MAGICIANS

by Katherine West

At first they just let us out for Christmas 

like Eleanor of Aquitaine 

in Lion in Winter

We were a bit cranky 

(like Eleanor of Aquitaine)

and it didn’t go well

Nevertheless, they kept trying 

and many called for our presence 

at Easter 

We sat between chicks 

and bunnies 

and tried to look fluffy

Better this time

as long as we didn’t speak 

or bare our teeth while eating chocolate rabbits 

Soon birthdays were demanded

like clowns or magicians 

no party was complete without us 

until someone pulled a baby 

out of a hat 

(instead of a scarf or a white rabbit) 

pink and plump 

and lisping mama

so that everyone could hear 

They had forgotten 

that we 

could do that 

They tried to lock us up  

citing the Constitution 

and the Bible 

but we had learned a thing or two 

from our time 

in the limelight 

When they came to take us away (again) 

we put our hands over our heads and clapped

like Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter 

We vanished 

(like Dumbledore)

but no one said we had “class”

Hidden in plain sight now 

we walk the streets barefoot 

leaving bloodprints behind us 

impossible not to follow 

We magnetize the races 

like Joan of Arc in Joan of Arc

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash! and Eucalypt, Writers Resist, and Feminine Collective. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City New Mexico, the Tambaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado.

MOUNDS OF BOOKS OUTSIDE OF NASHVILLE

by Zebulon Huset

My freshmen students start Fahrenheit 451 next week—

today a Tennessee pastor lights back into the old chestnut

 

of Harry Potter infecting children with witchcraft or Twilight 

spreading the cheesy demons of vampiric thoughts. Roiling 

 

on the self-righteous fury of the Neo-Nazi echo chamber

that rebounds cacophonous  insecurities and fear like

 

the crystals that create a great fortress of solitude. Riled 

up by the downfall of monuments raised by Daughters

 

of the Confederacy, by schools teaching history

that covers even half of the truth about their great

 

grandparents, by the ricocheting of rage. Opposite

of a sensory deprivation tank that saps sounds

 

and light and leaves one with just the mortal drumbeat,

overwhelming sound of blood pulsing through ear-arteries.

 

The realization that self is both loud and fragile,

that our brittle hold on life can crumble at any moment

 

and it’s not witchcraft or the past that are frothing

at the doorway of extremism, but the hand grasping

 

the bulk-purchased bottle of lighter fluid, the voice

booming from their own mouths, the fire lapping

 

their stubby little fingertips.

 

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Rattle, Texas Review, North American Review, Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, and many others. He publishes the prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked.

THE RISING COST OF FOREVER

by Tricia Knoll

It started with stamps, that brainstorm to sell U. S. stamps with no imprint
of cost -- forever-good stamps. Flags. Shirley Chisholm. Ray Charles. Year
of the Horse stamps with no horses on them. Four-color winter flowers
and Harry Potter. The images seem to have a shelf-life of somewhat less
than forever, but maybe not. American culture is funny about cults.

There are some for-real forever stamps -- and the price is rising on them
too. Cesspools of nuclear waste no one wants in their backyard. Good-by
passenger pigeons. Black rhinos. Leatherback turtles. Mountain gorillas.
Children without food. Families with no homelands. Farmland poisoned
beyond use by nuclear accidents. Plant pollen that is genetically ready
for the round up season of pesticides.

You lick it. You stick it. Pick the self-adhesive. Stick it to you.
The cost is going up again soon.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who enjoys The New Verse News daily. Her chapbook Urban Wild will be available from Finishing Line Press  in May 2014.