Tuesday, April 30, 2024

WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN

by Pamela Wax




The ants 
are marching 
single 
file, their annual 
exodus across 
faux-granite 
counters, up 
and down door
jambs, through 
the sea of scraps 
in my stainless
steel sink. I’ve 
been told to kill 
them, a stew 
of sugar and boric 
acid. A sweet, 
merciful death.
But I can’t. 
Not this year.
Especially not
this year. May all
who are hungry 
come. Eat.


Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth(Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received a Best of the Net nomination and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. Other publications include Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Chautauqua, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Solstice, Mudfish, Connecticut River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Slippery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam offers spirituality and poetry workshops online and around the country. She lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.

Monday, April 29, 2024

THE DEEP STATE MADE ME DO IT

by Steven Kent


"Conservatives condemn Kristi Noem for 'twisted' admission of killing dog" —The Guardian, April 27, 2024



Within the MAGA GOP

It's possible, apparently,

To cross a line. (Who knew? Not me.)

Now Kristi Noem, VP-to-be,

Is suddenly a falling star.


They'll tolerate mere bigotry,

Caucasian male supremacy,

Repealing rights, dishonesty,

Assaults on our democracy,

But shoot your dog? A bridge too far!



Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent BurnsideHis work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, and SnakeskinHis collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

Sunday, April 28, 2024

CANDLE GLOW IN UKRAINE AND HONG KONG

by C. J. Anderson-Wu




We read books by candlelight whenever
power is out after air raids

We hold candles in the prohibited vigil 
for those nameless students killed
more than three decades ago
 
In the underground shelter we take turns
to recite stories for one another

At the park we mourn anonymously
in order to protect one another
 
We are in a war for
our dignified identity

We are in a war against
the deprivation of memories 
 
By candlelight we relay ancestors' stories
in our language

By candlelight we pass on the history
the regime is forcibly erasing
 
We are in a war 
for hard-earned sovereignty 

We are in a war 
against thought control
 
After the air raid alarm we briefly go home
and our stories are to be continued

As police approach we disperse into the night
and our struggles drag on
 
Reading, mourning, hiding and remembering
with different forms of resistance
we are in a war


Author’s Notes: 
     The publishing industry in Ukraine experienced significant growth after the outbreak of the war, as reading became one of the few activities people could engage in during power outages caused by bombardments. Additionally, the invasion led the Ukrainian public to value their own culture, history, and language more deeply.
     On June 4th each year, people in Hong Kong used to hold a candle vigil at Victoria Park for those who died during the Tiananmen Square Crackdown in 1989. However, since the implementation of the National Security Law by China in 2020, any event commemorating the slaughter of June 4th has become illegal. Several pro-democracy activists who persisted in continuing the vigil have been arrested and imprisoned without due process of law. 


C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020). Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards including the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

Saturday, April 27, 2024

AGAIN

by LynnWhite




Never again

the holocaust

of Jews,

of Slavs, 

of dissenters,

of the mixed 

or mismatched

ethnicity.

Gassed

starved 

beaten

enslaved

dying.


Never again

the swarms

of refugees 

left behind

fleeing

dying

pleading 

to be let in anywhere

dying

unwanted.

Never again.

That’s what they said

then.


But then

in Gaza

it happened 

again.


And now

in Gaza

it’s happening 

again.

Again and again

and again.



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.

Friday, April 26, 2024

A LOOK BACK FROM AGING

by Tricia Knoll




I wore a peace symbol bandana on my arm

when I received a professional degree 

from the Yale graduate school in 1970. 

I marched with candles in California,

put my butt down in an administrator’s office

at Stanford. I did not know then the extent

of my privilege. 

 

We walked. We assembled, chanted

simple words to a drumbeat. We saw

villages destroyed, lives ripped from

ancestral homes. Some of our parents

agreed with what we were doing, but

not all. Not mine. Despite the deaths,

the endlessness of destruction,

hopelessness, despair. 

 

I began to teach high school and met 

refugees. The first to arrive spoke

French, English and Vietnamese. 

A teen described the airlift from the embassy.

How he left his white dog behind. Later

I met Hmong and Mien whose lives

started harder.  

 

I cannot assume that to be pro-Palestinian

is to be an anti-Semite. I’m old enough

to know that flinging slurs gets us nowhere. 

I cry over young children starving to death

in Gaza, mothers giving birth in rubble. 

The clashing words of our leaders seem weak.

Money speaks, what must say do not kill

any more innocents. Insist money be spent

for humans wrapped inside carnage to live, 

eat, shelter, sleep, learn, grow. Open

the walls to food, good food.  

 

Arresting the protesting young enflames.

Horses, soldiers in camo, zip ties. Gaza

is filled with tent cities. Torn tents. 

 

I live in Vermont. My electeds oppose spending

more money for lethal weapons for Israel.

I thank them. When we hear support for Israel

is ironclad—that must not mean only bombs

and guns, the weapons of metal. Our mettle

must stand for the children, the men and women

who have nowhere to go, yet hear threats

that more and worse is yet to come.



Tricia Knollan aging Vermont poet, understands what drives campus protests. Her poetry collections often focus on eco-poetry (One Bent Twig) or personal responses to feminism and privilege (How I Learned to be White and The Unknown Daughter).

Thursday, April 25, 2024

AMERICAN SENRYU: FRAMED DIPLOMAS ON THE WALL

by William Aarnes




Despite PhDs,

administrators will fail

the test of protest.



William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.



Wednesday, April 24, 2024

SEARCHING

by Karen Warinsky




I type “Is Bisan” in the search bar

and the next two words appear automatically

with their furtive question mark, “still alive?”

 

Bisan, a Palestinian journalist popped into my Facebook feed

one morning during this latest Mideast roil,

her fresh, round face full of promise 

her troubled brown eyes alert as she posted

cell phone videos of the wreckage of Palestine, the slaughter of the people.

The videos are raw, wound the eyes, sear the soul.

She posts each time she must flee, relocate,

so many displacements now she’s lost count.

One day she shows us her favorite flower

the passionate poppy, Hannoun, red, alive

pushing forth in the spring air,

another day she videos a small boy selling homemade potato chips.

“Delicious, tasty!” she says, almost smiling,

boys flying kites on the beach behind her.  

These moments are her sustenance 

as she shares pictures of her home in the Gaza ruins,

a video of the day a bomb at Al-Shifa hospital just missed her

by two minutes,

her refugee life in Rafah,

stories of others spit out by this war

hundreds of thousands with no safe place to go,

their way home stalled, like the peace talks.

 

Bisan is 27.

She is forthright, emotional, outraged, 

bewildered.

She wonders, "Where is help?  Why is this allowed to go on?"  

Seven months now.

 

She looks into the phone’s lens. Begs, “Don’t get used to

what is happening in Gaza!”

She is searching for rationality, for assistance.

I will keep searching for her, 

pray she can send more videos of children flying their kites, 

sending up wishes,

pray that those wishes get answered.



Karen Warinsky is the author of three collections: Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press); a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest; a Best of the Net nominee; and runs Poets at Large.

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

SHE WAS NOT MY PATIENT

by Kelley White


Philadelphia toddler dies after shooting herself in the eye with father’s unsecured gun: police. —New York Post, April 8, 2024


But I don’t want to give her name
or the specifics of her case. I don’t want
to invade her family’s privacy. They have already
suffered more than I can imagine. Worse, I’m a grandmother, I can
imagine it. Have imagined it. Have seen other children 
shot. So many. Too many. I will not list their names or ages
only, imagine, this one shot by his brother over a video
game, this one shot by his friend during a game
of spin-the-bottle, this one ‘playing,’ this one
angry for a moment. This one whose grandmother
claimed the gun was safe. Oh, my dear ones
how much I imagine. I see your five year
old hands wrapped around the barrel.
I see the gun tossed casually on a
couch cushion, the gun left on top
of the refrigerator. The gun
on the dashboard of the
abandoned car. I hear
the shots, sometimes,
when I leave the clinic
for lunch. I see the 
crossing guard so
careful with her
charges at the
school just down
the road. I see
the children’s
faces. Their
hands on 
a trigger, 
my own 
old
empty 
hands. 


Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, No. Hope Street, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

Monday, April 22, 2024

A WOMAN SEES A REDBUD TREE ON EARTH DAY

by Ilene Millman




Bloom summoned by spring rains 
has summoned her— 
she stands on her patio square 
  
stretching up in her sleepy gray sweats, 
morning sun slowly climbing the arc of sky. 
From where she stands, all rosy 
  
blossoms up and down the redbud 
like pink freckles 
on tanned arms 
  
the woman watches 
the sun curve 
up around the tree’s branches  
  
like a playful kitten, 
and at the touchy tips 
she sees tiny heart-shaped leaves 
  
almost translucent 
as the eyelids of newborns. 
A cardinal hops from pinked arm to arm 
  
to the top of the tree 
his raucous ring of birdie, birdie, birdie 
ending in a slow trill. 
  
It was the whistle of this songbird 
rising on the gaunt wind that caught her— 
  
Aren’t we all susceptible? 
Her mind draws the details— 
  
disappearing species 
melting icecaps, rising seas 
  
and the redbud 
offering its hearts 
  
and the redbud offering 
its hearts.


Ilene Millman is a retired speech/language therapist who spent more than thirty-five years teaching children who learn differently. She published two language therapy games. Millman’s poetry received a Pushcart nomination in 2022 and is featured in print and Net journals including , The New Verse News, Potomac Review, Healing Muse, Nelle, The Journal of New Jersey Poets and othersHer first poetry collection, Adjust Speed to Weather, was published in 2018; her newest collection, A Jar of Moths, was published by Ragged Sky Press in March, 2024.