RESIGNED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Having now seen how quickly the truth can become a casualty amid controversy, I’d urge a broader caution: At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well organized or well connected they might be. Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity. —Claudine Gay, The New York Times, January 3, 2024

Some attribution errors, not deliberate,

in academic essays, and her posture
of defending freedom of expression

in campus rallies, for this the first

black woman to head the country's

most famous university resigned?

For the witch-hunt of our McCarthy

times, communism replaced by

anti-Semitism, even if Palestinian

people are also Semitic, even if

murder of twenty-two thousand

civilians, including eight thousand

children in Gaza does not mean

a holocaust, even if now

on the entire earth there

are about 700,000 thousand

people in a state of famine,

of whom 577,000 live in Gaza,

four out of every five Palestinian.

And at Harvard University (also

at Penn), female leaders resigned.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

T. S. ELIOT’S FIRST WASTE LAND

by Susan Terris

Cabanne Spring, Forest Park: vintage undated image with unidentified children from the archives of Louis (1907-1999) & Georgia (1918-2009) Buckowitz via Urban Review: St. Louis.

—The Waste Land poem is 100 years old this month.

Twit twit twit... turn of the century, it's 1900, and Tom

born in St. Louis, not yet known as T. S., found his first
waste land: Forest Park, 1,371 acres of countryside.

In the middle of the city, wild but with street cars:
an amusement park and a steam-driven carousel
(yes, that 1944 Meet Me in St. Louie whirlabout).
 
Both Tom and my Nanna Edna, almost the same age,
lived nearby on one side of the park. Did they meet? 
Jug jug jug... Maybe not, and yet I begin to see
 
them one day on the carousel when he and Edna
were both eleven: Tom, in a tan jacket and hat, 
riding the lead horse with roses around its neck,
 
smiling down at her—a girl in white organza, in
the white swan chariot. Perhaps. But what came next?
Oh   jug jug jug  Tom left St. Louis, went to Harvard.
 
Edna stayed, went to Fontbonne, a teachers college,
studied math, grammar, poetry, was the first woman
(or man) in our big family with a college degree.
 
Shantih   shantih   shantih   A hundred years passed:
Nanna Edna gone. T. S. Eliot gone and yet still there. 
The Waste Land, a mystery, kismet, a search for selves

Susan Terris is a freelance editor and the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and 2 plays. Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Denver Quarterly, The New Verse News, and Ploughshares. Poems of hers have appeared in Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Her newest book is Dream Fragments, which won the Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

THE NUN WAS TORTURED

by Karol Nielsen

The nun founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).

The American nun, who was gang raped and tortured in Guatemala, died of cancer in Washington, DC. She had been helping indigenous Guatemalans when she was captured. The government suspected the indigenous of left wing subversion, with the United States backing the Guatemalan military in its civil war. The nun was burned by cigarettes, exposed to dead bodies and rats, and forced to mutilate another captive with a machete. She jumped out of a car as the man with accented Spanish drove her to a new location. She fled to the United States and struggled to remember her life there. She sued a Guatemalan general who was studying at Harvard. A judge ordered him to pay millions but he escaped to Guatemala. She told a reporter that even though she was Catholic she struggled to forgive.

Karol Nielsen is the author of two memoirs and two poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. 

THE BALLAD OF BRAVE SIR BANNON

by Arnold Snarb

Bannon head caricature by 

Bill Sienkiewicz

In the distant future, a decade from now,
            when our planet has ceased to be,
those intergalactic aliens
            shall recite my song with glee.

So gather round, ye representative few
            who make up the Electoral College,
And I’ll tell ye a tale of doughty deeds
            That’ll fill your brain with knowledge.

O I sing of a lad who fought the good fight,
            or would, had he shown up to fight it,
but word of a protest made him think twice,
            so he said, well they can just bite it.

A true son of Eire, a man of the Cross,
            in his blood run the waters of Shannon:
nor better a bloke e’er ran Breitbart News
            than wild-eyed, race-baiting Bannon.

A son of the South who gave fatwa ‘gainst Islam
            and savaged the global elite;
when he found out that Jews went to school with his kids
            he cut out two holes in his sheet.

A Birther by birth, he was early to ken
            the charms of our Dear tweetin’ Leader.
So he rolled up his sleeves, and pulled down his pants,
            said here’s all that you’ll need to beat her!

The shit that he peddled the Donald sold wholesale
            and they shared an establishment beef:
Though he’d worked for a decade at Goldman Sachs
            he’d make T***p Pussy Grabber in Chief.

A cock-of-the-walk who never looked back
            at the three divorces behind him,
that dark day in Cambridge he chickened out,
            O Brave, Brave Sir Bannon!

The protesters stood all night in the rain
            with their signs, petitions and banners
while safely ensconced on the Upper West Side
            Was Brave, Brave Sir Bannon!

One day he’ll return, Harvard’s Prodigal Son,
            and stick like a fly in the ointment;
on wind of impeachment he’ll take the next plane
            for a cushy K-School appointment.

Arnold Snarb is a poet and scholar who holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Yale. He is currently working on a memoir written in blank verse that recounts his youth and education.

POEM FOR THE INAUGURATION

by Jon Wesick

I hope I’m wrong,
so wrong my name becomes slang
for a tragic blunder
as in, “Custer sure pulled a Wesick
at the Little Bighorn!”

I hope jobs return to the rust belt
and displaced workers
will now buy gold-plated mansions
and endow professorships at Harvard.
I hope the new president’s tweets
scare the beards off ISIS
and that from now on all terrorists
will come with big letter T’s
tattooed on their foreheads.

I hope greenhouse gasses
bring back the black rhino
and mountain gorilla.
I hope the free market
lowers the cost of heart transplants
and cancer treatment to $1.95.

I hope doctors determine cake and ice cream
make the most nutritious breakfast
and that playing video games
burns more calories than running.
I hope high school students don’t need algebra
for high-tech careers and that cheerleaders
want to sleep with guys who can’t dance.
I hope I really can earn $100,000
by working 3 hours a week from home.
I hope our new president
rekindles the American dream.

Jon Wesick hosts Southern California’s best ice cream parlor poetry reading and is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels.

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, LONE RANGER?

by George Salamon  

"I didn't get my ideas from Mao, Lenin or Ho Chi Minh;

I got my ideas from the Lone Ranger."

--Jerry Rubin, Do It (1970)

The class war is over, the verdict is in:
Working people and the middle class have lost.
The world's superpower
Is ruled by the Wolves of Wall Street,
Who are served by the Sheep of Main Street.
No Lone Ranger from Brahmin Harvard
Rode to their rescue this time to
Become a traitor to his class.
The best and brightest shine on
As entrepreneurs of the self.
A Lone Ranger couldn't cut muster
In their world of resumes and networking.
But this I know:
Our nation no longer turns its eyes to you,
Lone Ranger, you who have left and gone away.
With Joltin' Joe DiMaggio you still bat away
In the reruns of our mind.


George Salamon taught German at Harvard, Haverford and Smith colleges, served as reporter for the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor at Defense Systems Review. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

SCREE

by Corinne Lee

“Earlier this summer, President Obama worried about the disappearing honeybee population and what it means for the nation’s food supplies. In a presidential memorandum, he announced plans for the creation of a ‘Pollinator Health Task Force’ to help save the honeybee. . . . Well, not to worry, amazing robotic bees the size of pennies might one day pollinate crops, ending all concerns about Colony Collapse Disorder within the next 15-20 years. At Harvard, researchers led by Robert Wood are developing RoboBees—a completely mechanical flying device loaded up with sensors and batteries that would fly from flower to flower, picking up and then depositing pollen the way a real honeybee would.” —Dominic Basulto, “New RoboBees show that the future of robotics is very, very small,” The Washington Post, August 7, 2014. (Image from a National Geographic video.)

As bees lose home
and gills stiffen     warming warming—

our hunger hardens
to a graspish Devonian

jig. Yakety yak, few talk
back and most rasp, grating forth

a decree: Come, warm as the dead,
let’s pick the bee-fish

from our breath like swill—
                                             
      and eat
                             and eat.


Author's note: This poem responds to last week’s news stories about the likelihood that RoboBees will pollinate crops within the decade, due to a lack of real bees. I was appalled by the exuberant stories about this possibility. It seems to me that our rapacious appetites—easy to witness in a scree of everything from overfishing to global warming—are now dangerously matched by technology’s equally rapacious desire to “remedy” the consequences. This complex zero sum game results in further losses, yet the best solution is simple and obvious: reduce consumption, quickly.


Corinne Lee’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published in dozens of literary magazines, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. Her book PYX won the National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin. Lee was chosen in 2007 by the Poetry Society of America as one of the top ten emerging poets in the United States, and six of her poems were included in Best American Poetry 2010. She was educated at U.S.C., the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (fiction), and U.T. Austin (poetry).