WOMEN OF GHŌR

by Steven Croft

In twilight we stare into our deaths

like we are the coming darkness

Our harrowed babies cry

but we dare not sing to them

The flour is gone in days

even tea is scarce

Our colorful dresses long hidden

or already burned for warmth

A bird calls a melody from a snowy tree

like joy trapped by the coming darkness

Warlords with stern faces walk the streets

with whips, rifles,

Whip-march a head-bent man with hands

bound behind by thick layers of rope

They tell us we have now what the hands

of the people have earned

And there is nowhere else to go, just

a cold valley, hill passes snowed for winter

If allowed to sing, we would moan a dirge

now even the night-bird is quiet

Nowhere is even a seed of relief

markets, kiosks, shops, silent and empty

They say our sins haunt us now—

girls wanting work and education

In the cold schools boys recite the Quran

Ameen

But how many times, O Knower of the Unseen,

until all our sins are erased

In our dreams of spring we see green trees

goat's milk and markets full of vegetables

In our dreams of spring we dance and sing

in our colorful dresses

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, Soul-Lit, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

ANOTHER RAPID TEST

by Devon Balwit

The Biden Administration to Begin Distributing At-Home, Rapid COVID-⁠19 Tests to Americans for Free. Americans can order a test online HERE

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

But want to reassure, so swab away—

Another rapid test without a line.

 

The tests are nearly impossible to find.

We call around or treasure hunt all day.

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

 

We hide our coughs from those who’d mind.

But none of us can forego pay.

Another rapid test without a line.

 

The law now makes tests free—how kind—

but where to find them? Hunt and pray.

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

 

We’re three years into this new grind—

Vaccinated, boostered—the whole array.

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

Another rapid test without a line.

 

When not teaching, Devon Balwit chases chickens in Portland, OR. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press, 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2021]. 

IN THE ROUND

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Yes, I pray now to God, to Francis

whose name I took at Confirmation,

to the Pieta in whose lap I lie, to my

mother determined to bathe despite

her failing legs and fear of the night.

who recalls the pride with which

we were taught to reply to scissors

and knives of the outrageous

and bigoted, who say that we

do not belong on this side of

the river, on the red carpet,

in the ceremony of democracy.

We will not cede. We will not

be overcome. We will not

despair. We are going to keep

our seat despite the pandemic,

the supply chain hijacking,

the wild fires, because God

will observe the proceedings

once again—this my faith—

to keep us from falling off

the flat end of the other party's earth.

Indran Amirthanayagam produced a “world" record in 2020 by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He has just published Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

WILD ABOUT WHITE

by Jen Schneider

FIND AN ANIMAL SHELTER IN YOUR AREA

sets on. lights bright. everyone wild. wild about white. all bets on betty. betty always on. leg of hose & humor on tap. eyes of blue & berry sparkle. body & mind of pure spunk. cameras click. lights blind while white binds. folks of television lands. card hands & foreign tongues. tongues click. vocal cords clack. white cures airs of silence. heir to all. syllables stream. smiles crack. baby blues sparkle. betty curates & creates. aches of bellies & bent backs arc. laughter always on the menu. dial in. dial on. of/with/at your back. always streaming. of decades. of then. of now. flashes of brilliance. beltways of brightness. of dolls & decades. of danes, dances & daily documentation. of golden girls & mary tyler moore. everyone always eager for more. regimens & irregularities. broads on main. saturday night brilliance. live on stage (& social). expert at both crafting & creating a life. time to mourn. time to adorn. under the lights. lights bright. sets on. everyone wild. wild about white.

99 (by three) ways to make (live) (transform) a life

1.     Entertain all people, possibilities, & permutations. Ration sarcasm.

2.     Track consumption not weight. Weigh options. Seize opportunity.

3.     Track actions, not time. Treasure time & tunes of many types (& transcripts / scripts).

4.     Experience & experiment with life, love, laughter. Liquid humor, too.

5.     Season all sauces. Secure all seasons (& reasons).

6.     Breed offspring of original lines. Converse (& traverse) lines of unoriginal origin.

7.     Maximize sauciness. Minimize saltiness.

8.     Memorize scripts regularly. Make new memories daily.

9.     Prime personalities & timing. Always of/on prime time.

10.  Improvise finales. Rehearse final lines.

11.  Glow (like a Golden Girl). Emulate (like a multi-Emmy winner).

12.  Collect & create (a life on high definition). (re)Create. Juxtapose. Pose often.

13.  Patron (not patronize) all personalities. Puree peculiarities & ponderings.

14.  Befriend & pet creatures of many paws. Pause often. Inhale. Glow. Regale.

15.  Pen recipes of craft & creation. Greet consumers of/on/in People & Parade.

16.  Serenade serendipity. Harmonize habits. Habituate harmony.

17.  Entertain all possibilities. Entertain all people. Populate screens. Screen popularity.

18.  Track actions. Not time. Treasure time & tunes of many types.

19.  Experience & experiment with life, love, & laughter. Favor foods of familiar roots.

20.  Embrace final words & works. Take action & agency. Work finales.

21.  Grace plates, tubes, & presents. Maintain presence of mind and manners.

22.  Practice gratitude. Tether caution. For/of/in/at duties. Projects, too.  

23.  Be of homegrown grains & household grime.

24.  Assess all situations. Situate all communications. Savor sitcoms.

25.  Twinkle under stars, in eyes, of curtseys. make light of most makings.

26.  Stroll across stages. Put pen to paper. Pamper pets in pens.

27.  Add a dose of sass to all sensations (& creations)

28.  Be curious. Be courageous. Be(t) on/of/for betty.

29.  Mix & mingle. Sip sweet & salty. Stir trouble. Add dashes of umph.

30.  Blanket newsstands. Blanket screens. Fill in (all) blanks.

31.  Run series. Run bits. Run betty.

32.  Plan jokes of spontaneous & unpredictable possibility. Do not plan. Be.

33.  Be (dedicated to thee) betty.

Sources:

https://people.com/tv/betty-white-died-peacefully-in-her-sleep-at-home-agent-says/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/arts/television/betty-white-dead.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/16/entertainment/betty-white-100/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/12/31/betty-white-appreciation-tribute/

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of A Collection of Recollections (Next Chapter), Invisible Ink (Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming Atmosphere Press).

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

by Geoffrey Philp

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued level 4 and level 2 travel advisories for Jamaica which sees them strongly warning against travel into the country due to several factors including Covid-19 and violence which has plagued some areas. —YardHype, January 12, 2022. See also CDC, January 10, 2022

The CDC has updated their travel advisory

to Jamaica due to crime, the spread of Covid,

and a lack of police presence in the county.

 

They’ve suggested avoiding public buses or secluded

places and added to statistics of robberies and break-

ins, a rising positivity rate. Fully vaccinated,

 

boostered, and up-to-date on flu shots I’ll take

my survival odds on the island this winter.

You see, America, I need a long-deserved break

 

from my daily rehearsal of answers to policemen

with the tiresome, “Who are you? Why are you here?”

usually by some rookie hoping to make his bones

 

with an exotic trophy in the trunk of his squad car

where he’ll pose with his first kill of the New Year.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children’s books, and two novels, including Garvey’s Ghost. His poems and short stories have been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, sx salon, World Literature Today, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Bearden’s Odyssey Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Crab Orchard Review. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a former chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp’s work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy—an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. His next collection of poems, Archipelagos, is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press.

WINTRY MIX

by Tricia Knoll

As a forecast this seems like calling for mayhem

until the front moves in and the silence of snow

licks every branch and sticks to each twig’s gesture. 

 

The goldfinch and nuthatches retreat from the feeder

to unseen hideouts. The dogs yawn, and I succumb

to a sleepiness at odds with the morning news

 

of those who call for civil war, the skyrockets

of corona deaths, projections of costs in trust

and cash. The silence of falling snow deepens

 

inch by inch above the ice slick the rain gave 

first. Slow gather and the flurry of politicians

with papers and proof seeking. Such sad news

 

in accumulations inch by inch by inch. 

Tricia Knoll is living out the series of wintry mixes in Vermont where the forecast calls of windchills of -20 in the next few days. Her new chapbook Let's Hear It For The Horses is available February 1, and the horses outside down the road during the day  are all wearing heavy blankets now.

BASEBALL LOCKOUTS AND WINTER DREAMS

by Earl J. Wilcox

Baseball labor talks to end the lockout resumed Thursday for the first time in 1½ months with little evident progress during a bargaining session that lasted about an hour, jeopardizing a timely start to spring training. Major League Baseball imposed the lockout on Dec. 2 as soon as the five-year collective bargaining contract expired, a few hours after talks broke off. —Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2022

Your tinny voice throws me off.

You stand slightly slumped holding

 

a baseball bat. Your face is a bit

out of focus though my macular

 

eyes make most pictures seem dim.

I have trouble figuring where

 

you and I are: a ball park, a small

dugout, perhaps just a dirt yard,

 

the kind I know well from childhood.

We sit very close. I see the bat, its

 

stark beauty of slightly tanned oak

or is it maple or some wood I see only

 

in my dreams. We chat, but I cannot tell

what we say. Man, your quirky smile

 

radiates warmth through shaded

teeth of twilight in dreamland.

 

You talk a lot about a pitcher’s

knuckleball you once hit. I mumble

 

a reply and just want to know more

about Enos or Gibby—and the lockout.

 

You shrug then take a sliver-looking

candy bar from your pocket. You put

 

the bar in your mouth, blow, cheeks

slightly puff out. I feel & hear a wail

 

sounding like Wabash Cannonball

or an old gospel tune clearly off-key.

 

My Alexa gently nudges me with music

and some NPR news, mid-January morning.

 

Baseball lovers all will have no trouble puzzling out who appeared in Earl Wilcox’s dream.

SOCIOBIOLOGICAL

by Tom Bauer

E.O. Wilson, famed entomologist and pioneer in the field of sociobiology, dies at 92.

It’s safe to say. It's like the species does

what others do, but quickly, consciously,

aware of what it does while doing it,

like caterpillars on the dying edge;

the lava comes, the inner circle’s safe;

above it rains, they’re safe below, beneath

the layers of others, those who will go first,

who'll dive off leaves into the drowning ground.

The finest traits in all the kingdom are

amassed and ready in the mass, to move,

adapt, the speed of thought, instant meta

class of entity, biology, human,

bipedal feces-maker, building wide

a grand estate of armor-plated lies.

Tom Bauer grew up playing violin and listening to spoken word recordings. When he was ten, he rashly announced he was going to be a poet. He did a bunch of university and stuff. He's had some poems published. He lives in Montreal and plays board games.

THE CLASSROOM

by Gary Glauber

This undated photo shows special education teacher Jennifer Graves, at Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School, in New Haven, Conn. When her classroom aide didn't show up for work and no substitutes were available for the day because staffing levels have been decimated by the surge in COVID-19 infections, she borrowed paraprofessionals from other classrooms for short stretches to get through. (Courtesy Jennifer Graves via AP) —US News, January 6, 2022

We ask them to identify global issues

at a time when their own lives are the global issue,

when identity comes masked and at a remove

measured and circumscribed for safety

according to the latest recommendations.

 

This remains a social place, as it must,

where exchanged ideas ignite the fires

that fuel internal growth alongside 

the social and the physical, and we bear witness

daily to the awesome and real act of becoming.

 

Now we are in a prolonged fugue, a limbo

wherein they better grasp the repetitive hopes

of Vladimir and Estragon, awaiting further instruction.

As news brings forth each sobering tidal wave

of rising numbers, it grows harder to pretend.

 

Every week brings a new normal.

Haggard-looking administrators roam hallways

with official clipboards of doom,

asking four questions to trace

the trails of those not virally passed over.   

 

And all the while we take attendance,

having learned to smile with our eyes,

and dispense daily lessons that pale

against these larger life lessons

that challenge and instruct us all.

 

Here in our smart modern classrooms

we muster the safest havens we can manage,

sharing screens and hearts and minds,

knowing that with each period’s gathering

comes a strong dose of social healing.

 

All pandemics come to an end,

the wisdom of the ages suggests.

Yet until that ancient saw becomes reality,

there’s a remedy called the classroom

that brings the dream closer, uniting us in wisdom.

 

With this new world comes higher order questions 

that Bloom’s taxonomy never considered.

Through shared crisis come unmasked truths:

together we feel shared love that helps us through

what often seems these most trying of times.

Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog while negotiating life’s absurdities. He has four collections, Small Consolations  (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), and most recently, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing); and two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. A new collection will be forthcoming soon from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.

STRIKE

by Katie Kemple

We placed the blue trash can

and the green recycling bin

filled with the detritus

leading up to Christmas

in front of our townhouse

garage, like we always do,

and our neighbors too, and

they stayed there, all the way up to

and well past Christmas,

past New Years. The brown

cardboard boxes of mail-ordered

gifts stuck their tongues out

at us, papers glued like stickers

to the pavement courtesy

of the rain, and the sanitation

drivers never came. The neighbors

built cities of empty boxes.

Shrimp skins haunted us.

We wore yesterday's diapers.

The CEO of the sanitation

company makes 154 times

the pay of his average employee:

twelve-million dollars a year. 

Crows swung down to feast

on the new year's abundance. 

Katie Kemple (she/her) is a poet, parent, and consultant based in San Diego. Her work has appeared recently in Longleaf Review, The West Review, and The Shore Poetry. 

DRESSING ROOM

by Shirley J. Brewer

The funeral for a 14-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet fired during a police shooting at a North Hollywood clothing store is scheduled for Monday in Gardena, family attorneys said. The funeral for Valentina Orellana Peralta is scheduled for 11 a.m. at City of Refuge Church. The Rev. Al Sharpton will officiate and deliver the eulogy, family attorneys said in a statement. Valentina was shopping for Christmas clothes Dec. 23 when she was struck by a stray bullet fired by Los Angeles police who opened fire on a man attacking shoppers. A bullet went through an exterior wall of the dressing room and struck the girl, police said. —NBC Los Angeles, January 5, 2022

Growing up, I spent hours in dressing rooms

not much larger than an upright coffin,

lined with hooks and distorted mirrors—

my mother and I in such close proximity

the space felt like a birthing place.

Every zipper resembled an umbilical cord

I longed to slice in two.

Buried under a cluster of plaid skirts,

ugly corduroy pants—I ached for fresh air.

Holiday sales or back-to-school bargains

signaled dread. It wasn’t all torture.

Mom’s agony while squirming into

stiff girdles and voluminous brassieres

stirred laughing fits I could not suppress.

“Hold these pins,” she’d say

as I doubled over, spilling my M&M’s.

Sometimes we both dissolved in giggles.

Prom time called for battle tactics,

Mom fighting off the billowing crinolines,

eyeing bust and hem before the price tag.

She earned her corsage.

Looking back, I recognize the miracle—

how my mother and I emerged alive

from a thousand dressing rooms, how we walked

together into the safe burst of afternoon light.

A recent Pushcart nominee, Shirley J. Brewer serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for the Arts in Baltimore, MD. Her poems appear in Barrow Street, Comstock Review, Gargoyle, The New Verse News, Poetry East, Slant, among other journals and anthologies. Shirley’s poetry books include A Little Breast Music (2008, Passager Books), After Words (2013, Apprentice House), and Bistro in Another Realm (2017, Main Street Rag). Shirley was a 2020 guest on The Poet and The Poem with Grace Cavalieri, broadcast from the Library of Congress.

YEAR IN REVIEW

by Barbara Simmons

“In the weightlessness of space.” Oil on canvas painting by Anastasia Balabina (Ukraine).

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. —Joan Didion

 

What were the stories that seemed mental U-turns,

that needed returning to, never ending?  At year’s

end, 2021’s review heralded tales most told,

the big look back compactly written,

the headlines sculpting what had happened

into what we should remember.

I’ve skimmed the stories alphabetically, but find the letter C

for COVID is my alpha, tireless virus with infinite variations. I 

flip quickly to the Fed, to China, climate, revivals

on Broadway, deaths we expected someday, but maybe

not this year, like Didion’s, Sondheim’s, Tutu’s.

The story I return to most takes me on SpaceX travels,

finding weightlessness a way to reconstruct my sight,

no longer lineated up and down,

but now a new fluidity, a chance to stream myself beyond

the time and space of just one journey,

just one life, to understand how we are multitudes,

how we are singular, how we are both chorus, soloist, conductor

in a musical rendition of this year reviewed

and what we need most is to listen to stories we’ve composed,

and play

and play

and play

until we fully hear.

 

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, graduated from Wellesley, and now lives in San Jose. As a secondary school English teacher, she loved her students who inspired her to think about the many ways we communicate. Retired, she savors exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, always trying to understand human-ity. Publications have included Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Writing it Real, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition, and OASIS. Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums will be published in Spring 2022.

BEHOLD

by Geoffrey Aitken

 

the cat

our predatory

suburban

household favourite

cannot change

its spots

the cuttlefish

the octopus

and the squid

like the chameleon

can change colour

now

the automobile

A minimalist industrial signature drives Geoffrey Aitken away from the scene of mental unwellness for the eyes and ears of those without voices. Widely published locally (AUS), and internationally (the UK, US, CAN, CN & FR), he chases ongoing congeniality.

LIFE ON MARS

by John Whitney Steele

NASA’s Retiring Top Scientist Says We Can Terraform Mars and Maybe Venus, Too —The New York Times, January 2, 2022

Imagine the red planet with an atmosphere,

replete with plants and animals. It isn’t hard to do. 

A couple billion years ago Mars lost its air,

its water too, and so it is no longer blue.

But should we choose to live there, we could change it,

claims NASA’s top scientist. All we’d have to do

is terraform the planet—that goes for Venus too.

Put up a magnetic shield, block the sun, retain

more heat, and watch Mars turn from red to blue.

The solar system’s ours. Imagine life on Mars 

while back on planet Earth we churn out CO2.

John Whitney Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University. His chapbook The Stones Keep Watch was published by Kelsay Books in 2021. His full length collection Shiva’s Dance will be released in 2022. Born in Toronto and raised among the pines and granite cliffs of Foot’s Bay, Ontario, John lives in Boulder, Colorado where he encounters his muse wandering in the mountains.