BY ANY OTHER NAME: SPRING TRAINING ANGST

by Earl J. Wilcox

If some kids played it on the Pittsburgh

streets with only a Wiffle ball, a crooked

stick, and one lad to keep it from the gutters.

 

If they played it on a loamy garden patch

in an Arkansas village with a ball made

from old socks around a ball of twine.

 

If kids of any age and many sizes

played the game on a sandlot

in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic.

 

Even if the Japanese kids decided to

practice ten hours a day just to make

the team for the family’s pride.

 

If the boys of summer began practice

in winter, in a game that no longer

uses bat boys, has no fans in the stands... 

 

And if this game has no hot dogs or

peanuts and Crackerjacks and many

players wear kerchiefs and masks

 

And if they can no longer blow bubble

gum or eat pumpkin seeds or swat each

other on the butt after a terrific play.

 

And if the balls and strikes are called

by a robot squatting behind the screen

in the stands or hovering in a drone.

 

We will still call this game BASEBALL.

 

Earl Wilcox dedicates this poem to the late Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose "Baseball Canto" remains the iconic tribute to our national pastime.

THE GOLDEN CALF

by Gordon Gilbert

At CPAC.

He spoke appropriately enough

(although misspoken)

of a herd “mentality.”

He could have been speaking of

his own followers,

this super-spreader,

deliberately infecting their bodies

and their minds.

 

Now they wander in a desert of their own making,

mindless in their worship

of this golden orange-coiffed calf,

and at his bidding

they have set aside

the ten commandments,

for only one that now all must obey:

 

“Bow down

&

worship me!” 

 

Gordon Gilbert is a long time resident of the west village in NYC. He only took up writing seriously and performing his work in public in 2008. Since then, besides poetry, he has written many prose pieces (short stories, monologues, short fiction) and one play, Monologues from the Old Folks Home, which he has produced and directed eight times in the past seven years at various venues in lower Manhattan. He has hosted over a dozen programs celebrating the beat generation writers, as well as some other writers, including William Carlos Williams. Gordon is also a member of the Irish American Writers and Artists, and has occasionally hosted their bimonthly salons as well.  

THE AMERICAN VARIANT

by Pepper Trail

It has always circulated among us

We know that, and we know

Mutations happen all the time

So what makes this so virulent

So easily transmitted

Neighbor to neighbor, father to son?

 

It is airborne, that is clear

Transmitted on the breath

On the words carried on the breath

Capable of crossing great distances

Broadcast on the seething turbulence

Filling our air, our airwaves

 

Experts speak of it with awe

The terrible beauty of its design

How it targets our vulnerabilities

Binds to our fears

Produces an inflammation

Disorderly and wild

 

There are treatments

Not painless but effective

But the problem is this:

The genius of this variant

Its most deadly symptom

Is denial of the disease itself

 

And so the epidemic rages

The world waits for the crisis

For the fever to break

To burn itself out

Or to infect every last one of us

Burn everything up, at last

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

ILLUMINATION

by James Schwartz

500,000.

We are not equipped to process this level of grief, the news anchor sighs. Video plays of the President, First Lady, VP and Second Gentleman surrounded by candles. 

500,000.

A statistic surpassing wartime numbers. The day will come, President Biden promises, when the memory of our loved ones will bring a smile before a tear. 

500,000. 

We are an illumination in this dark stillness. One morning we will smile at the empty chair. One morning we will smile. 

James Schwartz is a poet, writer, slam performer and author of 5 poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America. Twitter: @queeraspoetry

500,000

by Cathy Hailey

Ascent and descent

Symmetrical staircases

Move candlelight bent

Flames flicker faces

Pathways towards transcendency

Spirits drifting in

Liminality

A presidential burden

Despite empathy

Comforts multitudes

In national eulogy

Church bell interludes

Ritual “Amazing Grace”

All, Requiescat en Pace

Cathy Hailey teaches as an adjunct in Johns Hopkins University’s online MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing in Prince William County, VA. She is northern region vice president of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a biennial reading of poets laureate held in PWC. Her writing has been published in Poetry Virginia, The Journal of the Virginia Writing Project, Written in Arlington, The Prince William Poetry Review, Grid Poems, and in anthologies associated with ekphrastic collaborations.

YES,

by Penelope Scambly Schott

yet another one of the poets I have known

now gone under the grass. Lawrence Ferlingetti,

at a hundred and one. I once heard him recite:

   Pity the nation whose people are sheep

   Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

and yet, how we all try

to go on walking.

Who will sell shoelaces down by the seashore?

Mine are torn.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

WHALE SONG

by Barbara Parchim

Probing the structure of the ocean crust requires a wave source. The most common source is an air gun, which is effective but potentially harmful for ocean life and not easy to use everywhere. Václav M. Kuna and John L. Nábělek found that fin whale songs can also be used as a seismic source for determining crustal structure. Fin whale vocalizations can be as loud as large ships and occur at frequencies useful for traveling through the ocean floor. These properties allow fin whale songs to be used for mapping out the density of ocean crust, a vital part of exploring the seafloor. —Science, February 12, 2021

now that seismologists know

that different frequencies of whale songs

can map the layers of the ocean floor

to help us study sediment and rock

in areas where earthquakes occur—

can we pause?

 

when their beauty and sentience,

curiosity and gentleness,

is not enough—

has never been enough—

to awaken compassion

 

when the “harvest” of these giants,

some with their young alongside

does not engender adequate empathy

 

now that we have a “use”

for these beings,

for scientific research,

that requires a living, breathing, body

 

now—

can we, finally, stop the slaughter?

 

 

Barbara Parchim lives on a small farm in southwest Oregon. She enjoys gardening and hiking and volunteered for several years at a wildlife rehabilitation facility. Her poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Isacoustic, Turtle Island Quarterly, Windfall, and Trouvaille Review. Her first chapbook, selected by Flowstone Press, will appear in 2021.

THE UNSPEAKABLE

by Sister Lou Ella

Dianna Ortiz, an American Roman Catholic nun whose rape and torture in Guatemala in 1989 helped lead to the release of documents showing American involvement in human rights abuses in that country, died on Friday in hospice care in Washington. She was 62. —The New York Times, February 20, 2021. PHOTO: Sister Dianna Ortiz in 1996. After being raped and tortured in Guatemala, she helped focus attention on the 200,000 people who were killed or disappeared during that country’s 36-year civil war. Credit: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

           in memory of sr. dianna ortiz, osu

                         rape and torture victim

“I’m not sure what it means to forgive.”

friday after ash wednesday

2/19/2021

 

the death certificate read cancer

but i know better

the unspeakable terror

that tortured your flesh years ago

has finally had its way with you

then and then daily the Holy in your body

screamed why have you forsaken me

perhaps you are the saint of the struggle

that wrestling with the command to forgive

but the Holy will also have Its way

It too Unspeakable

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, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

THE NUN WAS TORTURED

by Karol Nielsen

The nun founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).

The American nun, who was gang raped and tortured in Guatemala, died of cancer in Washington, DC. She had been helping indigenous Guatemalans when she was captured. The government suspected the indigenous of left wing subversion, with the United States backing the Guatemalan military in its civil war. The nun was burned by cigarettes, exposed to dead bodies and rats, and forced to mutilate another captive with a machete. She jumped out of a car as the man with accented Spanish drove her to a new location. She fled to the United States and struggled to remember her life there. She sued a Guatemalan general who was studying at Harvard. A judge ordered him to pay millions but he escaped to Guatemala. She told a reporter that even though she was Catholic she struggled to forgive.

Karol Nielsen is the author of two memoirs and two poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. 

SOME DAY, PERHAPS...

IT WILL HELP TO REMEMBER THESE TROUBLES AS WELL.*

by Bonnie Naradzay

*Aeneas to his men, after theirs is the only ship

  to survive a violent storm at sea near Carthage.

         

Friends, a study of The Black Death states the plague 

may have come from outer space. The Mars Rover 

landed in a dried up lake. Perseverance is transporting 

images home from the red planet. On earth, we learn 

that magnetic north and south may be flipping sides, 

an ominous event, according to weakening attractions 

and ancient iron shards stuck pointing the wrong way. 

In Galveston, medical workers asked for a refrigerated 

truck to store the dead bodies. Thousands of turtles 

stunned by the cold have gone to a convention center 

in the backs of station wagons. Ted Cruz got on the plane

in jeans but went the wrong way, or the optics were wrong.

Sweet Thames, and Virgil, flow gently while I end my song.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry workshops at a day shelter for homeless people and at a retirement center, both in Washington DC.  Recent poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), Kenyon Review Online, RHINO, Tar River Poetry, Tampa Review, Poet Lore, EPOCH, Northern Virginia Review, Anglican Theological Review, Seminary Ridge Review, and The Ekphrastic Review.

KIDNAPPING GODOT

by Richard Fox

Cartoon by Tom Gauld.

"People are bloody ignorant apes." 

—Estragon in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

1. Polio

Mom makes pancakes for breakfast on a Wednesday.

Gives me a gorilla hug at the bus stop.

At school, we hang up coats, march to the All-Purpose Room.

The nurse smiles, watches us down cups of clear liquid. 

The principal anoints each forehead with a gold star. 

2. Cancer

Mothers quiz me about Gardasil* for daughters. 

I endure HPV*-caused tumors, 

so pegged their expert.

My plea, heed pediatricians.

Inoculate girls and boys by age eleven.

They choose to delay, let their kids ripen. 

Maybe by sixteen, the children can decide.

3. Ba’al

Carthage

the field of stones 

chiseled memorials

first born sons

throats slit

* Gardasil is a vaccine that prevents the HPV virus from causing oral and cervical cancer. Anti-vaxxers promote false research that a side effect is autism. Because HPV is spread sexually (not necessarily via intercourse), they claim the vaccine is tacit approval for teenage sex.

When not writing about rock ’n roll or youthful transgressions, Richard Fox focuses on cancer from the patient’s point of view drawing on hope, humor, and unforeseen gifts. He is the author of five poetry collections and the winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize.

A PANDEMIC PRAYER

by Roderick Deacey

Don’t let me die a COVID death

pinned and tied by wires and tubes,

felled by fear and pain,

enduring dark visions

from potions that numb and confuse,

unable to touch the infinite,

losing the inevitable tussle for breath.

Instead, let me choose a worm’s death,

gently stilling movement

in the warm black soil.

Feeling the earth shiver and move

as it wraps me in its vast body

and cradles me

in its perpetual swing around the sun.

Or let me walk into the ancient forest

and sense the slow sap of centuries

sliding through the rough bark I lean against.

Let me mark the deep rhythm of the wood

as I feel myself slowly sink

into the tree’s heart,

to rest serene among leafy limbs.

Best of all, let me die a bird’s death,

swooping and swirling

high in a star-pricked sky—

not even aware

of tumbling flesh and feathers falling

as I joyously fly on

toward that brilliant rainbow slash of dawn.

Roderick Deacey is a performing poet in the DC area, based in Frederick, MD. In normal, non-viral times, he regularly performs with his drummer/percussionist and bass-player, presenting “neo-beat” poems inspired by the Beat Poets’ poetry and jazz forays of the nineteen-fifties. His beat poetry chapbook neo-beatery ballads was published in 2019. Deacey was awarded the 2019 Frederick Arts Council Carl R. Butler Award for Literature. Crossing genres, he won the Gold Award for best lyrics in the 2020 Mid-Atlantic Song Contest held by the Songwriters Association of Washington.

WHAT IS HERE

by Mary K O'Melveny

Perseverance

has landed today

on Mars.

Curiosity will have company.

Everyone is eager for news:

Red cinnamon rocks.

Long dead grey lakes.

Dust filled grooves.

Caves chiseled into canyons

like a Henry Moore garden.

Layers of mystery

embedded in swirls of rock

marbled as a fine steak.

We are always looking

for something

to make sense of.

Something that explains

our odd and quirky selves,

the reasons we love and lose,

fight over nothing sensible,

torture and torment.

We are always looking

for history,

for memory,

for stories,

for permanence,

for renewal.

The deeper we dig,

the less happy we are.

So we fly off

to other realms

hoping to learn more

from long dead planets.

Hoping there is something

new under the sun.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

FAMILY VALUES LIMBO

by Chad Parenteau

Cartoon by Steve Brodner for Mother Jones, March 6, 2009.

Angry Dad is dead.

The rush is on

to see who now has

the loudest voice.

Auditions begin

at dinner table. 

Women fill glasses

from bottom to brim.

Contents spill over

on flag tablecloths.

New father figure 

finds this affront,

sets air above table

aflame, scatters dishes,

sends all to bed

without supper.

There they'll fester,

rewrite old declamation

overheard piecemeal

from fighting parents.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street ,and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His second collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, was released in 2020.