RENT FOR OUR ROOM ON EARTH

by Barbara Simmons  

after Muhammed Ali

Not sure where that is, sometimes, my room, my home,
but this west coast city has too many zip codes,
and too many faces that turn away
don’t look at you, sometimes beyond, afraid connecting might mean
you want something and here there are too many
whose wants aren’t being met
whose needs go unwatched whose backs we don’t have.
Sounds on this hot Sunday rise like hot air sending gospel notes
beyond the outdoors stage, lifting words that catch up with my feet
so I am walking keeping time
walking and watching and walking and listening and walking and hearing
“Give me your arms for the broken hearted    and San Jose cried with Dayton and El Paso and Gilroy.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten   and San Jose cries for all who don’t have refuge.
Give me your eyes so I can see”   and I cry until my tears clear my eyes, and I hear
the words on your t-shirt sing to me of  Ali, you walking towards me, me looking at you with you.
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth
My room here on earth—so many rooms where I’ve slept and risen
loved, been lost, saved, often still looking for redemption, my many lives
spent trying to understand  words we wear, words we feel, words I say.
I stop to mouth the words to you, to all of you, that yes I’ll have your back
I’ll read and listen and watch and hear and see and see and see.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston and lives in California; her dual environment—shapes, skylines, even color wheels—informs her poetry, as do her families of origin and extended. She graduated from Wellesley College, received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in Educational Administration from Santa Clara University. As a secondary school English teacher, she was able to revisit texts she loved with students who inspired her to think more about how we communicate with each other on pages/screens as well as face-to-face. Retired, Simmins savors the smaller parts of life and language, exploring the communion of words as ways to remember and to envision and to heal. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, Soul Lit, Hamline Review, Oasis Anthology, Writing it Real and Common Ground, among others, as well as short Perspectives on NPR affiliate. 

YES, THEY SOW GUNS INTO THE BELLY OF THIS WORLD

by Ariana D. Den Bleyker





You cannot sow leaves back to a tree,
unpluck the plume of an eagle.
When words begin to rot the tongue,
those words cannot be swallowed back.

There is a dish to hold the sea,
a brassiere to hold the sun,
a compass for the galaxy,
a voice to wake the dead.

But this is the silence between us.
And this is why there will be no nest.
Because this is a relationship
between a bird & a gun.

Shots burst out into a crowd;
and, we saw the red-hot glint,
watching & crying & asking
that question over again.

Talons fall from the sky,
settle, & turn to rust. I hate you,
I think, as you shoot me
to death with a rifle in my face:

Born to pull the trigger.
Born to light the match.
Born to see the blood.
Born to steal the hope.

You feel rage & there are bodies
on the floor, me, dying,
almost dead, knees stuck
together with feathers & blood.

One gun to hold the bullets;
one finger to pull the trigger.
Truth wears everyday clothes.
Tufts crimson as sunset pass us by.


Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches(Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Even the Statue Weeps (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2019), and Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Between Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.

BLEEDING OUT

by Lisa J. Rocklin

Let's just leave it down:

the flag—
half-staff.
Raise it high
on days when

no one dies
            like that. 

Declare a holiday. 

Thoughts 
make ineffective gauze.
Prayers 

absorb no blood.
Flags were not meant

to serve 
as tourniquets
or crucibles of
            patriotism.

Let's just kneel 
together
every time
our banner waves
for these days 
we share—
collecting grief like debt.

Let's mourn 
the self-destruction
            of a nation. 

Let there be rage for 
the addict we can't save
who shoots up 
skin that isn't his
triggered by . . . 
            it doesn't matter why.

As long as he's fed
as long as we're willing
to yield more dead
as long as we keep 
loading the chamber
let's just leave it down—
as a shroud—

star-spangled 

and red.

Lisa J. Rocklin is a writer, facilitator, community builder, and associate director of Women Writing for (a) Change, a nonprofit organization in Cincinnati, OH, that offers supportive writing circles to nurture and celebrate the individual voice.

CHURCH OF THE HOLY GUNS

by John Kaprielian

Someday all poems will have to be
about shootings and killing sprees
It seems that's all that happens these
days and if we do not change our ways
there will be no time to write about things
like the first light of dawn that kisses the
treetops aflame against a carmine sky or
waves that wash dancing silver
fish across shell-flecked sand

No, there will be no time for that only
blood and fear and hate and tears
the sick sweet smell of gunpowder
that hangs in the air like incense
at some perverse Church of Holy Guns
while mothers kiss cold lips and
bleach washes crimson stains
from shell-shocked floors and walls

Who needs poems about nature
and love when there are elegies
and laments to be written thoughts
and prayers to be mouthed
and promises to be made
and forgotten until the next time
which will probably be the day
after tomorrow

A natural history photo editor by day, John Kaprielian has been writing poetry for over 35 years. In 2012 he challenged himself to write a poem a day for a year and self-published the poems in a book 366 Poems: My Year in Verse available on Amazon. His poems have been published in The Five-Two Poetry Blog, Down in the Dirt Magazine, TheNewVerse.News, Naturewriting.com, The Blue Nib, The Blue Mountain Review, and Minute Magazine. He lives in Putnam County, NY with his wife, teenage son, and assorted pets. He is thoroughly sick of writing poems like this.

GARDEN VEGETABLES

by Joan Mazza

The garden blooms again in profusion,
offers snow peas and sugar snaps,
lettuces green and crisp. The tomatoes
have never tasted so good. Maybe
the heavy spring rain kept the ground
moist during  a critical window, maybe

it’s the usual cycle of the earth. Hands
in the dirt provide distraction,
the sense of doing something useful,
healthy, with an outcome you can eat—
most basic feeling of security. Logs
on the wood pile cure for winter
while you can tomatoes, pickle cukes.

Without TV or radio, without knowledge
of the height of children, you’d never know
the year. Gardens’ bountiful vegetables
are an annual constant, a salve.
In Dayton and El Paso, the experts
are closing out crime scenes, taking

photos, mopping up blood, notifying
next of kin. When you hear the number
of injured victims along with the dead,
you won’t know how their lives have been
altered to live with chronic pain and fear.
How many young men are cleaning their
guns and counting their bullets today?

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and has taught workshops nationally with a focus on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Rattle, The MacGuffin, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes a poem every day and is working on a memoir.