PASSOVER 2023

by Eric Greene

The Israelites were told that if they painted their doorposts with lamb's blood, their first-born child would not be killed by the angel.

The Angel of Death 
is running amok
 
and no amount 
of lamb’s blood
 
smeared 
on the schoolroom doors 
will keep him away
 
Columbine, Red Lake, Virginia Tech
 
No cup of sweet wine
will dull the suffering
 
Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Santa Fe
 
No bitter herb
will burn 
like a mother's pain
 
Oxford, Robb Elementary, Michigan State
 
In bondage 
once again
 
with no exodus 
in sight
 
we wait 
for the next child 
to be taken
 
The Covenant School… 
 
 
Eric Greene is a longtime member of The Southeast Michigan Poetry Workshop Group. His poems have appeared in The New Verse News and other online publications.

SOCHI'S CHOICE

by George Held

            "That old black [widow] has me in its spell . . . "

            “‘You carry enough stuff in your pocket to blow yourself  and everything within sixty yards of you to pieces.’”          —Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907)


Those young Moslem women terror-bent
from Dagestan and Chechnya now are sent
to Sochi with bombs embracing their bodies
like the arms of their dedicated husbands,
already blown to bits by suicide bombs
to earn their tickets to Paradise.

The young ladies now arm themselves
like Conrad’s Professor, “hand closed round”
the detonator in his pocket,
an armed flask bomb sitting
in another pocket like a sleeping
black Angel of Death.

Call these young women “black widows,”
conjure our primal fear of black spiders
with red hourglass shape on their abdomen,
who devour their mates for giving the gift
of fertilization. The old misogynist myth
is summoned again to feed nightmares

for the well-heeled with tickets to Sochi,
the Winter Olympics Paradise,
with palm trees, by the Black Sea,
while at its back, in the snow-clad Caucasus,
Moslem revolutionaries fight
for independence and send (black) widows

to detonate the fun and games.
Which is your choice: the curious
tourists who require armed security
to bolster Vladimir Putin’s coffers
or the widows dedicated to avenge
their husbands and help to liberate

their ancient/nascent nations
from Putin’s pitiless grip?
Let the games begin.

An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com