THE BOARD SPEAKS TO AN ASSEMBLY OF FIFTH-GRADE GIRLS

by Terri Kirby Erickson 

Sunday school at a Baptist church in Kentucky, 1946 

The Board has determined that fifth grade,
which may be too late for some, is the most
optimal time to inform girls that post-birth
females are not fully autonomous human 
beings. No adverse circumstances or plans
or dreams or medical emergencies trump 
your legal and moral responsibility to give 
birth should any male, whether by force or 
consent, plant his seed in the fertile ground 
of a uterus that becomes, immediately upon
conception, the sole property of The State. 
The Board, comprised of five men and two 
wholly compliant women, strives to remain 
sympathetic to how hard it must be for you 
to accept this news, having been so revered 
before birth and deceived into believing you 
have the same rights and post-delivery value 
as boys and men. Let us assure you today, 
that you do not. Indeed, should you become 
pregnant and experience a life-threatening 
situation, the continuation of a fetal heart-
beat is all that matters. Furthermore, there 
are many government agencies dedicated to 
ensuring that, under penalty of death or life 
in prison for all involved, no pregnancy is
unlawfully terminated. No questions? Then 
you are, as will often be the case, dismissed.

 
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of an International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA,Poet’s Market, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Third Wednesday, and many more. Other awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. 

ABDUCTED GOLDFISH

by Kenton K. Yee

Dean Young, 1955-2022

In The Art of Recklessness (Graywolf, 2010), the poet Dean Young's exhilarating book-length essay on writing poetry, he repeatedly questions and rejects the idea that the most important thing in writing poetry is an acquired mastery of craft, suggesting that it comes at the expense of intuition, risk-taking, wildness, and negative capability. He writes, exasperatedly and in all caps, "WE ARE MAKING BIRDS, NOT BIRDCAGES!" —Michael Dumanis, Editor of Bennington Review

I ping. I ping love.

 

I ping love and I love pings.

Here’s one from the library:

Due in two.

 

Love me my deadlines.

Ping me butter melting,

cantaloupe ripening,

gasps quickening.

 

Dean Young.

 

Ducks.

 

Abduct.

 

I’m waiting for the gulls to return my goldfish.

I’m waiting for squirrels to sing like nightingales,

daisies to bear me raspberries,

and bonsai trunks or cornflakes.

I’m waiting for bugles to herald the dying of salmon.

 

All this sun and all that sun.

The melting hours. Starlight. Dew.

The lackadaisical one

who settles for steam turned to rice.

Author’s Note: This poem is in memory of Dean Young, who passed away a few days ago. When I first took up poetry, I didn't know what to make of Dean Young and his rich language and ranging movements. Now, he's become one of my poetry role models.

Kenton K. Yee recently placed poetry in Constellations, Plume Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Indianapolis Review, Matter, Lily Poetry Review, and Pembroke Magazine, among others. An Iowa Summer Poetry Workshop alumnus, he writes from northern California.

A NEW WINSTON CHURCHILL STATUE

by Tom Bauer

‘Self-indulgent’: Churchill statue plans stir public controversy, perplexity over motivation. Statue will be installed at Calgary’s McDougall Centre in 2023. —Livewire Calgary, August 27, 2022

Like deadly white mold, signs keep surfacing.

The skin of life develops pustules and blisters;

past echos of a fierce disease of dominance

resurfacing to blight the natural landscape.

Looking at faces I see hope and care.

I see landscapes of spontaneous growth

moving as one towards some shared outcome

each of us unconsciously wants to see.

Statues do not see, and will not see us through

their purpose, ownership of all we seem.

Their stone presence blocks our human landscape.

The greatest monument might come to be

feeling connected when we come together

and see the real enemy: the harms we cause.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

JORGE BERGOGLIO

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Pope Francis on Saturday inducted 20 cardinals from around the world, choosing men who mostly agree with his vision of a more progressive and inclusive Church and influencing their choice of his eventual successor. —Reuters, August 27, 2022

Pope Francis [born Jorge Bergoglio] says he wouldn't live in the Vatican or return to his native Argentina if and when he ever retires. ABC News, July 12, 2022

Joe Ratzinger's a marvel. He gets ten

Off me for walking when his sun had set—

Retiring from his job as pontiff when

God told him he was past it—though he'd get

Eleven if the saintly fellow would

Be called, not Benedict, but Joe the Pope

Emeritus, and twelve if Joseph could

Remember his white cassocks are a nope!...

Go back to Argentina, or be found

On Vatican estates, if I step down?

Good heavens, no! Don't let me hang around,

Let Jorge hold confessions in the town

If he retires... But I'm not going yet—

Or you'll get some hardliner I'll regret!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

BULLET-PROOF BACKPACK

by Robin Wright

First day of school, pens, pencils, notebooks,

scissors, crayons, lunch bag, corralled and ready,

along with fear, anxiety, worry.

 

Parents hopeful—not their children’s school, 

not their children’s lives on the next segment 

of the news with police interviews on who, how many. 

 

I watch a video of a mother teaching her child 

what to do in case a shooter appears at school, 

run to the corner, curl up behind his backpack. 

 

Do not let anyone tell him he doesn’t need 

this small wall of protection. She instructs him 

on what to say, NOTHING.

 

She tells him, be small, be quiet, run if you can. 

I will find you. Yes, I will find you,

wearing your Spiderman backpack.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, One Art, As it Ought to Be, The Drabble, Bombfire Lit, Young Ravens Literary Review, Olney Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, 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.

SENATE UNCERTAINTY

by Chris O’Carroll

by Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In an appearance back in his home state of Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) downplayed the odds of Republicans reclaiming the Senate—and, by extension, him reclaiming the title of majority leader. In doing so, he suggested that “candidate quality” was a key factor.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said, according to NBC News. “Senate races are just different—they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.” —The Washington Post, August 18, 2022

Mitchity-kvetchity,

Candidate quality

Doesn’t look great for the

GOP’s brand.

Voters seem cool to those

QAnonologists

Mouthing the lies MAGA

Wingnuts demand.

Chris O’Carroll is the author of The Joke’s on Me and Abracadabratude.  His poems have also appeared in the Potcake Chapbook series, New York City Haiku, Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections.

ORANGE LINE SHUTDOWN, DAY ONE

by Chad Parenteau

Now comes the latest upheaval for the [Boston’s] weary commuters: a complete 30-day shutdown of the Orange Line, the area’s second most-traveled subway line, which typically provides 101,000 passenger trips a day from Boston’s southwest neighborhoods through its downtown core and into Somerville, Medford and Malden, three cities to the north. Transit officials announced the shutdown after a series of safety problems on the T, as the region’s transit system is known, including an Orange Line train that caught fire in July while on a bridge, prompting one rider to jump into the Mystic River below. —The New York Times, August 23, 2022

First of trainless

thirty days, possibly

preluding forever.

 

Slower busses

bound for Mattapan

might have chance

 

to shine, if not for

oversized shuttles

to Copley Square

 

pushing commerce

first, blocking last

gasps of commute.

 

Newspaper calls it

“Orange Crush’

because if officials

 

could tighten belts,

poke extra holes,

make new notches,

 

stretch bodies further

from city’s center,

they already would.

 

Forrest Hills remains

quiet as crematorium,

ashen holdovers already

 

gone from benches.

Nobody wants to be

left further behind.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. 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, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

THE LIBRARIAN AT THE SCHOOL WHERE EVERY CHALLENGE SUCCEEDS

by Cecil Morris

Photo by Stu_Spivak

The Bible is among dozens of books [including the graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank's diary and numerous books with LGBTQ+ themes or characters] removed from this Texas school district. —NPR, August 18, 2022

I like our high school library now—the high ceiling,

the tall windows inviting light, the shelves throwing

their long shadows onto each other, their blond wood,

so easy to dust and polish now. Something stately,

a little grand, a little minimalist—a kind

of puritan austerity, I think you could say,

now that all the books have been withdrawn, all the ideas

removed from circulation, stored now off site and out

of sight. No more books to face or edge or try to dust,

those uneven tops. No more rows of books to cull

for the out of date, the never read—or checked out,

at least—the ones defaced by flip-page cartoons, or drawn-

in dicks, or very personal slurs that should be kept

to lavatory stalls. No more issuing fines

for books late or lost. I know, as librarian,

I should miss the books, both learned tomes and flights

of fantasy, but this vacuous cleanliness

appeals to my love of order and simplicity,

and the kids—the students—still come in with their phones

where they can find the whole world in bite-size chunks,

where they can Google, scroll, and cite Wikipedia.

And I do not have to check anything out or in

or shush any heads bent over the little lights.

I guess this is what the school board and parents want.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, divides his time between Oregon and California.  He has poems in or forthcoming from 3Elements, Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hiram Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Scapegoat, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

LIZARD DAYS

by Alejandro Escudé

A lizard, small, on my walk along 

the largest airport in the country,

dead, curled, fetus-like, so swift

they are as they shoot back toward

the ivy mounds. At times I imagine

how many trash bins would the 

lizards fill if they were all collected

from the overgrowth—so I take

with my iPhone a photo of him,

Cretaceous little being, extinct, 

and think about the latest warning

issued to all Apple users, a hack

where they could take control,

absolute control, the newscaster

asserts, of your phone. I yearn

for a return to those lizard days

when I couldn’t carry around

a sea of digital pirates, both legal

and illegal, a neon mind-maze,

yet enough data to assume society’s 

panoptic perch. I choose to keep 

from running another space race

with my phone, contemplate

the deadness of a dead lizard

on the sidewalk as monolithic 

shadows of planes, like the foot-

prints of a dinosaur accelerated 

in time, mesh onward to the west.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

HAMILTON, SHMAMILTON

by Kenneth J. Purscell

We could argue all day long

On where the Founders stood 

Regarding things like Christ and church

And Triune personhood.

And some who do so feel compelled

To stand and testify,

To preach and rescue souls because

They fear the End is nigh.

But when "producing" Broadway shows,

Believers must get real.

You'd think a church should not forget

The Law: "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL!"

Kenneth J. Purscell is a retired retail cashier, adjunct professor, and pastor. He has been published sporadically, but has made submission more of a habit. He lives with his wife Koni in the south suburbs of Chicago. And he apologizes to Lin-Manuel, who probably could have done this better.

THE WATERS OF LAKE MEAD

by Alfred Fournier

Water levels at Lake Mead have fallen dramatically amid a record drought. Compare the satellite images of the lake in 2000 and in 2022, and you can see the stark decline. NASA Earth Observatory via Vox, August 17, 2022

shrunken by drought, 

reveal body by body our sins: 

missing children and sunken mob hits,

bricks heaved into once-deep water. 

Inch by inch, layers of strata denuded 

become sheets of ancient music 

played on instruments of doom. 

One last chorus for the climate scientists, 

our voices rising in thin atmosphere,

where far above the moon peers down. 

Is that a frown on the old man’s face, 

or does our willful dance with fate amuse him? 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, International Times, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. 

THE HEARTS NEAR TROUBLESOME CREEK

by Sarah Mackey Kirby

Eastern Kentucky has long been neglected. After recent floods, locals are relying on each other yet again. —CNN, August 9, 2022

beat loss,

beat wood slat rubble,

beat morning Appalachia.

 

It’s patch-up and fix-up

and clean-up and move-on

time again. The mountains

know these folks. The ones

in old boats, still combing

flooded neighborhoods

with their own homes in shambles.

Teachers without classrooms and

workers taking charge throughout the night.

 

Sorting clothes and preparing supply

boxes in shelters. Manning the grills.

Handing out water bottles.

Somehow landing on their feet

 

as they know to do. The coal mine jobs

lost but the sickness those wrought.

The lack of work to replace them.

The stubborn terrain. Two parties that’ve

fought to be the one who gets to use them.

Same generations of neglect. Different name.

Humble people, caricatured through time,

whose character shows despite their pain.

 

Nurses care for patients. Art and music bring

the light. The breeze blows through soaring pines.

And when the world tires and the cameras leave

and the mud dries and the current-event poems

become current only for them, they’ll keep asking

their neighbors, “Y’all need somethin’?”

Talking distinct Eastern Kentucky, offering help.

Saying, “Bless your heart” to those who’ve never

once tried to understand. Picking up what’s left of

family pictures and damaged front porch swings.

Together. Always rebuilding.

Sarah Mackey Kirby grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of the poetry collection The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her work appears in Chiron Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, The New Verse News, Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MA in Teaching and a BA in Political Science from the University of Louisville. She and her husband spend their time in Kentucky and Ohio.

THE HOLLER

by Tricia Knoll

The flood of July 28, 2022 was not a natural disaster. To imply this flood, along with so many other weather-borne catastrophes plaguing our world, is a natural disaster is to say three things: We don’t know why it happened, we don’t know how it happened and we don’t know how to prevent the next one. But we do know the answers to these questions. We’ve known them for some time. A combination of unfettered capitalism, environmental degradation through extraction economies and government indifference or plain inaction have borne a land in these hills ripe for weather related disasters and left behind communities with little to no defenses against them. Charles Calhoun, Courier Journal, August 16, 2022

Since 1958, the amount of precipitation during heavy rainstorms has increased by 27 percent in the Southeast, and the trend toward increasingly heavy rainstorms is likely to continue. – What Climate Change Means for Kentucky, EPA, August 2016

When you have always lived in the holler

and the mortgage come due or the river

trickles your worries downstream, you accept

barking dogs, loose chickens in the road

and rusted trucks in the side yard. Kittens

thrive for a while. You know the business

and love affairs of neighbors and grandmothers.

Who has work and who doesn’t. 

Children know barefoot, few strangers,

and security in familiar. Ponies

run lean and the women leaner, 

mountains tall and a gravel lane narrow

—funnels for floodwater.  

 

You could say the name came from hollows

but you don’t. You honor salty talk while

a warming planet has its say with

record rains few had time to measure.

 

Refrigerators float and homes sweep down

to wrap around trees. You can scrabble

up a hillside, but like so many places

what grandparents built is gone. 

The holler has only one way out

 

and yours will never be the same. 

Tricia Knoll does not live in a holler but knows that everywhere is vulnerable to climate change.

GIULIANI WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA

by Jon Wesick

with apologies to Charlie Daniels

Jack Ohman: "A peach of a guy," The Sacramento Bee, August 18, 2022

Giuliani went down to Georgia, he was lookin’ for votes to steal

He was in a bind ‘cause Trump was way behind

And he was willin’ to make a deal

 

When he came across the DA writing subpoenas and slinging ‘em hot

And Giuliani pled attorney-client with Trump

And said, “girl, let me tell you what”

 

“I guess you didn’t know I’m a lawyer too

At least until I was disbarred

Now you got a pretty good grand jury, girl

But why you gotta’ make it so hard

Makin’ me travel to Atlanta

By bus, or train, or car?”

 

The DA said, “My name is Fani and I’m gonna’ win

And you can bet you’re gonna’ regret

‘Cause I’m the best there’s ever been”

 

Giuliani wiped off his hair dye and said, “I’ll start this grift”

And nothing else passed his lips except, “I take the fifth”

All the hacks at Fox News made an evil hiss

While Lindsey Graham filed appeals for judges to dismiss

 

Fani said, “You’re pretty slick, old son

But sit right there in the witness chair

And I’ll show you how it’s done”

 

Classified documents out in the sun

While Trump considers a twenty-four run

New York, Georgia, and Feds closing in

Holding our breath for justice to win

 

Giuliani hung his head ‘cause he knew he’d been beat

As he climbed down off the witness seat

And Fani cracked a smile

“Come on back to Georgia

I’ll see you at your trial”

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, The New Verse News, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. Jon is the author of the poetry collections Words of Power, Dances of Freedom and A Foreigner Wherever I Go as well as several novels and short story collections. His most recent novel is The Prague Deception.

(NONFICTION) THE SÁMI WORD FOR ‘HELP’ IS VEAHKKI! AND I YELL IT IN MY DREAMS TONIGHT, AND ALWAYS

FOR SACHEEN LITTLEFEATHER AND MISKOPWAAGANIKWE

by Ron Riekki

Above: Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, known as Áillohaš in the Northern Sámi language (23 March 1943–26 November 2001), was a Finnish Sámi writer, musician and artist.

“I am not saving my life for the future” 

—Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Trekways of the Wind 

 

Tomorrow I go in front of a board 

to speak on the allegations that I 

was “speaking of native issues too 

frequently in class.”  When I heard 

 

these allegations, no, this allegation, 

no, this pissing-on-a-bonfire, I had 

the revelation of being had.  I had, 

yes, in class, spoke of indigenous 

 

issues, not realizing it’s a crime, 

but I am guilty of being native, of 

being Sámi, of being Karjalaiset, 

of being of a background where I 

 

hear, here, “I’ve never heard of 

that.”  The that falling flat.  And 

it’s a board of seven people.  And 

it makes me think of the time in 

 

Berkeley, where I was walking 

down the street and saw a black 

man, around 70 years old, peace- 

fully being drunk, on a bench, 

 

buzzed, yes, eyes red, yes, and 

leaving the world alone, then 

a police car drove up and an 

officer asked the man some- 

 

thing and he said something 

and another cop car pulled up 

and another cop got out and 

another cop car pulled up and 

 

more police got out and then 

a van pulled up, a cop van, 

a SWAT team reaction for 

this septuagenarian swept up 

 

so quickly into the back of 

the swallowing vehicles, all 

painted black, as if to mock, 

as if to mask them in night 

 

where the body was taken 

and I stood there and realized 

how there is the centrality of 

overreaction, of SWAT-style 

 

action movie hyperbole where, 

in the end, there is the pairing 

of kissing the woman while 

killing the man who didn’t 

 

matter, the man who was 

reduced to villain and a woman 

seduced by cliché and audiences 

in the dark, snoring.  And a First 

 

Nation playwright in Montreal 

told me that Hollywood cinema 

is all about conflict, that they 

love conflict, because colonialism 

 

is hearted in conflict, but native 

playwriting and screenwriting and 

story is about community, not con- 

flict, not the incarceration of their 

 

films, but instead about connection, 

and he said that there was a reading 

where afterwards a white man 

raised his hand and said he’d have 

 

to be honest and he said the play 

was boring, and behind him was 

a group of Anishinaabe who were 

all in tears, their sleeves filled 

 

with tears, and this man was 

bored.  And tomorrow I don’t know 

if I am getting kicked out of college 

or if I’m getting killed out of college 

 

or if I’m getting left in decorticate 

position, funeraled, how I was told 

that I was not only speaking too 

much about native issues, but I was 

 

being too “aggressive” with how I 

was talking about native issues and 

an elder, Red Pipe Woman, on 

the phone told me, “Oh, let me get this 

 

straight: a native person is being 

told they are ‘aggressive.’  They’re 

telling you that you’re being ‘savage’ 

by speaking of native issues.”  And 

 

our laughter was as normal as all 

the tall clouds above, and our laughter 

was sky-deep, and our laughter was tears, 

and the grey clouds were coming and 

 

I love walking in the rain and I walked 

home and I wondered if tomorrow 

they were going to try to destroy me 

and tomorrow I am going to find out. 

 

And tomorrow I am going to find out. 

And I will live even if they kill me. 

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).

LEGAL AND SAFE IN DULUTH MN

by Jess Morgan

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — On the top floor of a modest two-story brick building near the shore of Lake Superior, the executive director of northern Minnesota’s only abortion clinic flits from room to room, checking in patients, fielding phone calls from people seeking appointments and handling billing questions from those struggling to pay. In the waiting room at WE Health Clinic in Duluth, patients from Wisconsin and Texas sit among Minnesotans — the leading edge of an expected uptick in out-of-state patients following the Supreme Court’s removal of the federal right to abortion. Photo: A clinic escort outside WE Health Clinic in Duluth, Minn., awaits the arrival of patients, Thursday, July 7, 2022. The clinic escorts protect patients from protesters as they approach and enter the clinic. (AP Photo/Derek Montgomery)

We mosh to punk in a shower of bubbles

and beer at house shows on Saturday

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

Decked out in tin foil and wearing fish heads,

we flail and wail in the annual Smelt Parade

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

Our earrings are handmade, we drink coffee

brewed downtown and our music is Homegrown

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

An underground art collective hauls a piano

onto Lake Superior for improvisation opera

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

We plow out each other’s cars in negative

thirty-degree temperature snow storms

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

Our lake is as big as the sea. She is grounding,

healing and as comforting as living 

within a city where abortion is legal and safe.

Pro-choice protestors sing the child I babysit 

happy birthday and feed him cupcakes

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

Indigenous land protectors chant and bring 

their drums when we rally for choice

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

A surprising amount of us are queer or trans,

and my non-binary heart feels right at home

in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

I’d like to own goats on the outskirts of town,

and will only raise a family or give birth

in a city where abortion is legal and safe.

My co-workers and I work together to provide

patients with gender-affirming healthcare

in my city’s clinic where abortion is legal and safe.

Patients kiss my hand after a suction abortion,

thanking me for holding theirs during their procedure

in my city’s clinic where abortion is legal and safe.

Too many Duluthians make a poverty wage and rent 

isn’t cheap in my city where abortion is legal and safe.

And each day we must keep fighting for the culture,

clinic and city where abortion is legal and safe.

Jess Morgan is a nonbinary poet in Duluth, Minnesota where they juggle many hats. Their jobs include (but are not limited to) working as a wedding DJ, sound technician, patient educator for abortion services at WE Health clinic, hobby photographer, and occasional goat-sitter. They are a fiscal year 2022 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Poems they've written have been included (or are soon to be included) in The Nemadji Review, Prøve Art Gallery's Zine titled Emerge, and the Wisconsin Review. Jess shares a Tik Tok account with their partner called @ColdLakeHotPoets to capture their poetry adventures around Duluth.

LACROSSE: AN APOLOGY FOR FORGETTING

by Dick Altman

"Ball players," a hand-colored lithograph by George Catlin (1796-1872)

How Indigenous Athletes Are Reclaiming Lacrosse: The Haudenosaunee Nationals lacrosse teams have a big ambition: competing in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. —The New York Times, July 30, 2022

Thud!

 

Thud!

 

Thud!

 

The sound

of a solid rubber

lacrosse ball

slamming

into my chest

at 90 mph.

 

I’m a goalie.

By game’s end

the ball tattoos

red impact circles

all over ribs

and thighs

Everyone

a “save”.

     *

Cayuga

 

Mohawk

 

Oneida

 

Onondaga

 

Seneca

 

Tuscarora

 

Syllables poetic

of the Iroquois.

Now known as

Haudenosaunee.

Hoe-dee-no-SHOW-

nee, to my ear,

almost a poem

unto itself.

 

Haudenosaunee.

Star-strewn lacrosse

team that hopes—

and I share them—not

merely to win six years

from now Olympic gold.

 

But to trumpet

in the game’s balletic

clash and flow—

of stick on stick,

stick on flesh—

Native America’s

presence—resilient,

enduring—as I want

to imagine it

in the wider world.

                *

I write this poem for you,

you of First Nations,

to acknowledge

what a privilege

it was to dance

in your ancestors’

footsteps.

 

To play one of your

magical stringed

instruments, whose

music lets me subdue

strikes in mid-flight.

Bladed ball of poetry

that writes across

my body its wounds.

                 *

I stand fifty years later

in front of the mirror.

If I look closely, I can

see fine broken blood

vessels, not of age,

but joy of deflecting

one more shot on goal.

One more Thud! of joyful

pain, to rhapsodize over

a lifetime.

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where,at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

SALMAN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

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 and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

FIELD OF DREAMS 2022

by Julian O. Long

The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-2, on Thursday, but that was hardly the point. Major League Baseball had once again found its way to Dyersville, Iowa, for its Field of Dreams game, and a sport that sometimes struggles with its technological future got a reminder of how great the game can be when it is broken down into its simplest form. “It’s really magic,” Cubs catcher Willson Contreras told reporters of the field, which is a short walk from the one used in “Field of Dreams,” the 1989 film starring Kevin Costner. “It has some kind of energy that I think is real.” —The New York Times, August 12, 2022

We gather as to a shrine
as to a place where prayer
has been valid, not to kneel
but to play or to observe
a sacred game. Sound of our
own wheels drove us crazy
but the year Matt Carpenter
rose from the dead and flashed
across the great white way like
a comet there was still America.
There were still the boys of summer
men playing a boys’ game dressed
in the holy garments of acolytes, dressed
in gladiatorial splendor, stadiums
full or empty still arrayed about
a plate we still called home.


Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, and Litbreak Magazine.

IN MEMORY OF ALBERT WOODFOX

by Mary K O'Melveny

Albert Woodfox, who is thought to have been held in solitary confinement longer than any individual in US history, having survived 43 years in a 6ft x 9ft cell in one of America’s most brutal prisons, has died aged 75. Woodfox’s death was made public on [August 4]… Woodfox was a member of the so-called “Angola Three”—prisoners who were wrongfully convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller, in Louisiana state penitentiary. The prison was built on the site of a former slave plantation and was commonly known as Angola, after the country from which most of the plantation’s enslaved people had been transported. —The Guardian, August 4, 2022. Photo: Albert Woodfox after his release from prison in 2016. —Credit Brian Tarnowski, The New York Times, August 5, 2022

Some say we are alone throughout our life.

Others say loneliness is just a state of mind.

One’s search for inner peace is filled with strife

on our best days. Imagine doing it alone, confined

for forty-three years in a closet-sized prison cell

where one must confront inner demons, serious

fears, failures of will, spirit. He traveled through hell,

emerged home, freed by wisdom. Like Odysseus.

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 most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. 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.

TERRITORY

by David Chorlton

“El Jefe,” a jaguar last seen in Arizona nearly seven years ago, was spotted in the Mexican state of Sonora last year, researchers confirmed recently, reviving hopes that the species can thwart the border wall that bisects its natural habitat. Above: El Jefe in the Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona on April 30, 2015(AP). Below: El Jefe is seen in the central area of Sonora, Mexico in November 2021(AP). —The Washington Post, August 10, 2022

Land remembered

from the distance of a century

turns into rock and light afloat

on a thread of water

that runs down from a mountain and sings

to the stones in its path.

Here comes night with the moon in its teeth.

Here comes a prayer

with blood on its lip and a heart

that beats time with a past

it’s come to reclaim. When belief

has soaked back into sky

the sky wears a pelt

cut for survival as all the land beneath it

turns mysterious blue

and a jaguar at a water hole

licks away the stars. He’s invisible

all the way inside himself

and quiet as a holy man who went

into the desert for its solitude.

He’s shed one country’s language. Its grammar

ran as liquid through his limbs

and he spat out punctuation every time

he moved in for a kill. Here’s a pool

of thirst.

             A red cloud of breath.

Some bones.

                   A heartbeat running

underground.

                      Homeland.

 

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix. While jaguar sightings are ever elusive, he is content to know that the big cats have allies in their quest for survival, such as the Northern Jaguar Project.

SOMETHING ABOUT WOLVES IN LOUISVILLE

by W. Barrett Munn

They hunt

as if they were four wolves,

a pack in pursuit of its prey.

When found they surround.

Fearsome, they isolate the young, the weak.

The black

night of the deserted moon masks

their padded steps but rapid hearts

and adrenal sweat unmasks

their stealth intent.

In silence they surround.

Less silent comes their rush:

Sudden. Sure.

They come as one

faceless, nameless, savage fury

until prey can only hope

survival of encounter

but this prey never had a chance:

judged and juried,

justified the pack brings down

its game, misguided hunger quelled.

In silence they survive

the questions; they

close the open net

no game escapes

no mistakes as

the righteousness of nature

nestles close.

Silence is a necessity

voices turn blue ischemic,

black and whites become necrotic.

But the smell won't fade in silence.

Stench always has a cost.

Silence as a weapon is

too weak when conscience speaks

too weak and unreliable when

other hunters—larger,

more powerful—

lay down their open traps.

W. Barrett Munn lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His poems have appeared in Copperfield Review Quarterly, Volney Road Review, Speckled Trout Review, and The Asses of Parnassus. He is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature where he studied under Larry Callen.

REBOUND

by Devon Balwit

A mind in a body, we want

the body not to suffer,

but bodies must learn

 

what illness is. To avoid

unpleasantness is to leave them

vulnerable to reinfection.

 

How tempting are blister-packed

nostrums when better

is to roll in our fever sweat

 

and full inflammation, each cell

a diligent student

of never again.

Devon Balwit is trying to put her final days of isolation to good use and is crossing her fingers against her own rebound.

TEACH TO THE TEST

by Phyllis Frakt

What is “rule of law”?

What stops one branch of government

from becoming too powerful?

What is the supreme law of the land?

What does the judicial branch do?

 

I slip through a distorted looking glass

to prepare the class for US citizenship,

to speak, read, write simple English,

and recite answers to 100 questions

about American history and government.

 

On their side of the looking glass,

I simplify revered founding principles

that most of their American neighbors

learned in school, then forgot.

But the class must learn and remember.

 

So, we thrash through a verbal thicket –

pursuit of happiness, colony, revolution,

Civil War, civil rights, Constitution,

democracy, Confederacy, emancipation,

declaration, representation, discrimination.

 

They grasp at historic words and principles

as keys to permanent homes in America

with steady income, education for their children,

safety from vicious gangs or husbands,

freedom from fierce dictatorships.

 

Feliz once was a high school teacher.

She escaped violence, and cleans houses now.

Selim and his family fled their country,

running from false government accusations.

No job back home for Abeo, a stutterer.

 

On my side, I cringe at lessons about

civic ideals now sullied or out of reach:

no one above the law? checks and balances?

The class waits patiently for me to explain,

and I slip back through the looking glass.

 

Phyllis Frakt's poem "Recoveries" will appear in the upcoming edition of Worksheets 67. She lives in New Jersey, where she has volunteered as a citizenship teacher for ten years.

EXTENDED MAGS FOR KING GEORGE III

by Dave Day

Source: For the Sake of Arguments

Grapeshot, grapeshot

British artillery and redcoat musketmen

undone by Rhode Island farmboys

heeding the militia’s call

bearing

fully automatic AR-15s with

laser sights and aerial drone support

the colonists spray the loyalists

in the killzone

nine-millimeter sidearm

dum-dum jacketed softpoint

magnum ACP

thirty rounds for Lord North and

the madman King George

to enfilade the tyranny of

the House of Hanover

well-regulated militiamen all

comporting with the history and tradition

of SEAL Team Six, which was founded after

the Battle of Agincourt

the militia, our militia

selfless minutemen doffing

tricorne hats, brass buttons gleaming on

ballistic body armor, hurrah!

Dave Day is an attorney from Honolulu, Hawaii.  Dave has published poetry in The Ekphrastic Review and The New Verse News, and extremely nonpoetic articles in the Hawaii Bar Journal and Emory International Law Review.

BULLETS

by Andrena Zawinski

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School's 1200 building has been sealed since the massacre on February 14, 2018. On Thursday, jurors in the sentencing phase of the school shooter's trial walked through the undisturbed scene, where the blood of the victims still stains classroom floors. Bullet holes also mark the walls of the Parkland, Florida, school where Nikolas Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members. A lock of dark hair remains on a floor more than four years after the body of a victim was taken away. Valentine's Day gifts and cards are strewn about, as shards of glass crunched beneath of the feet of visitors. These are the unsettling notes from a group of reporters allowed to enter the building after jurors completed their walk-through to provide details to media outlets across the country, including CNN. —CNN, August 5, 2022

Bullets, 

their brassy caps 

glinting golden in the dark

ammo tray tucked under

a student study desk,

more bullets in a bandolier 

crisscrossing the chest, bullets

maneuvered across a screen

in slugs of anger and angst 

in bullet launchers, landmines 

of bullets, bullets of the slain 

in a shooting game.

Bullets,

their powder packed cartridges

of panic and fear, hollow points 

shattering identities, blasts 

sounding in sleep, bullets 

of grief from a spray hate. 

Bullets 

that silence at windows, on lawns, 

on street corners, in schoolrooms, 

supermarkets, factories, churches, 

all turned altars of flowers,

candles, placards, and prayers, 

while bullets 

fill bank accounts

of makers and regulators

dodging bullets whistling by,

shells jingling in pockets 

like loose change spent 

in puddles of blood.

Bullets, 

their full metal jackets 

dug from the corpse 

with its legacy of wounds, 

bullets that pierced the flesh, 

shattered the bone, riddled 

the heart and all the wild in it,

depositing dreams

to urns and coffins

buried in holes in the dirt,

screams smothered, 

breaths sealed.

Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. It has appeared in Artemis, Blue Collar Review, Progressive Magazine, Aeolian Harp, Rattle, Verse Daily, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. Her latest collection is Landings. She has two previous award winning books: Something About and Traveling in Reflected Light and a fourth collection, Born Under the Influence, forthcoming in 2022.