PEACE WILL ALWAYS SOUND BETTER

by Joseph Hope

“peace” by Shahid Atiq at toonpool.

The body would prefer perfume to real bullets.

Prefer water to tear gas.

Prefer flowers to rockets.

Prefer anything that will not kill it 

to what can.

Ask the dead!

Brokering peace is better than taking a side.

Whether it's 

Palestine vs Israel or

Allah vs Jesus or 

White vs Black or 

Jews vs non-Jews

peace will still remain the only cure to conflicts.

Joseph Hope is writing from Nigeria, a student of Usman Danfodio University. His works are either forthcoming or already published in Reckoning Press, Evening Street Press, Zoetic Press,  The New Verse News, Praxis Magazine, Gemini Spice Magazine, Spillwords, SprinNG, Writers Space Africa, Nthanda Magazine, 5th Chinua Achebe Anthology, Ariel Chart, Best "New" African Poets 2019 Anthology, and many more. He's a young man running away from his name. How absurd! He tweets @ItzJoe9

PRAY

by Jennifer Hernandez

Credit: MacLeodCartoons

By all means, pray.
Pray to God
Allah
Lord Vishnu
Chi-manidoo
Eirene
La Virgen
the Universe.

Pray for San Bernardino
Savannah
Colorado Springs
Boston
Conway
Houston
Minneapolis.

Implore. Plead.
Beat your fists on the ground.
Howl until your throat is raw.

That this may end. That we may creep
from the shadows in which we cower,
push back against the boulder of learned
helplessness. Speak the language of Enough.
No more.

Pound on the gates. Flood the ears of every one,
Every One, who votes yea or nay, who makes our laws.
Our laws. Ours.

Make them.


Jennifer Hernandez lives in the Minneapolis area where she teaches immigrant youth, wrangles three sons and writes for her sanity. Her work appears in Talking Stick, Red Weather,  Silver Birch Press, and elsewhere.  She has recently read her poetry in the Cracked Walnut Literary Festival and as honorable mention in the Elephant Rock Flash Prose contest.

WORLD SERIES

by Richard Marx Weinraub

Baseball is a metaphor for life.
The pitcher and catcher—the rubber and cage—
play out as a sadomasochistic game.

The heart of the drama transpires at home.
The plate is stolen and a beanball is thrown.

Murphy’s the oil, the law, and the goat.
Matt’s the dark knight falling short of glory.
Familia is the story of a family gone wrong.

God relieves Satan. Citi Field’s Jericho—
the towers struck out by the pitch of Allah—
Babylon bombed by the squad of Jesus.

“It is the Inquisition, the/Revolution,”
the good doctor said (not Ben Carson).

Imagine the flight of the bat and the balls
and the hole they are trying to fill.


Richard Marx Weinraub has published three collections of poetry: Wonder Bread Hill, Heavenly Bodies, and Lapidary.  His work has appeared in many journals including The Paris Review, Asheville Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, Green Mountains Review, North American Review, Slate, and River Styx.