FLACCID JUSTICE FOR MONSIEUR TOUT LE MONDE

an Erasure

by Betsy Mars

Dominique Pelicot and 50 Others Guilty in Rape Trial That Shook France: A court sentenced Mr. Pelicot to 20 years after he admitted to drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, for nearly a decade, and inviting strangers to join him. The case has made her a feminist hero. —The New York Times, December 19, 2024

they appeared to represent a cross-section of men:
The court heard from their wives,
 parents, 
friends
and children, 
who mostly described them 
as kind people incapable of rape
 
after watching videos of them penetrating Ms. Pelicot 
while she lay inert, sedated and often snoring loudly 
the defendants didn’t think of those acts as rape 
 
among the terms they used were 
“involuntary rape,” 
“accidental rape” 
and disassociated rape:
“rape by body, but not mind”
every defendant fully knew

he had drugged his wife 

without her knowledge

a playful threesome

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

WE WANT A PRESIDENT

a wish list

by Bonnie Proudfoot in collaboration with Betsy Mars

We want a president who moves in down the street, 
spends a week or two. Even if we live in Flint, NOLA,
Hindman, Gallop, Butte, or the Bronx.
 
Who stands at the feet of a chalk line 
around victims of gun violence and weeps 
with families, friends, neighbors of the slain.
 
Who Faces the Nation and Meets the Press, 
This Week and other weeks as well.
 
Who flies Southwest economy class, 
rides the F train, buys local, birdwatches,
who saves the spotted owl, the monarch butterfly
the spotted salamander and the gopher frog. 
 
Who celebrates the 4th of July with poetry.
 
Who protects women who want to bring babies
Into the world and defends women who don't,
stands up for anyone facing gender-based rage,
who nurtures babies and spends time with children, 
not to teach them how to grow up faster 
but to teach herself how to imagine more.
 
Who pays taxes, declares gifts, keeps promises,
learns other languages, uses them. 
 
Who opens the White House doors to heads of
non-profits and legal aid groups, to teachers, 
911 dispatchers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists, 
actors, musicians, dancers, artists, farmworkers, 
bridge builders, smoke jumpers, border guards, 
police, soldiers, not just to donors or glitterati
 
Who recycles the plastic she picks up 
on shorelines and riverbeds. Who puts
solar panels on the roof of the White House and
charges her EV fleet. Who walks or bikes.
 
Who calls out sulfur leaching through creeks, 
fish floating belly up in lakes and rivers, 
the scraped-off mountaintops of Appalachia 
and all abominations to earth in the name of profit
 
Whose compassion breaks us open. 
Whose gravity weighs on us. Whose hope
holds us steady. Who laughs her ample laugh
shakes her womanly hips, hoists her groceries 
in an NPR tote bag, asks too many questions, 
dreams bigger than we ever could.
 
Who sits with Native American elders, 
holds an ear to the earth 
and listens.
 
 
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

 
Bonnie Proudfoot writes fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays. Her novel, Goshen Road (OU/ Swallow Press) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway. Her 2022 poetry chapbook, Household Gods, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig editions, along with a forthcoming book of short stories, Camp Probable. Bonnie resides in Athens, Ohio.

INCREASING TURBULENCE

by Betsy Mars

 

 

“we live and move and have our being / here, in this curving and soaring world / that is not our own” –Julie Cadwallader Staub, "Blackbirds"

Each body with its own gravity, each a potential
projectile, catapulting beyond our limits.
We pin on wings, ignore warnings, leave
our belts uncinched, bang on overhead bins.

 
Oxygen masks dangle like buttercups, lines tangled 
rice noodles, seatbacks cracked, someone’s hair floats
feathering above. In galleys: scattered wine bottles, 
kiwi slices, coffee urns, snacks, the aftermath.
 
If we could see the air ahead would we swerve, 
fly below, rise above? How many words 
for this invisible curve are there in
blackbird tongue, imperceptible to us?
 
We weather the storm. Again, ask for 
mercy, oscillate, tally the toll. 

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

THE CREMATION CRISIS

by Betsy Mars

A flyer for a campaign to dissuade Jews from cremation. Courtesy of Rabbi Elchonon Zohn accompanying “More and more Jews are choosing cremation. These rabbis aren’t happy about it,” Forward, January 5, 2023

An ash is an ash of course, of course,

unless it's derived from a Jewish corpse.

Then under law and tradition (Tradition!)

said corpse must be interred, of course.

 

We don't want to reminisce about history 

when we're enmeshed in a different kind 

of misery, and the associations 

with Nazi Germany might lead to regret 

and painful discourse. 

 

But in the end the worms have their way 

(first course) no matter our religion, 

and ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 

so why not hasten the process 

rather than wasting space for bones and stones 

(though most rabbis and scholars do 

not endorse this course, of course)?

 

The Bible does not tell us so, of a prohibition, 

so off we go, and we're all letting go 

of our divisions— or

at least the pundits tell us so—

and at least in this final decision, keeping up 

with the goyim, assimilation above 

the ground, not under ground, a shanda.

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, publisher, and an editor at Gyroscope Review. Her writing has appeared widely online and in numerous print anthologies. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee.  Her photos have been published in Rattle (as the Ekphrastic Challenge prompt), Redheaded Stepchild, and as a cover image for Spank the Carp. She works as a substitute teacher, and as a cat wrangler in her spare time. Her chapbooks and small press publications (Kingly Street Press) are available on Amazon. In addition to her chapbook collaboration with Alan Walowitz, she recently worked with artist Judith Christensen on an installation in San Diego which is part of an ongoing exploration of memory, identity, home, and family. 

THE MATILDA EFFECT

by Betsy Mars

This is the painting I did not paint,

the poem I didn't write.

It was never my curious eye

fixed on petri dish or darkest night.

 

Not my hand that held the pen

or brush, not my place to wish.

It must have been my better, man,

who led me to discover that which is

 

impossible for my gender. Please

excuse my claim to wonder—it was not

in my code but clearly the expertise

of some other pocket-protected polyglot.

 

A woman’s work is never done

by her. Now how can I atone?

Editor's Note: The Matilda Effect posits that women in science become overlooked because many of their discoveries and breakthroughs are attributed to men. —Lost Women of Science.  “It is important to note early that women’s historically subordinate ‘place,’ in science (and thus their invisibility to even experienced historians of science) was not a coincidence and was not due to any lack of merit on their part. It was due to the camouflage intentionally placed over their presence in science.” —Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America.

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, publisher (Kingly Street Press), and currently an assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. In 2021 she was nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Betsy’s photos have been featured in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Spank the Carp, Praxis, and Redheaded Stepchild.

AUNT JEMIMA

by Betsy Mars

Cartoon by Matt Davies, Newsday, 

“Brands Pretend They Just Learned Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's Are Racist” 

—VICE, June 18, 2020

Stripped of her name
and branded,
her onyx pearls
dropping
one by one.
Backlash.
Corporate fathers
take a knee
in insincere
solidarity.
A belated Mea Culpa,
treacle spilling
from the lips of execs
once the deck was stacked
like flapjacks, they scurried,
transparent as lace,
finely collared,
ready to erase
the mammy
they embraced
in the race to be virtuous,
awakened just in time—
the tortoise at the finish line—
when it impacts their bottom line.

Betsy Mars is a poet, educator (prior to the pandemic), photographer, and occasional publisher. She is currently working on her second anthology to be released by her press, Kingly Street Press, this summer. She is also finishing a book co-written with friend and poet Alan Walowitz entitled In the Muddle of the Night, coming soon from Arroyo Seco Press. She has one chapbook, Alinea (Picture Show Press), to her name, as well as numerous publications on the web and in anthologies, most recently in Verse-Virtual, The Blue Nib, Kissing Dynamite, and The Poetry Super Highway. Her childhood years in Brazil gave her a deep appreciation for language and culture, a love of travel, and an early awareness of the disparities that exist throughout the world. 

WHITEWASHED

by Betsy Mars

Ahmaud Arbery falls to the ground after being shot.

When you want a commodity, a spokesman,
team spirit, sales soaring, think fast,
think brawn, think black.

Think pounding pavement. Think
of those hard-earned calves jumping
on command. Think of a casket.

I mean a basket. A hoop, rope
hanging from its neck.
Think of a shot, circling the rim,

going down as the buzzard, I mean
buzzer, ends the game. If you train off-court
or just enjoy a runner's high, I'm sorry.

Be prepared to run, to shoulder the blame—
a steal from behind—as your muscles
strain, push off on defense. Find the hole,

cut inside. Man-to-man or zone, you don't
stand a chance. They've got the big guns,
the refs in their pocket.

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, educator, photographer, and recent publisher whose first release, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife, came out in October 2019. Her work has appeared in Kissing Dynamite, The Blue Nib, Poetry Super Highway, and Rattle (photography), to name a few, as well as in a number of anthologies. Her first chapbook Alinea (Picture Show Press), came out in January 2019. Her father was a professor and her mother was a social worker, and their progressive beliefs as well as her childhood years in Brazil deeply influenced her values. Her passions are language, travel, and animals; the latter two often conflict as her pets prefer she stay at home. 

PASSOVER IN PLAGUE-TIME

by Betsy Mars

after Saeed Jones’s “Boy in a Whalebone Corset”  in  Prelude to Bruise

“The acre of grass is a sleeping swarm of locusts,
and in the house beside it,
tears too are mistaken” for a dark sea,
into which we dip our egg
hoping it will ignite in fertility,
that it will part, a million times—
or whatever is needed—

dividing into heart, lung, legs,
the brain and whatever refrain
we choose to utter
on this, one of the holy days,
to mark our division, and our coming together
a tribe in the end, passed over,
we find our bitter herbs
our unleavened bread

our toilet paper and paper towels shared:
the treasures of this day,
when we marked our doors,
hid inside and hoped to God
he’d pass us by.

Betsy Mars is a poet, educator, photographer, and occasional publisher. Her Kingly Street Press published its first anthology, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife, in October 2019. Her work has recently appeared in Verse-Virtual, The Blue Nib, The Ekphrastic Review, and Silver Birch Press. The daughter of a professor and a social worker, she has had a lifelong interest in issues pertaining to social justice.

SMOKE SIGNALS

by Betsy Mars

In the town where the Pilgrims settled, members of Native American tribes from around New England gathered for a solemn National Day of Mourning observance. Thursday’s noon gathering in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts,  recalled the disease, racism and oppression that European settlers brought. It’s the 48th year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day. —boston.com, November 23, 2017

Released, the dream where the pipe broke,
dumping oil into the water table.
Oil and water don't mix.
In another, the peace pipe
is passed, but one person,
or even a whole class,
refuses to share

or worse still—
turns it into a war drum.
Sticks and stones might break
my bones but names will be
thrown around haphazardly

igniting flames, festering old wounds,
clouding the discussion.
Run interference and divert.
Take up the cross. Toss that medicine,
man, unless you can afford it.

When you're on the trail
of tears, rub salt in the wounded.
Kneeling is a sin before football,
but not before God.

In God we trust, unless we're native
American, or any “other.”
The dreamcatcher is broken;
nightmares run rampant.

Betsy Mars is a poet, educator, mother and animal lover who spent part of her early childhood in Brazil. This experience led to an early awareness of income disparity, linguistic and cultural differences, as well as a love for travel and language. Her work has appeared in The Rise Up Review, The California Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among others.