THE BLAME GAME

by Joel Savishinsky

It is hard to predict where

     the next contagion will erupt,

          or how, or when.

 

Most of us do not even understand

     what is already understood

          about the plagues of the past.

 

Few recall, or ever know, for instance,

     that the “Spanish flu” of 1918 began

          at an American army base in Kansas.

 

But surely, at the next

     outbreak of outrage,

          the cause for the spread of whatever

 

may well be laid at the feet of a Chinese lab,

      an Asian market, or an African village…

          anywhere but here…

 

unless, of course,

     our leaders can blame

          someone like Dr. Fauci.

Joel Savishinsky, an anthropologist and gerontologist, is the author most recently of Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging (The Poetry Box, 2023). His earlier work, The Ends of Time: Life and Work in A Nursing Home, and Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, both won the Gerontological Society of America’s annual book prize. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his other writings have appeared in Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Passager, and The New York Times. He lives in Seattle, trying to raise hell and five grandchildren.

WE'RE SITTING AROUND A TABLE NOT FAR FROM THE RUSSIAN BORDER

by Ron Riekki

A Chinese artist, a Russian musician, and American poet,

and we talk about surveillance, sharing how dangerous it is

to be an artist, after speaking with a local who told us about

the tensions with Russia, how they're like a choking fog,

and the musician from Russia says it's all propaganda there,

says she doesn't care, that her voice will never be voiceless,

tells us about being taken in by the Russian police and how

she brutalized them with truth, was let go, and then let go

of her country, emigrating, immigrating, Euro-ricocheting around,

and hanging out with Pussy Riot, doing anti-war campaigns,

and we speak of the ten percent of the Russian population

being tortured, and she speaks of physical torture and

emotional torture and the torture of propaganda, and

the Chinese artist talks about holding up signs in Hong

Kong that were all white, not allowed to have signs with

actual words, so this haunting image, this effective image

of hundreds of artists and writers and protestors and students

holding up these white signs, ghost signs meant to haunt

politicians, and the American poet talks about being hunted

by the Trump administration for a pro-Islamic, pro-immigrant

tweet, how the administration administered paperwork to his

home, pages and pages and pages of warning, how watched

we are everywhere, he says, he thinks, he feels, and we are

near the Russian border, except it's shut down, too dangerous,

and here we are, doing art that is too dangerous, and having

this conversation that is too dangerous, so dangerous that

we turn off our phones to make sure we are not being listened

to, because we want to create the form of our words, rush

home and turn our conversations into lyrics and artwork

and this poem you are reading now, written near a border

that is rotting with worry, a border that lacks moonlight tonight.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

IMMIGRANT’S SONG

by Jim Burns

Riots broke out in Philadelphia after Nativists burned down a Catholic church in May 1844. This lithograph shows the Know-nothings (in the top hats) clashing with the state militia.

Out of the vapors
of the past
I come
to sing you a song
of the poor and huddled masses
who have gathered at your gates.

I am the inscrutable Chinese,
one of 20,000 from my land
who for a dollar a day built your
grand railway of the golden spike.

I am the drunken Irishman,
the mobbed-up Italian,
the ignorant Pole
who sweated and died
to forge the iron and erect
your palaces of steel.

I am the Shylock Jew 
whose sweatshop toil
made the clothes on your back,
but whose financial acumen you blame
for relieving you of your earnings.

I am the the suspected spy,
the German who had to change my name
to protect me from your Klan
when first our countries fought.

I am the devious Japanese whose family
were reviled as turncoats
and dwelt in your internment camps
while in Europe I fought and died for you.

I am the wild-eyed son of Middle Eastern deserts
denied entry into your land 
and murdered in your cities
because of the evil of a few
who, like me, pray to Allah.

I am of those deemed not human at your southern border,
who braved deserts and human predators
to pick your crops, roof your homes,
tend your lawns,
do the jobs your sons won’t do.

Think of me as you will,
but Lady Liberty, 
raise your torch to me.
I am America,
I am you.

Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana and received degrees from both Indiana State University and Indiana University. He then spent most of his working years as a librarian. A few years into his retirement he turned to a decades old interest in writing, especially poetry, and in the last two years has been fortunate enough to have published 18 poems and two short pieces of nonfiction online, in print or both. He lives with wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.

LITTLE THINGS AND BIG THINGS

by John Kotula

A terrible, terribly damaged boy nearly bleeds to death in a boat, under a tarp, in somebody’s back yard. Yes, he has blood on his hands and worse. How have we let this happen to one of our boys? But no one will say they are broken hearted. They will only say they are strong. “You picked the wrong city this time,” they say. I just want to cry for a while and hold each other.

My granddaughter is fussing in her car seat. I corkscrew my arm back and grope around for her blinky. I help her get it to her mouth. My beautiful daughter smiles at her beautiful daughter in the rearview mirror. The baby grabs my index finger in her damp, four month old fist and goes back to sleep. Something to suck on, the purr of the motor, someone within reach who loves her, is all she needs for contentment.

Way up in the mountains of Honduras there are plans to build a dam that no one needs or wants. It will make rich Hondurans richer. They will siphon off their share. It will make rich Americans richer. They will sell unsustainable technology to the rich Honduras. Some how the Chinese are involved. Some rich Chinese will get richer, too. The thatched roof houses of the poor people who live along the river will be thirty feet under water.

There is a young man who trusts me to give him advice. His mother is suddenly in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He is ashamed that he doesn’t understand her condition and doesn’t know how to make things better for her. I take the young man to the hospital and help him talk to the social worker. I joke with his mother in my bad Spanish and make her laugh. He feels a little better. I would be proud to be this young man’s father.

Automatic weapon fire blows apart a whole school full of tiny, fragile bodies. Even with the knowledge that they will never hold their own children again, the parents go to Washington and say please don’t let this happen to some one else. But the Republicans have so blatantly sold their souls, you got to wonder why God doesn’t strike them down. Hey God, where is the fire? Where is the brimstone? Where are the frogs and boils?

I am three floors above sea level in an old, old building. Looking out through wavy glass I can see the beach curve away to the north. A poet is reading about her memories of living in Alaska. I know many people in the room. Some of them I’ve known for forty years. In that moment, The New York Times and National Public Radio are far away. I don’t think so much about the little things. The big things are more important.

John Kotula is a writer and artist who lives in Peace Dale, Rhode Island.