SPEAKING OF LEGACIES

by Devon Balwit

King Charles III built his own empire long before he inherited his mother’s. Charles, who formally acceded to the British throne on Saturday, spent half a century turning his royal estate into a billion-dollar portfolio and one of the most lucrative moneymakers in the royal family business. —The New York Times, September 13, 2022

Your average Brit pays to inherit. Not he.

King Charles gets his tax free,

 

the pelf of the Commonwealth studiously invested.

You’d think working folk would grow disgusted

 

at the granting of titles to Saudis for cash, the off-

shore holdings, the real-estate profits,

 

that they’d line up with fists raised rather than phones.

Why should HRH earn 28 million

 

last year alone when inflation’s at 10%?

Are we really so suckered by pageantry?

 

Imagine the Crown Estate and the Duchy of Cornwall

liquidated, the money put towards ending global

 

warming. Now that would be a worthy legacy—

one to send cheering crowds into the streets.

Devon Balwit walks in all weather. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2021].

QUEEN OF CEYLON

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The Queen is dead. This afternoon

at Balmoral Castle, on the eighth

of September. We mourn her

 

throughout the Commonwealth

and much of the planet. This is

no easy passing, from the world

 

before and the world to come.

When she assumed her brief

India and Ceylon had just won

 

their latest independence. 

When she traveled to Ceylon 

in 1954 to see the fledgling 

 

new nation she charmed 

everyone she met, from mahout 

to rickshaw driver to staff 

 

at the Queen's Hotel

in Kandy. I imagine

she stayed at Galle Face too,

 

and Sir Chittampalam

Gardiner led the royal couple

to their rooms. Dignity

 

is the word. Quiet resolve.

Memory of how Britain

survived the Blitz, how

 

it let go of its imperial

arrogance to later become

part of Europe, one among

 

equals—how it lost great

comics to homogenization

of the transatlantic

championing of money

above all values. She

saw Monty Python,

 

Dave Allen, the Two 

Ronnies, Peter Sellers,

and other geniuses on stage, 

 

in music, on television,  

leave their wit in history

books of a golden age.

 

She lived through many

and leaves us now to balance 

our nostalgia against 

 

the return of a would-be 

iron lady to Downing Street.

God forbid Truss may

 

just bring out the artists

again, born in suffering,

a new Mersey sound,

 

a Notting Hill dub,

English revolution,

Commonwealth invasion.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

KOMAGATU MARU

by Akua Lezli Hope





Forgiveness,
                      an evolution
Apology
                is          
                     revolution
Acknowledgment
                               does not redeem
                               but embodies
growth                          maturity                understanding
re                                   cog                                nition            
               known
                                see            again
                                             grant permission        
 now                            better                        now now now    
the  denied
                       arrival
                              has landed
disembark

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, wearables, jewelry, adornments and peace whenever possible. A third generation Caribbean American, New Yorker and firstborn, she has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts,  Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. Her manuscript, Them Gone, won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in 2016.