place

i had called home

for twenty-five years

turn red

for the first time

in twenty-four—

on a night that would determine

the future

of not only myself,

but so many other people,

many whose entire livelihoods

were on the line—

was the first time

i had ever been

ashamed

of where i’d come from.

Cyrus Parker is a New Jersey-based poet, originally from Michigan, where he spent four years actively 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.

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

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.