TO THE REPUBLIC

by Athena Kildegaard

It is hard, right now, to think

of America, my country, it no longer
holds together inside its borders. 
Four decades ago, every school day, 
I asked one of the twelve-year-olds
in my charge to lead us in the Pledge
of Allegiance. It was the law, this recital.
As good a way as any, I thought, to begin.
Words, words, slippery as jello cubes,
hardly join, now, to anything real.
My heart beats, my hand firms itself
to my chest—this friction, this viva—
but my tongue dare not lift, my lips
not open, my body not burst
with air, with light. America, where
have you gone?

You are in Minneapolis,
America, handing out scarves and hats,
standing beside your neighbors, lifting
whistles to your lips because your lips
have power, your breath has power,
you are teaching us how to be Americans.

Athena Kildegaard is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions), winner of the WILLA Literary Award. 

AUTHORITARIANISM

by Scott Lowery

 

No point appealing to the heart

            or soul it doesn’t have, so save

                        your breath. It needs its namelessness,

 

but name it with too many syllables 

            and it wins again, the goon squad’s 

                        tracks wiped clean by grocery lists, snow,

 

football scores. Just four words 

            on my sign: Breathe Easier—Join Us!

                        Hah! Not really! jokes the nervous

 

young marshal in his or her 

            neon vest at the busy crosswalk—

                        too cold to breathe easy here today!

 

It’s what we do at these things—

            wry smiles, weather complaints,

                        bits of chatter to pass around

 

like balm for our deeper shivering.

            Most of us have paid our protest dues 

                        before, are dressed for bitter wind,

 

giving motorists our cheerful best

            reflected back by honks and hand 

                        waves, leaning our way behind unshattered 

 

windshields. Faces like or unlike 

            ours, bright momentary smiles—

                        running to Target for toothpaste or beer, 

 

some Happy Meals on the way home, 

            trying not to see those prices rising like

                        flood water, halfway up the basement steps. 

 

Give us a good old 

            disaster any day of the week,

                        we all know how to pitch right in,

 

wade through mud and wreckage

            in our rubber boots. Same kind 

                        of summons is why we’re here, 

 

boots, signs and all. So, thanks 

            for the wave but next week join us, 

                        please—all of us breathing easier, 

 

warm bodies out in the cold to say 

            it plain and clear. Name it Wrong. 

                        Name it Not While I Can Breathe.

 

Scott Lowery is a poet, songwriter, and teaching artist, who currently lives with his wife and cats in Milwaukee near their young grandkids. More than ever, he is proud to have grown up in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Great River Review, River Styx, North American Review, Canary, and elsewhere, including several anthologies, ekphrastic shows, and podcasts. Lowery’s award-winning second chapbook, Mutual Life, observes small-town life against a looming backdrop of pandemic, climate change, and extremism. Find more, including work with young authors, at www.scottlowery.org.

JANUARY BOUQUET

by Katherine Smith

The only antidote for America 

is to go outside in the freezing cold winter

and dream of the most beautiful city on earth

or even this universe (there may not be any other). 

This city is Granada.  Inside my house 

I think only of Minneapolis, of winter.

Outside my house I dream of Grenada and spring

on the slope leading towards the white limestone caves

where the pink dusk hovers over the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada.

By day I once walked through the summer palace of the kings of Spain.

By night I listened to flamenco and the percussive shoes of dancers.

By day the stained glass of the cathedral blossomed

like the roses in the summer palace. Beauty softened the blow

of the inquisition six hundred years before

just as a memory of joy softens the blow of the shootings,

and the military on the streets of Minneapolis. Nothing 

is more consoling than the dream of a beautiful ruin,

for the ugliness happening to America. I lay memory

like a wreath on the roadside 

where Alex Pretti and Renee Good died.

Katherine Smith’s poetry publications include appearances in Southern Review, Boulevard, North American Review, Ploughshares, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. Her third book, Secret City, appeared with Madville Press in 2022. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

WANDERING INTO A DREAM WORLD

by Susan Cornelis

Art by the poet.

. . .and I’ve wandered into 
a dream world I no longer recognize,
teeming with shapes,
twisted
gone
out of bounds
dangerous,
like a cell phone
mistaken for a gun.

So many ways
to get it wrong,
to step where a trap is set.

Too much for this little guy
who sees a featureless white shape,
which seems to be slumbering, 
like Fox, who is warm around his neck,
but where is the thing’s head
where is the mouth
where the teeth?

Too much for this little guy
who knows not yet
the art of hiding.

Too much for me
and for you too,
even as we stand here
learning the shape of fear,
trying not to turn away.

Susan Cornelis is an Olympia, WA mixed media artist, workshop teacher and art blogger. Her ekphrastic  poetry is an exploration of the emotional content of her paintings. She refers to these as Conversations with the Muse, which are regularly posted on her blog by that name at http://susancornelis.wordpress.com/