ROUH (ARABIC FOR SOUL)

by Jane Edna Mohler

A premature Palestinian baby, who was saved from her mother’s womb after she was killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip, has died after days in an incubator. Sabreen al-Rouh Jouda died in a Gaza hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her, said her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh Jouda. [Photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters via Al Jazeera, April 26, 2024

You were red and blind as a just-hatched robin

when they cut you from your silent mother.

 

On the news, your curled form was cradled

by a doctor who needed you to live

 

even more than me. I hope

your nakedness didn’t shame you.

 

It made me love you.

 

They named you Sabreen al-Rouh, prescient,

as you had too much soul for the three pounds

 

your mother had time to give you.

Her name was Sabreen al-Sakani.

 

They call her a martyr.

You call her Mama.

 

At five days old you still knew the cadence

of her heartbeat. You flew to her

 

while your body rests under the mud of sorrow

that tears have made of Gaza’s dust.

 

 

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus (Pennsylvania). Recent publications include Gargoyle, Gyroscope, and One Art. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay Books. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal in Philadelphia.

CAN YOU LET THE CICADA BE BEAUTIFUL?

by Morrow Dowdle

When one, newly broken from its honeyed shell

tests flight’s imperative,

   whirs, strikes your skin,

will you turn to see who’s there?  Don’t look up.

Don’t think you deserve only what’s lofted.

This holy spirit lies on asphalt on its back.

 

Reconsider where it comes from, this fear

of what that can’t harm us. 

        Why do we hate it?

Turn it over if you are brave enough to touch it. 

Braver still if you will lift it.  Make your fingers

delicate as chopsticks on a robin’s egg.

Don’t pitch it in the grass.  Let it cling

to your wrist,

           its legs’ gentle sharpness.  You are just

another kind of tree, flesh-barked.  It crawls

your arm, and that’s when you see its eyes of red,

such a red we could never manifest—

not the richest lips, not the sex in its engorged

glory.  And its wings,

           its wings when they unstick,

intricate as any dragonfly, yet you’ll never find them

enshrined in silver, glass, or amethyst.

Are you brave enough, now, to allow it

to approach your head?  You have no xylem, no sap

for it to taste.  Nothing

                                     to dread.  But would you kiss it?

Could you name it the most modest of angels,

if much disgraced?  An angel must have wings,

but surely, it can wear any face.

 

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.  They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. A former physician assistant, they now work as a creative writing instructor for current and former prison inmates. They live in Hillsborough, NC.

RIVER OF RHETORIC

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Cartoon by Mira Scharf, The Times of Israel

In its own words, the founding principle of the Netanyahu coalition is that “the Jewish people has an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of Eretz Yisrael” — Eretz Yisrael is a Hebrew term referring to the entire territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The Netanyahu coalition envisions a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which would grant full rights only to Jewish citizens, partial rights to a limited number of Palestinian citizens and neither citizenship nor any rights to millions of oppressed Palestinian subjects. —The Washington Post, May 13, 2024

"From the river to the sea,"

Bibi says, "It's all for me.

If you've got opposing views, 

I'll just say you hate the Jews."

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had four previous poems in The New Verse News.

DO WE HAVE A DEAL?

by Steven Kent

A billion cash, that oughta do it.

   Regulations? You'll be free.

The sky, the air, the water—screw it!

   What'd they ever do for me?

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His 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 Snakeskin. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

HOW I LOVE YA, STORMY

by Catherine Gonick

So he called you a toilet, you called him a turd
you could flush. You talked so fast
the court reporter couldn’t keep up.
You were made out to be rough, a body
made for rough treatment. Then you proved
a slut is a spy in the world of men,
a refugee who threads the mountain pass
through snow, barefoot. She wears 
the veil turned inside out
to expose its scarlet lining, floats
her soul upon the ceiling. She is smart
as the whip he asks her to use
on his sorry ass, his little-boy mouth.
She is his punisher, he her power.
They are connected by a belt of gold
in a tug-of-war, an umbilical cord
of blood smeared to dry on paper. 
And you weren’t meant to be funny
but couldn’t be stopped 
when he and the law were served
official notice of your humor.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and  Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate. 

I’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE

by Jerry Krajnak

David Shapiro, Who Gained Fame in Poetry and Protest, Dies at 77: A renowned member of the New York School of poets, he also found accidental notoriety when he was photographed during the 1968 uprising at Columbia University... Mr. Shapiro was just weeks from graduating when another student photographed him when the office of the university’s president, Grayson Kirk, in Low Library was occupied. Shown seated in a high-backed chair behind the administrator’s paper-strewn desk, Mr. Shapiro captured the spirit of a moment, casually smoking one of Mr. Kirk’s cigars while wearing sunglasses and a defiant smirk. —The New York Times, May 10, 2024

They locked us out of Schofield Hall,
police demanded we disperse,
warned us we disturbed the peace,
endangered safety, led us away;
 
meanwhile, eight thousand miles away,
bamboo huts were being torched,
buffaloes and chickens shot,
farmers’ daughters raped,
 
and military chiefs kept score
with their bloody body counts
repeated nightly on channel 13
before the local weather.
 
I slowly rock on a cabin porch,
a snoring dog at my feet,
listen as a mockingbird calls
from far across the pond.
 
Another responds, so near to us
that we both flinch, get up
and enter the cabin, turn on the news,
hear about Gaza, Ukraine.
 
We watch as New York tents get smashed,
see ziptied children led away.
I join them, rise with my gray hair
in solidarity.

Author’s Note: I was in college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1968. The events were not as dramatic for us as they were for Columbia students either then or now, but they are all true. Also, I thank the spirit of Sylvia Plath for help with the penultimate line.

Jerry Krajnak is a Vietnam veteran who later survived forty years in public school classrooms. A Pushcart nominee, his recent work appears in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry, One Art, Star 82 Review, Rat's Ass Review, and other journals.

SENATOR UNINFORMED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

A U.S. senator calls 

the tents set up 

at universities

camps for Hamas;

and he says

he supports Israel

and if Hamas 

surrenders

and hostages

are released

the war will end.

He adds 

that he is 

deeply 

disappointed

that the President

has paused

some shipments

of heavy weapons

to Israel. Deeply 

disappointed

Senator 

Fetterman?

That is how 

I feel as well 

about you. 

Your ignorance

resounds. This

is not  binary.

Instead 

of pledging 

allegiance to Israel

come what may,

why don’t you 

in turn bow 

to the Palestinian

right of return

to homes from which 

they have been  

expelled since 1948? 

Why don’t you cite 

the ever smaller

wedge of Palestinian 

land, about twenty 

percent of what 

was assigned

to them in 1948?

Can you manage

to turn your head

around that fact?

Twenty percent?. 

One fifth of 

a shrinking pie?

And you say,

hard disagree

deeply disappointed.

Mr. Fetterman

pitch your tent

in Gaza. Wait

for food 

to be dropped

from the sky

Run and hide

when bombs

fall down 

instead.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. 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 edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

BIRDCAST

by David Chorlton

World Migratory Bird Day May 11, 2024
BirdCast

Two million birds crossed the county last night

moving to where starlight

lands. It’s springtime in the sky, two thousand

four hundred feet at midnight high,

feather bright and quiet

along the true path north. It’s dark enough

 

up there to feel

the pull of a remembered place

while down here the sleeping mountains roll

to one side or the other, and the creeks

keep flowing on the way

to being rivers. Forests sparkle

with the sounds of insects,

the desert exhales, radios are tuned

 

to the secrets only darkness knows

and they play softly while

the count begins. Orioles, flycatchers

and chats; there they go, a million, a thousand,

a hundred and the one

grosbeak who already knows

the tree she will nest in.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix, now living close to an extensive desert preserve that runs through the city. His neighbors include coyotes and the hawk families that nest between the human and natural worlds. They often make their way into his painting and writing life.

LEAFLET

by William Aarnes

Imagine yourself old enough

to have survived Operations

Cast Lead and Protective Edge.

 

Imagine a fellow refugee

            videoing flyers drifting

down from a blue sky,

 

then focusing on you

            as you pick up a leaflet

                        at once a plea for news

 

about pictured hostages

            and an implicit warning

                        that soon your current shelter

 

will be demolished by bombs.

Imagine knowing the world

can see what’s happening.

 

Imagine knowing the world

keeps failing to react.

Imagine your dulled terror,  

 

your bewildered loyalty,

your desperate rage.

Imagine your aimless trek.

 

Imagine your imagining

there’s somewhere to go

where the flyers

 

won’t drift down again

to tell you to keep moving.

Imagine the leaflet

 

as one of the keepsakes

            that will give purpose

to your children’s lives.   

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.  For perspective he recommends Norman C. Finkelstein's Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom.

HAIKU

by W. Barrett Munn

A Child’s View of Gaza

i dream of Gaza
as Gaza was before dreams
were dreams of Gaza

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature. His adult poetry has been published by The New Verse News, Awakenings Review, San Antonio Review, Sequoia Speaks, Copperfield Review Quarterly, and many others.