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.

HOLI-DAYS AND SUGAR COOKIES

by Diana Poulos-Lutz

A seven-year-old boy has been collecting essentials to distribute to homeless people this Christmas. —BBC, December 21, 2019

This is how we
celebrate holi-days
I found.
Baking sugar cookies
in festive shapes,
food that comforts,
spirits and laughs.
But the sun rises and cries
for a different kind of sweetness
and fullness on these days.
To forgo righteous and
judgement and right-way thinking.
To look for the light of the fire
of those without homes,
to stand in a house of wor-ship
and declare that love is love,
to walk along a border-line
and to feel what should be—
health, safety and promise for all.
The stars shine on the evenings of holi-days,
the moon still hangs, sadly,
but brightly for the lonely,
and in the dark spaces in the
sky where there is nothingness,
there is room to imagine what
these days can be for.
A present wrapped in hope,
for the most vulnerable among
us, the dreamers, the defeated,
songs for those lost and found in stigma,
merriment for the heart.
Before those sugar cookies burn,
I open the oven, take them out,
and see what they really mean to-day.

Diana Poulos-Lutz has a B.A., M.A. in Political Science from Long Island University as well as an MPhil, Master of Philosophy in Politics, from the New School for Social Research.  Diana's poems have recently been featured on media sites such as TheNewVerse.News, the Rye Whiskey Review and Pantsuit Nation. She is the 1st place winner of the 2019 Nassau County Poet Laureate Society poetry contest as well as the 1st place winner of the 2019 international Spirit First poetry contest. Diana's poetry is inspired by her deep connection to the natural world, along with her desire to promote equality, mindfulness, and empowerment.

SPIDER CAUGHT IN THE ASH WEB

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: Hiveminer

Ash flakes into the new fall spider’s web
on the corn stalks. Wind ferried specks
from the wildfires raging on the cliffs,
smoke hazard on the east-west freeway,
a breathing caution. Ash on the rose petals,
fading ones facing diminishing blooms.

The Dreamers’ frail web tears,
dragged down under ash, victim
of fires hundreds of miles away.
An urge to struggle free of this
drift acknowledges the flames
of hope that kindled the work,
the time of learning to weather
seasons, grow up in storms,
and pursue the road of their lives.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet watching the ashes of burning trees fall on Portland, Oregon. Ash coating the garden flowers, tomato plants, mucking up windshields. At the same time, the news on DACA and its impact on hundreds of thousands of young people seems overwhelming.