I LIVE IN A COUNTRY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

"Oil and Distraction" by Ann Telnaes

I live in a country
Proud to invade
Proud to destroy
Proud to kidnap and murder
The leaders of other sovereign nations
 
I live in a country
Too brutal
Too lacking in a sense 
Of our shared life on the planet
Too impatient and inarticulate 
To negotiate its aims
So it vociferates instead
Using bunker-busting bombs.
 
I live in a country 
With an embedded elite
That controls massive amounts of wealth
And leaves millions
Lacking in the wherewithall 
Necessary for a decent 
Productive and creative existence.
 
I live in a country without leaders
Only capos
Without a vision of a better world
Only hackneyed slogans
And faded old Batman comics
Without the music of hope
Only the cracked ballads of despair
Played on one-string shoebox guitars.
 
I live in a country
That fervently worships
Only itself
Mad with the fear
That it is rapidly losing its place
As the hegemon
A country that is 
Flailing away hysterically
Demanding that the rest of the world
Keep paying tribute and obeisance
And endlessly fawning
Like a Hollywood lacky
Assuring the fading star
“You are still beautiful.”
 
I live in a country whose mountains
And prairies and woodlands
Rivers and lakes and streams
Are beautiful
Whose ordinary citizens
Are still mostly good and kind
But whose leaders
Are a pack of craven 
Crooks and scammers and parasites
Who use their positions and powers
To bully the populace
And upholster their own pockets.
 
I live in a country whose leaders
Make it a very difficult land
To love
But let us all keep standing 
With our neighbors against
The cruelty and criminality
The self-absorption and toxic greed
That prevails in high places
And raise another banner on the flagpole
The banner of universal humanity.
 

 Buff Whitman-Bradley podcasts his poetry at thirdactpoems.podbean.com

PAGES OF LIGHT (IN DARK TIMES)

by David Chorlton

(1)

Hard to tell

whether the wind 

last night was social unrest

or coyotes’ dreams as darkness flowing.

The lightness of touch suggested

nature whispering

                                 in the face of human discord

yet in the absence of a moon

and with so few stars

to give direction there were only the neighborhood palms

leaning on the moment

                                            as if time

had taken solid form and claimed

the desert underneath

the city as its first

and only home.

 

(2)

Stone-bright the way ahead

runs true to course, rising by the step

to a view of all things possible

and some

                 forever out of reach. All those things

that never change come what may

are out there, stubborn and holding their ground

through traffic jams and newscasts,

analyses and polls, discussions

that take truth

                           away just as the sun

has stripped first the outer skin

of the saguaro lying

where it fell two summers back

                                                            and subsequently

dried its flesh revealing the core

connecting tip to root, the inner life

revealed in code, an alphabet

surviving after language ends.

(3)

The peaks and dips along the ridge

rest easily this morning

against clouds too closely packed

for news to pass

                               from worlds beyond our own. 

Grey light, pigeon feathers

scattering from the rooftop cooling unit at house

four-three-four-seven

where a hawk endures a mockingbird’s attention

until he stretches out

                                        and eases into day’s grey light.

Nothing exists outside

his range of vision, he’s the headline and the story

circling higher than opinion columns

reach. Doesn’t need words

to know what he knows. Leaves emptiness alone

because the entire sky

                                          isn’t worth

the area he’s taken for a home.

 

(4)

A bright and tranquil morning

on the way around the pond where red-

eared sliders and secrets

move just beneath the sky

that floats across the surface to the reeds

at the farthest edge.

                                      A Black phoebe picks flies

and rumors from the air.

None are too fast for him,

neither the latest out of Hollywood

nor royalty’s ongoing

struggle to be important. What is true tastes no different

from what is not; he keeps dipping

and swerving

                         through politics, finance

and all the way down

to the feathers and bones left on the ground

still with a glaze of moonlight.

 

(5)

Arroyo walk, sidestepping the facts and

speculating whether

the boulder resting on the slope just past

where the trail dips came

to be exactly in position after

falling through space

                                        or was coughed out of the Earth.

Some facts are immoveable, too heavy

to be argued about. But someone’s always

naming parts, allocating

numbers, holding science

to the light and insisting explanations

matter more

                       than the experience

of stopping every time

to contemplate the mystery

that built the world before there was

a truth

             to lie about, when

only the stars kept records. 

 

(6)

Darkness left, light straight

ahead, the first sky of the day can’t decide

which mood to promise. The clouds

are carrying concealed, the sun’s

a lonely heart just waking up. 

One day looks

                          much like another, give or take

the shadows and the low high

in the forecast, rain

this afternoon on a street

for all weathers where showers dance

on asphalt,

                    heat soaks in

and wishes for a better world

go barefoot, once around the cul-de-sac

and back, beyond the visible, beyond

reality, beyond what even

                                                 the hawk can see

from his throne of wind.

David Chorlton lives in Phoenix with a view of a desert mountain and more interesting local bird life than many people expect in a city. The desert still teaches him about poetry in a way academies can never do.

(NONFICTION) THE SÁMI WORD FOR ‘HELP’ IS VEAHKKI! AND I YELL IT IN MY DREAMS TONIGHT, AND ALWAYS

FOR SACHEEN LITTLEFEATHER AND MISKOPWAAGANIKWE

by Ron Riekki

Above: Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, known as Áillohaš in the Northern Sámi language (23 March 1943–26 November 2001), was a Finnish Sámi writer, musician and artist.

“I am not saving my life for the future” 

—Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Trekways of the Wind 

 

Tomorrow I go in front of a board 

to speak on the allegations that I 

was “speaking of native issues too 

frequently in class.”  When I heard 

 

these allegations, no, this allegation, 

no, this pissing-on-a-bonfire, I had 

the revelation of being had.  I had, 

yes, in class, spoke of indigenous 

 

issues, not realizing it’s a crime, 

but I am guilty of being native, of 

being Sámi, of being Karjalaiset, 

of being of a background where I 

 

hear, here, “I’ve never heard of 

that.”  The that falling flat.  And 

it’s a board of seven people.  And 

it makes me think of the time in 

 

Berkeley, where I was walking 

down the street and saw a black 

man, around 70 years old, peace- 

fully being drunk, on a bench, 

 

buzzed, yes, eyes red, yes, and 

leaving the world alone, then 

a police car drove up and an 

officer asked the man some- 

 

thing and he said something 

and another cop car pulled up 

and another cop got out and 

another cop car pulled up and 

 

more police got out and then 

a van pulled up, a cop van, 

a SWAT team reaction for 

this septuagenarian swept up 

 

so quickly into the back of 

the swallowing vehicles, all 

painted black, as if to mock, 

as if to mask them in night 

 

where the body was taken 

and I stood there and realized 

how there is the centrality of 

overreaction, of SWAT-style 

 

action movie hyperbole where, 

in the end, there is the pairing 

of kissing the woman while 

killing the man who didn’t 

 

matter, the man who was 

reduced to villain and a woman 

seduced by cliché and audiences 

in the dark, snoring.  And a First 

 

Nation playwright in Montreal 

told me that Hollywood cinema 

is all about conflict, that they 

love conflict, because colonialism 

 

is hearted in conflict, but native 

playwriting and screenwriting and 

story is about community, not con- 

flict, not the incarceration of their 

 

films, but instead about connection, 

and he said that there was a reading 

where afterwards a white man 

raised his hand and said he’d have 

 

to be honest and he said the play 

was boring, and behind him was 

a group of Anishinaabe who were 

all in tears, their sleeves filled 

 

with tears, and this man was 

bored.  And tomorrow I don’t know 

if I am getting kicked out of college 

or if I’m getting killed out of college 

 

or if I’m getting left in decorticate 

position, funeraled, how I was told 

that I was not only speaking too 

much about native issues, but I was 

 

being too “aggressive” with how I 

was talking about native issues and 

an elder, Red Pipe Woman, on 

the phone told me, “Oh, let me get this 

 

straight: a native person is being 

told they are ‘aggressive.’  They’re 

telling you that you’re being ‘savage’ 

by speaking of native issues.”  And 

 

our laughter was as normal as all 

the tall clouds above, and our laughter 

was sky-deep, and our laughter was tears, 

and the grey clouds were coming and 

 

I love walking in the rain and I walked 

home and I wondered if tomorrow 

they were going to try to destroy me 

and tomorrow I am going to find out. 

 

And tomorrow I am going to find out. 

And I will live even if they kill me. 

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).

TIME'S UP

by Judy Juanita

“Burn this city,” a photograph by Anthony Citro.

Just because Woolworth's lunch counters were integrated

And black people could buy their lunch there

Didn't mean that Woolworth's as an institution wasn't fading

Its time was up.

Just because blacks integrated the Academy Awards

Showed up and showed out in 2022 

Doesn't mean that Hollywood as an institution isn't fading. 

I said it once and I'll say it again:

We should all be so disgusted by this perversity

That we boycott the Academy Awards and Golden Globes

As the pimps and hos conventions they are. 

Of course, who am I but a black woman

Old as coffee grounds, talking still 

About the mistreatment of women? 

Besides it being a display by the rich in front of the rich 

Because they're effing rich and can floorshow v. streetfight

The "slap" is good for biz. And there still is no biz like show biz.

Meanwhile the exploitation of "the nubile bodies they peed and shat upon" 

Continues practically unabated. If you think women aren't still peed and shat upon

Please tell me why female broadcasters and weathercasters show much 

Flesh/leg/cannot age while their male counterparts can look like Elmer Fudd

And stay employed until they're way past 65. 

Please tell me why Kevin Costner can walk out and preach to the minions 

With gravitas and brag about being 68 during the awards

While the "sell by" date for females in H'wood is 38 or so 

(unless they're a supertalented Brit).

Please, this slap wasn't shit. 

The real problem is that H'wood is as out-of-date 

An institution as slavery. 

But because it's so profitable for the slave-owners

It hasn't faded out completely. 

But its time is up.

Judy Juanita's poetry collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). Her collection of essays DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] examines race, gender, politics and spirituality, as experienced by a black activist and self-described "feminist foot soldier." Winner of the Tartt Fiction Prize at the University of West Alabama [UWA], her short story collection The High Price of Freeways will be published by Livingston Press  [UWA] in July, 2022. 

PRICK AN AMERICAN

by Zev Shanken

Still from Ang Lee's film of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

America is bad on health care because
   Americans never get sick.
America favors the rich in taxes because
   all Americans are rich.
Americans carry guns because
   Americans shoot bad guys.

America isn't afraid of war because
   Americans never die, and if they do,
they live forever in half-time shows—
      well worth the sacrifice.

Prick an American, he will not bleed.
Prick him again, he re-invents Hollywood.

Zev Shanken’s poems “The Hora for the First Passover under President T***P” and “High Noon” have appeared in earlier issues of TheNewVerse.News.  A collection of his poems, Memory Tricks, is available from Full Court Press. He co-chairs a monthly poetry reading series, Thursdays are for Poetry,  at Classic Quiche in Teaneck, NJ.

SECOND COMING

by James Bettendorf

Detail of poster for The Young Messiah film.

Imagine Jesus is alive again.
He has to go to school,
it’s the law.
The kids tease him
his hair so long,
Are you a boy or are you a girl? 
He hears the judgments
echo in his head
as he walks home
to build furniture
with his immigrant father
while his mother
takes in wash
so they can eat.

He is smart, hides away
in his teen years, builds
a robot of wood and spare parts
from the appliance junk yard.
He covers it with silk and denim
so it looks like a real person
When his real father says

          IT IS TIME

he substitutes the robot
so he can avoid the pain
and won’t have to roll
the stone again.

He goes on to star
in Hollywood comedies
as a transgender female.

James Bettendorf is a retired math teacher who recently completed a two-year poetry internship at the Loft in Minneapolis  after having taken many classes over the years.  He is a member of the Forward writing group at the Loft.  James has been published in Rockhurst Review, Common Ground Review, Verse Wisconsin and Light Quarterly as well as the last eight volumes of Talking Stick.

BIOPIC

by Rae Leone Allen



Zoe Saldana faces criticism over dark makeup in Nina Simone film trailer. The actor’s casting as the legendary singer is in the spotlight again after the trailer and poster show a darkened skin tone and prosthetic nose. —The Guardian, March 2, 2016. The film is scheduled to open April 22.

                  
"Cause I see the face of things to come."

                                                          -Nina Simone, “Revolution” 1969

hollywood goddam.
blackfacing, caste
making muthafuckas.
consistent, blasphemous, boardroom,
behemoth muthafuckas. yall sholl got yall
ways. assaulting. can’t sing that blue black goddess no praise.

goddam: fatally, fundamentally flawed—blatantly missed
understanding. violence
in re-imagining.
herstory. hollywood, goddam. lifting
the leg, pissing. legacy dismissing. narrow lip-
servicing. herstory. them blackfacing,
castemaking, ofay muthafuckas want the glory. goddam,
zoe. a prosthetic nose.
really?

out of formation. chosen token
actress darkening. ignorance, arrogance
obscene. tweeting.

negro nostrils flarin’. pickaninny eyes rollin’. these muthafuckas
always stealin’. always a nigga lost, in the big
house. willin’. oh sinnin’ land: hollywood,
america: goddam. where
you gonna run to on that day,
blackfacing, castemaking muthafuckas?

not hearin. the word
she sang.
god

damned.

Rae Leone Allen is a child of Nina, Malcolm, Octavia, Jimmy and Audre living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

FOR THE ESTRANGED ON MOTHER'S DAY

Imps of Insomnia
by Larry Litt

Image source: Becky Says Things

True Nature doesn’t give a damn.
Imps in darkest tossed nights
Sleepless chattering monkeys
Waken me analyzing
My life screaming
“Tragedy begets Empathy!”
As if I needed a
Hole in my heart repaired.
Monkeys feel estrangement
Shout “What’s it for?
What’s this silent pain all about?
Why can’t it be healed?”
I know now there’s no healing
Just accepting the boundaries
Of betrayal, anger
And eternal shame.
The mad poet took all offered
In his path of pleasure.
The payout is never
To hold a child with
Love again.
Biting lips with empathy
At families reconciled
In Hollywood movies
With a sadness too great
Even for the big fake screen.
True Nature is silent
Does not give a damn
Or consent to relief.
Were I more like True Nature
Could I still write this poem?


Larry Litt is a writer and performer who can't decide if he’s a 'dirty old man, 'smart olfart' or 'recently bathed geezer.’The NY Times has called his work "Wryly conceived, politically provocative." New Littany Editions coming soon.