ROE V. WADE—THE PREQUEL, 1972

by Marianne Gambaro

I guess I can’t blame them

for feeling the way they do.

 

They weren’t there.

They didn’t see your ashen face

against the blood-soaked

laundry service sheets

on your dorm bed.

 

I wish I could remember your name—

Karen, I think,

or maybe Caryn—

your whitebread family

was pretentiously middle class

so would have spelled it differently,

not at all like that boy

who knocked you up.

Did he disappear fast when you told him!

 

You were a quiet girl, younger

than the rest of us freshmen,

smarter too,

with all your advanced placement classes.

 

I think it was your roommate who took you

to that bogus doctor in Pennsylvania,

who stayed with you

and finally called the RA

when she couldn’t stop the bleeding.

 

You never did come back to the dorm.

Did you come back to school?

Did you even live?

No one talked about you after you left,

at least not above a whisper.

 

I guess I can’t blame them

for feeling the way they do now.

But maybe you can.

 

Marianne Gambaro’s poems and essays have been published in print and online journals including Mudfish, CALYX, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Pirene's Fountain, Avocet Journal, Snowy Egret, and The Naugatuck River Review. She is the author of Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers (Finishing Line Press). She lives in verdant Western Massachusetts, with her talented photographer-husband and two feline muses.

COWS WHO DIDN'T JUMP OVER THE MOON

by Dick Altman

Jason Grostic's cows are tame and relaxed on his small Michigan farm. But after repeatedly testing his farm for PFAS chemicals in biosolids applied to his fields, state officials stopped Grostic from selling any meat or cattle from his farm. Feed grown on his farm is contaminated as well, and he's having to buy feed for the herd he can no longer sell. (DTN photo by Chris Clayton) —Progressive Farmer, May 9, 2022

After euthanizing several thousand contaminated cows, Art Schaap is losing not only a once-thriving dairy farm but a place where he and his family have lived for a quarter-century. He has no choice, he said, because the polluted runoff from Cannon Air Force Base that tainted the groundwater, soil and his livestock with cancer-causing chemicals has left Highland Dairy in Clovis [New Mexico] an empty shell… Schaap euthanized 3,665 dairy cows in phases over the past four years, when he first learned they’d become contaminated with PFAS from drinking polluted groundwater. PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they last indefinitely in the bloodstream, PFAS can cause increased cholesterol, reproductive problems, impaired immunity and cancer. Highland Dairy, a 3,500-acre farm, is a casualty in an ever-growing environmental and health issue as PFAS increasingly turn up in public drinking water, private wells and food. —Santa Fe New Mexican, May 19, 2022

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cow jumped over the moon.

Except the bovines,

all thirty-six hundred,

who couldn’t overcome

pollution’s deadly gravity.

Who weren’t invited

to your last barbecue.

Whose cream didn’t fortify

yesterday’s Frappuccino.

 

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cows who didn’t

jump over the moon,

died rife with PFAS,

“forever chemicals” etched

into their bloodstreams.

Cholesterol/reproduction/

immunity all impacted.

Cancer lurking.

 

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cows who tanked up

on PFAS-ed groundwater.

Who drank the brew/runoff

of airbase firefighters practicing

with PFAS-laced foam.

The entire herd euthanized/

farm closed/soil toxic.

PFAS showing up

in public drinking water,

wells and food.

 

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cows’re all dead.

No place to rest/exit.

Oh, just this once.

change the flight plan.

Let them jump on the moon—

rather than over it.

 

Dick Altman writes in Santa Fe’s high, thin, magical air, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. The Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Haunted Waters Press, and many others have published his work in the U.S. and abroad.  A poetry winner of the Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems, Voices in the Heart of Stones and Telling the Broken Sky.

PRAYERS OF WAR

by Peter Witt

On May 20, Dmytro Kozatskyi, a soldier of the #Azov Regiment posted his photos of the defenders of #Mariupol, calling on the world media and those who can help to distribute them. "Well, that's all. Thank you for the shelter; Azovstal is the place of my death and life. See you".

I.

I hear the drums of war banging

as recruits shoulder their weapons,

while merchants of arms pray

half-heartedly for peace knowing

money is to be made

off the mayhem and suffering.

II.

Somewhere safe and hidden,

a barely 19 year old guides

a drone capturing images

of hospitals, schools, that

will soon smolder with

the aftermath of airborne

mechanized chaos...silently

he offers a prayer for the living

and soon to be dead.

III.

Mother with teething child,

walker propelled grandparent,

and shivering family dog

board a train that chugs

its way to the western border,

rails singing "pray with me,

pray with me."

IV.

Someday, when bodies

are counted, refugees

and soldiers hobble home,

there'll be an annual day

of remembrance of victory

and defeat, speeches made,

loved ones honored,

as the priest asks

the assembled to bow

their heads and pray.

Peter Witt lives in Texas.  His poetry has appeared in a variety of online and print publications.

UKRAINE HAIKU

by G. R. Kramer

On May 20, Dmytro Kozatskyi, a soldier of the #Azov Regiment posted his photos of the defenders of #Mariupol, calling on the world media and those who can help to distribute them. "Well, that's all. Thank you for the shelter; Azovstal is the place of my death and life. See you".

all across the road

blood of butchered                  root in cracks

seed of black spring             bloom

 

weapon

 

below white flowers

we lie with the fray of bees

nowhere people are

 

child

 

mir meant peace to both

when trees leafed over laughter

now           stumps             stand    their     ground

 

      explosive

 

see how the flies help

keep down             the odor of rot

old men in ditches

 

witness

 

may the good endure

tanks missiles sunflowers plows

may the lost                    return

 

annihilate

 

family        stained             red

parlor tatters                      open sky

empty sniper eyes

 

artillery

 

war machines rust out

wind blown blood loam covers steppe

lily bulbs open

 

memory

 

when do nations live

empires feed         death to their dead

human history

 

for get       ting

 

mothers of soldiers

whose blood drains to the black sea

mothers of soldiers

 

G. R. Kramer grew up in Canada, Kenya and the U.S., the child of refugees from fascism and communism. A lawyer by vocation, his passion for writing poetry has rekindled in late middle-age. His first poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Finish Line Press and he has published in numerous journals. 

LET PEACE BE THE MOTHER OF EVERYTHING

by Steven Croft

Polemos pater panton (War is the father of all things.)

—Heraclitus

From the internet I read about the bombardment of Barcelona

by Italians, Germans, in 1938, watch the Movietone footage

of children running, the torn arm of a father's tweed jacket dark

with blood even in the film's black and white.  Omen, prelude

of what would come.  Today Germans, Italians, the rest of us,

condemn the bombs' carnage in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol.

The UN was founded in 1945 to prevent world war and make

the world better.  A gradualism powered by hope, a world

where the center will hold, held by our civilized will, forged

from what we all want and what we know we did wrong.  But...

those bomb-melted multistorey wrecks of buildings in the gritty,

jumpy newsreel are grimly colored in today in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol.

War could never be a mother.  Not that she couldn't cradle a rifle

as easily as a baby, plant a garden of mines—but motherhood

is too likely to want the peace to nurture children, is too ready

to negotiate, to drop the aim of a final strike on the wounded,

seeing her own sons and daughters in them, their mothers' pain.

Even if it, she, starts small like an opening bud in spring, compassion

could start at a steel plant in Mariupol where bloody-bandaged men

are being stretchered out to buses today on CNN.  Negotiation

could spread to Kharkiv, Kyiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, peace

could become a warm-bedded garden, now the mother of everything.

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

HEART OF THE GALAXY

by Alejandro Escudé

The mystery at the heart of the Milky Way has finally been solved. This morning, at simultaneous press conferences around the world, the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It’s not the first picture of a black hole this collaboration has given us—that was the iconic image of M87*, which they revealed on April 10, 2019. But it’s the one they wanted most. Sagittarius A* is our own private supermassive black hole, the still point around which our galaxy revolves. —Scientific American, May 12, 2022.

It’s an engine, 

the scientists say,

a black Mustang

parked at the curb

in front of our house,

the Milky Way,

I’ve been there, 

lightless, eating up stars,

surrounded by fire

that cannot reach me,

speed of light,

the scientists say,

why the image is blurry

yet crisp

as can be,

such are the rules

we live by, the movie

inside the maelstrom,

the Papi

and the Mami,

a solitary mitt laying 

centerfield, a baseball 

tucked inside 

twirling 

as the cradle

of life in the universe spins 

26,000 light years away,

humans beings, Lucy

to the aliens, biological

Big Bang, Adam

and Eve to the bug-eyed

Greys

and the lizard man

who staggers out of an oval door

of a saucer-metallic

flying saucer,

time falling into time,

a spot on a boy’s foot,

beach tar, sound of waves,

salty air.

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.

I AM THINKING ABOUT AMERICA TODAY

by Cecil Morris

A counselor attends to a grieving woman outside Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, Calif., site of a "politically-motivated hate incident" shooting which left a prominent doctor dead and another five people injured, on May 15. (Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images) Photo illustrating “A weekend of violence punctuates generations of hate.” —The Washington Post, May 18, 2022

I am thinking that more people need more guns, many, many more guns in the hands of many more people, even young people, people too young to be trusted with books or ideas or facts or contraception or health care. If everyone has guns—both long and short and semi-automatic, bump-stopped and rapid-fire, with magazines large and small—then those bad guys with bad aims will be outnumbered and outgunned and no amount of metal-clad body armor will protect them. How else can we be prepared for the communists invading from Russia or Mexico or Cuba or Venezuela? How else stop the socialists spilling out from Blue States, flooding out from urban centers to America the Beautiful home of brave and unalienable rights. I am thinking Kid Rock or Ted Nugent or Lauren Opal Boebert or MTG needs to follow Dolly’s baby-book give-away example: a gun for every real American at birth and a new bullet for every month. I am thinking of growing libraries of arms borne and bared, of personal catalogs of destruction carefully curated and cleaned and oiled and mounted with laser-targeting sights so red dot marks the spot and shows us the way to heaven. I am thinking about teachers with guns and the indoctrination of students. I am thinking about ghost guns haunting America with our forefathers. I am thinking about women’s shelters handing out guns and incorporating target practice in their services, about Guns for Graduation, about CPS with guns and black plastic trash bags, about beaming girls at quinceañeras armed to the nines, about pistols in pews and a line of shopping carts with bullet-proof fairing and guns, about fortune cookie fortunes with guns in bed.

Cecil Morris taught high school English for 37 years. In his retirement, he has turned his attention to writing what he once taught students to understand and (maybe) enjoy. He has poems appearing in Cobalt Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hiram Review, Hole in the Head Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poem, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

JUST AS THE BIRDS, DISTRACTED

by Paula J. Lambert

Most nights this week, there will be more birds in the air above

this country than people in beds down below.” —Josh Sokol

 

Just as the birds, distracted by light

that splits the star they follow into sparks

and mirrors so they never see the towers

that reach out to kill them, just as the birds,

 

so entranced by needs they cannot explain

that they propel themselves steadfastly

forward through all the wildfires we set 

for them (if they recognize their own 

plummeting numbers when they emerge 

from the smoke, they don’t show it, 

they keep flying) just as the birds 

soar even through their own sleep as, 

one by one by one, they die of thirst 

or starvation or exhaustion, falling into fields 

and ditches and sidewalks, mountain peaks

and seldom-seen valleys, just as they 

keep going, season after season, year after 

year, eon after unfathomable eon, so we 

sleep through it all in our beds below, 

writhing maybe through tangles of sheets 

and the existential threat we’ve made

of our lives—we who’ve lived long enough 

to multiply every problem we inherited, 

who’ve ignored or angrily explained away 

the desperate patterns of our own migration—

but sleeping, blithely unwilling to do more

than worry while, awake, we grab our keys 

and cameras and binoculars and go,

 

to the marshes, waterways and wild places

still left, still untrampled, still—unbeknownst

to us—part of the twisted dreams and difficult

truths we rarely remember, come morning. 

Paula J. Lambert has authored several collections of poetry including The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing (FutureCycle 2022) and How to See the World (Bottom Dog 2020). Awarded PEN America's L'Engle-Rahman Prize for Mentorship, Lambert's poetry and prose has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes.

WHAT WE LEARN FROM BIRDS

by Earl J. Wilcox

If our baby worm formula is not available—

Backup plans with day-old bugs will do.

 

If the five-year old birdie-boy wants

To be a girlie bird, let him dress as he will.

 

If the teen robins won’t sing or play—or fly

Let them consult Papa Owl, not take codeine.

 

If old lady robin’s days are done, do not

Push her out of the nest where foxes await.

 

Find old bird a comfy hole in an elder oak,

There let Sister Robin live out her days in love.

Earl Wilcox has learned from many birds over many years.

PRAYING FOR YOU, GOV

by Darrell Petska

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said Sunday that he will call a special session of his state's legislature to pass a total ban on abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this term. "Nebraska is a pro-life state. I believe life begins at conception, and those are babies too," Ricketts told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" when asked if he thought the state should require a young girl who was raped to carry the pregnancy to term. —CNN, May 15, 2022

Of course rape is evil,

but evil left to proliferate in a woman

tends to strike again and again in all its

suffocating helplessness, trauma, chronic

anxiety and nightmarish violation,

with all its attendant heartache.

Political one-upmanship and pietisms

that insist on allowing rape's evil to live on

by citing "directives" of god or bandying

emotionally fraught trigger words—

manipulating evil to sell one's agenda—

are beneath a purported man of god

and the yea-saying cadres of men sharing

narrow perceptions of a woman's uterus,

including its role in shaping cognitive

and emotional well-being and the drive

for self-determination—the latter a right

not reserved for men alone.

The shelf-life of your brand of religiosity

is short. We who espouse a more merciful,

compassionate religion pray that your efforts

to be both judge and executioner will fall

to the light, lest "Nebraska Nice" succumbs

to the politics clouding your heart and soul.

Darrell Petska lives and writes in Wisconsin, but part of his heart remains in his birth state of Nebraska.

VILLANELLE FOR A POST ROE WORLD

 by Mary K O’Melveny

Cyndi Lauper and Laura Dern

Women have no rights required to be respected

say five jurists whose words hurl us back to ancient time.

What actions are required to see this travesty corrected?

 

This outcome—undesired by most—was not unexpected.

Women have been told for centuries that men’s role is prime,

that women have no rights required to be respected.

 

Some say our decisions must be made by men, elected

but clueless, whose laws transform our choices into crime.

What actions shall we take to see such travesty corrected?  

 

Once a woman’s bodily autonomy has been rejected

by folks who’ve no idea the mountains we must climb,

how can we ensure that anyone’s liberty will be respected?

 

Diminishments of human rights are always quite connected.

Misogyny, like slavery, depends on whose lives we define

as worth the actions needed to see such travesties corrected. 

 

Look in the mirror—do you see the person you expected?

No matter age or circumstance, the time has come for rage sublime.

If women have no rights required to be respected,

revolution is what we need to see this travesty corrected.

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.

BUFFALO HAIKU

Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian in the Catskill Mountains/Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals including The New Verse News, The Mainichi's Daily Haiku, the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association's Haiku in Action, and Prune Juice. 

LE GRANDE REPLACEMENT

by Susan Cossette

Image credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Blood moon rises over the horizon,

over Minneapolis, Auckland, Buffalo,

over blood spilled in schools and supermarkets,

hot orb, hatred splayed on the pavement.

 

In Minnesota you know you’re dead to the world

if you see your obituary in the Star Tribune a week before you die.

The loons’ eerie tremolos and yodels call to you—

outsider, peculiar threat, excised one, unwelcome.

 

Strange bugs come calling each spring.

They crawl up your walls in curious unison,

fleeing, seeking escape.

You find them on the kitchen floor,

dead in the window wells,

silent and withered.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.

IN SEARCH OF DEMOCRACY

by Shirani Rajapakse

The Sri Lankan state is descending into a full blown political and economic crisis, as more people contend with starvation, death and severe disruptions. Now they are also facing the brutal violence of the state. The BBC reports at least nine people died and more than 200 were injured as vehicles and houses were set alight during fighting between government supporters and critics this week. The island is facing its worst economic crisis since independence, and the responses of the state indicate it is incapable of protecting its citizens. The deployment of military force, however, is unlikely to quell unrest. The anger and frustration displayed by the public, aggravated by pro-government protesters, is only likely to grow – fuelling further distrust in the ruling government. —The Conversation, May 12, 2022

Watch the blazing 

snarls of flames 

spitting disgust. 

Bodies stand outside arms raised 

fists wrapped round 

poles ready to beat up dissent 

silence with one stroke 

anyone, anyone who protests 

opposes the wrong 

howling jackals laughing condoning 

acts of violence. 

 

Wrong is the new right. 

No one understands where 

we stand. 

Who are we? How did we 

come to this? 

 

Thirty-five years ago 

I cowered in fear 

of red guerillas stalking streets 

vengeance running in veins 

bloodthirsty hyenas 

                    looting 

                    pilfering 

                    destroying 

                    torturing. 

 

 

                                        Murdering. 

 

 

A new generation that 

                    doesn’t remember 

the knock on doors dragging 

life out pleading screaming begging, 

                    never saw 

bloated corpses floating in waterways 

or have to step over 

roasting moaning bodies unrecognizable 

piled up on the side of roads, 

                    never 

                    lived 

                    through fear 

wondering if they will be next. 

                    Only 

heard about those days 

through history’s sieve. 

Violence 

the norm to get what 

cannot be 

through the ballot. 

 

Is power so blinding we 

gorge on our own? 

Brother against brother, the same 

kind, flesh and blood 

stripping bare to kill for a different 

cause or 

for promises of treats? 

 

The future sheds tears eaten 

up greedily by cackling flames 

                    lamenting 

silently through swirling 

fumes roaring hatred 

and what is left 

to moan for—cinders that were 

once homes now 

kicked to the side 

as vultures from foreign shores 

                    line up behind clouds looming 

                    at the periphery of the island  

 

                                        waiting 

 

to step in and devour the land. 

Shirani Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan poet and short story writer. She is the author of five books including the award-winning Chant of a Million Women as well as I Exist. Therefore I Am. Rajapakse’s work appears in many journals and anthologies including Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry, Litro, Linnet’s Wings, Berfrois, Flash Fiction International, Voices Israel, About Place, Mascara, Counterpunch, Deep Water, Silver Birch, International Times, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Spark, The Write-In, Asian Signature, Moving Worlds, Harbinger Asylum.

SHIREEN ABU AKLEH (IN MEMORIAM)

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday declined a request to let Israeli officials examine the bullet that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a prominent reporter for Al Jazeera who was killed in the occupied West Bank during an Israeli raid. Palestinian officials and witnesses accused Israeli soldiers of killing Ms. Abu Akleh, dismissing Israeli claims that the journalist may have been hit by Palestinian fire during a shootout in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank. —The New York Times, May 12, 2022. Photo: The day after she was killed, Palestinian artists were already at work painting a mural of Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank. Credit: Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock via The New York Times)

Who killed Shireen Abu Akleh? Who fired the bullet

into her head? Who raided the neighborhood? Who

has the right to bear arms? Who has the right

to desecrate the dead? Who is crying for justice

where justice has not been served, not for

Rachel Corrie, who stood before a bulldozer. Not

for Shireen who wrote of people how they live

and cook, wash and teach, how they live and die

in an occupied land as second class subjects. Meanwhile

the murderer walks. Meanwhile the struggle continues

between lord and subject. And the girl who loved holding

her bottle before the mirror as a microphone saying

one day I will grow to be Shireen Abu Akleh: what

shall we tell her now? Where can she bury her tears?

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.

WHAT MONEY CAN BUY

by George Salamon

US billionaires' demand for 'golden passport' schemes that sell citizenships to 'safe' countries for up to $6.5m including New Zealand and Portugal rockets by 337% in three years as fears of civil unrest spike. —Mail Online, May 7, 2022

Good riddance, and safe trip,

but before abandoning our ship,

make them sign a promissory note

forbidding return to their original boat.

George Salamon looks forward to the inevitable movie version, "Ship of Wealthy Fools," starring celebrities who appear in ads for beachwear.

PRIME REAL ESTATE

by Emmie Christie

Sphecius speciosus, often simply referred to as the cicada killer or the cicada hawk, is a large digger wasp species. —iNaturalist

The cicada killers drone in the park

Small rockets,

A display of gold in the sky.

I glare. I stare them down,

But billionaire buoyancy keeps them

Flying. A confidence fueled by concepts,

On stinger stock options,

Keeping me inside my cardboard home

But even that’s Prime real estate,

This box someone threw out.

And I shouldn’t be sleeping here, no,

Because that nearby bush has a plaque.

Where can I go to sleep?

I guess it’s a crime to have bad luck,

To lose my savings to a fire truck.

Where can I go

When the wealthy claim even the sky,

And I am not allowed to dream?

The cicada killers drone in the park.

Emmie Christie’s work tends to hover around the topics of feminism, mental health, cats, and the speculative such as unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in Flash Fiction Online and Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and she graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013. She also enjoys narrating audiobooks for Audible. You can find her on Twitter @EmmieChristie33.

COLOSSAL LOSSES

by Timothy Kercher

The Soviet monument symbolising historic ties between ex-Soviet Ukraine and Russia being dismantled in Kyiv on April 26, 2022.

Today I read that Russian

casualties are colossal, Latin

for larger than life,

the Romans using the word

to describe the statue of Helios

in the harbor at Rhodes,

a term now used to describe

abounding death, the day before

a colossal eight meter-tall Soviet

-era statue of two men

representing Russia and Ukraine

holding a banner of friendship

was taken down, the heads

rolling right off in the middle 

of Kyiv, where, in the surrounding

towns, colossal losses

were suffered, larger than life

numbers of dead civilians

strewn in the streets, add 

to this the soldiers on

both sides, the mass 

casualties on the eastern 

front in the cities, apartments, 

theaters, schools, hospitals eclipsed 

by heavy artillery, the war's

collective losses larger

than a toppled statue depicting

friendship, larger still

than a statue of the sun god.

Timothy Kercher lives in southwestern Colorado with his family and teaches on the Navajo Nation. He has lived much of his adult life overseas, including time in Ukraine, Republic of Georgia, Bosnia, Mongolia and Mexico. His essays, poetry, and translations have appeared in many literary journals including Crazyhorse, Plume, Ruminate, Guernica, and Quiddity.

BRISEIS

by Gail White

Apulian Red-Figure Amphora by the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl ca. 430-410 BCE depicting Achilles and Briseis. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Women have few speaking parts

in the Iliad. At the beginning,

Briseis is torn away from Achilles

with never a word. But when Agamemnon

finally decides to make up the quarrel

and sends her back, Patroclus is dead

and her grief is for him, the most decent man

in the crowd, and the kindest.

You would not let me grieve, she says,

when Achilles had killed my father and brothers

and taken me captive; you always promised

Achilles would marry me.

That's what the women

have to look forward to in wartime:

with any luck, the man who murdered

your brothers will marry you. Although Achilles

did no such thing. Most likely he shunted

her off to the loom and kept her weaving

new tunics for him while he sent letters

over the wall to young Polyxena,

the bait that would lead him to his death.

Soldiers die, and the race of heroes

is gone: today there is no Achilles,

Patroclus, or angry Agamemnon.

But look at the eyes of captured women:

Briseis is there, forever dragged

away, forever and ever silent.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

GHOULS

by Lynn White

Is it ghoulish

to think

that life 

is more

than a small collection of cells

in a uterus.

Is it ghoulish

to think

that 

the life of the mother

and the spillage

of her blood

count for less

than the small collection of cells

in her uterus

that are unable to bleed.

Is it ghoulish

to think

that infant life

needs love

as it grows

and support networks

and things that cost

society

dear

through life

if it does not supply them.

Is it ghoulish 

to ask

how 

the highest court

in the land

was taken over

by ghouls.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

UNMASKING

by Pat Snyder Hurley

Illustration by The New York Times to accompany “America, Unmasked” by Pamela Paul, May 8, 2022. Photograph by George Marks/Getty Images.

is the new undressing performed

only with those we trust no matter

how illogically

and never with strangers no matter

how perfect unless

there is indoor dining involved

and the promise of conversation

and everyone is doing it.

 

Grocery-shopping isn’t intimacy

worthy of risk, but dinner

parties are, even with friends

who went maskless at Costco

and carpooled with teens

who went maskless at school

because who would have the chutzpah

to ask.

 

And so pockets are handy

and zipper purses and

consoles in cars—

all good for mask-stashing

in case someone you know

or don’t

is wearing one

or not.

Pat Snyder Hurley is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in Columbus, Ohio, where she also writes a local humor column, “Balancing Act.”  She co-authored the chapbook Hard to Swallow with her late husband Bill Hurley (NightBallet Press 2017), and her poems have appeared in literary journals including Pudding Magazine, Poydras Review, and the Passager Journal. 

THE ART OF THE HANGER

by Anita Pulier

Abortion rights supporters protest outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Credit: Valerie Plesch for NBC News.

Momma taught us to hang up our coats

tidy our rooms

and so we became familiar with them

Now that gang of robed men

and one godsmocked woman

remind us of the skills

we honed in the 60s then

abandoned when Roe freed us

to seek health care

in hospitals or clinics

where decisions

about our bodies

our lives

our futures

were ours

and we could safely

refuse to carry a doomed fetus

refuse to sink into poverty

refuse to empower rape and incest

now

untwist the sturdy wire

from its frame

squat, push it in

deep

scrape around

bleed

remember even 

their God still loves you

but they

don't give a damn

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.

HANGERS

by Mark Danowsky

“Let’s be clear about this: Roe wasn’t the beginning of women getting abortions. It was the end of women dying from unsafe abortions.” —No Dem Left Behind PAC

Blood in the streets

Blood on our hands

No Plan C

No icy nurse

No forced videos 

No waiting room

No chosen futures

Blood spilled by the broken 

Blood of a thousand splintered lives 

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press) and JAWN (Moonstone Press). In 2022, his poems have appeared in Kestrel, The Broadkill Review, tiny wren lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, Otoliths, Harpy Hybrid Review, The New Verse News. 

FAR FROM THE WAR

by Charles Hughes

Cover of the May 6, 1944 issue of The New Yorker.

Far from the war, days bloom—

Some gorgeously—as in

A sickroom hopes can rise,

Though death must surely come.

Spring’s lust can’t be a sin,

We think, and hide our eyes

 

From war. Not from the war—

Its miseries we see well:

Heroes we meet we cheer,

Barbarians we deplore, 

Shocked by the sights of this hell,

Glad it’s not happening here.

 

Poppies bloomed long ago

In Flanders Fields, but now

The flowers all have gone;

Now few ask where or know

The words to disavow

War’s always dawning sun.

Charles Hughes has published two books of poems, The Evening Sky (2020) and Cave Art (2014), both from Wiseblood Books. He worked for over thirty years as a lawyer and now works at writing poems.

WHAT IS THERE TO DO

by Jan Harris

Valeria Hlodan, her baby daughter Kira, and Valeria’s mother Liudmila died in the missile strike on 23 April. (Picture: @myroslavapetsa; Rex via Metro.)

after seeing the photograph from Odesa

of a mother and her new baby girl

killed by a missile-strike

 

but lay down the bread

your throat will no longer swallow

and rest your eyes

 

on the bird that alights

on the sweet-smelling lilac 

by your door,

 

notice his glossy black cap,

yellow breast glowing

in warm April sun,

 

how he stays for a moment,

how swiftly

he flickers away.

 

 

Jan Harris’s poetry has appeared in various literary journals, including Acumen, Atrium, and Poetry Wales, and in anthologies, including several e-books published by Poetry Kit. She received third place in the Wales Poetry Award, 2019. Her first collection, Mute Swans on the Cam, was published by Oversteps Books in July 2020.

HIS ABORTION POEM

by Dick Altman

Source: “Abortion” by John Bartlow Martin from the May 20, 1961, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

he’s the golden boy

of parent/teacher/friend

the boy wanted on everyone’s side

the scholarship boy

the grad school boy

the golden boy

who in that familiar moment

of uncontrolled/youthful rapture

watches his golden prospects

for the future turn to dross

                      *

the Viet Nam draft

breathes down his neck

he still hasn’t found a job

(too educated, he’s told)

he’s not married

(though one day he will

marry the woman

he impregnated)

they are neither ready to marry

nor ready to have/support children

abortion is illegal

Roe vs. Wade is nowhere in sight

                       *

he reaches out to his composer father

who reaches out to friends

in the music business

an address and phone number

in Harlem surfaces

no names/no receipts

the golden boy borrows

from his father enough cash

to pay for a semester of college

the young couple agree

this is their only alternative

they discuss their mutual anxiety

she—they agree—must make

the decision

                         *

they never talk about what exactly

took place on the fourth floor

of the Harlem walk-up

she’s bleeding profusely by bed time—

in the emergency room by next morning

a spontaneous abortion the doctor calls it

knowing it wasn’t

whatever made the embryo abort

likely ended her/their prospects

of ever having children

Roe vs. Wade would not be decided

for another nine years

Politico’s revelation the Supreme Court

may overturn the decision

shatters him to tears

 

Dick Altman writes from New Mexico. His work has been widely published in the United States and beyond.