ELEGY FOR LVIV AND STANISLAWÓW

by Joel Savishinsky

As Russia’s vicious attack on Ukraine continues, the western “safe haven” town of Lviv (top photo) is bracing itself to join the theatre of war. “We expect there could be an attack,” says Olga Myrovych, 34, head of the Lviv Media Forum. “We are far from Putin’s border, but this will distract the efforts of the Ukrainian army.” Lviv is a central European jewel, an exceptionally elegant town with a long history of culture and tragedy. —Institute for War & Peace Reporting, February 27, 2022. In the lower two photos, Ivano-Frankivsk (formerly Stanislawów), a city located in Western Ukraine, had its airport, fuel, and lubricants depots destroyed by the Russian missile systems. The city, formerly Stanisławów, is almost 600km away from Kyiv. With the city airport bombed, the people of Ivano-Frankivsk are being evacuated to bomb shelters. —SAYS, February 26, 2022.

The heart can be broken

in so many ways: lost love,

position, regard and address.

Janus is a novice when staring at

the diamond faces of disappointment.

 

We fear that even poetry may not

matter, that we have no voice, that

we have one but cannot be heard.

Shall we carry our broken hearts

before us like a banner, shouting

rage into the wind, using our mouths

and pens to signal from, or to,

a distant land.

 

When arms have been withheld,

can the body of words suffice

where other parts have failed, or

is hope already the disembodied

ghost of those about to die.

 

Crushed by the alien arms and armies,

the four-chambered heart of

our grandmothers’ homelands

may soon be a million lost freedoms,

the ones our leaders and

the whores of Babylon have each

mis-filed in the archives of revelation.

 

 

 

Joel Savishinsky is the author of Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America (Cornell University Press, 2002), winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s book of the year prize. His parents and grandparents, and those of his wife, immigrated to the US from western Ukraine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, escaping pogroms, anti-Semitism, and the impending invasion of the Nazis. Their communities of origin are named in the poem’s title.

BEAUTIFUL AND BITTER THE WATER

by Matthew Johnson

Before God had gone down to trouble those waters,
I had dipped and wash you child in the calm waves
Of the Nile.

From rooted Jordan and Babylon child,
I sang to you those ancient songs
As I scrubbed away the dirt from your black flesh.

In the plantation cots in the golden dusk of Georgia,
In steadfast resolute,
I tried to cleanse the expanse of your black skin with water.

But now child, I’ve been unsettled.
Muddy as the blackened conscious of Delta Blues,
I’ve seen the waters turn a syrupy-hue.

I now allow you child to drink bitterness
And etch the poison of human guile
In your god-like blood and god-like skin.

Let us flow to a return child,
When I sang those old spirituals, lulling you to sleep
With the most savory of shadows and dreams.

But in those days oh child,
The waters were far too deep
And your skin was far too beautiful to leave.


Matthew Johnson is a 2015 December graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Matthew is a sports journalist who has written for the USA Today College, Fansided, StoopSports and his university newspaper, The Carolinian. Matthew’s poetry has appeared in The Coraddi and The Carolinian. He lives in North Carolina.

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.