THE OILIGARCHS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

We are living in deadly heat

We are living in a climate inferno

Growing in intensity season by season

We are living in fire

We are living in weather conditions

Created by avarice and greed

Created by the princes of petroleum

The captains of capital

We are witnessing temperatures soar

We are witnessing our fellow humans

Particularly the most vulnerable

Expire of the extreme heat –

People living on the streets

With nowhere to escape the sun

Elders with weakened immune systems

Infants whose little bodies cannot cope

The weather today:

110 degrees in Phoenix, 107 in Grand Junction

105 in Tulsa, 101 in Casper,

No relief in sight

When I was a young boy

We lived near a greenhouse

Where the neighborhood kids sometimes gathered

On sub-zero winter days

The embracing warmth

The rich, organic stink of humus

And manure and decomposing straw,

The summer-in-winter just next door

We knew why the heat couldn’t escape

Up through those hundreds of glass panes

We learned it in sixth-grade science:

The greenhouse effect

An exquisitely balanced system

That lets just the right amount of heat out

That keeps just the right amount of heat in

That makes life on earth possible

Now carbon emissions have thickened the glass

To trap more heat

To skew the ancient equilibrium

To weaponize the weather

We have protested outside office buildings

We have blockaded refinery entrances

We have ranted and chanted and invoked the future

To change the hearts and minds of the oiligarchs 

To remind them of sixth-grade science 

To remind them of the delicate balance

To demand that they cease and desist

But they won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t… stop…

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.

IMMIGRANTS ARE TAKING OUR JOBS

by Robert Wildwood

When Lever Alejos of Venezuela arrived at the southern border penniless in July, he gladly accepted a free bus ride to Washington, D.C., courtesy of the state of Texas. He had no family or friends to receive him, and spent one night in the plaza across from Union Station. He soon settled into a homeless shelter. “I have nothing,” Mr. Alejos, 29, said on his third day in the city, “but I have the will to work and succeed.” Two months later, Mr. Alejos is making between $600 to $700 a week, saving up to buy a used car and planning to move out of the shelter. “There is so much opportunity here,” he said on Thursday, at the end of a day’s work. “You just have to take advantage of it.” —The New York Times, September 18, 2022

“Immigrants are taking our jobs”

after he said that to me

I wondered how it could be true

that a person with little capital and

only the possessions they carried

was so powerful that

they could “Take” a job from someone.

   Everytime I ever got a job

I had to ask for it

and a job was offered to me.

   Talk about the capitalists who

are giving jobs away to

desperate people willing to accept lower pay

Inside our country or worldwide.

   Talk about the capitalists who

turned their back on you and your family

to exploit a vulnerable working class population

the immigrants.

   Follow the money and see 

who is the real thief

Robert Wildwood, a poet from Duluth, Minnesota, makes his living as a nurse.

END OF THE LINE

by Howard Winn

Chinese Communist Party leaders are afraid that the Dalai Lama will not have an afterlife. Worried enough that this week, officials repeatedly warned that he must reincarnate, and on their terms. Tensions over what will happen when the 14th Dalai Lama, who is 79, dies, and particularly over who decides who will succeed him as the most prominent leader in Tibetan Buddhism, have ignited at the annual gathering of China’s legislators in Beijing. . . . Party functionaries were incensed by the exiled Dalai Lama’s recent speculation that he might end his spiritual lineage and not reincarnate. That would confound the Chinese government’s plans to engineer a succession that would produce a putative 15th Dalai Lama who accepts China’s presence and policies in Tibet. --New York Times, March 11, 2015

The train has reached the
station and will be taken
out of further service.
All passengers please
proceed to the platform.
It is reported as possible
that the Dalia Lama may not
choose reincarnation bringing
to a close the ageless reign
of his timeless essence in order
to thwart the Red Capitalists
now milking crony connections
to make the nouveau riche of
the modern China connected
to the high end real estate
of London, Paris, and New York
and who desperately still need
their own dogma for the Tibetan
region the Chinese covet as
also prime real estate where
they can park the excess
Chinese now filling their
historical land and deposit their
young like money laundering
shady deals in the best Ivies
and yet they desire Shangri La
as their very own and this
is what the 14th Dalai Lama
will short circuit if his spirit
says no more and no return
in the new body of some
favored infant for number 15
no matter what the descendants
of Mao wish they can only pretend.

Howard Winn's poetry and fiction has been published recently in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Taj Mahal Review, Descant (Canada), Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. He has a B. A. from Vassar College and an M. A. from the Stanford University Writing Program.