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.

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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.

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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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No Time to Lose

By Sergio A. Ortiz

It’s cold here.
Its color, a ninja turtle orange,
and only 1 day left
for el Presidente Electo
to inaugurate his burned hair,
his head de mal parío,
his enano politician tweets.
People say it’s worth the trip
to his Swearing In,
that this kind of shit makes you grow.
The thing is my body
cannot stand another Jetblue seat,
another Greyhound cafe.
Besides, winter hurts.
Its whiteness rusts the snow.
Its racism confuses me,
makes me feel small,
like a very distant echo.
Fuck it, if I go back to D.C.
It’ll be because I want to visit
the Smithsonian’s
African American Collection.
Where merchant ships loaded
with slaves are still shipwrecked
in my memory.

Sergio A. Ortiz is a gay Puerto Rican poet and the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. He is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four time Best of the Web nominee, and a 2016 Best of the Net nominee. He is currently working on his first full length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.

Reading recommendation: The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker.

Sad Homage to Whitman

By Mark J. Mitchell

Fatigued and down-hearted I read the result of the vote.
Wind has been stolen from my sails.
Fellow travelers jump, one by one, off the plank.
over the low gunwale of the ship of state.

Allons!

November 9, 2016

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty-five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. His poems have also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. Three of his collections and chapbooks—Three Visitors, Lent 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and a novel, Knight Prisoner, are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. He resides in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster. Visit his Facebook page.

Reading Recommendation: Artifacts & Relics by Mark J. Mitchell.

Reasons to post a photo of a dead child from Aleppo

By Sergio A. Ortiz

Omran was a Syrian boy: Our son defeated in front of the sea after chasing the dawn, our little brother cleft by the blows of the crab that was death, nothingness, emptiness, a thick river of icy water. Our child like all other innocent children whom they bombed in Aleppo and are no longer: I want nothing more from this world. Everything I dreamed of disappeared. I need to bury my children and sit next to them until I die. Omran survived hunger, thirst and despair, but not the Syrian government, not the world who did not know, or care, how to save him.

Reading recommendation: Elle va nue la liberté (Freedom, She Comes Naked) by Syrian poet Maram Al-Masri.

3 a.m. November 11, 2016 Turtle Cove Cottage Po’ipu, Kaua’i

By Chris Cummings and David Cummings

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
Drain the swamp     he brays   the president-elect     from his gold leaf
bedroom     in his gold leaf tower    Drain it he inveighs

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
C:
Horror-clown they called him that German newspaper the Germans
who know from horror-clowns alright

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
They’ll come first for Dems    border-crossers next     then lives that matter
and those who pray five times a day     then neighbors     then you    then me
C:
They’ll unbury and burn all the oil   behead the Appalachians for coal
eeeeeeeeeeeeeee tunnel the earth frack out the natural gas
All that and us    pyred and lit    rapacious fire    The black air we’ll breathe
D:
A fear governs them, unappeasable
I mean the ones he owns    his bottom-dwellers     murk-blind   uprooting
eeeeeeeeeeeeeee cypress     black gum     red maple              decay miasmal
eeeeeeeee That’s a swamp must smell sweet to him

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
But a swamp, my love, is an ecosystem: life-giving, life-sustaining, densely
fecund        A place where dinner swims by and all you have to do is make a net
to catch it     Or if you haven’t got a net your strong bare hands will do

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
Saddam Hussein finished off the Mesopotamian swamps in the mid-nineties
draining them    and thereby killed the livelihood and culture of an ancient
people     and killed the ancient wetland     A long misery
C:
humans     animals     plants     birds of many kinds, all lost     flamingos
pelicans     herons sacred ibis     Basra reed-warbler     African darter
Mesopotamian crow… Those murders    his atrocity   It must be spoken of

A vulture perches on my heart this night and tears off pieces Does that
mean I am dying already dead or am I hoping for death now?

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
Now I sit alone at a table on the lanai of this cottage in the 3 a.m. darkness
ceiling fan turning slowly    almost noiseless     The fan light is dim but
there’s light enough for writing     and I can hear the ocean a block away
The waves    how they break    a ceaseless sound   bound to the moon
But the moon too is leaving us     inches each year     moving forever     away

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
And she will be so far from us    waves no longer rise and crash     and seas
are drained of vigor     the world’s ocean beaches tame as inland shores
C:

no tides
no tide pools
no clams
no clambakes

just a quiet almost lifeless lapping at our feet

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
I mourn for you tonight my mother-father earth        But I think in the end
you will survive us     if the miniature suns we’ve so meticulously    construed
so faithfully sheltered    in buried silos like precious grain     if they’re never
lit their poisons I think would be more   than even you    could repair

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
But our own species?   Maybe this descent to madness is       you      thinning
our herd      returning us    to the ancient cave     damp and sooty and full
of shadows     Then you could start over   the Wild drained of us     build a
new offspring      if that’s your longing    more merciful than our kind
C:
One able to feel for the souls of all your children       the furred     the
feathered     the scaly ones too Who will look out again on the stars
reflect on their mystery and be reflected    if     if I could believe     but the
night vulture has not lifted from my breast       has not yet had its fill

Christine and David Cummings live and write together in Menlo Park, California. They’ve both had some poems published here and there, and David’s collection, Tancho, was published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2014. “3 a.m. November 11, 2016” came from a journal entry Chris wrote right after the election, while they were in Hawaii celebrating their 10th anniversary, feeling the opposite of celebratory. They keep working on the poem; this is the most recent version, edited for length. A slightly longer version lives on their blog, which you can read here.

Reading recommendation: Tancho by David Cummings.

When the New Cabinet Exercises

By Tricia Knoll

They will be back where the snow falls
on camp tents, cookfires and legends
of stars so cold you know they froze
in the middle of a myth of creation
where someone blue lifted up the egg
and old women sang the birth song.

They will be back when snow is so deep
painted horses frost over, their eyelids closed
on the shoulder of a neighbor. When wan sun
cresting over the hill turns pony hoof prints
into iced omegas and they move so slow, nosing
winter grass, that you might not see them move.

They will be back saying the freezing
blizzard is why they hack open the belly
of the earth, mow down mountain ridges,
loose the black snake on the iced river,
and that valley fog that smells of smoke?
It warms the babies, they say when really,
it’s the masks they must wear.

They will be back to promote a white-out
of words that deletes drought, wild land fires,
and whirlwinds clogging the record books,
pages they throw like coal on a bonfire
of lies, ashy remains of picture books
they read to their grandchildren,
that illustrated scorched earth series.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has done a great deal of resisting over a long period of time. She is deeply concerned about what will happen soon to the people protecting the water at the DAPL pipeline site. Visit her website.

Reading recommendation: The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon, 1959.

A Prose Poem by Alina Stefanescu

When You Send an Email Asking for Money to Support That Mission Bringing Jesus to Romania

I was born in a land wiped clean from the maps, a place you associate with AIDS-stricken orphans, tucked into Balkans, needing your bibles. Idiots needing salvation. Peasants needing administrations of missionary impulse. Come clear-cut this culture. Plant a flag. Mail a postcard. How you would have loved Ceausescu, his staunch anti-abortion policies. The workplace vaginal exams required by law. To check women for babies. To save baby lives while denying a mother’s. Illegal abortions, automated jail time. Birth control punished as contraband traffick, a violation of the national body. Borders decided the line between import and crime. Only Party members were permitted the honor of empty wombs. Only the Party ensured flesh against fetus. Pro-life is this boot on the neck of a lesser human, a blade you sanctify with statecraft.

I was born in a place where parents listened to shadows inching over concrete. Shadows don’t speak unless you count subtraction—the sound sucked away from nearby objects. A woman’s body is a mine, a natural resource. What’s natural is owned by men. You with bonafide smiles and big ole blessings. You with holy-roller heads & empty hearts. You hear nothing. Count the silence articulated in the portrait’s airbrush to taste the melody of what is missing. A math you cannot imagine. You who are blind. You who don’t see foreshortened folk ambling sidewalks. Take refuge beneath a roof slant. Seek the refuge you won’t grant refugees. You are busy bearing bibles. You are bringing the bible to the people of Romania. You are coming, eager to selfie. Tell the world what you’ve done for Romania. Tell what you’ve done.

I was born in a land that stopped naming its children Nicolae. The dictator’s name curses any child it touches. I am in love with the vacant wist of the local executioner, his grizzled voice, mourning the retirement of Alabama’s Yellow Mama. A mother who kills is a native Kali. An electric chair is the proper American matriarch, penultimate sizzle. Baptists forge petitions to bring Yellow Mama back. My mongrel womb won’t bear your life. I sew lips shut, vagina muzzled, verbs safe inside. My body is forbidden samizdat. Paul Celan is my answer. Please keep your American Jesus at home. Muffle his face with flags. Stars and bars you brand across his back.

From Alina

“[I] wrote it last week after re-reading Svetlana Alexievich and thinking how much the Russian desire for the “strong man” resembles America’s. And how sad.”

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania, raised in Alabama, and reared by various friendly ghosts. She won the 2015 Ryan R. Gibbs Flash Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2015 Robert Dana Poetry Award. Her poetry and prose can be found in PoemMemoirStory, Shadowgraph Quarterly, Parcel, Noble Gas Quarterly, Minola Review, and others. Objects In Vases, a poetry chapbook, was published by Anchor & Plume in March 2016. A poem from this chapbook, “Oscar Dees, No Apologetics Please,” has been nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Alina currently lives in Tuscaloosa with her partner and four friendly mammals. More online at www.alinastefanescu.com or @aliner.

From Alina: “Wrote it last week after re-reading Svetlana Alexievich and thinking how much the Russian desire for the “strong man” resembles America’s. And how sad.”

Reading Recommendation: Objects In Vases by Alina Stefanescu.

Gentle Bones

By Suzanne O’Connell

Darkness is upon us all.
The old tree kneels
like always
to sip from the water.

Poison pen letters
were returned
for insufficient postage.
Girls wear safety pins
and march in the street.

The house is dark.
The dachshund-shaped lamp,
is steadfast,
sitting in its halo of light.

II.

Darkness is upon us.
Search for the tiny miracles
close enough to touch.
Your ears for example,
those workaday wings.

Hello gentle bones,
hello flexible trumpets
made for listening.
You can touch the silken skin,
move them as in flight.
Their perfect rims
are crimped like pies
for our tarnished Thanksgiving.

Suzanne O’Connell is a poet and clinical social worker living in Los Angeles. Her recently published work can be found in Poet Lore, Forge, Atlanta Review, Juked, Existere, Crack The Spine, The Louisville Review, and Found Poetry Review. O’Connell was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2015 and 2016. Her first poetry collection, A Prayer for Torn Stockings, was published by Garden Oak Press. Visit Suzanne’s website.

Reading recommendation: A Prayer for Torn Stockings by Suzanne O’Connell.