LOWNDES COUNTY

by Mariana McDonald

Source: Balls and Strikes, April 21, 2025. Pictured: Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who said, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.”

       for Catherine Flowers

A low wind shifts and yet the smell

persists, erasing whiffs of sweetbrush,  

freesia, lilac. Even the gardenia,  

drowned out by the blaring stench  

of waste, raw and moving, straight-  

piped, pumped into the yards of poor   

folks in Lowndes county, Alabama,  

where Jim Crow and ramshackle join   

to spread a putrid presence onto lawns   

where children play, E. coli and danger   

in the dirt. No rains can clean it,  

clear it, make the grass a sea of   

fresh green bending in the wind,  

seed of childhood memories, scent of  

freshly-cut & gathered blades of summer.  

A memory Lowndes County children may not have.  

One brave fighter worked for years to change it,  

got a president to sign his name to fairness,  

agree to let the lilies and magnolias  

one day reign there, redolent of justice,  

until one stinking voice called it illegal, 

overturned it,  cancelling the clean-up,  

leaving stench  

to flourish

Author’s note: 

“Lowndes County” is about the poor and 72% Black county in Alabama where lack of public sewage treatment facilities forces residents to “straight-pipe” sewage into their lawns, creating a putrid public health and environmental disaster. After years of residents battling the state to have the problem addressed, and inspired by the leadership of Lowndes County native Catherine Flowers, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation which resulted in the 2023 landmark environmental justice agreement. The agreement calls for wide-ranging public health remediation and sanitation improvements. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice deemed the agreement “DEI” and therefore illegal, and overturned the agreement this month.

Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, writer, scientist, and activist. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She became a Hambidge Arts Center Fellow in 2012, and was appointed Black Earth Institute Scholar/Fellow in 2022. She lives in Atlanta. 

SPRING (RUDE) AWAKENING

or HANDS OFF MY SHOWERHEAD

President Trump, who has waged a long-running battle against low water pressure, signed an executive order that redefined a common bathroom fixture. —The New York Times, April 10, 2025

by Ann Weil

after Louise Glück’s “October (section I)”
 

Is it Spring again, is it green again,
aren’t we a field of four-leaf clover,
aren’t we coming up posies, 
 
weren't we promised,
aren’t we deserving,
aren’t we special, 
 
wasn’t he strong,
tougher than bullets,
 
didn’t he vow a phoenix nation,
to clean the shop
of waste and scum,
isn’t he bold, isn’t he clever, not telling
the half of his plans 
for ’25—
 
I remember our weakness, our shameful
kindness, our brotherly love, our lead-by-example,
didn’t those values drag us down,
drown us in our Gulf of America,
 
I can’t remember 
which government bloat 
I’m supposed to hate more—
park rangers or cancer researchers,
 
I no longer care
about clean air and healthcare, 
but, man, those egg prices
keep me up at night—
 
who needs allies, free-trade, or 401Ks,
who needs hurricane warnings
or Judy Blume books, 
 
down with DEI, up with ICE,
when was I young there were no illegals, 
no signs in Spanish, my grandparents spoke
only English, swept their Yiddish 
under the rug,
 
when did the taco trucks takeover
and bubble-tea shops spread like a rash,
when did a skirt 
give a guy a free pass
to the ladies room—
a scourge more worrisome 
than measly measles,
 
I blame the Fathers’ faulty foundation—
the Constitution’s lunatic creed,
 
didn’t we thrive without due process, 
without free-speech and fair elections,
 
wasn’t it great
when we were subjects
subject to
the whims of a king,
 
didn’t so-called progress
lead us to this towering cliff,
 
aren’t we jumping, won’t we bounce,
bounce back better like he said,
 
yes, we’re jumping,
isn’t it Spring?  
Yes, it’s Spring, 2025.

Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, 2024). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2024, Pedestal Magazine, RHINO, Chestnut Review, DMQ Review, Maudlin House, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. A four-time Pushcart nominee, Weil lives with her husband in Ann Arbor, MI, and Key West, FL.

ON THE AFTERMATH OF A CONSEQUENTIAL ELECTION

by Peter Nohrnberg

Art by Soybeing at Michael Moore Substack

Outraged and exhausted, we make our choice
guided by billions that masquerade as voice.
Like good consumers, we were well apprised; 
knew the cost of eggs, if not of lies.
Fever dreams of unruly immigration 
return to T---p the frayed reigns of the nation.
Sworn in under the Capitol’s Rotunda—
a cold snap turns DC to arctic tundra—
the colossus takes his oath on Lincoln’s Bible.
(Who but Abe or Jesus can claim libel?) 
Fearing his dark promise of retribution 
Silicon Valley makes a contribution. 
Bureaucrats begin to take their leave 
as Musk and DOGE descend like drones on Kyiv.
Among those given the algorithmic axe:
employees who fend off nuclear attacks. 
Less government reform than “shock and awe,” 
cutting of red tape, and rule of law. 
T---p wields his blunt Sharpie like a machete,
shreds the Constitution to confetti.
Vital public info goes up in smoke,
sacrificed on the altar of “anti-woke.”
An able four-star general gets the sack,
replaced by one with three-stars who’s not black.  
POTUS’s pen claims there’s but two genders;
and those born intersex? return to sender!
Like King David who forgave his half-brother, 
Trump pardons both rioter and traitor. 
The Senate coddles his menagerie of weasels 
while unvaxed kids in Texas contract measles.  
The keys to New York City pass to ICE
while Don Junior cavorts on Greenland’s ice.
Deported “illegals” are dealt a dismal fate:
and on the return flight? The brothers Tate. 
Statecraft becomes T---p’s Art of the Self-Deal,
while folks in Gaza scavenge for a meal. 
(One day they’ll all be served a ten-course feast 
at the “Riviera of the Middle East”;
but first they must go on a long vacation 
while Gaza undergoes renovation). 
Back in the Oval Office on his knees 
Zelenskyy begs, but stops at “pretty please”:
desperately in need of guns and tanks,  
dressed down for not dressing up, not saying “thanks.” 
 
Does the arc of history bend toward justice;
Or does history simply bend and break us? 
Does democracy die in darkness, or blinding light? 
How should we view this spectacle, our plight? 
Will art and culture help us ride out the storm,
or did they bring about this new abnorm?  
Did treating blue collar folks as ignore-ables 
help gather MAGA’s “basket of deplorables”?
Or were their grievances, self-pity
what drove them to become so proudly sh---y? 
Perhaps there’s something deep within us all 
that answers to the con man’s siren call.   
Devotion to another’s certainty 
distracts us from the world’s contingency.  
How easy to blame DEI, the border;
easier still to make disorder out of order.
 
When power controls the future and the past, 
can even the written word persist, outlast?  
Yet words, like insects tend to stick around;
gone for years, they emerge from underground:
can sting or float, be bee or butterfly,
little strong things to pinch an ugly lie.   

A poet, cultural critic, and a scholar of literary modernism, Peter Nohrnberg has had his poetry published by Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, and Oxford Poetry, among other journals. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. 

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION AND HOPE

by Cathy Lee

Today, in a quiet English classroom

In Southeast Ohio,

An English teacher 

And special needs teacher 

Discussed how to incorporate 

The work of students in the special needs classroom

In this year’s school-wide literary anthology

Of poems, stories, and art.

This year’s theme 

is hope. 

Some of these high school students will 

Be able to circle images of pictures

That give them hope.

Some of these students 

Have the ability to write a few sentences

And draw a picture about

what gives them hope.

Most of these students 

Rarely get included 

in school-wide projects,

Often remain hidden

And anonymous

Like Boo Radley.

But we 

are working 

To change that. 

While pompous politicians 

Flaunt their abilities to dismantle 

Programs for DEI, 

We move forward,

Inviting the voices

Of our fellow humans  

Who can name hope

By circling an image of a bird,

Or drawing their dog,

Or writing about a yummy piece of apple pie. 

Mmm, mmm. So good.

Cathy Lee is a wife, mother of almost adulting daughters, one in college and one in high school, and a high school English teacher in Southeast Ohio. She enjoys running, baking, and reading. 

MISS-SPOKE

by Adele Evershed

I Google the name of the new White House
Press Secretary—Karoline Leavitt—
and find she’s young—27,
the youngest press secretary in history.
This, and the fact she is a woman doing a difficult job,
should make me like her,
so I start to listen. 
Her manner is abrasive,
like a loofah on your ear,
rubbing my skin the wrong way.
But sometimes an album is more than its cover,
so I persevere.
She cycles through her talking points:
Egg prices—blame sleepy Joe Biden,
Trump’s visit to North Carolina—
like the hand of God.
a plane crashing—DEI policies.
Round and round,
like a malevolent Barbie News Anchor.
All the while the cross at her throat
bops about virtue signaling
like a protest outside an abortion clinic,
‘I’m only doing what Jesus wants.’ 
But on someone who has no virtue,
it’s just another fashion accessory,
the same as Madonna’s
when she sang, ‘Like a Virgin’
(and Karoline—definitely no virgin,
 married a man 32 years her senior,
 had a baby six months after the wedding—just saying). 
Her fake smile is as nauseating, 
as her ‘Make America Blonde Again' t-shirt.
Then she tweets about education— 
how it should only clothe a child
in those below the knee old fashions— 
Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmetic
AND NOTHING ELSE.
As a teacher I think—
maybe she has a point
because if she knew her ABCs,
she’d spell Karoline with a C.


Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. You can find some of her work in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press), The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press) and an upcoming chapbook, In the Belly of the Wail, with Querencia Press.