LEAVING ALEPPO

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

An older man was evacuated from a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, December 15, 2016

single line they walk
besieged eyes merely looking forward
forward one step in front of another
tired beyond tired
fatigued beyond fatigued
weary beyond weary
their sorrow faceless like themselves
their burden a city of ruins
they will carry forward
in their eyes their hearts
forward one step in front of another

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem to be published in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin.  Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

THEATRE

by Erica Goss

“Russian aviation launched the for the second day in a row raids on the city of Raqqa, where nine raids carried out by his aircraft centered on the markets and the revival of the city resulted in 43 civilian martyrs and nearly 60 wounded. . . . It is feared in the coming days that the Russian aviation will take over the mission of bombing Raqqa city  . . . while the international coalition and the world are standing silent in front of this criminality on the grounds that the Russians bombard ISIS [although we] know that Raqqa is occupied by ISIS and not [giving support] to it.” —Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, March 19, 2016

Handsome and indifferent
as a movie star, the pilot
drops his payload.

He killed it
tonight, had the audience
eating out of his hand,

from grandmothers tottering
on skinny legs to the family
barely breathing in the cellar.

Never have children
been so still, so
perfectly behaved.

One performance leads
to another – the pilot
will be back tomorrow night,

10:00 p.m. on the dot,
ready to put on one more
drop-dead gorgeous show.

Erica Goss served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA from 2013-2016. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Erica teaches poetry workshops and works as a Development Director for California Poets in the Schools. Her poems, reviews and articles appear widely.

MORE DARKNESS AT NOON

by George Held

The Swedish authorities have filed criminal charges against a Syrian man who is suspected of having participated in the mass killing of captured Syrian soldiers in 2012. The police arrested the man, Haisam Omar Sakhanh, on Friday, in the town of Karlskoga, Sweden, and charged him with a crime against international law. —NY Times, March 14, 2016

It is a late-winter day, chilly,
so the nine standing men wear a jacket
or a vest, and seven, two with masks,
point AK-47s at their targets

on the ground in front of them: seven
young men, torsos stripped bare, five
with their foreheads pressed to the ground—
two with hands bound behind their back,

three with hands restrained below the waist,
and two with hands free, one of whom rests
his forehead on a bare right arm, while
the other, at the extreme right, lies legs

spread, his chin on his left fist, his eyebrows
and nose visible for his last picture.
We can only guess at their last thoughts
and prayers, but each one knows

that any second a bullet will crash
into the back of his skull, and he will be dead.
The standing man at the extreme right
holds a pistol and looks down the rocky field,

maybe for a signal to begin shooting.
He will soon start the execution, firing
the first shot into his helpless victim.
The other armed men follow suit; all the bare-

backed men are now dead, and maybe so
are some of the rebels. Life is violent,
brutish and short for men at war, especially
a civil war, and usually it is better

to be a man with a Kalashnikov than one
stripped, prone, and waiting . . .


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Muddy River Books, Bleak Splendor.