PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

in memory of Wadea Al-Fayoume (6 years old)

The last words of a six-year-old US Muslim boy stabbed to death in a suspected hate crime over the weekend were "Mom, I'm fine", his uncle said as hundreds gathered to lay the child to rest… Police say Wadea al-Fayoume was attacked because he was Muslim. His funeral was held as the family's landlord appeared in court charged with the boy's murder. The 71-year-old accused was allegedly upset about the Israel-Hamas war. —BBC, October 16, 3023

Six-year-old sons are supposed to live the dream of a free-range American boyhood.
Cowboys and Indians. Minecraft and mumps inoculations. Even gender-neutral pronouns. 
 
Muslim or Christian, it shouldn’t matter since we, the people, possess a constitution
once amended to address that there is no sin in being subaltern.
 
But our land is filled with weapons. Frontier remnants, perhaps. Anger makes fathers
guard their daughters with rifles. We should never ignore that faith is a live wire.
 
What about knives. A mother discovers how a landlord’s grandfatherly fondness for her son
turns to murder. He raises his blade to the boy twenty-six times, practically a lunar cycle.
 
How did a man who carpentered nails and boards to build young Wadea a house
decide to enlist in sorrow’s circle. Was it Iblis or X. OAN perhaps. Maybe Fox. 
 
Did he go mad from the whisper of his neighbor’s dog
(like Berkowitz)
who said never trust anyone who abstains from swine.
 
I believe property is a theft. Claim a land, claim a life.
Now our nation reckons with a terrible debt.
 
Who but a martyred boy can account for that.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. His latest book is Flint River (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). New and recent work appears/will appear in Mobius, Rattle, Terrain.org, Writers Resist, Topical Poetry, and Belt Magazine. He holds two passports.

DEMOCRACY AS A WAY OF LIFE

by George Salamon

"We need to save democracy from capitalism, and save capitalism from itself." —Kevin J. Delaney, “American Workers Deserve to Live With Dignity,” The New York Times, July 5, 2020


Let us pretend this leopard can
Change its spots, let us dream
The impossible dream once more.
Not this old boy, who's not ready
For one more plunge into an
Unfulfillable dream to overturn
The one created by our Indian-
Killing, slave-owning heroes by
Our greed-consumed wheelers
And dealers and salesmen from
The Frontier to Silicon Valley, a
Dream without roots in democracy
But in the cult of Mammon and Mars,
Talking the big lie, the bigger promise,
But walking in the bloody footsteps of
Absurdities and atrocities committed
Against the humanism no magician or
Leader can inject into the heart of our
Homegrown capitalism.
We can "save" democracy in America
By making it our way of life, democracy
With its own culture grown from the
Essential democratic truths about the
Values of human life, beginning with the
Long march of democracy, sustained by
The new American Dream, through the
"Unprecedented waves and storms" our
Poet of democracy predicted and, with
Grit, patience and luck reach that "city
Upon a hill" as it morphs from myth into
A place of democratic life.


George Salamon, inspired by Whitman, in St. Louis, MO.