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.

Letter to Aminu

By Ololade Akinlabi Ige

After Salawu Olajide

                                    Dedicated to my country, Nigeria

 

What greets you when you get here?
Walls of broken spines? Fences of bleeding bruises?
Burnt roofs that open mouths? Windows with wounded hearts?
Your father was a victim of the last bomb explosion
and his grave grows mushroom flowers.
Your mother is an able handicap; on her cleavage are signatures of poverty.
Hauwa, your sister, was shot by Boko Haram.
That day, the clouds wept and the sky shrank.
Hakim, your brother, became a courageous coward.
He fled to Ibadan on a day the night was burnt to ashes.
That was the day we counted our dead and forgot numbers.

What greets you when you get here?
Your father’s house that stands on one leg?
Or your uncle in the wheelchair?
Maybe your friend with broken arms?
Or Amina, your girlfriend with a bleeding vagina?
Our village is a womb that harbours silence.
Children no longer cry aloud, instead they sob silently
like their fathers do when coffins are thrown into six feet.

What then can greet you when you get here?
Men of khaki marching on the hungry soil,
bullets of bandits diving in the space,
blood of innocent souls burbling like a fountain,
Almajiris holding their future in empty bowls,
or wails of a mother who just buried a son.
Maybe Mr. President, whose visit is for a mass burial.

Yet under an umbrella we still remain as one.
Mr. President said our war is technically defeated.
With one signed accord, we believe we shall see
to the end of the war that ate your sister and father.

 


Ololade Akinlabi Ige is a Nigerian poet. His works have featured in Muse for World Peace Anthology, 84 Delicious Bottles of Wine for Wole Soyinka, Word Rhymes and Rhythm (WRR) anthology, Sabr Literary Magazine, Wreath for a Wayfarer, Songs of Peace: The World’s  Biggest Anthology of Poetry 2020, Dissonance Magazine (UK), Voice Journal (USA), Teach. Write. Journal (USA), dyst Literary Journal (Austrialia), Northern Otter Press Journal (Canada), Levitate Magazine (Chicago, USA), Harbor Review (USA), and 2020 Anthology (Canada) among others.

Photograph courtesy of RNW.org via a Creative Commons license.


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Two Poems by Victoria Barnes

A Cosmic Dirty Story

—from the New York Times, 9 August 1945

 

From an open door in the sky,

the threshold of a new industrial art.

To the earth, an explosion of red:

the new and terrifying weapon.

In the morning newspaper, images arrive:

an imagination-sweeping experiment.

As we read the story, we learn—

The great bomb … harnesses the power of the universe to destroy the enemy by concussion, blast and fire.

With the fire, we consider our victory:

eminent scientists gathered, frankly fearful to witness the results of the invention, which might turn out to be either the salvation or the Frankenstein’s monster of the world.

In the glory of it all, the flash was pure—

an element of elation in the realization that we had perfected this devastating weapon.

Yet in our blindness an ocean apart, we see no blood.

What has been done … is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.

In reading more, we smell no cinders.

Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death.

In listening for imagined voices, we hear no calls.

We are more prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely.

In turning away, we relish no victory.

The cruel sight resulting from the attack is so impressive that one cannot distinguish between men and women killed by the fire. The corpses were too numerous to be counted.

In knowing now, we reject our place:

What is this terrible new weapon, which the War Department also calls the ‘Cosmic Bomb’?

Coda:

In knowing now, we reject our place:

How will these righteous-thinking American people feel about the way their war leaders are perpetuating this crime against man and God?

 

 

Liberty Island

 

Give me your cliff
your cloud
your dreamy vision
of birds and fog
and flying

in the whir and whirl

of industry and asphalt
and commuters
in sooty rain—

of mothers and babies
and withered neglect
in malaise maligned—

with searing tears
I lift my lamp
but shut
the golden door.

 


Victoria Barnes has studied mythology, creative nonfiction, poetry, bookbinding, metaphoric thinking, and a bunch of other seemingly unrelated mishmash. She did not take math past high school, an accomplishment given her too many college degrees. She endeavors in taking photos and writing poetry. Currently she is writing a cycle of poems imagining Amelia Earhart’s thoughts on each airborne leg of her last flight and studying the skies in her travels, especially in the Southwest U.S.

Photo credit: Daniel Horacio Agostini via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.