HOURS OF LEAD

by Susan Gubernat

                                                            This is the Hour of Lead –

                                                            Remembered, if outlived… Emily Dickinson

Lead that grazes the mouth of a child, bloodies her.

Lead she drinks down from her little cup of water.

Lead spewed at one another instead of spit

(though the spit too finds its target).

Lead they load, reload, load, reload

Lead soaring like an earthbound bird emboldened

by flight. Lead sinking to the bottom of a pan

boiling away on a kitchen fire. But can

a mother ever make the bath safe again?

As lead rains hard, can she throw her body in 

the path of the boy being eyed by lead,

stalked by lead, prey to the beast of lead?

The lead in the man’s pockets weighs him 

down like coins he thinks he must spend

to grow lighter. He pans the river for lead,

curses crowds with his shower of lead.

Underground, the dark pipes groan with lead.

Above, the air clamps shut with a seam of lead.

O lead, where is thy sting? There

and there and there.            Here. 

Susan Gubernat’s latest book The Zoo at Night won the Prairie Schooner Book Award from the University of Nebraska Press. Her work has appeared in many publications. She lives and works in the SF Bay Area.

DREAM SONGS FOR THE GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN

by Ned Balbo

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is accusing his staffers of lying to him about lead and other contaminants in Flint’s drinking water supply. Snyder has long accused state environmental and health regulators of giving him incorrect information about the safety of the Michigan city's water after its switch to using the Flint River in April 2014 until late last year. But on Monday, he accused employees at the state agencies of lying to him. —The Hill, April 11, 2016

1.

Why is our boiled water brown?

Our bottled water’s running out. 

Will it be safe to drink again?

Why shouldn’t water touch our skin?

The water mains still underground

belong to a forgotten age—

The records we’ve retrieved so far

don’t always point to where they are,

and, yes, we have a deficit—

which means we can’t repair them yet.

But rest assured: your water’s safe.

True, there are problems with its taste,

color, and smell, but samples show

lead levels are extremely low.

We hear you. We’ve conducted tests.

The wheels of government are slow.

2.

When water from the tap won’t clear—

When families forced to cook with it

get sicker, do we share their rage?

Or do we share in their defeat

when hydrants flush the streets metallic

orange—one more tainted purge?

When residents desperate to sell

are turned away by realtors?  

Water, once thought a public good,

is now one more commodity:

expendable, like those who live

in devastated neighborhoods.

3.

Why change a city’s water source

to one inarguably worse?

You know why: it was cheaper. Summer

days, pools fill with teenage swimmers,

laughter, lead. How soon will daughters,

showering, watch hair fall out

in clumps that catch in rusted drains?

How will the elderly, the poor

assured it’s safe, protect themselves?

Stop washing when their rashes burn?

Or let caregivers sponge their flesh—

the toxic river’s toxic touch.

We know this water’s poisonous.

Who’ll stop or redirect its course?

We’re told we have to wait. How long?

Who’s listening, if anyone?

4.

Hair white, startled from sleep, a man

who should have known pads down the stairs,

thirsty. What does he see at night?

Iced-over windows, mandalas

of frost on glass. He pours and drinks—

fresh water from the faucet, cool

and clear: the least that he deserves.

What do the least of Michigan

deserve from those responsible?

If citizens are customers

and nothing more, then, yes, they’re lost.

What should they ask this Governor,

and others like him? Shouldn’t water

wash us clean and nourish life?

Who sent this poison to our homes,

as if to kill or scatter us?

Don’t turn your back in disbelief.

Ned Balbo's The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems received the Poets' Prize and the Donald Justice Prize. His previous books are Lives of the Sleepers (Ernest Sandeen Prize; ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal), and Galileo's Banquet (Towson University Prize). A new book, Upcycling Paumanok, is due out soon from Measure Press. He currently teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.

DOUBLE CROSS STITCHES

by James Penha

'The Discovery of King Tut,’ an exhibition that recreates the discover of King Tut's tomb in 1922 with over 1,000 reproductions of the tomb's original artifacts 'The Discovery of King Tut,' opened May 16, 2015, at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

In the burial vault Carter unearthed embroidery
as bright after 3000 years as Tutankhamen’s gold
displayed last Spring in Grand Rapids only
two hours from a Flint entombed in lead
by pipes buried and buried again to hide
the hands that corrode the threads of civility
and undo woven black braids beaded brown
with more warp than weft and very petit point.




James Penha edits The New Verse News.

BEAUTIFUL AND BITTER THE WATER

by Matthew Johnson

Before God had gone down to trouble those waters,
I had dipped and wash you child in the calm waves
Of the Nile.

From rooted Jordan and Babylon child,
I sang to you those ancient songs
As I scrubbed away the dirt from your black flesh.

In the plantation cots in the golden dusk of Georgia,
In steadfast resolute,
I tried to cleanse the expanse of your black skin with water.

But now child, I’ve been unsettled.
Muddy as the blackened conscious of Delta Blues,
I’ve seen the waters turn a syrupy-hue.

I now allow you child to drink bitterness
And etch the poison of human guile
In your god-like blood and god-like skin.

Let us flow to a return child,
When I sang those old spirituals, lulling you to sleep
With the most savory of shadows and dreams.

But in those days oh child,
The waters were far too deep
And your skin was far too beautiful to leave.


Matthew Johnson is a 2015 December graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Matthew is a sports journalist who has written for the USA Today College, Fansided, StoopSports and his university newspaper, The Carolinian. Matthew’s poetry has appeared in The Coraddi and The Carolinian. He lives in North Carolina.

THE TRAGEDY IN FLINT

by Yi Wu

The stream of cold and greedy blood, still pumped
from fastened hearts at Michigan’s elites
at speeds of clunkers steered by reckless drivers,
on engines burning leaded gas, stolen
from Hades of obsolescence, is as
corrosive as the river water chlorinated
by negligent passing down of a lethal mixture
of industrial waste and calendar years

Pipes as anachronistic as a political system
whose residue has poisoned the cups
threaten to hold back children’s development
by chains of heavier metals tied on brains
as they fear sharp minds unmaimed
would sense the urgency of their replacement


Yi Wu is a writer who now calls New York City home. His work has appeared in Uppagus, Slink Chunk Press and Clockwise Cat.