SHOPPING SPREE

by Jerome Berglund

chains

slashing prices

black friday

everything

must go

black friday

fire sale

while supplies last

black friday

giving

thanks

black friday 

brick

and mortar

cyber monday

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. His first full-length collections of poetry Bathtub Poems and Funny Pages were just released by Setu and Meat For Tea press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE MOMENTS AFTER THE DEREK CHAUVIN VERDICT

a found poem

by Dick Westheimer

White folks in my feed: Thank God!

Black folks in my feed... 

White folks responding to white folks in my feed: Amen!

Black folks in my feed... 

White folks in my feed: Boom!

YES, YES, YES!!!!! Justice, sweet Justice!

A perfect trifecta...GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY.

Justice served. Black Lives Matter. Accountability today. 

A black death mattered. 

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY ❤️❤️❤️

Black folks in my feed:

George Floyd is still gone.

God rest your soul, George Floyd.

Each day that I worry I will be next 

is another day 

without justice.

If there hadn’t been a video, 

there’d never have been a trial.

Time to organize our strength 

into power.

DO NOT forget 

the other three cops! They let it happen!

A white woman in my feed:

What a relief justice was served!

A Black woman in my feed posts a snapshot:

George Floyd holding his daughter Gianna. 

Black women in my feed: 

Thank God for Darnella Frazier. 

Keep ALL the witnesses in your prayers. 

All of them.

I exhaled...and as soon as I did, 

I started sobbing. This is what it’s like 

to be Black in America.

This! Darnella! A Black girl...now a Black Woman. 

I am thankful for you!

White folks in my feed: 

Justice. Guilty x 3!! We can all breathe!!!

Black men in my feed:  I  still  can’t  breathe.

For over 40 years, Dick Westheimer has—in the company of his wife Debbie—lived, gardened and raised five children, on their plot of land in the rural US in Clermont County, Ohio. He recently has taken up with poets and the writing of poetry to make sense of the world. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Riparian Anthology, and The New Verse News, among others.

HOW SUBTLY IT HAPPENED

by William Doreski

Secretly, I slip the daylight

moon into my pocket. A crowd

has formed. As I approach,

stainless things clatter. A cop

 

kneels on a neck. A sigh kites

into the trees and deflates.

The cop looks too dispassionate

for this lifetime. The man

 

on the ground no longer speaks.

The stainless things rain down

with naked blades twittering.

I ease the moon from my pocket

 

and compare it to the face

of the cop and of the man

he’s stifling. None of these three

expressions can tell me the time.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

THE CONDITIONAL CASE FOR CONVICTION

by Diana Cole

A patron of a laundromat near Cup Foods watching the Derek Chauvin trial on Monday. Credit: Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times, April 6, 2021

for George Floyd

 

 

Nothing can be true, so the dog barks all night

          missing the man who feeds him.

 

Into the fire go the stars. If the garbage is collected

          in the morning, the moon will go too.

 

Without evidence of insects, birds have nothing to eat.

          He’s talking so he’s fine.

 

Nothing but a man, a sizable guy who loves his Mama, 

          who lost his Mama.  

                                    

I kneel in case the sun will intervene in time.

          Inside the car, the back seat is a thick darkness. 

 

A black man could get lost if the air is handcuffed.

          Even if he pleads 20 times, he is under the influence,

 

under suspicion, under the knee, undertaken.

          All for 20 dollars, supposing that, even if, as long as… 

Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poems published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, the Tar River Review, the Cider Press Review, GBH Public Radio, Friends Journal, Verse Daily, and the Main Street Rag, and upcoming in Crab Creek Review. Her chapbook Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press. She is an editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal and a member of Ocean State Poets whose mission is to encourage the reading, writing and sharing of poetry.