BEFORE AND AFTER

by Judy Juanita

before

We stood on garbage cans to watch the assembly line

at the Chevrolet manufacturing plant on 73rd ave

See the USA in your Chevrolet

America is asking you to call

Drive your Chevrolet through the USA

America’s the greatest land of all

We paid our parents no mind at all

when they said Dinah Shore was passing for white

Oakland had white-only garden apts. on 66th ave

housing UC Berkeley grad students

young dads in Bermuda shorts 

moms in capri pants

a 99 year covenant kept us out

the little children called us niggers

if we took the shortcut home

Those apts. became the site of the 1980s drug wars

The would-be Coliseum was a swamp

BART was a developer’s dream 

to bring suburban commuters to SF

Oakland be damned

We had to fight to get Oakland stops added

The boys across the street were from Georgia 

Their mother welcomed my brother to peepee 

in their bathroom but insisted he poopoo at home

I thought white people pooped white poops

And we pooped brown 

Wave after wave of Ohlones, Mexicans, Chinese, Portuguese

Oakies and Arkies from the Oklahoma and Arkansas dust bowls

coloreds and whites from Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma 

migrated for munitions and troop movement work during WWI

Our parents and grandparents came in droves

planting their families and dreams 

in the fertile soil called California 

after

We’re all Panthers now

The Black Panther Party did not backfire

It was an early warning system 

for this entire country/world 

about U.S. oppression

the ravages of imperialism 

the rampant police-as-occupying-force 

in the black community

As the vanguard it did exactly 

what 

it was historically tasked to do

it woke people up 

What people choose to do now

under this near totalitarianism

is up to individuals and groups

We don’t need Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Denmark Vesey

Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Fannie Lou Hamer

MLK, John Lewis, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver

Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, all our people

who fought to the finish

They came, they saw, they served

It’s up to the living to stand up and be counted

Judy Juanita’s poetry has been published widely. Her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). She appears in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Season 5, Laney College where she teaches.

FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE MAST

by Devon Balwit

A brokenness in need of fixing, we carom, 

blowing out sail after sail. At the helm 

gapes a hole the shape of a captain 

in love with his flail. We keep eyes 

to our holystones, thinner with each 

fretful pass, and scrub fore and aft. 

In sight of shore, we hoist a false flag, 

gilded with import. All know our master’s 

true master, his fathomless coffers 

deep in the hold. Our sad tongues 

misremember the taste of fresh water, 

the tartness of greens as we bleed 

from both ends. Weeping awakens the sleepers 

in the fo'c'sle. We ourselves 

may be its source. Without a hand 

to our throat, there’s no knowing.

Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

THE MEN IN BLOOD RED POWER TIES

by Howie Good

I have seen them corrupt water and air, spew contagion when they speak, block the light from windows with their empty bulk. I have seen them gather armies of the deluded and the stupid, place the law in the keeping of shit-stained hands, turn away smirking from the motherless, the helpless, the lost. I have seen them obscenely rub up against dictators and corpses, reserve for themselves the best or the most, erase the last trace of truth with acid, chisels, and a blowtorch. I have seen them make a crisis of every loving gesture, a crime of every beautiful thought.

Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION

by Michael L. Ruffin




Out of an abundance of caution,
we are washing our hands
seventy-six times a day.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are avoiding large
gatherings of people.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are trying not
to touch anybody.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are disinfecting
everything in sight.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are sneezing and coughing
into our sleeves.

Oh, and out of an abundance of caution,
we will henceforth vote for only
science-affirming, rationally-thinking,
forward-looking, plan-making,
crisis-anticipating, confidence-inspiring
candidates for any and every office.

Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and  of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at TheNewVerse.News and is  forthcoming in 3 Moon Magazine and Rat's Ass Review.

POLITICS AND PICASSO

by Ed Werstein

A Facebook friend posts: Any blue
will do! and I comment: What if
Picasso had had that attitude?
We may be entering another of our
periodic blue periods. I want to scream
across the internet, No! Not any blue will do!
According to the founders, we are
the architects, the artists, of our own
future. (If we have one).
We mustn’t just dip blindly at the blue
palette we’re offered to cover the orange
we’ve been putting up with lately.

Some blues bend toward green, while
others appear blue, but quickly turn
yellow when applied to the canvas.

Artists! Let’s amaze our many critics around the world.
Let’s choose a new revolutionary blue
(or at least a reformist one), a blue
we haven’t dabbled in in decades.

Ed Werstein is a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. In 2018 he received the Lorine Niedecker Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. His latesT chapbook is Benediction & Baseball.

CONTAGION

by Mary K O’Melveny

When dispersed, dandelion seed heads, also known as “blowballs,” can travel vast distances due to a unique morphology of the pappus, a fine hair-like material which holds the spherical seed heads and enables their wind-aided dispersal.  The pappus adapts, based on wind or air moisture, closing its plume of seeds until optimal conditions for maximum dispersal and germination occur.  

the metaphor seems right

too obvious of course

as arenas fill up with 

chanting shrieking clapping

sounds of sickness  backbeats

to our long agony

everyone in MAGA

hats or face masks   Look

to your right or your left

infection will arrive

like a dandelion’s

pappus as it sails off

carried by wind to new

meadows,  gliding down like

wartime propaganda 

hoping for fallow fields

and willing minds   there is 

no ripcord    just free fall

furtive looks  yield nothing

no obvious symptoms

everyone could carry

these germs    no one will tell

truths   everyone will shift

blame   new tears will be shed 

you cannot lock us all

up   cannot invent a

failsafe test   find a cure

hiding inside some lab 

mouse   even if we steal

back money from builders

of walls a plague still looms

dress up in your white coats

smile at your neighbors who

are about to lock their 

doors so you can’t enter

wash your hands one more time

then beg them for mercy

show them how your face mask

can repel each viral 

blast better than theirs  

tell them you have never 

seen a hot zone or helped 

a victim    promise you will

never argue about

anything important

won’t blow any whistles

tell them you are grateful 

you will not doubt again


Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

THE IMMIGRANT BOY'S LAMENT

“President Donald T***p wants America to know that his plans to remove government officials deemed insufficiently loyal to him is actually for the country’s own good.” 

—Talking Points Memo, February 25, 2020

Photograph by Oleg Ver.

George Salamon entered the USA as a 13-year-old immigrant in 1948, after a decade as a refugee from Austria in Switzerland during World War Two. The first play he saw, in early 1949, was Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.

A WORD FROM OUR FEARLESS LEADER

by Gail White

Coronavirus Pandemic by Bill Day, Tallahassee, FL

Coronavirus crisis?
I don’t know what you mean.
We’ll stop it at the border.
We’ll find a new vaccine.

They loved me in New Delhi.
I didn’t wear a mask.
You’re safe with me to guide you.
Your health care? Please don’t ask.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

NOVEMBER 2020

by Gil Hoy

Graphic: MoveOn.org

When the poet's
arrow hits the mark,

a wishful paragraph
can become

a single word:

Blue

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and served four terms as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman. He is a member of the Brookline Democratic Town Committee. 

HERO

by Gil Hoy




The sun rises, just as splendidly
and majestically as she did
the day before. And the day
before that. He'll be fine,
he thinks, for telling the truth.
The Lieutenant Colonel, with a
Purple Heart, is honest and steadfast.
He loves his Country. She's oblivious
to the impending tempest--ignorant
and innocent. He's not worried, unaware
of his coming marching orders.
For this is America--not the Soviet Union.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and progressive political activist. He served four terms as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman.

AFTER PNEUMONIA, AFTER ACQUITTAL

by Kathleen McClung

Graphic for “Scare in the Crow” from the CD Heart of Wood by My Father's Son

I hear it first before I see: lone crow,
insistent, caws. A president who lies
and struts, here a loud bird.  The one surprise:
how long it grips that twig-ringed spot below
the Walgreens cursive script, the huge display window
of beauty creams, pills, potions, some device
for whitening our teeth—swell merchandise
or “perfect” in his lexicon. The crow
seems rooted to that perch, unyielding bird
commanding passersby to hear its call.
Sheer volume. Sheer relentlessness. No grace
or nuance here, no eloquence, no words.
Just shameless, crude intent: drown out, appall
all those outside its nest, its tilted base.

Kathleen McClung is the author of Temporary Kin, The Typists Play Monopoly, and Almost the Rowboat. She teaches at Skyline College and The Writing Salon and judges sonnets for the Soul-Making Keats literary competition. She lives in San Francisco.

THE SMEDLEY D. BUTLER BRIGADE

by Art Goodtimes

Smedley Darlington Butler by Robert Shetterly / Americans Who Tell the Truth

John Bolton

Mitt Romney

McRedeye has to say

that it’s unexpected truth-tellers

of a completely different

stripe

that make my day

Like Smedley Darlington Butler

in FDR’s day

America’s not perfect

by a long white shot

but it has its heroes

Art Goodtimes of the Talking Gourds Poetry Program in Telluride has a new book out from Lithic Press in Fruita, Colorado: Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (2019).

WORDS, GRAMMAR, EVERYTHING

by Jen Schneider

CARTOON:  David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star, 2017

If for some reason you haven’t been clear about what President Trump thinks about traditional public schools, consider what he said about them in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. There was this: “For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.” What’s a “government school” to Trump? A public school in a traditional public school district. —The Washington Post, February 5, 2020

Some speak of failing
government schools. The cement-block
halls and crowded rooms I call home.
Rooms lined with pet turtles, donated books,
and color-blocked rugs. Often too hot.
Sometimes too cold. Usually just right.
Some speak of failing
government schools. Staffed
by hard-working folks—with tenures
of ten, fifteen, and twenty years and passions
for literature, mathematics, Us—I call family.
Some speak of failing
government schools. The 7 AM through 4 PM
world where I find breakfast, lunch,
and meaning. And where I learned the power
of Words. Of Grammar. Of Punctuation.
Of love. Mrs. P. Ms. T. Mr. B.
I miss them—All.
Some speak of failing
government schools. I, rather, speak
of schools that have been failed.
Mr. B taught me well. We have not failed.
We have been failed. Where failing is a verb,
not an adjective. With funding
denied, teachers declared
no longer hired, and students
deemed unworthy
of care. Of Love. Some speak
of failing government schools.
All I see, from the windows
of the school I Love,
is a failing government.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

THE DAY MY FALLOPIAN TUBES ASKED ME TO PLAY HOPSCOTCH

by Dianna MacKinnon Henning

Source: reddit

All lies are not the same.
That’s why I won’t watch the State of the Union.
A plague of misinformation.

Even my favorite merlot
fails to numb the pain of the times
and I wake with stains on my tongue.

Go tell it to the mountain
my ears admonish, or at the least tell it
to your closest friend.

But there’s no good in talking,
no one can do anything
with unabashed crooks playing guard.

I would walk my dog
to hush the horror off, but my dog
goes belly flop, won’t budge.

Because of this, my fallopian tubes ask me
to play hopscotch, with assurance that jumping
carries a fertilized egg into heaven

where the Catholic priest Gabriele
Falloppio, the anatomist, promises better days ahead,
that all oviducts aren’t created equal.

Dianna MacKinnon Henning is widely published. A three-time Pushcart nominee, she had work in 2019 in New American Writing and The Kerf. Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several CAC grants, and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program. Henning’s third poetry book Cathedral of the Hand was published 2016 by Finishing Line Press.

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE IDIOCRACY

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Sign at Women's March, January 21, 2017 via diggit

"God grant that men of principle be our principal men."

—Thomas Jefferson

Idiocracy is claiming you are the king
of reality, seeking only ratings
while the rest of us
let the show go on.

Idiocracy is becoming your own smoke-
filled room, your attraction
to wrong-doing unabated
as supporters compromise
integrity on demand.

Idiocracy is having thousands of points of entry
to you
through your businesses
and no one sticks a finger
in that holey dike.

Idiocracy is allowing a transactional businessman
to run the country like a mafia state
while the rest of us watch reruns
of The Sopranos.

Idiocracy is riding the rollercoaster
of presidential whims
ignoring the vast scope
of your childish unruliness.

Idiocracy is standing by
while you self-ignite
self-inflicted crises
daily, glorified
babysitters for the biggest
crybaby in the history
of our crumbling world.

We live in an idiocracy
our government run by loyalists
where narcissism and hegemony,
hateful groupthink,
one-size-fits-all cowardice,
dangerous stupidity
and the end of democracy
being neither
indictable crime nor
impeachable offense
are okay with us.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Her books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.  Project XX, a satirical crime novel, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. What I Did for Love was released by Bloodhound Books in October. Kelsay Books is publishing the poetry chapbook the disappearing self in 2020. 

IN MEMORY OF NARROW PLACES

by Sophie Mann

Out of Egypt we came.
Mitzrayim.
Mitzrayim literally means
Narrow place.
We have come from narrow places forever
Jews have.
Minorities have.
We have come from wombs
We have come narrow passages
From doors of no return
From binaries that do not fit us.
Egypt we overcame.
Mitzrayim.
Egypt literally means
Black.
We have come from dark places forever
Jews have
Minorities have.
We have come from wombs
We have come from middle passages
From the depths of the South
From misgendering and murder.
Out of Egypt we came.
And now
It is as if we were sent back.
G-d did not part the seas this time
He did not speak to Moses
We thought we heard Him through Upshot
And Nate Silver
And everyone who consoled their friends
Their loved ones
The Jews
The minorities
That the sea would part, once more.
But it hasn't.
And while the Jews spent over 500 years in bondage
We must endure four more.
We must overcome.
And they marched and said
We will overcome.
We must march and hold each other up
Because some of us have fallen when the weight of it all became too much.
And as I sat bleary-eyed, sleepless, in the warm presence of dejected journalists
I thought to myself
We will overcome.
And when I saw the sunrise on the new world
A world that was full of hope when I entered my safe haven of journalistics and liberals and love
I remembered that
If we came out of Egypt
Mitzrayim
We can do it again
Jews can
Minorities can
Because we have come out of narrow places forever.
Jews have.
Minorities have.
We have come from wombs
We have come narrow passages
From doors of no return
From binaries that do not fit us.
Egypt we overcame.
And Egypt we will overcome.
For it is narrow now
But we will break through the walls
The wombs
The narrow passages
The binaries that don't fit us
Mitzrayim
Arm in arm.
Together.
Because out of Egypt we came
And out of Egypt we will come

Sophie Mann grew up in Palo Alto, California surrounded by love and trees good for climbing. She has a Bachelor’s in English and psychology from Northwestern University and a Master’s in learning sciences from Harvard University. She currently lives by Lake Michigan.

NOW THAT HE'S HAD A TASTE OF WAR

by Joan Mazza

Trump's reelection campaign is fundraising off Soleimani's killing. —Yahoo! News, January 8, 2020

He pats himself on the back for the drone
strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
We got him! he brags at another rally,
smirks while his supporters cheer, eager
for the blood of brown-skinned people.
He calls them scum, terrorists, animals,
as he called Mexicans rapists and murderers.

The old playbook is wide open, rage
fueling rage, war and more war. Poor boys
fed into the machine return in body bags
with flags. He promises to bomb cultural
heritage sites like the Golestan Palace,
or Persepolis first looted by Alexander
the Great, or Pasargadae from 600 BCE—

meaningless places for an egomaniac sans
empathy, ethics, or education. The only
sites he cares about are those he owns,
those that make money, with his name
in giant gold letters across the façade.
Would the beauty of mosques with tile
mosaics or gardens move a man who lacks

feelings for the children he separated
from parents? Nothing will pierce the heart
of a man who always gets what he wants,
who suffers no consequences for fraud
and cheating. The laws of war and human
decency do not apply to him. He’ll take
a bit of purple rubble as a memento.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and she is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Prairie Schooner (forthcoming), and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes a poem every day and is working on a memoir.

52 LIES

by Julia Marsiglio

On social media I see the thunderous applause
for crushing bones under buildings
for bullets that close the eyes of children
forever—whose last words are unspoken
replaced with a cacophony of heavy
artillery, and the screams of mothers who hold them
under the rain of hellfire, and instead of running
count their eyelashes, one by one, and join
the dust, brought in rolling out from under tanks
manned by twitter fingered horsemen
who expected seas of sand but instead
colored the mountains with bright red blood.

The domes are imploding under 52 lies
all written by 45.
The explosions started at home—
on Facebook. Tic Toc. They don’t stop.
They are ours, but we don’t own them.
We watch them, like fireworks and we clap.
As flesh parts from flesh
mother from child
child from life—
we yawn
and we laugh.

Julia Marsiglio is a writer currently located in Montréal, Québec, who has been writing poetry and fiction since she was a child. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish language and literature from the University of Alberta in 2011. Her work has previously appeared in Montréal Writes.

WHITTLED LIES

by Jan D. Hodge

Faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump during a rally for evangelical supporters at the King Jesus International Ministry church, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

When
Sir
Impresario rose for the vacuous ritual discharge of pomp
      In that dismal political swamp,
Insulting and faulting those who dared to oppose him
      (Sneering and jeering at them),
Meeting their protests with humbug and shrugs
Amid the capuchin clicking and whining
Of cameras, his answers were dreary as verses on Stalin,
Then echoed in turn by a toadying chorus of dim-
Witted grim apparatchiks routinely intoning:
O leader of peoples, our nation spearheading,
Great One, our Sun, applauded by millions of hearts
      (Chanting in classical metres).
Like Vergil recited from packets of cue cards, they
Hailed and regaled him.  Not one of the thugs
Had conscience or courage enough to consider resigning
               . . . Preferring fine dining!


Author’s note: The situation, alas, is all too recognizable.  For those not familiar with the model for this verse, I refer you to Edith Sitwell’s “Sir Beelzebub.”  (My title, incidentally, is an anagram of "Edith Sitwell.")
     To explain the allusion to verses on Stalin, consider these lines by A. O. Avdienko:
           When the woman I love presents me with a child
           the first word it shall utter will be: Stalin. . . .
           O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,
           Thou who broughtest man to birth . . .
           Thou who makest bloom the spring,
           Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords . . .
           Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
           Sun reflected by millions of hearts.

Jan D. Hodge's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. Two of his books, Taking Shape (a collection of carmina figurata) and The Bard & Scheherazade Keep Company (double-dactyl renderings of Shakespeare, tales from the Arabian Nights, and Reynard the Fox) have been published by Able Muse Press.

NEW YEAR'S WISH

by George Salamon

Out of our broken mouths
The protests get wilder,
The occupation did not last.
The marches lost their rhythm,
Compelling poets to abandon
Shining harmonies and blow
Shrilly in chopped up phrases,
Raging against the malice
In the heart and at the helm
Of people blinded by false
Promises and propelled by
Dark urges, only nudging us
Not to close our eyes to
What humanity has done in
Good and evil, and not yet
Say goodbye to all that.

George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and most recently has contributed to One Sentence Poems, The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice and TheNewVerse.News.