IMMIGRANT’S SONG

by Jim Burns

Riots broke out in Philadelphia after Nativists burned down a Catholic church in May 1844. This lithograph shows the Know-nothings (in the top hats) clashing with the state militia.

Out of the vapors
of the past
I come
to sing you a song
of the poor and huddled masses
who have gathered at your gates.

I am the inscrutable Chinese,
one of 20,000 from my land
who for a dollar a day built your
grand railway of the golden spike.

I am the drunken Irishman,
the mobbed-up Italian,
the ignorant Pole
who sweated and died
to forge the iron and erect
your palaces of steel.

I am the Shylock Jew 
whose sweatshop toil
made the clothes on your back,
but whose financial acumen you blame
for relieving you of your earnings.

I am the the suspected spy,
the German who had to change my name
to protect me from your Klan
when first our countries fought.

I am the devious Japanese whose family
were reviled as turncoats
and dwelt in your internment camps
while in Europe I fought and died for you.

I am the wild-eyed son of Middle Eastern deserts
denied entry into your land 
and murdered in your cities
because of the evil of a few
who, like me, pray to Allah.

I am of those deemed not human at your southern border,
who braved deserts and human predators
to pick your crops, roof your homes,
tend your lawns,
do the jobs your sons won’t do.

Think of me as you will,
but Lady Liberty, 
raise your torch to me.
I am America,
I am you.

Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana and received degrees from both Indiana State University and Indiana University. He then spent most of his working years as a librarian. A few years into his retirement he turned to a decades old interest in writing, especially poetry, and in the last two years has been fortunate enough to have published 18 poems and two short pieces of nonfiction online, in print or both. He lives with wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.

NO CONFIDENCE

by William Doreski

Boris Johnson returns inside 10 Downing Street after making his resignation speech on July 7. Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Because I found the ticket

for the cold-storage locker

on the outskirts of Frankfort,

I must reclaim the rumpled corpse

of the long-debauched hero

and somehow arrange to return it

to the nation he led until

his wingspan shrank and he fell.

 

The attendant speaks only German

and I speak only the crudest slang.

He unlocks the locker to allow

inspection of the earthly goods.

The familiar upturned face,

sallow professional smile,

arched gothic eyebrows grinning

and bruise-blue eyes unwinking,

opens its wired jaws to speak.

 

Everyone warned me that even

fifty years after death he’d claim

airtime to unleash his grievance,

a fiction he wrought in Parliament

as the members shook and groaned.

The chill in the locker numbs me.

I drop the lid before he mouths

a syllable of pious cant.

 

His blond shock and beer-stained suit

signaled a feckless charisma

that faded long before death.

No one wants him to recur

half a century after his prime.

The attendant sneers and offers

a snort of schnapps to calm me.

I accept despite the agony

of all those clashing “S” sounds.

 

Let the British consul handle

transport to Westminster Abbey

where a few curious old folks

may wish to fondle the corpse.

I step outside into Europe’s

painterly light and soak it in,

bracing political virginity

against history and brazen lies.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022).  His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

CHRISTMAS COMES

by Peter Neil Carroll

For most of the 19th century, the celebration of Christmas with Christmas trees and gift-giving remained a marginal phenomenon in American society. Most Americans remained skeptical about this new custom. Some felt that they had to choose between older English customs such as hanging stockings for presents on the fireplace and the Christmas tree as proper space for the placing of gifts. It was also hard to find the necessary ingredients for this German custom. Christmas tree farms had first to be created. And ornaments needed to be produced. The most significant steps toward integrating Christmas into popular American culture came in the context of the American Civil War. In January 1863 Harper’s Weekly published on its front page the image of Santa Claus visiting the Union Army in 1862. This image, which was produced by the German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast, represents the very first image of Santa Claus. —Thomas Adam, “How Christmas Became an American Holiday Tradition, with a Santa Claus, Gifts and a Tree,” The Conversation, December 6, 2021

Today isn’t my holiday;

neither did the Puritans celebrate Christmas—

only after huddled masses, tempest tost

slipped through Ms Liberty’s golden door

did Santa tumble down the chimney.

 

So what? says the bored look

in my child’s eye. All day we shall suffer

her shame, born to pagan parents,

she will see us through the eyes

of little friends who believe.  

 

Yes, Virginia, today we will dash to church.

Not to pray, mind you, but to see the unseen

wretched refuse lining on cold sidewalks  

and to serve those we will have

with us always, strung out

like light bulbs at St. Anthony’s.

 

At noon, we dollop beans and rice,

turkey, spuds, chopped carrots and greens.

Everyone polite, clean, stiff-backed,

without voice or tune

or jingled bell, only the scrape of chairs,

spoons tinkling in tepid cups.

 

Peter Neil Carroll’s newest collections of poems are Talking to Strangers: Poetry of Everyday Life  (Turning Point, 2022) and This Land, These People: The 50 States (Press Americana) that just won the 2022 Prize Americana. He is currently Poetry Moderator of Portside.org and lives in northern California.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, II

by Judith Terzi

This Miami Herald editorial cartoon dramatized the plight of Jewish refugees aboard the passenger ship St. Louis, a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which her captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for 908 Jewish refugees from Germany, after they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States and Canada, until finally accepted in various European countries, which were later engulfed in World War II. Historians have estimated that, after their return to Europe, approximately a quarter of the ship's passengers died in death camps. Cartoonist: Robert Epstein/Miami Herald Staff, June 11, 1939. Caption text thanks to Wikipedia.

Creamy tomato basil soup, a hunk
of baguette at Panera, table #36.
I hear Korean spoken next to me,
two women in animated talk. I'd

like to understand. A father speaks
Arabic to his baby boy. The mother,
highlighted hair, chic jeans. They're
at my favorite table next to the fire-

place. I hear Spanish, Armenian. We
are 10 miles from the largest Armenian
diaspora in America. I hear almost no
English today, like sometimes at mega-

stores where you can't buy one roll
of toilet paper, a single box of tissues,
or a solo tube of toothpaste. Or, I
recall at the top of the Eiffel Tower

before it blushed tricolor in mourning.
The non-talkers here stare into computer
screens between mouthfuls of turkey chili
or a Frontega chicken panini. Here is

the gusto, the throb, the intonation of
America. Here, you can travel without
having to make reservations. I imagine
Delancey Street at the turn of the 20th:

Italian, Ukrainian, German, or the Yiddish
of my grandparents pulsing, reminiscing
between pushcarts, theater seats, newspaper
boys. Or what about on the St. Louis,

ship touching Cuban and U.S. shores with
refugees unwanted, then having to sail them
back to a Europe soon at war? Exhalation for
some. But no Exile, no unshackling from fear.


Judith Terzi's most recent chapbook, If You Spot Your Brother Floating By, is a collection of memoir poems from Kattywompus Press. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Atlanta Review (International Publication Award, 2015), Caesura, Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo), Raintown Review, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque). She lives and writes in Southern California.