THE INHERITANCE

by Jim Bellanca

Gainesville, Georgia, 2020 (Shutterstock)

Jim Crow’s obituary read,

“After a lengthy illness, Jim has passed away,

His Crow name now just history.” 

I thought “maybe not, maybe so.”

(You cannot trust the news these days.)

 

I knew Jim’s sister Jane had moved to Toronto

with her DACA son Juan

a surprise, a ten-year caboose

behind three sisters college gone,

had joined the family late.

Juan Crow was the most interesting one,

a son who’d volunteered for war, 

three tours in Afghanistan’s battle fields,

a Silver Cross and long times spent from love.

Back home, a hero named, he learned again, 

(most definitely not his first experience),

the curse of Jim Crow’s name, 

with his life separated by skin

in school,

        —at water fountains

        —on school bus ride

        —in restaurants

        —in restrooms

        —in voting booths

        —in marriage beds

the profile depicting all brown men

as one no matter where or who or when

ICE labeled shady caricatures,  

        —“beaner”

        —“wetback”

        —“gringo”​

        —“spic”

who tequila too much, siesta too long, 

just “don’t belong” on our turf;

accused of job stealing, rape, and more, 

tattooed as M-13,

by Presidential decree,

      —“the worst of hombres”

      —“the most detestable of human beings”

      —“the lowest despicable animal beast”

      —“a greaser druggy poisoning our lands”

any excuse the man can name

while hooded fiends from ICE 

day-quota-sized kidnapping any brown man

      —in church or school  

      —in hospital bed

      —in shopping mall

      —in strawberry fields 

      —in pizza huts

all blared and shared in local tv news, 

dread images bent with bowed shaved heads, 

arms tattoed with criminal marks

slow marched to caged jail cells,

(no one knows where)

—to scare the most innocent

—to leave their family love 

—to end their journey to freedom’s land

—to prove the power of the President

            by breaking what laws, he wished.

 

Juan Crow’s red blood

once given to save the land, the nation he loved,

no longer flows free. Juan sits in Alcatraz,

in his separate unequal cell

all son and martyr and hero dream

of Jim Crow newborn, a cosmic transfer,

a heritage inherited without recourse

Jim’s curse transferred to Juan, 

a lifetime injustice to bare, 

all ball and chain and prison wrack, 

all Sisyphus rock on his back.

Jim Bellanca, former English teacher, publisher and gadfly, now a late blooming poet, favors paining memory images about nature, family, peace, social justice and wry comments about senior life. He fervently assumes a “No Prufrock I” position when he writes about social injustice. More than two dozen poetry journals including Witcraft, Write City zine, Aerial Journey. Down In the Dirt, Sparks of Caliope, Westwood Quarterly, The Lyric, and East on Central have published his poems.

AS EMPATHY FAILED

by Imogen Arate

Cartoon by Nate Beeler (Cagle Cartoons) via Tulsa World.

Let them face the insecurity of not knowing 

if home will remain haven 

in the hours separating dawn and dusk

Let them taste the bitter metal of cruelty

that tosses life into uncertainty

while hiding behind secured gates

Let them be exposed without retreat

to ready canines famished for sinking

into the bleeding of abused flesh

As empathy could not sway

the concrete heart

let them be cast into the weight

of lead shoes drowning 

without fail in the muck 

below the azure of waterlines

Let the stirring chaos made

by unsympathetic hands

swallow their owners 

into the whirlwind they 

conjured with others in mind

Let this ouroboros birthed

in ill intent latch onto

its diseased umbilical tail 

and ensnare those who

envisioned its callous trap

in its tightening coil

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She proudly hails from an immigrant family whose previous undocumented status and associated economic burdens nearly robbed her the opportunity to pursue higher education.  She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published on the Global Vaccine Poem Project and Documented Experiences and in The Opiate. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

THEY AREN'T JUST TAKING SELFIES

by Tricia Knoll

Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'. CLICK HERE to see her dramatic speech via CNN.

having sex before graduation,
or trying pot before sloe gin.

They volunteer, ride horseback
to halt pipelines, engage

with hip hop, rockers and rappers
to say words that need saying,

march in Washington and our city,
enlist, vote, call for police accountability,

and want citizenship for DACA immigrants.
Teenagers and twenty-somethings

see a world every day on their phones
where shooters slaughter friends

in school because there is no will
to ban assault weapons and control guns.

They know shots crack living room windows
on residential streets, that gangs fight useless

wars. When young people knew rightness
of the opportunity for gay marriage,

the nation swayed and so did judges.
They are screaming for gun control

and the right to sit in school
and learn without fear

with no more brush-off praying
for teachers and families

until something is done.
Yell with them.

We need them
to know we’re with them.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has signed petitions for gun control for more than forty years. "We are children" say the survivors in Parkland. Do we need to hear more? She doesn't. She is tired of the empty rhetoric of pray for the families and do nothing to stop gun lobby money in Washington. Her book How I Learned to Be White is coming out from Antrim House in 2018.

VIEW FROM ABOVE (A CAROL)

by Melissa Balmain 

"Argh," the herald angels sing,
"Who's this guy who thinks he's King—
Grabbing gold (and other stuff),
Kicking Dreamers in the duff,
Lobbing incoherent tweets,
Flitting off to golf retreats?

"Argh," the herald angels sing,
"How'd they pick this ding-a-ling?

"Christ, it really frosts our gourd,
Seeing such a threat ignored—
Any day, he'll twitter, 'Hey,
Rocket Man, it's bombs away!'
But what do his minions do?
Say, 'Enough' and stage a coup?
No, they simply kowtow while
He's got crazy on speed dial!

"Argh," the herald angels shout,
"Earthlings, while you can, get out!"

Melissa Balmain is the Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (Winner of the Able Muse Book Award), is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

INCANTATION: LET THE MAGIC BEGIN

by Mare Leonard

art by Noely Ryan @ ArtStation

You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man. I can grab your pussy, stick out my tongue, spit, sputter like geysers from below.

Into what hell of fake news,  ruse of tax cuts,  mountains of lies, the lawyer in the room guise  stirs the cauldron  today? Don't lean on hopes of Flynt. He scratched a rock, lit a light of immunity for morality or him? Like a geyser, he may spark, sputter, reach to the sky and fizzle. The devil resides in the cauldron below. Deep under the caw caw of the crow, geysers spout up and we shout this is it, the one, howl, don't let babies burn  burn, burn, don't let lifelines fall through the cracks, don't give  billions to the rich. don't mock the middle, the poor, the immigrant. Drown out congressmen in LaLaLand who like Marie Antoinette shout, Let them eat cake. Geese honkhonk, Resist. How does the GOPP, the party of the pedophiles exist, how do they move and eat and sleep? Hooked on opiods, burgers, midnight tweets, a belief in trickle down economics, the lie that sweeps the donors cash for their ten thou dinner treats, another castle on a hill?  We observe, take photos when the earth splits, sweeps you all below. We sing, you can run you but you can't hide, you can shout  but Mueller and the FBI will  crack you GingerBreadMan and your vanilla wafer friends. You'll tremble and crumble, rollrollroll into the underland.  And in the heavens  the #MeToo will light the sky.  We'll sing, love, love, love, hug women, men, babies, The LGBTQ, DACA, Muslims all who  rise from the dead to hear from above no one can  pardon the King of Scam.

Mare Leonard lives in an old school house overlooking The Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.  Although her most natural writing voice is humorous she has published in a range of voices and in all forms and subject matters. She was a finalist in last year's NY State Di Biase contest. Some of her latest publications appear in the Vietnam poetry publication from Perfume River, Rats Ass Review, Figroot, Sweet Tree, Eunoia and in the British Journal of Arts&Letters.