FIRST POEM OF A NEW YEAR

by Linda Lerner

Photo credit: Nick Cobbing at LegalPlanet

I thought of the polar bears when
he told me of waking up with
his arm flapping around like it wasn’t his

not right away, of course,
but after he’d gotten more accustomed
to it, like the polar bears

who’ve been unhomed & had to
scavenge for food on land when
the ice began melting,

told him I understood, though
I’ve never seen a polar bear or been
in his place; he thought that having scraped off the
last vestiges of immunity after a bad fall

I felt more vulnerable but that’s not what I meant,
something had gradually shifted; none of us
were where we thought we were;
one morning a stricken body politic
woke up flapping about in utter confusion asking
                                                what just happened 

my friend looked at me and asked,
one hand forcing the other to get past it

Linda Lerner has new work in Onthebus, Chiron Review, Gargoyle, and SoFloPoJo. In spring 2015, she read six poems on WBAI for Arts Express. Her recent collections include Yes, the Ducks Were Real and Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (NYQ Books) and a chapbook of poems inspired by nursery rhymes Ding Dong the Bell Pussy in the Well.

POEM FOR THE INAUGURATION

by Jon Wesick

I hope I’m wrong,
so wrong my name becomes slang
for a tragic blunder
as in, “Custer sure pulled a Wesick
at the Little Bighorn!”

I hope jobs return to the rust belt
and displaced workers
will now buy gold-plated mansions
and endow professorships at Harvard.
I hope the new president’s tweets
scare the beards off ISIS
and that from now on all terrorists
will come with big letter T’s
tattooed on their foreheads.

I hope greenhouse gasses
bring back the black rhino
and mountain gorilla.
I hope the free market
lowers the cost of heart transplants
and cancer treatment to $1.95.

I hope doctors determine cake and ice cream
make the most nutritious breakfast
and that playing video games
burns more calories than running.
I hope high school students don’t need algebra
for high-tech careers and that cheerleaders
want to sleep with guys who can’t dance.
I hope I really can earn $100,000
by working 3 hours a week from home.
I hope our new president
rekindles the American dream.

Jon Wesick hosts Southern California’s best ice cream parlor poetry reading and is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels.

A NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING

by Mary Saracino

Poster by JessicaSabogal for We the People which will flood Washington, DC with NEW symbols of hope on January 20. You can download the set of posters for free at http://bit.ly/wtpdownloads.

I will wear black on January 20
a national day of mourning
while the collective soul of America
lets loose a dirge as an illegitimate president
takes the oath of office
his place secured in history
by fake news, voter suppression
the deception of a foreign dictator
and his own brand of white supremacy
spewed from his bully pulpit of
racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia
and every other kind of –ism the world has ever witnessed

On the next day the women of the world will don
pink pussy hats, take to the streets in cities far and wide
to march in protest, defying the fake king, the tyrant
in the Oval Office
reclaiming their vulva power,  the power to
procreate truth, to name evil, to smash
the glass ceiling of lies that tries to silence us

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet, and memoir writer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her most recent novel is Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014). Her novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Mary’s short story, "Vicky's Secret," earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.