DIANNE FEINSTEIN IS DEAD

by Marissa Glover

This is the truest thing 
you will read all day. 
 
Some people mourn
others will rejoice
 
some write about legacy
others, swaths of destruction.
 
It happens every time.
Rush Limbaugh, bin Laden—
 
the women/witches at Salem.
What you see always depends 
 
on where you stand. Just ask
the reporters taking notes
 
at Calvary. There were women
crying at the foot of the cross;
 
there were soldiers gambling
for garments. 
 
If you’re looking for truth,
you will not find it here. 
 
Not even consensus. Except
Dianne Feinstein is dead.
 
Be grateful. Elvis and Tupac
can’t even get that much. 
 
Witnesses of the same car crash
offer cops different details…
 
Who is right? It doesn’t matter.
Everything goes into the report.
 
And someday it will be you,
likely not in the news cycle
 
because you’re not famous.
The only people invited
 
to speak at your funeral will 
have something good to say.
 
But there will always be others,
ready with their own story.
 
The only truth: you are dead.

Marissa Glover lives in Florida, dodging storms and swatting bugs. Her poetry collection Let Go of the Hands You Hold was released by Mercer University Press in 2021. Box Office Gospel was published by Mercer in 2023. Follow her on X (Twitter) at @_MarissaGlover_.

ODE TO THE AK-47

by Judith Terzi

                    after the obituary for Mikhail Kalashnikov, Los Angeles Times, 12-24-13


He was born hearty without
a heart in 1947, weighed eight
pounds but had few moving parts.
He screamed six hundred bursts
of fire blood that ricocheted
from his banana-shaped clip-crib
through jungles and steppes and
tunnels and flesh and now. He is
the Lego for child soldiers who
crave him, caress him with agile,
wide-eyed fingers. He is their
playmate; they deconstruct him,
then rebuild him for pleasure.
They drag him into sandboxes,
into the silt of rivers and creeks,
through grasses of marshes,
the grime of exile, crime of
hunger. Drug lords fondle him
during drive-bys and executions.
The chouchou of the Hutu,
Saddam, Bin Laden, the Afghan
mujahideen, he became a Russian
icon for creative genius. He is
the most lethal firearm in human
combat. Yet, with so few moving
parts, without a heart, he can be
bought for the cost of a live chicken.


Judith Terzi holds an M.A. in French Literature. Recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies including Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's (Barefoot Muse Press), Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo Press), The Raintown Review, and Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes Press). Her fourth chapbook, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, was just published by Finishing Line.