ANTIQUES OR ARTIFACTS

by Carol Parris Krauss

by David Horsey

Some people like to comb the beach for gold coins, silver medals.

There’s an entire group of Civil War buffs who scan the fields
of Suffolk, traipse down to the marsh looking for mini-balls 
and musket pieces. You can purchase the luxury metal detector
for just over a hundred bucks plus shipping online. Artifacts. 

Webster defines the word as an item of cultural or historical interest. 
Pieces of who we were, the battles we chose. I know a man who 
has an entire room walled with knotty-pine shelves 
where he displays his Rebel buttons, Union canteens,
and the occasion dried-up timber rattler. His wife watches 
from the kitchen window as he walks the fallow fields 
with his robot arm shaking. Hours later, he comes inside
and grabs his iced tea. Two lemons. Plops down on the plaid couch
he inherited from Me-maw and begins to watch Live @ Five. 

Breaking news coming from Tennessee. How an entire building
seems to be jam-packed with artifacts. Old white antiques
hidden away in locked rooms. Secrets covered in a layer of dust.

Carol Parris Krauss loves to use vivid imagery. Her work is in One Art, The SC Review, Louisiana Literature, Broadkill Review, Story South, and Susurrus. She was recognized by the UVA press as a Best New Poet and her first book Just a Spit Down the Road was published by Kelsay.

INSURRECTION MALAISE

by Tricia Knoll

Image via Getty Images.

I watched that mob with confederate flags 

use their poles as stabbers. I thought we could never

get beyond this, never heal, and their coiled timbersnake

curled all too ready to deliver poison. Threat 

on glaucous yellow background. 

 

I thought we would never get beyond this.  

My stomach seized. Like when the towers fell. 

How tear gas billows as if the theater director

called for high-tone smoke and no going home

with a program in my pocket because warplay 

has no script apparent to the watchers 

even if the actors think it does, yell

bad dialogue in murder tones. 

 

I thought we would never get beyond that. 

The next morning’s coffee bittered as if exposed

to air too long and even the cream wasn’t enough

to settle me. Then sugar dumped from a big spoon,

and more sugar from the same spoon, same mug.

It was not the same as getting through this. 

One minute of sweetness at the bottom. After 

in the morning joe. One at a time. 

Tricia Knoll is busy writing letters to Republican Senators about why they should vote to impeach. The fear on insurrection day was built on lies.

THREE FLAGS

by Diane Elayne Dees

On my walks to the river, I pass
many American flags, and—
while I don’t like to judge—
I think I know what they stand for. 
In front of one house 
is a large Confederate flag,
and I’m sure I know what that stands for. 
Then, one day, I walk around the corner,
and am surprised and thrilled to see 
a huge rainbow flag in a neighbor’s yard.
The next day, an American flag is hung 
next to it. I wonder if the neighbor hung
the second flag as a means of protection;
I let my imagination run away with me. 
The following day, a third giant flag
appears next to the others—a flag
reminding me to vote for the two
most evil and incompetent men
I can recall having power in my lifetime.
Collective delusion has destroyed
cognitive dissonance. The red, white
and blue of democracy and the 
bright yellow and green and purple
of nature’s prism lift my spirits.
But now, every day, when I turn 
the corner, the colors of diversity
and freedom hurt my eyes,
trigger blood-red visions,
and intimate a sky so dark,

no rainbow can ever be visible.

Diane Elayne Dees's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, and she has two chapbooks forthcoming. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world.

CONDOLENCES ON THE PASSING OF YOUR CONFEDERATE MONUMENT

by MEH

Sunday night at Linn Park in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, a crowd took down the city of Birmingham's Confederate monument. Photo tweeted by Daniel Uhlfelder.

our deepest thoughts and prayers are with you
for the terrible loss you must be feeling. but
what was it doing in that part of town, so far away
from its own kind? didn’t it know, wasn’t it raised
better? (poor thing probably had a father in prison,
a mother on welfare, like so many of your people).
honestly though, it should have just followed the law,
not been out there on the street corner, glorifying thugs
of a bygone era (with all their violent music and chanting).
it’s un-American. it should have known its place,
known when to keep its mouth shut. but it wouldn’t stop
resisting. and I heard it had a weapon. it only got
what was coming to it. they had no choice, were only
doing their jobs. we should consider how they feel:
all lives matter. but it is a tragedy—no community
should watch a thing crushed to death like that while
children looked on. but the sad truth is it was well
past its prime and had an underlying health condition.

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet. The author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), his recent works are appearing or forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Bryant Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, Poemeleon, The Radical Teacher, Rejection Lit, The Revolution (Relaunch), Solstice, and Spiritus. MEH is an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education.

THE MOURNING AFTER

by Nan Ottenritter

Detail of Kehinde Wiley's "Rumors of War"

Drive downtown, in the circles can be found
Stonewall Jackson, Arthur Ashe in Monument town.
Two hooves in the air mean the rider died in battle,
Others want their freedom, don’t make me no chattle.
The history society debunks the horse limbs lore
But slavery, Lost Causes leave generations sore
and hurting from a war and the endless chore
of teaching you, the victor, writing the stor-
ies, the history, the truth of our nation.

On the block in Shockoe Bottom, bound in chains
Or, cause cotton weren’t the only crop, sold down the James.
We scrawl on Jeff Davis Black Lives Matter.
At Robert E. Lee’s feet red paint is splattered.
Say his name. Lynch Trump. This is racist.
Your vote was a hate crime. The south ain’t no oasis.

Yet near Monument Avenue a black man rides,
Nike high tops astride a horse with one foot high.
Pony-tailed dreadlocks, rips in his jeans,
Wounded in the battle of his own life it seems.
Yet regard his hoodied shoulders, straight and proud.
Regard his youth, his gaze, his head unbowed.
Wiley brought him here to Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
The statue sits right here, in Richmond unmarred
the painful mourning after in our own backyard.

Nan Ottenritter lives in Richmond, VA and has driven by the confederate statues for years. Yet in February, 2019 the city council voted to change the name of the Boulevard to Arthur Ashe Boulevard. In December, 2019 Kehinde Wiley’s statue Rumors of War was installed in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It stands in stark comparison to the statues on Monument Avenue. With both of these actions the author began to feel a little proud of what was once the capitol of the Confederacy.

SWAMP POEM

a sonnet by Cindy Hochman

Add caption

Throw your old comb & hairbrush into the swamp.
Throw your hamper full of dirty laundry into the swamp.
Throw that bad poem you wrote this morning into the swamp.
Throw your shattered-after-the-breakup heart into the swamp.
Throw your mother-in-law into the swamp.
Throw your cataracts, your ulcers, your tumors into the swamp.
Throw war and all its symbols into the swamp.
Throw all Rebel statues, from Virginia to Alabama, into the swamp.
Throw the lawyers, the bailiffs, the judges, and the guilty defendants into the swamp.
Throw the press secretary and her podium of mendacity into the swamp.
Throw the rolled heads of recently departed staffers into the swamp.
Throw the hurricanes’ fallen branches, and the West Wing’s executive branch,
  and the Great Lawn with its Easter Egg Roll and pardoned turkeys into the swamp.
And the president, that no-goodnik, into the fetid, putrid, malodorous, stinking swamp.


Cindy Hochman is the president of "100 Proof" Copyediting Services and the editor-in-chief of the online poetry journal First Literary Review-East. She is on the book review staffs of Pedestal magazine and Clockwise Cat. Her latest chapbook is Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press).

HOW TO REMOVE CONFEDERATE STATUES

by Patty Mosco Holloway





Locate them in Baltimore.
Give no advance notice, little fanfare.
Do it quickly; do it quietly
under cover of darkness
in the wee hours of the morning.
Allow flashing red lights and backup beeps
on heavy equipment.
Hire crews in T-shirts and hardhats.
Use crowbars, cranes, and cargo straps.
Hoist statues whole, bronze tons,
onto flatbed trucks.
Procure police cars to escort statues
out of town at sunrise.
Let the new day's rays
illuminate empty pedestals.

Next?

Find cranes strong enough
to hoist hatred from hearts.

Patty Mosco Holloway is a writing teacher.  She lives in Denver, Colorado. She often "hears" the starts of poems in conversations.  Advice:  Don't talk to her.

HOW TO BE THE BEST REPUBLICAN EVER

by Bill Livingston

Image source: Forward Progressives

Set your clocks back to 1950

Remove all foresight, no need to look forward

Be white

By any means necessary

Be a man

Only your wife or mother can control your body

Be the loudest one in the room

Let the meek inherit the rest of the earth

Listen to country music exclusively

Except Keith Urban – being married to Nicole Kidman ain’t country, Hoss

Actually live in the country

Don’t be that stubborn ball of flour in the melting pot

If you’re rich, live next to a country club

Toast the minorities who tend the greens, yet could never be members

Stay far away from cultural institutions

Such as libraries, museums, theatres, art house cinemas and bars featuring poetry nights Everything you need is on FOX, FOX NASCAR and the internet

Buy a gun, then another, then another, then another

Buy more bullets than you can possibly use in any kind of apocalypse

Protest abortion and Planned Parenthood with the same fervor you protest gun regulations

Let others appreciate the irony

Show your Southern pride and fly the Confederate flag

Show your Northern ignorance and fly it in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, etc

Love thy neighbor

As long as they’re straight, white, Christian, Republican and actually your neighbor

Go to bed early

Late night talk show hosts mock your heroes incessantly

Make love only in the Missionary position

You can get creative when the NEA is obliterated

Fill your nightstand with exciting works of fiction

Start with Rand, Clancy, Le Carre and, of course, the Bible

Instill envy in your peers

Take a selfie with Donald Trump, Sarah Palin or a dead lion

Support lawmakers who defund public education

While you teach your children to hate, hate, hate

Adopt a firm grasp of right and wrong

Remember, cops are always right and Black Lives Matter is always wrong

Ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?”

Then do the opposite

Always offer Thoughts & Prayers

Without actually thinking or praying

Numb yourself to war, but choose your enemies wisely

Start with Muslims, Mexicans, filthy liberals and the irksome truth

Read this poem, hate this poem

It doesn’t even rhyme

Burn a cross on my lawn, ignite it with these words

Because I’m very different from you

Originally from Altoona, PA, Bill Livingston is a poet, humorist, screenwriter and advertising copywriter who has been published in Danse Macabre, Saturday Afternoon Journal, Treehouse, Flipside, Mobius, and forthcoming in Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge. He is a supporting member of The Poetry Project and an original member of Brooklyn Poets and Bowery Arts + Science. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and twin daughters.

BY ANY STANDARD

by Kenneth Salzmann

The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said. In an interview with the News-Leader on Monday, she said the flag represents faith, family and freedom — not slavery, racism or white supremacy. On Thursday, the News-Leader was alerted by readers that Robb’s husband Nathan, co-owner of the store, once tried to adopt a highway in Arkansas on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Nathan Robb’s father is Thomas Robb, the national director of the KKK. (Photo: Valerie Mosley/News-Leader) —Springfield News-Leader, June 26, 2015

Far be it from me to rag on
the beloved flag that yet waves
not (as some say) to celebrate
the keeping of slaves but (as you
assure me) to pay all due tribute
to your valorous ancestors
who waged brave war against
the relentless arc of history even as
they carved your glorious home
land out of stubborn red
clay and soft lacerated flesh.

All praise be to those
who came before you bearing
whips and shackles ax handles
at the doors of shabby
roadside restaurants christly
crosses fierce fires
of redemption and the proud
blood that even now
flows freely in your veins.


Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies, including The New Verse News, Rattle, Comstock Review, Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents (Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises), Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press), The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press).

DEAR GOD:

by Gil Hoy

Take down
the stars and bars,

the Confederate
battle flag that flies,

over the Capitol
in Charleston.

And take down
the Confederate

veterans' monument
and the statue of the white

supremacist who was once
governor and senator

that stand nearby.
Then take down all

the vestiges of slavery,
every fiber and every stone,

every hair-thin remnant
of that terrible time

until not a rootlet remains
in any city or town.

But when the symbols of racism
are all cleared away, taken down

carried off and finally
gone:  How to remove

the lingering hatred
from a grown man’s heart?


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, magna cum laude, and won a silver medal in the New England University Wrestling Championship at 177 lbs. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as an elected Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Gil’s poems have been published recently in The New Verse News, Clark Street Review, The Penman Review, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, The Zodiac Review and To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology.