Tag: Poetry

The Crucible

By Christie M. Buchovecky

 

An old friend messaged today.
Told me “Got a funny story
if ya have time . . .” and sent a clip:
riding by an old Colonial I recognized,
despite a view obscured by rain
and the barred windows
he’d had to film behind.

“Nothing like riding
down your old street
in the back of a police car”

I made time. Clawed it back
from meetings, spreadsheets, VIPs.
You must for someone who
made a kinder home of your heart.

Our bond was forged twenty years ago,
tempered in apparent contradiction.
Honors Student / Future Tradesman,
Class President / Class Clown,
Teachers’ pet / Boy given detention
just for walking down the hall
with a traffic cone
on his head.

“Was in town for a job;
stopped by to thank our science teacher.
Her class made me a better welder.
Hoped to tell her that now
I teach students like me – make them see
how working with your hands
doesn’t mean you are stupid.”

I always knew he was smart. He knew
I wished being smart didn’t matter
as much as being kind.

“She wasn’t there, but that admin guy
who used to file my detention slips?
Yeah . . . he’s principal now. Lectured me
for not knowing to sign in, then
had me arrested for trespass.”

Funny, how some things never change.

The last time I went back,
administration offered me cake.

 

A geneticist in New York City, Christie M Buchovecky devotes her days to finding answers for families caught in the diagnostic odyssey. In the evenings, she can be found either enjoying excellent food and ridiculous games with friends or curled up on the couch with her husband and cats (notebook in hand). Ever curious about the world and our place in it, Christie turns to poetry to examine truths we hold within ourselves. Previous work can be found in Humana Obscura and on Instagram @cm.buchovecky.

Photo credit: Fabrice Florin via a Creative Commons license.

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Out-of-Pockets to Pick

By David Icenogle

 

They tell me
the copay for my medication is only
a hundred and fifty dollars.
The best way to measure privilege
is the way people use the word “only.”
They tell me
I should be relieved
because without insurance it would’ve been eight-hundred.
Why not make it a million?
They tell me
never, never, never
stop taking your psychiatric medications abruptly
unless you can’t afford them apparently.
I’m already buying off-brand food
just to pay for the off-brand, generic prescriptions,
maybe I could afford the one-fifty
but what I can’t afford is the uncertainty
because last month it was one-twenty.
Spare me
the carpet-bombing of jargon that you think
will bully away my questions.
“It’s complicated” ain’t an answer
especially when it’s on purpose.
Here’s something not complicated,
people die without insulin
so don’t intimate that this is negotiable,
don’t intimidate and call it consensual,
and don’t boast about what insurance has saved me
when it’s all Monopoly money.
I’ve spent way too many lunch breaks on hold
just to be told
I should’ve had an ailment that’s in-network.
My patience has met my out-of-pocket.
I just want it to make sense.
If an apple-a-day keeps the doctor away
then this system is an orchard
rotten to the core.
It has the bedside manner of a buzzsaw.
And no
I can’t tell you how to fix it
but that doesn’t make me or it less broke,
so if ya’ll keep blowing smoke
I’m going to keep pulling fire alarms
until the insulin runs out.

 

David Icenogle is a writer and mental health advocate from the Midwest. He has written nonfiction work for the University of Nebraska-Omaha and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, as well as poetry for Asylum Magazine, A Tether to this World, Main Street Rag, From Whispers and Roars, and others. He also produces a YouTube channel focused on addiction and mental health called “No Chaser with David Icenogle.”

Photo credit: Sy Clark via a Creative Commons license.

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Emma Thompson Full Frontal at 62

By Angelica Whitehorne

(found poem from Emma’s interviews for the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande)

It’s challenging to be nude
at 62. The age that I am.
Nothing has changed.
Can’t stand
in front of a mirror, always pulling
something, judging it.

The neural pathways
of eight-year-olds going,
“I hate my thighs.”

I was 14, hating my body.
Everything that surrounds us
reminds us how imperfect we are,
everything is wrong with us.

In acting, it’s challenging to
see untreated bodies on the screen.
We aren’t used to women in the real-world.
We aren’t used to seeing time.

This thing is the same as it ever was.

The dreadful demands,
carved into my soul.
I didn’t think I could’ve done it.
And yet.

I can’t just stand there.
So, I stood there, nude at 62.

This is your vessel,
it’s your house,
it’s where you live.

I have lived in it.
I have experienced pleasure in it.

 

Angelica is a writer living in Durham, N.C., with published work in Westwind Poetry, Mantis, Air/Light Magazine and The Laurel Review, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, The World Is Ending, Say Something That Will Last (Bottle Cap Press, 2022). Besides being a devastated poet, Angelica is a marketing content writer for a green energy loan company and volunteers with Autumn House Press. Learn more at angelicawhitehorne.myportfolio.com.

Image credit: “Three Girls in front of a Mirror” (“Drei Madchen vor dem Speigel”) by Otto Müller, c. 1922, via the U.S. National Gallery of Art.

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WWJD

By Maureen Fielding

 

“KOREAN WOMEN STRIPPED,
TORTURED BY JAPANESE.
Oriental brutality at Seoul…
American missionaries take no part.”

So reads the 70-year-old headline
of a Los Angeles Daily Times cutting,
yellowing, displayed behind glass
in the Museum of Korean Contemporary History.

My question is this:
Did the missionaries take no part in
the stripping,
the torturing,
or the defending?

Did those godly folks
book first class passage on the SS Korea,
travel thousands of miles
across Pacific Ocean swells and surges,
battered by typhoons,
seasick in their cabins,
just to watch young women tied together,
struck with swords and butts of guns,
dragged off by policemen and soldiers?

To deliver Jesus?
To save the pagan souls?
To witness brutality?
To watch torment and humiliation
but to take no part?

We learned in school of the martyred missionaries,
the Jesuit priests in Canada,
Franciscans in Japan,
Daughters of Charity in China.
These were the missionaries of my childhood,
missionaries who could inspire a 10-year-old girl to
build a shrine of dandelions and violets,
to pray to plastic statues and pictures on the wall,
and weep at their sufferings.

But who were these missionaries who took no part?
The words pain me as if a sword had struck
some precious spot, excising
some last fragment of faith.

 

Maureen Fielding is an associate professor of English and Women’s Studies at Penn State Brandywine. Her work has appeared in Westview, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Marathon Literary Review, and other journals. She has taught English in South Korea, and she has been teaching about Japanese Militarized Sexual Slavery in Women’s Studies classes for 20 years. She is working on a chapbook based on research conducted in South Korea before the pandemic began. She has also written a novel inspired by her experiences as a Russian intercept operator in West Berlin during the Cold War.

The photo is provided by Maureen Fielding. The 1919 Los Angeles Daily Times article that inspired this poem is on display at the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, in Seoul, South Korea.

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“Don’t give kids any gifts tied to reading”

By Joanne Durham 

—One on a list of restrictions from the Sarasota County School District,
in response to Florida HB1467, posted on Twitter

 

Go then, pack away Honey I Love, unfit title
for eight-year-olds. Hide Can I Touch Your Hair?
braided with so much empathy it must be banned. Destroy
A Caribbean Dozen, the book Robert finds first thing
each morning, which sometimes gets him through the day
without stabbing a classmate with his pencil. “I practiced
the poem from Haiti,” he tells me. Remove Good Books,
Good Times (the editor was gay). Search Daryl before
he goes home, be sure there’s no Pocketful of Poems
he’s hidden to read with a flashlight under his covers. Snatch
Out of Wonder out of Eddie’s hands as he and Dora share
the rocking chair, puzzling over “chasing justice”
and “smile like moon.” She teaches him the hard words,
he shows her the funny part about alphabet soup –
choosing their favorite books, they give each other
gifts they must unlearn to give. Sanitize the empty
poetry shelf just in case some trace of joy remains.

 

Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and the forthcoming On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books). Her poetry appears in Poetry East, CALYX, Chautauqua, Wordpeace, Rise-Up Review and many other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina Coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. Visist her website at joannedurham.com.

Editor’s note: You can help stop book banning by opposing book challenges at your library’s and schools. Find information and support from the following “freedom to read” organizations.

American Library Association

#FReadom Fighters

PEN America

Unite Against Book Bans

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Arby’s Pilot Casino

By T. Dallas Saylor

 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, says

Gordon McKernan, big truck lawyer,

on one of his dozens of billboards lining

the Louisiana stretch of I-10, mixed in

with ads for boudin and cracklin’s,

the Coushatta Casino, the Tiger Truck Stop

which—after Our Tiger Lived Longer,

than whom I’m not sure, now features

a live camel—and Gordon’s rival

Morris Bart—One Call, Y’All.

 

I pull off for gas at one of these holy

trinity complexes featuring fuel plus fast

food plus casino: the door’s cartoon miner

pans for gold, swears that in the time I idle

guzzling a dozen gallons into my tank

or choosing between Combo 3 and Combo 5

I could be striking it so rich I’ll blow bills

out my tail pipe as I rocket right out

of this state, & why stop there, out of

the country, off the surface of the planet.

 

In the bathroom as I wash up at the sink,

adjust my skinny-ass jeans over my small frame,

straighten my N95 & fluff my long curls

in the mirror, a man walks in & stops,

apologizes, pokes his head out the door

& double-checks the sign. Why do I feel like

I’ve won this one, gotten away with something

forbidden—delicious, like the extra-large fry,

like one last quarter slipped in the slit

of the slot machine, & at last the crank comes up

 

three 7’s: I’m biblically blessed, birthmarked,

not a man in the desert but the desert

in a man, a camel stuck in a truck stop,

or three cherries, meaning the rib is ready

to rip, burst forth from my chest, compete

with a Coke & knowledge of good & evil,

so bless my poor queer spirit, God, because I’m

blowing this joint, I’m using my one call, y’all,

blasting off this nationwide runway straight

to the stars on a full stomach & full tank.

 

 

T. Dallas Saylor (he/they) is a PhD candidate in poetry at Florida State University, and he holds an MFA from the University of Houston. His work meditates on the body—especially gender and sexuality—against physical, spiritual, and digital landscapes. His poetry has been featured in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Colorado Review, Christianity & Literature, PRISM international, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Houston, TX. He is on Twitter: @dallas_saylor.

Photo credit: “Lucky 7” by John Wardell via a Creative Commons license.

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after a school shooting: the cleanup crew

By Sister Lou Ella Hickman

 

the bodies are gone
so
today
i write
about the cleanup crew
those who see what we do not
and perhaps never will:
the desks
the white boards
the closets
o yes   and the floors
how do they feel
when they kneel down
to pick up
the spattered   scattered books
lunch boxes
artwork
finally
the dried chaos of blood
they must mop up
what do they feel
when they go home
when they open the door
when they sit in their easy chair
and drink their first stiff drink

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, US Catholic, Commonweal, The Christian Century, Presence, Prism, and several anthologies.  She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015. Five of the poems were set to music and performed at 92Y in New York City on May 11, 2021.

Photo credit: “Mopping Up” by Steven Usher via a Creative Common license.

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When You Swim Out into the Ocean

By Claudia Wair

 

You float on your back, your face barely above water. There’s nothing but the silence of the ocean in your ears. In the saltwater’s embrace, you drift, weightless. You stare at the clouds above, trying to empty your mind. You’re away from the beach. Not so far that the lifeguard blows her whistle, just far enough from the splashers and the screamers.

The ocean is peace.

Here, you’re a gently bobbing body, not a stupid nigger, like the man on the boardwalk said when he bumped into you. The water doesn’t care that your skin is dark brown or that your hair curls tight. You’re a small human in a vast ocean.

The rage subsides to a dull ache. Your muscles finally relax. You roll over and swim back to shore. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Then you feel gravity again, feel the sand, feel the breeze. You find your white friends and sit on your towel. No one asks how you are.

And you pretend you are fine.

 

Claudia Wair is a writer and editor from Virginia. Her work has appeared in JMWW, The Wondrous Real Magazine, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Corvid Queen, and elsewhere. You can read more at claudiawair.com, or find her on Twitter @CWTellsTales.

Photo credit: “At Sunset” by Giuseppe Milo via a Creative Commons license.

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Vile Affections

By Soon Jones

 

I grow up in a Florida church being warned about
god-hating bull dykes and sissy fairy fags
leaving the natural use of the woman,
which is sex, because
all a woman is good for
is sex and tempting men.

Yet when a woman tempts another woman
somehow that is not about sex,
though I’m pretty sure it is:
I want Crystal instead of Stephen,
the hottest boy in youth group,
apparently.

At a sleepover with church girls
I panic when they throw
down a copy of J-14 magazine
with *NSync on the cover,
and interrogate me on who
I want to marry.
This is a trap:
there have been rumors about me
and they’re all true.

I pick Lance Bass for his friendly face.
This is not the wrong answer,
but it is still not the right answer.
I should have said Justin Timberlake or JC Chasez,
apparently, but I’ve made my bed

so now I have to buy Lance Bass stickers
and say how hot Lance Bass is at youth group
and now everything I own is covered
in Lance Bass. I even write about him
in my diary, in case someone reads it.

I doodle in my Lance Bass notebook
while my pastor rants about an “it”
with “hips of a woman, but a face like a man”
who served him coffee in some roadside diner.
He shares his fantasy of renting a room
in a Miami hotel close to the gay bars
on Memorial Day weekend, and how,

God willing,

he would hide in the air ducts
and descend on the bull dykes and sissy fags
with an AK-47 and a Bowie knife, for
they which commit such things
are worthy of death.
He throws his head back in ecstasy,
licks his lips at the thought
of all those queers he would sacrifice
on the altar before the Lord.

I hold Lance Bass to my chest
as the men shout “Amen!”
tossing hymnals at the pulpit
like panties.

 

Soon Jones is a Korean lesbian poet from the rural countryside of the American South. Their work has been published in Juke Joint, Westerly, beestung, and Moon City Review, among others. They can be found at soonjones.com, on Twitter, and on Instagram.

Poet’s note: Passages in italics are taken from Romans 1:27 and 1:32.

Photo Credit: “Ungodly Hate” by K-B Gressitt.

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Feeding Stray Cats in Ukraine

By Rebecca K. Leet

 

As molecules of steel madness
concussed the air
and no next breath was sure

a vibration in his unbowed soul
prompted Sasha to step outside
and feed a posse of stray cats.

The offering –
from one displaced in the world
to others also beggared –
cost Sasha his right foot.

War presents, at times,
a tableau for tenderness –
often anonymous, usually unseen.

It always presents
a canvas for cruelty – unfathomable

yet undaunting
to the merciful who step outside
to succor the world.

 

Rebecca K. Leet has spent a lifetime across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, seeing the best of times and the worst. Writing poetry keeps her sane.

Photo credit: Yael Beeri via a Creative Commons license.

Editor’s note: Paws of War is helping to care for abandoned pets in Ukraine. The nonprofit has received a 4 of 4 stars rating on Charity Navigator, so it’s safe to assume your contribution will be well-spent.

Displacement

By Antony Owen

 

I am
the fox-flame in the wood
jumping through snow an ember
chased to extinction by lesser beasts.

I am
permanent as the moth in amber
its patterns decided by the white sun
its fate decided by the earthlings.

I am
the glass-blower’s lips’ creation
to consume whatever is put in me
if I break, I become injurious to touch.

I am
the exhausted bee in the shying rose
the heartbeat bass of my distant hive
preferring my own cruel natures.

I am
insignificant as a cloudy starlit night
yet everything is still revealed just hidden
like Greek Gods who move us to sea.

 

Antony Owen is a writer of conflict translated in English, Japanese and German. His work has been recognised internationally, including, a full bilingual collection translated in 2021 by Thelem Press and an award in the British Army Poetry Competition in 2018. His work has also been shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry.

Photo credit: “Glassblower” by Kairon Gnothi via a Creative Commons license.

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“I can experience joy alone”

By Tristan Richards

 

I meditate on this line while hiking
away from the waterfall, and a doe
pokes her head out of the snow,
watching me, her eyes black and beady,
her body sandy, the color of spring
gravel turned mud. She is beautiful.
I freeze, my heart in my throat.
I become too aware of the ice
surrounding me, melting but still
cold enough to take me down.
She tracks me as I walk, alert
but faking confidence, toward
the parking lot. I think about how
strange it is to be so close to nature
and also surrounded by cars.
It is wild to set natural growth next
to what comes at you so quickly.
When I pass, she stands on top of
the hill and I see her full body,
white stripe running from her throat
down her belly, somehow calm and
ready to bolt at the same time.
I think each of us scared the other.
It is hard to exist in this world
as a woman and not be afraid.

 

Tristan Richards (she/her) is a poet and student affairs professional from Minnesota. She is the author of two self-published chapbooks: Not All Challenges Are For Us (2022) and The Year Was Done Right (2019). Her poems have been published in Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, on the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride, and in Firethorne. In 2022, Tristan facilitated daily poetry writing workshops throughout the month of April for National Poetry Writing Month. She holds an MA in Leadership in Student Affairs from the University of St. Thomas and a BA in Communication Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College. You can find her on Instagram @tristanwritespoems or at tristanwritespoems.weebly.com.

Photo credit: “Doe in the Snow” by Richard Carter via a Creative Commons license.

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What Is Truth?

By Wells Burgess

  

Deep in the South, men gather.
First among equals, the Kingfish,
upstage, and it is only he
whose face you see; his minions –
that includes me, Markie –
have their backs to you. The Boss
plays solitaire; the cards slap
the table. “Markie,” he says,
where we gon’ put that road?”
“DeVreaux and the boys got
them all whupped up in Jasmine,”
I say. “Chairman talkin’ like
it’s yesterday. Folks
so starved for traffic, they’ll
walk ten miles on crutches
to vote for you.” Kingfish
looks me in the eye. “Markie,”
he says, “I  got a debt to pay.
Judge in Bayou goin’ on and on
bout how we are ‘destroyin
rural culture’ with the highway
projects. Owns a big tract. We
gon’ run that road right thoo
it so he hears them big eight wheelers
when he lays him down to rest.”
“Boss,” I says, “we got a rally
in Jasmine, big parade and all.
Tenth-grader singin a song he made up
about the highway they’re gettin.
Shall I call it off?” “Hell, no,”
says the Boss. He looks me right
in the eye. “Markie,” he says,
“Do you trust me?” And I say
back, “I do.”
The scene goes dark; another lights:
Jasmine Parish: scrub country,
hard-bitten faces, an old dirt road,
a boy, a wheel, a stick, Kingfish
on the stump. “We gonna’
put my big new highway right
thoo this ol’ Parish,” he says.
“Hire your boys to build it. Only
ramp for 60 miles go right to
this town. You folks gonna
be eatin the fat o’ the land.
Ain’t that right, Markie,”
he says to me. “Amen,” I say.
The scene goes dark. Another lights:
the Kingfish’s election headquarters,
a victory celebration. “I want a
Parish by Parish count,”
the Kingfish yells. When it comes
to Jasmine, DeVreaux shouts
“Eighty percent!” So I ask
the Boss, “So we gon’ give em
their road?” “Hell no,” he says.
“Goin’ thoo Bayou. Plans drawn,
press release tomorrow.” “What
we gon’ tell em down in Jasmine?”
The Kingfish looks me right in
the eye. “Tell em I lied,” he says.
DeVreaux won’t do it, so I make
the trip myself. Press release
come out, Chairman calls
a meetin’ of the Parish Council.
I show up. “Wha’ happened?”
Chairman asks. “He bout
guarantee us that road.” I
step right up. “Boss told me
to tell you he lied,” I say.
Folks bustin out cryin
and cursin, bout half of em
run on out the hall. Chairman
and others, DeVreaux’s people,
they stay quiet, and pretty soon
Chairman starts to chuckle.
“That’s the Kingfish for ya,”
he says. “Thoo and thoo.
Our turn will come.
He gon’ see to it.”

 

Wells Burgess began writing poetry late in life. His work has appeared in The Lyric, Measure, The Beltway Quarterly, Light, Think, Passager,, The Federal Poet, and Better Than Starbucks. In retirement, he teaches poetry at Encore Learning in Arlington, Virginia.

Photo credit: “I Win” by Kevin Labianco via a Creative Commons license.

 

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September Together

By Elizabeth Shack

 

Last September, we hiked the forest
beside the fog-drenched sea.
Followed a swift stream
bridged with salmon spawning,
returning from gray Pacific homes.
Switchbacked beside a waterfall
sparkling down steep granite.

Emerged into sunlight with a view
of lichen-painted rock
and the blue-white ice
that once sculpted this verdant valley.

Is still sculpting:
Just as moss and fern carpeted bare rock,
as alder and spruce sprouted,
as forest appeared where glacier receded,

today melting ice reshapes coasts,
forests flame to ash,
grasslands wither to desert,
rivers run to dust.

This September, whales still sing in the sea.

Will you fight with me
for this vibrant,
dying world?

 

Elizabeth Shack lives in central Illinois with her spouse, cat, and an expanding collection of art supplies and fitness equipment. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The MacGuffin, Writers Resist, Daily Science Fiction, and other magazines and anthologies. She attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for poetry in 2022. For more of Elizabeth’s work, visit her website.

Photo credit: “Humpback Whale” by J. Maughn via a Creative Commons license.

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Scylla

By Bex Hainsworth

 

A nymph unburdened by beauty is a nightmare.

My barnacle flesh scratches against stone
as I curl up in my cave, full of octopus cunning;
folding many limbs around myself, cruel, content.

This was Circe’s gift: to make me a monster,
a maneater. The distant roar of Charybdis
rocks me to an easy sleep each night.

I know they will take the dangerous road,
right to my mountain door. The men,
the soldiers, the heroes. The semi-divine.

They taste of revenge, of justice
for the ripped dresses, for the temple maids
who lost the chase, the dryads who couldn’t
get away, and the goddesses who never escaped.
For Leda, and Persephone, and Helen. For Hera.

This is for my own golden bruises.

I hold vigil. My teeth are tapers, glinting in the dark,
for all my sacrificial sisters. No offerings
are made in my name, no altars, no prayers.
No matter. The sea provides settlement.

You should hear them scream for me.
I rip the last words from their throats
with claws like scythes.

Afterwards, wiggling a thigh bone free
with the stick of a ship’s mast,
I recite my affirmations:

let them know how it felt beneath their bodies,
let their hearts freeze at the thought of me,
let them know what it is to be truly afraid.

A nymph unburdened by beauty is their nightmare.

 

Bex Hainsworth (she/her) is a bisexual poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Ethel Zine, Atrium, Okay Donkey, trampset, and bath magg. Find her on Twitter @PoetBex.

Illustration of “Pesce Donna” from Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi’s Istorica descrizione de’ tre’ regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola, 1687, via Public Domain Review.

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Islands of No Nation

By Ada Ardére

 

We give them our children to fight in jungles and deserts,
we give them our taxes to pave their roads,
we give them our land to build their businesses,
we give them our coasts to moor their battleships,
we give them our waters to test nuclear weapons,
and we have received nothing.

Hurricanes and earthquakes ravage us
and only deafened ears sit on the mainland
as we watch the light go out in our hospitals
as we hear of emergency rations withheld at ports.

Where is the medicine needed in San Juan?
Where is the common courtesy owed the Virgin Islands?
Where are the passports for the people of Guam?
Where are the houses for Samoa?
Where are the services for our veterans?
Where are the schools for our children?

They respond.

They call us niggers, spics, and pretenders,
subconsciously lumping us into one group
they whisper: inbetweener.

They refuse to meet us on our shores,
removing us from public memory
they ask us who we even are.

They call us savage and uncivilized,
speaking slowly and loudly
they consider us for zoos.

They see us pouring into recruiting stations,
greedily licking their lips and growling
they see guerrilla soldiers signing up.

They use us hard and fast.
Emptying VA hospital funds,
they kick us to the streets.

They think us incapable of thought or reason.
While building a third theater in their child’s school,
they accuse us of overbreeding.

Until we are held in common,
until the law is not chain and whip,
until our shores are ours to have,
until our pain is paid for,
until we have a future as ourselves,
until we too are free

We can answer to no one,
no duty to higher powers,
nothing owed to foreign chambers.
We hold neither oaths nor allegiance.
We are islands of no nation.

 

Ada Ardére is a Puerto Rican poet from New Orleans who now lives in Kansas City. She studied philosophy of art and Plato, and loves beat poetry. Her works have appeared in 34th Parallel Magazine, Wussy Mag, and The New Southern Fugitives.

Image of Donald Trump, throwing papers towels at a press event in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017, used for purposes of commentary and education under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 allowing for “fair use.”

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Reputation

TW: SA

By Frances Koziar

 

He speaks of his reputation
while I think of fates worse than death,
his name, when I would gladly give up mine
for a good night’s sleep, to see those nightmares
shaped like ordinary men slain
before their groping hands reach me; he speaks
of having a life ruined, not knowing
what that really means, not understanding
how men can form packs like wolves
at the first sound of a woman’s
assertiveness, ready
to tear that voice from her neck, carnage
be damned, not seeing our loss of reputation
every time we speak our names, our shame,
even when the evidence convinces anyone
who’ll let it; I laugh
when I want to cry, hold still
when I shake with fear, walk with poise
when I am running away, because attention
is the most dangerous thing of all. Smile
they tell you while you bleed out from the throat;
Speak, Pretty One,
but only if you say frivolous things; Sing—
but I can only hear screams.

 

Frances Koziar has published poetry in over 35 different literary magazines, including Vallum and Acta Victoriana. A young (disabled) retiree and a social justice advocate, she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Visit her website and follow her on Facebook.

Photo credit: “Eve in Shame” by Stanley Zimny via a Creative Commons license.

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Justice Clarence Thomas Ate My Fucking Plums

By Christina Bagni

after William Carlos Williams

 

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the ice box

and which
you were probably
relying on
forever

Forgive me
you didn’t deserve them
they were always
mine to take

Forgive me
but the icebox
was always meant
to be empty

it came that way
and that’s how god
told me
it should be

So I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the ice box

to return order
to your cold
empty
world

I did it for you,
you see.

Forgive me.

 

Christina Bagni’s creative work has been published in Asterism, Lit202, and Underground Literary Magazine, among others. She is the Chief Editor at Wandering Words Media and a writer on the Captain Bitcoin comic book series. Her first novel is forthcoming with Deep Hearts YA (2023).

Photo credit: Public domain.

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The North Wind & The Sun

By Jacqueline Jules

“Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.”
       —The North Wind and the Sun, Aesop

                    

The woman seated next to me
on the plane, sees the star
around my neck and begins
asking questions.

How can I be happy without eating ham?
she wants to know. Or live in America
without a Christmas tree?

I could tell her to ask the internet,
my eyes as cold as the tiny soda cans
we’ve just been served.

I could bluster and howl
like Aesop’s North Wind
forcing her to pull
her blue silk shawl
tighter and tighter.

Or we could have a conversation.

And I could be like Aesop’s Sun,
shining with gentle beams, until
she feels too warm to stay wrapped
in her misconceptions.

 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her poetry has appeared in more than 100 publications, including K’in, The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, and One Art. Visit her website at www.jacquelinejules.com.

Photo credit: Garland Cannon via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Renee McClellan

Black Listopia

I feel like an idiom that drips from Baldwin’s pen
“that” angry Black woman negotiating sin
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO! A thing to be had
Thick lips, curvaceous hips, or a fashion fad
You can’t set me like diamonds
Or string me like pearls
Pick on my afro, then appropriate my curls

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
Black, Brown, and Yella, too
Why are you fucking with me? I don’t fuck with you.

I feel like a literary assault by Langston Hughes
An angry Black woman and her Weary Blues
I, TOO, SING AMERICA, a pejorative dream
Ghosts of my ancestors flow in my blood stream
That white picket fence and that sweet apple pie
That dream wasn’t mine, that nightmare’s a lie
Like a Raisin in the sun, do I fester, do I run
What happens to a dream Deferred, you’re looking at it
You haven’t heard?

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
Black, Brown, and Yella, too
Stop fucking with me and I won’t fuck with you

I feel like a mythical logophile, words linger & prod
Like Zora Neale Hurston
MY EYES ARE WATCHING GOD
Truth be told, Every tongue must Confess
Like Dust on the Road, I’m God’s perfect mess
Perfectly flawed and divinely conceived
All of Africa holds the mystery that is me
Ripped from my familiar, felt the soul of my seed
My daughters are raped and my sons can’t breathe
I’m a paradigm of potency, a leather-bound force,
An African fused American on a reparation course

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
Black, Brown, and Yella, too
I will NOT apologize for this trauma, FUCK YOU!

Angelou knew and her encouragement wise
Like a phoenix from its ashes – Still I rise
A PHENOMENAL WOMAN, phenomenally
I’m a Queen like Sheba with the bones of Lucy
With all that was taken on that infamous boat ride
My womb for stock and trade for my babies genocide
I should be angry, it’s justifiably so,
You auction the fruit of my womb then call me a ho
You ripped from mother African, the Proverbs of her son
And refused to Honor her for the work that she has done
Her children will RISE like the sun bathed in blue
Ebony warriors and the daughters of Shaka Zulu
I AM A BLACK WOMAN & I’m angry as fuck
But forgiveness in this moment, bitch, Good Luck!
I’m not the PEACE you seek, I wont lay down and die,
I wont turn the other cheek, I want an eye-for-a-mother-fucking-eye

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
This is the America I Sing
But you keep fucking with me,
HERE!
Hold my mother-fucking earrings!

 

That Tree

Strange fruit hanging from that tree
The crown shudders with each crosswind
Leaves of humanity blow like flecks of dust on the sea
Seeds sprinkled on top of soil
The roots spiral deep and strong,
The branches sway,
reaching for the sun limbs refusing to break
Spiny twigs like fingers closed around a tight fist
The trunk solid taking shape
Searching for a place to exist
Branches reaching toward the warmth of the sun
But meeting the coldness of too much shade
flailing in mercy

No sustenance to nurture its existence

Life dangles from that tree
Dangling shapeless
caught in the ambiguity of the whistling wind
the fruit falls from the tree
pulled to the ground by desire
thick tentacles of hope
Strange fruit growing on that tree

 

Renee McClellan, a Chicago native and writer of the EMMY award winning PSA, Pick Me! – Toy Loan, began her career performing with elite theater groups in Chicago. As a film and television actor, she performed in such productions as Brewster’s Place, Seinfield, and Deep Impact. She continued on to writing, directing and producing various film and television projects. A graduate of Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she also has an MFA in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute (AFI). A Long Beach resident, Renee has produced many award-winning productions often using Long Beach as the backdrop of her artistic expression. She is currently a professor at Pepperdine University, a best-selling author, and an award-winning filmmaker.

Photo credit: Lynne Hand via a Creative Commons license.

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