DER SHTEYN

by Donna Katzin

"Der Shteyn” in Yiddish means “the stone.” April 19, 2022 marked the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which lasted for 27 days, as Nazis launched their final liquidation of the largest Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. 7,000 Jews died. News of the uprising spread quickly, giving hope and strength to others struggling to survive and resist. Each year on this date, the survivor community and friends gather at the stone—a memorial marker in New York City’s Riverside Park—to honor the fighters and the fallen, commemorate the uprising, and inspire resistance to the fascist, racist and other oppressive forces of our own times.

On our lapels,

we pin paper daffodils—

yellow like stars.

 

 

Together we revisit the stone

asleep in silence, scarcely seen,

through summer, autumn, winter,

waiting by the unwavering river

that warms to an uncertain sun

as wind holds back its tears.

 

 

Our grey heads bow,

as we receive the letters

from London and Melbourne,

words of solidarity from Warsaw

somehow still shrouded

in smoke and ash.

 

 

This year we honor women

couriers who carried messages

and money in their inner garments,

revolvers in their handbags, passed

with borrowed accents between ghettos,

harbored hope, smuggled life.

 

 

Our lips recite

the Hymn of the Partisans

in a language I have forgotten,

as we place blossoms on the stone,

listen for the voices that will rise

as long as we remember.

Donna Katzin is the former and founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

REMEMBERING CATASTROPHE

by Anita Lerek

“The Lost Library Forest,” a painting by Luis Peres

Mother, how much time is left

for us in the forest library, 

where master spines 

clasp woody pages

pollinated by wind?

How much time before 

the boxing up, the clearing out

of minds meshed in ancient tree lives: 

now inventory, cubic footage,

caged, trucked away—

to bonfires staged by haters. 

1933, Berlin: Cigarettes, 

chocolate, sausages for sale!

To music and spotlights

some 50,000 books burn.

Burn the texts, said Artaud. 

Did he yearn for another heaven

to leave scripts of cruelty 

far behind?

I cry for you, Mother, 

stroke keys for you. 

Something must be saved here 

of your wounded spines… words. 

How memory’s flesh burns.     

Wind, carry my voice without a voice—

tell the trees that she, I—

Author’s Note: Homage to the thought of Edmond Jabes (The Book of Questions), and to the poem by Don Pagis, "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car."

Anita Lerek has spent her adult life juggling business with the enchantment of poetry. The visual arts, jazz, and social justice are life-long influences. Born abroad (Poland), she retains a sense of otherness, and a resulting affinity for the divergent. Her poems have appeared recently in Poetry Super Highway, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and River Heron. She is co-founder of Change Artists, a start-up online poetry community relating to political engagement. She is the author of a chapbook, History and Being (2019). She lives with her archivist husband in Toronto, Canada.

THE RELICS OF MARIUPOL

by Agnieszka Tworek

A Reuters photo shows the building of a theatre destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine on April 10, 2022.

grey butterflies of ashes

rise and fall on Mariupol

after each missile or bomb

is dropped

 

bridges and roads

to safety are gone,

no way in or out

 

many can’t pass

the threshold to the other

world because even Death

is overwhelmed in Mariupol

 

ghosts help wounded

soldiers reload their guns

 

the lacerated land

bleeds into the sea

shadowed by the enemy fleet

 

sirens lull children

to sleep and wake them up

 

what is for breakfast?                         

a spoonful of air

 

what’s to drink?

a cup of rain

 

what is a house?                     

fire and smoke

 

what is a school?                    

a gaping hole

 

what are the walls?                

your mother’s arms

 

the city landmarks endure

on maps stored

in survivors’ hearts

 

grey butterflies of ashes

rise and fall on Mariupol

at dawn, noon, and dusk

 

a woman covered in dust

presses her hands on the ground,

as if trying to resuscitate

her hometown

 

wailing and blood

are spilling out

from the underground

 

does anybody know? 

everyone knows

does anybody come? 

nobody comes

except for bullets, rockets,

and bombs.

Agnieszka Tworek was born and raised in Poland. Her poems have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, Best American Poetry, The Southern Review, Rattle (Poets Respond), and in other journals.  She lives on Staten Island.  

IN THE DAYS BEFORE I DIE, I RECALL THE LAST TIME I WAS HERE

by Dick Westheimer

                   for Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova

A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor died while sheltering from Russian strikes during the siege of Mariupol, her daughter has said. Vanda Semyonovna Obiedkova died on 4 April while taking cover in a freezing basement without water, in a grim echo of how she had hidden in a basement from the Nazis when she was 10 years old, her daughter Larissa told Chabad.org. Obiedkova, the second Holocaust survivor known to have died during Russia’s war in Ukraine, “didn’t deserve such a death”, said Larissa, who was with her mother at the time. Larissa described the conditions in Mariupol as “living like animals”. Photograph: c/o Rabbi Mendel Cohen —The Guardian, April 19, 2022

"I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness;

I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.”

—Anne Frank

The tongue of huddling in cellars is a forgotten one, a language 

only a few of us remember from the before times. But here I am, 

again, buried in this frigid basement beneath these same shamed streets. 

I should be home, folding laundry, making khrustykys for the little ones, 

maybe napping. Instead, I shiver away the last of what was me

covered only by my daughter’s thin coat.

I recall my father, gone to dust in the gulag days, his sure hand

firm over my small mouth, held my crying inside as Nazis hunted

for my kind in the homes above our blacked-out hiding place.

I beg for water but it’s really the dark that defeats me, steals these 

last shallow breaths of mine. I dream back to that time when 

10 year old me first learned the lightless dialect of cellar life, 

was forever drained of light. Since then, it has been the daily 

illuminated hours that have saved me—that made the thin link 

from one frightful night to the next—and without that dim lit bridge

I am already dead.

Dick Westheimer has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have recently appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Chautauqua Review, RiseUp Review, Ekphrastic Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat.

EVERYTHING MARJORIE MAY HAVE NEVER SAID

by Chad Parenteau

We swore an oath. Does anyone remember the oath?

Free speech is essential, whether or not we recall it.

They continue to take our freedoms away. Can anyone

tell me what those freedoms were? I don’t recollect 

putting any of those freedoms back on when my mask 

came off. Who took my mask off? I can’t remember 

everyone who voted for me, but I know everyone did, 

and the only way I can win is if everyone forgets that 

I won. Protect the integrity of elections. If this could 

happen during the time of my election, whenever that 

is, I would really appreciate it. Remember when Black 

Lives Matter and Antifa fought over who would storm 

the capitol,  or so I’m told by people I can’t recall. Political

power  comes from the barrel of a gun. Mumia Abu Jamal

said that, according to my notes. That wasn’t free speech 

when he said that. Has America proven those words 

to be true? I’ll have to get back to you if the smoke 

ever clears. There’s two schools of thought to research. 

One of them is CNN, which lies about me. The other 

is NewsMax, which uses my complete sentences

but omits everything else I’ve ever said in my life, 

which I may or may not have said. I don’t remember.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, and Nixes Mate Review. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His second collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.

ANTIGONE IN MARIUPOL

by Bonnie Naradzay

Mariupol, Ukraine 17 April 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

I searched the ruined city for my brother

to consecrate him with a proper burial.

Snow was still falling in the cold spring then.

I stopped at a body pockmarked with bullets;

the fingers on each hand had been bent backwards.

I came upon a corpse without a head. 

Do I know him?  Oh, they are all my brothers,  

in mass graves everywhere, shoved into ditches, 

dead in the midst of life from this unholy invasion.

Now I myself am buried—in tunnels below the city,   

refusing to surrender to the enemy king who said

not even a fly will be allowed to leave alive.  

Sentries are everywhere, barricading the doors. 

Where oh where is the civilized world?

Some day, perhaps, Sophocles will create a tragedy

for people to witness—and make sense of this.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry salons at a day shelter for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. Poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review online, Tampa Review, Florida Review online, EPOCH, The American Journal of Poetry, and others. While in graduate school, she took a class that Robert Lowell taught: “The King James Bible as English Poetry.” In 2010 she was awarded the New Orleans MFA poetry prize: a month’s stay with Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary in her castle in Northern Italy. While there, she had tea with Mary, heard cuckoos calling during mating season, and hiked in the Dolomites.

REAL NEWS, EASTER

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Zoom, you are finished. The Sun is out

strolling on Easter Sunday, spring

roaring into summer making peace

in the heart and loins. Yes, imagine

that word rescued from time, recreated,

reborn 'though bombs are falling on people

and buildings in Ukraine. Refugees are

returning with brave hearts, friends;

and Zoom, you are dead like a cliché,

a doornail. In the suburbs of Kyiv

a woman is looking for keys

she buried under a nearby tree. War

continues but she does not give a damn.

She lives and dies where her home lies.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record 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 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.

CAMPY

by Matt Witt

This month marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in major league baseball, followed soon after on the Dodgers by another Black all-star, catcher Roy Campanella. “Campy” was the National League’s Most Valuable Player three times, only to have his career cut short by a car accident that confined him to a wheelchair. Photo: Matt Witt and Roy Campanella.

How simple the world seemed

when I was seven years old

and met Roy Campanella,

the greatest catcher of all time,

and he asked me about the team I was on,

and what position I liked to play,

and told me to keep practicing,

and didn’t tell me that when he was my age

he couldn’t dream about playing in the major leagues

or about the years of protests it took to change that

or how when Black men came home from World War II

many could no longer accept playing in separate leagues

or sitting in separate seats

or being called “boy” or much worse.

 

How simple the world seemed,

but later, much later,

when I read the history books that said that

Jackie Robinson and “Campy” got to play

because Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ white general manager,

had the courage to finally see the light,

and that he trained them to behave themselves

so they wouldn’t cause problems for the team,

by then I was old enough to know

that there was more to that story.

 

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Talent, Oregon.

EARTH DAY

by Pepper Trail

I.

 

Let us give thanks

 

In gatherings or on our own

Stepping carefully upon the earth

Looking closely, bending to the flowers

Lifting our eyes to the swallows and the soaring hawk

Listening to the wind combing the grass and

Carrying birdsong across the creek

Scenting the richness of the soil

Mindfully opening every gift

 

Let us give thanks

 

II.

 

Let us grieve

 

Remembering all that once was given

Meadows bright with butterflies

Daily chorusing of the birds

Far forest-clad horizons

Silent wilderness

Mighty rivers of ice

Blue whales and elephants

Coral reefs in dazzling splendor

 

Let us grieve

 

 

III.

 

Let us protest

 

Lest we surrender to the drowsy sun

In our multitudes, cry Enough!

Name the destroyers

Corporate greed

Oil addiction

Political cowardice

Denial of nature’s rights

Willful blindness to all we do

 

Let us protest

 

IV.

 

Let us plant

 

Let us fall to our knees

Prepare the waiting earth

With our soft and ignorant hands

Plant a tree native to this damaged place

A testament to our desperate hopes

Flourishing past our little lives

A lasting gift of breath 

For our survivors 

 

Let us plant

 

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.

UKRAINE, FLOWERING

by Janice Northerns

after Van Gogh’s “Four Sunflowers Gone to Seed”    

Stalks slashed, petals scattered along the road

to the bomb shelter. A country drained of color

 

waves its flag as a placeholder for the sky.

But spring will green the world again and seeds

 

crushed under the enemy’s boot will fire

with life. War’s buried relics will multiply

 

into bright bouquets, blood blossoming

into patches of helianthus coming up

 

volunteer. Shimmering in the blue breeze:

sun-soaked fields, lapping up the light.

Janice Northerns is the author of Some Electric Hum (Lamar University Literary Press, 2020), winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award from the University of Kansas, the Nelson Poetry Book Award, and  a WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Poetry. The author grew up on a farm in rural West Texas and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Tech University. She and her husband live in southwest Kansas.

350 PAGES

by Thomas J. Erickson

i

The battle for Madrid [during the Spanish Civil War]… was decided in lecture halls, laboratories, and classrooms at the sprawling campus of University City… Brigaders stacked books in the windows as shields from snipers; bullets usually did not penetrate past the 350th page, so they sought out the thickest tomes of German philosophy and Indian metaphysics. —Dan Kaufman, The New York Review, February 24, 2022, on The International Brigades by Giles Tremlett. 

 

If a book can stop a bullet

then it stands to reason that words

can unite a world in ways

that are surprising

to its sense of normalcy

 

On page 351, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

and Grossman were just getting started

 

If only the power of the grand Russian novels

of war and peace and crime and punishment

and life and fate could prevail across the borders,

from east to west.

 

Of course, that’s not going to happen, I think,

as I lie in bed and check Babel’s Red Cavalry

for thickness.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His latest book is Cutting the Dusk in Half by Bent Paddle Press.

INEVITABLE

by Christina Cowling

We are the vaxed, un-vaxed,

the masked, un-masked,

believers or deniers of conspiracy.

Like minded in the measure of our perseverance,

our impatience peaks, declines,

and though we point a shaming finger at each other,

our tongues sharpened like swords divide us,

given no choice, inevitably we ride 

the same pandemic wave together.

Christina Cowling is the published author of short stories and poetry. Her love for writing began at six-years of age. Presently a retired senior, she continues to write and resides in Peterborough, Ontario with her husband.

TAKING BACK MALA ROHAN

by Sarah Russell

 

The snow came silent, pure,

a quilt of feathered white

to cover wreckage of the war.

Few saw the snow’s allure—

just ordinary men who stayed to fight.

The snow came silent, pure.

This ragtag, patriot corps

were confident they’d stall Goliath’s might

despite the wreckage of this war.

Russian bodies dead, left unsecured.

Tanks smoldering, explosions in the night.

The snow came silent, pure.

Families, hid in cellars, reassured,

emerged again with trembling to the light

and saw the wreckage of the war.

Old Praskovia clutched her apron. She’d endured 

two wars, was broken by the sight.

The snow came silent, pure

to cover wreckage of the war.

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Kentucky Review, Misfit Magazine, Rusty Truck, Third Wednesday, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons.

VIRA

by Jaime Banks

A mother who scrawled contact details on her two-year-old daughter's back while fleeing Ukraine has described to the BBC her desperation in that moment. Sasha Makoviy said she wrote little Vira's name, age and some phone numbers on her, in case the family were separated or killed while fleeing Kyiv. "In case of our death, she could be found and would know who she is," Ms Makoviy explained. The family are now in France where they feel "surrounded with love and care". —BBC, April 12, 2022

Her Kyiv apartment shakes

from the bombing. A woman

draws her two-year old close,

with permanent pen

scrawls the name Vira 

her birth date

parent’s names

grandparents’ names

telephone numbers

on the child’s slender back,

her hand shaking. 

If something happens,

she slants to think,

may this child be delivered

into familiar arms.

Numbers inked on skin

once a sign of barbarity,

now a mother’s only prayer.

Jaime Banks writes about family, home, and spirituality in everyday experience. She was recently awarded first place prize in the Bethesda Local Writer’s Showcase Poetry Contest, and her work is featured in the anthology Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead. A communications specialist and freelance writer, she resides in the DC area.

NADEZHDA OF KRAMATORSK

by Moira Magneson

The Kramatorsk railway station was hit by Russian missiles at about 10:30 local time (07:30 GMT) on Friday, April 8. Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, has said the death toll has risen to 50. That number includes five children… The mayor of Kramatorsk said there were 4,000 people, most of them elderly, women and children, at the station at the time of the attack. —The Guardian, April 9, 2022

Only yesterday Nadezhda had gone with her mom to pick up the red

eyeglasses. Once they'd been fitted, looped around her ears, snugged

to the bridge of her nose, she stepped into the street and the sudden

 

fanfare of the world rose to meet her—linden trees lining the sidewalks,

their green clear song—the sharp corners of buildings, the pebbled earth, the perfect

yellow rings of the blackbird's eyes.

 

Why had no one told her life could look like this?

 

At five a.m. today, glasses on, she was strangely happy packing up her belongings

alongside her mom and sister—a duffel, two suitcases, her sister's stuffed pink

hippo, a carrier for her cat.

 

Their neighbor dropped them off at the train station, promising to see them soon—

 

When the war is over.

 

Hundreds queued on the platform, bundled in down, watchcaps, scarves, and coats, some wearing surgical masks, westward bound to Lviv and safety.

 

Jostling shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, one long winding caterpillared creature, one breath steaming in the morning air.

 

Nadezhda reveled in the dazzle, color, and length of it, heartswelling, newfound sight

taking in each detail, scrap, and shape, vowed to love everyone, even

the lead-grey pigeons hobbling in the dust.

 

It was half past ten when she heard the cat's mewl and twisting cry.

 

It was half past ten when she saw the birds wheel up into the cobalt sky.

 

Half past ten when she felt the wave of wind shove through her skin.

 

She turned to her sister to say—

 

How do the birds know to rise as one?  

 

The words stilled forever on her tongue.

 

Red eyeglasses spilled on the red stained brick.

Author's note: When I read about the Kramatorsk train station bombing on my phone's news feed, the videos and photographs of people's personal belongings—children's stuffed animals, juice boxes, eyeglasses strewn pell-mell across the blood-stained brick—filled me with horror, driving home all over again the cruelty and pointlessness of war. I wondered what it must be like to be a child living and traveling in wartime. How might a child see the war? How could she possibly make sense of it? This poem—with its imagining of a child I call Nadezhda—emerged from these questions.

Moira Magneson's work has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Plainsongs, Canary, The Rumpus, The Tule Review, California Fire and Water—a Climate Crisis Anthology, and Halfway to Halfway and Back. Her chapbook He Drank Because was published by Rattlesnake Press.

BLACK TRAFFIC, STOP

by Rémy Dambron

The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., released videos on Wednesday showing a white officer fatally shooting Patrick Lyoya (pictured above), a 26-year-old Black man, after a struggle during a traffic stop last week. The officer, who has not been named, was lying on the back of Mr. Lyoya before he appeared to shoot him in the head. In the seconds before the shooting, Mr. Lyoya and the officer wrestled on the ground and seemed to be fighting for control of the officer’s Taser. —The New York Times, April 13, 2022

at first 

an ordinary traffic 

stop, routine

suspect 

you

stay in the car 

get back in the car

do you have a license 

your plates don’t match

do you speak english 

show me your license 

i said your plates don’t match

stay in the car

no stop

you can’t stand there

hey you can’t stand there

stand here no 

wait STOP

grabbing him 

restraining him

throwing him to the ground

with the force of the law

immunity qualified

we’ve seen this before 

too many times before

released body cam footage shows

cop shoots black man

don’t watch it

hurts 

(body camera shuts off)

he shoots 

he shot him

the cop shot the black man

(body camera turns on)

paramedics can’t revive him

because the cop 

he shot him

he shot him dead 

for what 

why

forgive me 

for being repetitive 

but another man with a badge 

shows his bad intentions and 

oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the head

they called it a struggle

a fight for control over the taser

cop drawing the weapon first

ready to electrocute 

the man he would instead 

just shoot 

but no charges filed

the investigation is ongoing

ongoing, yes

forgive me 

for being repetitive but 

another man with a badge shows his bad intentions 

and oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the head

his community going on 

carrying his cry for help

to the city steps in protest

to say to their reps 

please 

enough 

stop letting them shoot us

for gods sake 

jesus 

forgive me 

for being repetitive 

but another man 

with a badge 

shows his bad 

intentions and 

oh, did I mention?

*he shot him in the fucking head

Rémy Dambron is a former English teacher now Portland-based poet whose writing focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social/environmental justice. With the help of his chief editor and loving wife, his works have appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Words & Whispers, Spillwords, Robot Butt, and The New Verse News. 

CRITICAL 'RITHMETIC THEORY

by Chris O’Carroll

Some schools are considering altering the way they teach math to better serve struggling K-12 students. But the debate is being sucked into the culture wars. —“Is math racist? Wrong question.” The Washington Post, December 15, 2021. See also: “Is math education racist? Debate rages over changes to how US teaches the subject.” USA Today, December 7, 2021.

The Florida Department of Education announced Friday that the state has rejected more than 50 math textbooks from next school year’s curriculum, citing references to critical race theory among reasons for the rejections. —CNN, April 17, 2022

They’ve been slipping weird racial ideas in our math!

Ron DeSantis erupts in a geyser of wrath.

When Florida’s white math books spring into action,

Black lives will be in for a touch of subtraction.

Chris O’Carroll is the author of two books of poems, The Joke’s on Me and Abracadabratude.  He is a Light magazine featured poet and a contributor to several volumes of the Potcake Chapbooks series.  His work has appeared in Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, New York City Haiku, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections.

GIVE UNTO CAESAR

by David Chorlton

Tiberius Penny at The Smithsonian

Word comes down from the mountain

that Caesar has awakened

and begun to ask for what is his,

much to the distaste of the next man in line

whose shirt tells everyone he’s tuned

to a radio in the sky and he can tell you

why Washington’s to blame

for the state of all things on Earth. He orders

enchiladas. Says with pride

he’s ex-law enforcement. Smiles

at a passing thought available

only to himself.

                        With taxes comes the time

the ocotillo greens in the front yard

where the first of summer’s orioles

has found her way back

to where she came last year. She’s a flash

between red blossoms

and arrives when the Earth’s clock tells her to:

when the people empty their pockets

and count small change, when they

find news in dark rumors, sign their checks

and send them to Caesar

on the last of winter’s winds.

David Chorlton observes the coming and going of birds in the corner of Phoenix where he lives, near South Mountain. The Mountain became the focus of his short book published by Cholla Needles last year, The Inner Mountain, which featured watercolors and poems.

SEA-TAC AT EASTER

by Jerry Krajnak

Fifty years ago, a boy returned

on a drizzly Easter Monday and found no one

to curse or kiss him. Holiday decorations

peeled from the walls as he lugged his duffel bag

to the gate of the final red-eye homeward flight.

On that eastbound plane no one asked

what he had done to earn that colorful ribbon

on his lapel or the metal pin on his hat.

Not wanting to hear about Vietnam, they looked

away from him as the plane sped on in the dark.

Only clinking ice cubes and the cry of a baby

welcomed him home on that dark United flight.

 

What kind of welcome will they receive next year,

all those young Russian soldiers, as they return

from afar? Uneasy and gone so long from home,

will they be thanked for their service to the state,

hear shouts of baby killer hurled, or worse,

arrive ignored by tired mothers and brothers

all sick of deprivation and numbed by broadcast

body counts that cannot be confirmed?

Will sisters and fathers and friends all cover their ears,

unwilling to hear what these young men would tell

about the distant place where they were sent

to do what leaders told them they must do?

Jerry Krajnak is a retired Vietnam veteran who lives in the North Carolina mountains. Recent poems appear in Plants and Poetry, Novus, Rat's Ass Review, Sublunary Review, and in the Flee to Spring anthology.

OH, BLACKBERRY WINTER

by Earl J. Wilcox

Late last night, you creep upon us—

cold, chilly rain, winds whipping

across Georgia & Carolinas.

Our pretty in pink peach orchards

shuddered, ready to eat (almost)

strawberries huddle under plastic tarps.

Bright purple and yellow pansies

still hopeful of weeks yet to shine

before the wilting suns of summer.

Our most beloved children—azaleas

and dogwoods—both already dressed

in their Easter bonnets. cringe, nearly

freeze in the cold winter-like night.

Oh precious and sacrosanct blackberry

cobbler, we shall miss your bubbly sauce,

your savory aroma fresh from our ovens.

Hurry along, children, summer time—

when the living comes easy—already

peeps from behind her humid clouds.

Tomorrow she will likely hum her hymn,

teach cat fish to jump.

 

 

Earl Wilcox writes from South Carolina where all flowering creatures are in bloom.

ARE WE THERE YET?

Passover 2022

by Anita S. Pulier

Marc Chagall's "Passover Haggadah"

Celebrate forty years of wandering.

40 years of searching.

Read Haggadah to the children,

give thanks,

sing praises

for the tribe surviving.

Focus on the ancients,

not the news.

Ignore ICE, as it issues

this warning: if officers

view you as Other,

hear a foreign accent,

take notice of shabby clothes,

you will be wrangled

like cattle into pens

and, paperless or not, deported.

To where? Weep, explain

you have lived here

since you were two,

this is your home.

Your wife, your children,

your aged mother

may never see you again.

Glory be to what?

Listen! Angry screams nurtured

by hatred, drown out the cries

of kids in Florida, or Texas, or next door.

How many more will be force fed this poison

in the name of a merciless God

punishing the sin of survival?

Tonight, we Jews co-opt words;

suffering, pain, freedom.

I imagine the day that

anyone’s God

will deliver enlightenment,

angels will sing,

heavenly light will shine

on the cruel irony of the self-righteous,

the day each of us will be revealed

as the supplicant,

each of us the Other.

The day our ancient journey,

our Passover celebration,

will not fall so woefully short

of the promised land.

Anita S. Pulier’s chapbooks Perfect Diet, The Lovely Mundane, and Sounds of Morning and her books The Butcher's Diamond and Toast were published by Finishing Line Press. Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in nine print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac.

MAP MAKING

by Robin Wright

Draw lines that represent countries.

Go further, pen buildings

whole and firm, houses

with sunflowers, children’s toys

in the yard, bicycle leaning

against a tree, a bench in front

of a library. Populate with people

eating ice cream, strolling the streets.

 

Hold the map close.

 

Soldiers tear it away,

draw guns, tanks,

bodies on the ground

carpeted with blood,

crushed buildings,

landmines meant to erase.

 

Snatch it back,

ink blue sky, yellow sun

above people, buildings,

a child’s future.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Bombfire Lit, One Art, Young Ravens Literary Review, Olney Magazine, As it Ought to Be, Rat’s Ass Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Muddy River Poetry Review, Sanctuary, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.

ATROCIOUS NEWS

by Madlynn Haber

The story of atrocities screams out from the front page

until the end of the column of words. The story continues

on page five. In between, is the weather report. I stop

to follow the progress of early spring’s longer days,

full sunshine, warming temperatures. Delightful. Turning

pages, today’s atrocities pick up with images of rubble,

devastation, tears running down children’s pale faces.

A cartoon follows for our amusement, then notices

of upcoming fun, fairs, and festivals.

 

The word atrocity repeats until it is familiar, so

commonplace it almost loses its meaning.

It’s just another atrocity, one might say.

Red is the color of blood as it spills across

the globe from bodies whose skin tones reflect

a spectrum of hues from light to dark.

Today’s crumpled headlines continue screaming

with news as the paper is thrown on a pile going back

to the beginning of time.

Madlynn Haber lives with her dog, Ozzie, in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in the anthology Adult Children (Wishing Up Press, 2021), Random Sample, Borrowed Solace, Buddhist Poetry Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetica Magazine, and other journals.

ABEL ASKS HIS BROTHER WHAT CAME OVER HIM

by Bonnie Naradzay

CAIN ET ABEL (CAIN AND ABEL), 1960, an original color lithograph by Marc Chagall designed for and published by VERVE for the volume Dessins pour La Bible.

after Agnieszka Tworek

 

If I gave the best when I offered my sheep

while your harvest fell short of the mark,

why turn against me? There was still time–

 

Now my blood cries out from the ground

you have claimed as your own. You know

the land mine you rigged to me will explode.

 

Alas, the loaf of bread I’d held, this pool of blood.

How could you choose to bludgeon my cows,

to wreak your vengeance against them too?

 

We are brothers; yet you attacked my humanity,

dragged me with your arms. Let me feel the snow

fall across my face as I say goodbye to life.  

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), Potomac Review, and others. Her essay on friendship was published in 2020 in the anthology Deep Beauty. For many years she has convened poetry salons with homeless people and with residents of retirement communities in the Washington DC area.

LIBRARIAN/HAPPY EASTER/X

by Annie Cowell

“Twenty-two years after a pair of notebooks filled with Charles Darwin’s early musings went missing from the Cambridge University Library, they were anonymously returned in good condition last month along with a note to the elated librarian: ‘Happy Easter.’” —The New York Times, April 5, 2022. Photo: One of the returned notebooks included Charles Darwin’s famous “tree of life” drawing, which maps out how related species could diverge from a common ancestor. Credit: Cambridge University Library via The New York Times

It wasn’t just the fatty bloom of ancient leather

(although my fingers itched to touch it),

but more the lignin laden bibliosmia

which wafts from the wrinkled patina.

Vanilla essence of Darwin.

What lay inside mattered less to me

than the shadow of the procreator,

of the man whose mind gave Life to the Tree.

An aura which goes beyond the scientific,

of ink-stained fingers lacing 

his beard with brown and grey before 

penning those spindly branches. 

Two decades, I have been their guardian.

Whilst they were presumed missing

mislaid, misfiled, misplaced,

I have inhaled Darwin; stared at the covers

through half-closed eyes,

felt his ghostly hands on mine. 

It is only when he whispers

the books are overdue,

that I know I must return them.

The librarian looks a jolly sort so 

I choose a pink gift bag

and leave them with a note,

happy to have played a part 

in the mystery

of the Origins of Life.

Author’s Note: This poem was inspired by the return of Darwin’s notebooks to Cambridge University. I wanted to imagine what had motivated both the taking and the returning of them.

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

PREGNANT AND TRAPPED IN MARIUPOL, UKRAINE

by Claire Matturro

“Pregnant women moved from Mariupol hospital were sheltering in bombed theatre.” —Sky News, March 26, 2022. Photo: Mariana Vishegirskaya, an injured pregnant woman walks downstairs in a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

At first we acted brave as we hurried

Inside the theater to flee mortars.

We had food and water, but I worried

Heavy with child if I’d make the border

If buses didn’t come. We sang bold songs,

then our food ran out, the water was gone.

Missiles crushed the walls, so we ran for trees,

as if feeble branches could stop the siege.

My baby kicks as an old man stopping

By me in the forest offers toffee.

He says “don’t chew it. It is the last one.

Let it melt slowly upon your tongue.

Chocolate and mint, a bit of sweet cream,

like the bold songs we used to bravely sing.” 

Author's Note: This sonnet is a heart-felt response to recent news stories about the continuing ordeal of people in Mariupol. The first eight lines are based upon direct news accounts—including the shelling of the theater where many took refuge and the wait for the humanitarian relief via the Red Cross buses. However, the last six lines, after the turn in the sonnet about the man offering the pregnant woman the last piece of candy, are wholly imagined. I wanted to show something of the kindness and courage of the Ukrainian people, which is so often reflected in news stories, and to offer at least a hint of hope. 

Claire Matturro has been a journalist, a lawyer, and a legal writing teacher at Florida State University and University of Oregon. She is the author of seven novels, including a legal thriller series published by HarperCollins, and is the co-author of a recent novel. She is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and lives in Florida.

A TANKA FOR THE TWO PEOPLE KILLED IN KHARKIV BY A RUSSIAN MORTAR SHELL

"A loaf of bread on a park bench, collecting snow. A puddle of blood nearby. Those were the traces of two lives lost this past week, two people killed as they sat sharing a late lunch or an early dinner, or maybe just feeding pigeons. No one seemed to know their names. They died at around 5:30 in the afternoon on Sunday in the southeastern Slobidskyi district of Kharkiv from a mortar strike, residents said, describing the victims as an older woman and a middle-aged man." —Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak, The New York Times, April 6, 2022. Original photo by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Jimmy Pappas is the Zoom moderator for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.

FRONT LINES

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

The governor of Alabama on Friday signed into law two controversial bills: one that criminalizes healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth and another that requires students to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she “believed very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl”. The anti-gender-affirming care bill, described as the first legislation of its kind in the US, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to provide medical care including hormone treatment and puberty blockers to minors. It also includes bans on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, which are extremely rare, and compels school personnel to disclose to a parent or guardian that a “minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex”. —The Guardian, April 8, 2022

We will fight them on the

beaches    we will fight them in

 

the sandbox    these tiny

terrorists, the little boys

 

with nail polish, a spangly pony

and a special Barbie.

 

We have God on our side

He who surely must have sanctified

 

the hand of the doctor filling out

the birth certificate.  We have

 

George Orwell on our side to

inspire our marketing team.

 

We’ll call it de-nazification, no,

we’ll call it parental support, no,

 

wait, we’ll call it The Vulnerable Child

Compassion and Protection Act.

 

No more shelter in the demilitarized

school nurse’s office.  We’ll make It a crime

 

to slow the inexorable hands of time

bringing forth an unwanted body.

 

In this holy war

No prisoners are too small.

 

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a psychotherapist and a poet.  Her chapbook Out of Order was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.  Her poems have been published in District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Lighten Up, The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Calyx, and Voices:  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and an ever-shifting blend of rage and wonder.

FAIRY TALES

by W. Luther Jett

Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims. —The New York Times, April 4, 2022

Let’s pretend the moon

is made from cheese, and bees

go there when they die,

and the river runs backward

on alternate weeks, and, oh,

the tallest peaks

are covered in ice cream—

you could climb them in just

ten giant steps—or fly.

Yes, let’s pretend that we

can fly. Also, let’s pretend

that summer will have no end.

The rifle isn’t loaded. Those

are not dead bodies there,

bloating in the city square.

W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks: Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father (Finishing Line Press 2015), Our Situation (Prolific Press 2018), Everyone Disappears (Finishing Line Press 2020), and Little Wars (Kelsay Books 2021).

TRUE COLORS

by Julie Steiner

"Refugees Welcome" by Omar Ab Abdallat

A Haitian family's asylum case shows double standard at the border: It took three doctors, a small team of lawyers and multiple nonprofits on both sides of the border to get an exemption for a Haitian family seeking asylum in the United States… Border officials have routinely granted exemptions to Ukrainian nationals while subjecting asylum seekers from other countries to much more scrutiny. That included the Haitian family, who had to wait almost four months to get an exemption. Advocates said their case underscores just how arbitrary and unfair the country’s asylum system is right now. —KPBS, April 5, 2022

We’re opening our hearts and homes and wallets.

We’ve got donations piling up on pallets

for families in flight from bombs and bullets—

their frightened faces traumatized and pale. It’s

inspiring, seeing decency at work.

It’s proof the world’s not totally berzerk.

When strangers need our help, we never shirk

our duty. (If their faces aren’t too dark.)

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

THE WORLD IS FULL OF WAR AGAIN

by Penelope Scambly Schott

More than 100 people have drowned in the Central Mediterranean in one week while at least 130 others have been forcibly returned to Libya. In the same week, MSF teams rescued 113 people from a rubber boat that was taking on water. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns Italy and Malta’s failure to assist boats in distress and urges Frontex and other European vessels in the area to reveal the circumstances of these tragic events.  —Médecins Sans Frontières, April 6, 2022

No, the world is always full of war.

The thing is, this time it’s white people

killing white people, so we pay attention.

When it’s those people with darker skin

and we’re not sure exactly where they live,

we pay less attention. Can you point

to Ethiopia on a map? But really,

what good does our attention do? I mail

my pittance to Doctors Without Borders

on my way to shop at Safeway. Am I being

cruel? Yesterday I listened to my friend

lament for an hour on the phone.

I brought homemade bread to the neighbor

who calls it date night at the cemetery

when he brings a chair to his wife’s grave.

And look at me here with my fresh coffee

in a mug with dancing dogs. Don’t I think

I'm just so goddamn kind?

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.

THE SPECTRUM

by Peter Neil Carroll

“Spectrum I” painting by Ellsworth Kelly (1953) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and promised gift of Helen and Charles Schwab

War began as predicted, a vision of fire.

I pulled the blanket over my head, safe,

thousands of miles from personal tragedy.

 

Maybe I should send my blanket to the Red

Cross, they could forward it to a child in

Ukraine. Surely that’s the least I could do.

 

Not enough, though. Maybe tomorrow I will

purchase a box of soft diapers for a children’s

hospital in Kyiv or a can of condensed milk.

 

I saw a photo of a woman weeping in the street,

her arms bare, blood on her naked legs, shoeless.

Clothing. That’s what she needs, a little warmth.

 

Yes, I realize, the wounded need bandages, anti-

biotics, plain aspirin in an emergency. It’s okay

to send medical aid. They call it humanitarian.

 

I know there are many Doctors without Borders

already there, and volunteer cooks boiling soups,

and stews to nourish folks who have lost kitchens.

 

Those helpers are so brave, sincere, real menschen.

I should support them, too, but will money arrive

in time to save a country? Can I buy an ambulance?

 

Can I drive an ambulance? That’s a peaceful way

to help strangers trapped in a war. It would be good

for my conscience. But can one person matter?

 

What the soldiers who are fighting really want are

more weapons and ammunition or, better still, tanks

and rockets. They could use airplanes and bombs.

 

But stop there. They must be only old-fashioned bombs

built on TNT. Not atom bombs or hydrogen bombs

because that could kill too many people plus animals.

 

Where does it end? What is it the right thing to send,

to help someone in trouble? Or a whole country? As if

I could draw a red line on a spectrum or cross over it.

 

Peter Neil Carroll is currently Poetry Moderator of Portside.org. His latest collection of poetry is  Talking to Strangers (Turning Point Press). Forthcoming is This Land, These People: 50 States of the Nation, winner of the Prize Americana. Earlier titles include Something is Bound to Break and Fracking Dakota.  He is also the author of the memoir Keeping Time (Georgia).