BEATING UP THE POOR

by Dale Jacobson

Trump’s thugs come wearing masks 
like the KKK would hide their faces 
to not be known by the honest light of day.

To be surprised by American fascism 
is to forget to ask what the country has been 
for the poorest of the poor from the beginning, 
or how the worst of the worst made their law 
bright with fire, whips and murder.

You think reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school 
ever meant justice for all? Or for the poor 
a just country ever existed? And the hatred 
and terror Trump now brings to the cities 
is a new law of a land that once was free?

Yes, they are paid to break families apart, 
they are colder than the deepest cold of 

Minnesota winter. The past also has its allegiances, 

cold-blooded and brutal.

And what do these thugs get from the mayhem 
they generously offer as their vision of America?  
What do they take home for their supper of dreams? 
Their bribe is what they take.  
What is the moldy crust they want the nation to eat? 
They don’t care. They never did.

Dale Jacobson is a poet from Minnesota. He has published ten books of poetry and appeared in a number of journals, including APR, Great River Review, and Another Chicago Magazine.

COMING UP

by Chad Parenteau

Trump, Kanye

and a ghost

of others who

the former

President has

never seen

without sheets.

Also, Milo

Yiannopoulos

going Jews

for Jesus

slicing

Semitic bits

to trade

for bodies

of Christ.

A pride

of people

fine to be

on same side

until not.

And also,

why this

is bad for

Joe Biden.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

THE NEW NOVEMBER

by Jan Steckel

for Garrett Murphy

 

Late October is the New November,

the nova ember, when all slates

are made new. Ladybug, ladybug,

fly away home, your statehouse is on fire.

If you can’t vote the bastards out, 

drag along your electoral hammers,

spousal skull-crushers. Surveil those 

ballot boxes through the sights 

of your AR13s, only wear masks 

when you’re Ku Klux Klanning.

Proud Boys will be bashers.

It’s the ballot-harvesting festival,

so let’s go smashing pumpkins.

MAGA MAGA make it rain, it’s

lefty-hunting season again.

Kristallnacht’s in fashie-fashion.

Jack-o-Lannister, slide down

the Capitol bannister.

Olly olly oxen free!

Open season/no more reason:

civil discourse is passé,

democracy’s so yesterday.

Grab your billyclubs, shillaleghs, 

flagpoles, sheriff’s star,

little red baseball cap.

It’s mass grave o’clock, wake up, 

smell the decomposing bodies.

Get up off your brass knuckles—

Let the midterms begin!

Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California. 

JUSTICE, CLARENCE?

by Geoffrey Philp

Justice Clarence Thomas, hailed as the “brightest

possible northern star“ and lauded as a “legal titan”

prefers the sobriquet of Originalist, a justice intent

on reversing laws not explicit in the Constitution.

And while he remained quiet during oral arguments,

he’d been preparing tortured briefs against abortion

and affirmative action, which he called a threat

to the “notion of equality,” in his considered opinion.

But I wonder what the other black-robed justices think.

For at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

Clarence would’ve been reduced to 3/5 of a man—

His marriage would’ve been ruled as miscegenation

His home surrounded by hooded men on horseback:

“Don’t be scared, ma’am. We’re just here for the n***er.”

Geoffrey Philp is the author of two novels, Garvey’s Ghost and Benjamin, my son,, three children’s books, including Marcus and the Amazons, and two collections of short stories. He has also published five books of poetry. His forthcoming books include a graphic novel for children titled My Name is Marcus and a collection of poems titled Archipelagos. His forthcoming poetry collection borrows from Kamau Brathwaite’s “Middle Passage” lecture, Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, Sylvia Wynter’s “1492,” and Amitav Ghosh’s thesis in The Nutmeg’s Curse to explore the relationship between Christianity, colonialism, and genocide. He is currently working on a collection of poems titled Letter from Marcus Garvey. He can be found on twitter and on instagram.

IT'S THE EXOTIC, THE FOREIGN...

by Phyllis Wax

who rouse fear—                                                           

the Egyptian cobra, the black mamba,                                                  

the pit vipers of Pakistan and Afghanistan—                                        

and nativists lump the unfamiliar benign 

with these toxic snakes, want to fence them all out. 

                                                         

But what about the homegrown “patriots”—the domestic

side-armed sidewinding rattler, chattering and clattering           

its venomous views, sowing discord wherever  it chooses?

What about the skin-headed southern cottonmouth

with its deceptive languid accent and aggressive

lashing out?  The klanned coral snake, venomous,         

yet anonymous?  The paranoid tea-                                

stained copperhead?  The credulous shrug them off,                        

consider them crazies,

not dangerous species

to be monitored and tracked.

They slither from under rocks and brush piles                            

in the western hills, cluster in nests in lowland swamps,

ooze out of slimy mics all over the homeland.

The willfully oblivious ignore them—              

even when they rear back and strike.                                                                                                     

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee, WI, where she is now watching in horror as the homegrown snakes are all slithering out at once. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, both online and in print.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

by Bart Sides





Where I grew up: KKK ruled, in shadows,
Friends’ parents joined, in secret,
Crosses burned, in fields,
Shrouded apparitions danced, sweated, hated—
Where I grew up.

Where I grew up: Sears had two bubblers, near off-limit restrooms,
One said, “Whites Only, in block letter print,
One said, “Colored,” polite for the day,
Each, unquestioning, “knew its place,”
Where I grew up.

Where I grew up: Confederate flags flew, proudly on buildings,
Licenses read, “Hell, no, I won’t forget,” on cars,
Whites put bars, on windows,
Loaded guns waited, in corners, under beds, in drawers,
Where I grew up.

Where I grew up, sharecroppers toiled, over cotton,
Workers sang, in hot summer sun,
Heavy bags dragged, between green-white rows,
Jim Crow weighed the balance, against “free” run-down shacks,
Where I grew up.

Where I grew up, shacks lacked paint, near fields,
Newspapers stuffed cracks, in walls,
Sacks covered floors, over gaps,
Lanterns flickered, in rooms,
Where I grew up.

And that’s why “Black Lives Matter.”

Where I live now, racists retort, “All Lives Matter,”
And vote “NO,” on healthcare and schools,
And cash government checks, at banks,
And drive unmolested, in cars,
Where I live now.

Where I live now, some plant signs: “Blue Lives Matter,”
Prisons overflow, with poor black men,
Sentences lengthen, for all black men,
Police harass, for minor offense,
Where I live now.

Where I live now, racists tweet: “All Lives Matter,”
Police budgets soar, for weapons of war,
Law kills black, twice more than white,
No judge, no jury: modern-day lynching,
Where I live now.

Where I live now: “All Lives Matter,”
Black man jogs, then hunted and killed,
Open season lasts, in the land of the free,
Another lynching, four hundred plus years,
Where I live now.

Where I live now: churches declare, “Hate has no home here,”
And members say, “I like that,” before a golden cross,
And white satisfaction comforts, ignores privilege,
And no cop kills, shoots, smothers, arrests, for THEIR color,
Where I live now.

AND THAT’S WHY “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

Bart Sides is a fly fisherman, teacher, and occasional poet. Southern by birth and New Englander by choice, he resides with his wife in Currier and Ives country with his wife of 46 years and 5 cats.

APOCALYPSE

by Charles Harvey

Police escort the last of about 150 masked members of the Patriot Front from a parking garage, after they peacefully ended a march near Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Theiler

I don’t give a fuck

About Donald Duck
Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!
He a chicken shit
He a mouth too small to
Blow smoke up my ass
But he sure blowing jazz
Up some white folk’s corn holes.
He blowing smoke, and they
Inhaling the shit he shit.
He gonna paint the White House red
From the blood of busted skulls,
‘Cause the cops are coming
The Neo-Nazis are coming
The skinheads are coming
The KKKs are coming
The Jew-haters are coming
The nigger-haters are coming
The stars and bars are coming
The Uncle Toms are bowing,
“Yas suh! !Yas suh!” thirty pieces of silver
to seal they thick lips.
They raising Bull Connor from the dead
The fools have been fooled
The turkeys are coming home to defecate,
But the wise will rise
From the ashes of democracy.

Charles Harvey lives in Houston Texas. He is a novelist and poet. He is currently working on a volume of poetry, Rough Cut Until I Bleed, due to be out on March 24. He has numerous volumes of poetry and short stories all over the web. He is in the middle of revising several novels to be re-released soon.

SONNET FOR GOVERNOR NORTHAM

by Diane Elayne Dees





I had to shine my shoes that day. I might
have inadvertently smeared polish on my face.
I don’t recall—but I’m more or less contrite
(for those who get all worked up about race).
I know that I’m a doctor of neurology,
but I have a lot of brain fog and confusion.
That photo in my yearbook’s an anomaly;
it may even be an optical illusion.
I may have donned a baptismal-like robe—
pure white (and perhaps it had a hood)—
and though I’m trying really hard to probe
my memory, it isn’t very good.
In summary, I’m the short guy. No—the tall!
But wait.....I think I wasn’t there at all.


Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

BOTH SIDES

by Judith Terzi





Lies and lies are everywhere,
and racist slogans fill the air
and hatred oozing everywhere.
We didn't know this way.

And now these folks they block the sun,
they ruin love for everyone.
So many things he could have done.
His base got in the way.

He looks at hate from both sides now.
The KKK's okay somehow.
His father marched, you will recall.
He really doesn't care about us at all.

His id rides on a Ferris wheel,
spins dizzy, hurtful tweets he feels
as all delusional goes real.
We didn't know this way.

So every day another show.
We cringe wherever he doth go.
And what will happen, we don't know
until the lies give way.

He looks at hate from both sides now
and white supremacists somehow
are good, he said, you will recall.
And Sheriff Joe isn't really bad at all.

Our tears and fears, not feeling proud
to say our country right out loud
is led by hacks and circus crowds.
We didn't vote this way.

Our senators are acting strange.
They shake their heads, but what will change?
Transgender troops may lose what's gained
in fighting every day.

He looks at hate from both sides now.
His nemesis is love somehow.
Dark clouds will reign, you will recall,
when Fascists really aren't that bad at all.

Judith Terzi's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as BorderSenses, Caesura, Columbia Journal, Good Works Review (FutureCycle Press), Raintown Review, Unsplendid, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By are her most recent chapbooks from Kattywompus Press.

GOD KEEP ME

by Alejandro Escudé

One can organize well.
Hate in sharp angles:
Triangles, crosses, swastikas.

Checked boxes.
If you believe this,
You can't believe that.

Then there's the vitriol
That anticipates understanding.
Firewalls of reaction.

Dull, bright colors.
In the midst of this,
A bullet the size of a car.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

CHARLOTTESVILLE 8/11/17

by Jan Steckel

Several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists were met by a small group of counterprotesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson on Friday night at the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. 

—The Washington Post, August 12, 2017

O my America!
What are these phosphors
borne in the hands of men
wearing polo shirts and swastikas?

The pastor flees her church.
She hasn’t seen Klan with torches
since she was five years old.
Here they stride with baseball bats,
dressed like college students
or fresh from the boardroom.
She fears for the black man walking
alone the streets of her town,
where bands of predators roam.

“Blood and soil,” they chant.
”White lives matter.”
”You will not replace us.”
”Jews will not replace us.”

Where are the streets of gold
my great-grandparents came looking for?
Now it’s blond men who brandish flambeaux
surrounding a circle of antifascist students,
hands joined around a monument,
facing outward against the slavering pack.
The Nazis throw their torches,
mace the kids. Afterward a girl
tweets that she’s safe,
but she’s not okay.
Where is the God in whom she trusted?
Out of the many, where is the one?

Charlottesville, tonight the dream
of a shining city on a hill
shatters into points of light
marching along your occupied streets.

Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who left the practice of medicine because of chronic pain. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards for LGBT writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. 

T***P BUMPS HIS HEAD, A BIGGER

by  David Spicer  

                                         

Cartoon by Darcy, Cleveland.com, May 10, 2017

idiot than ever. No, not impossible:
decades ago he grabbed a Voodoo
princess by her pussy in his penthouse.
Curses galore at the height of your infamy,
Goldie Small Hands! T***p didn’t laugh
but drools today. Today, swastikas curve fetally.
Today, the sheets of KKKers bleed.
Beavis and Butthead chew Tic-Tacs.
T***p’s blonde miracle weeps tangerine tears.
Whitey Pence shocks himself into a coma,
handmaids arcing around him, praying to Buddha.
Chris Christie scarfs twenty cheeseburgers.
Kellyanne Conway talks circles around herself
like a carousel pony. Congress is revolting.
Eddie Munster for Prez! moderates roar.
David Duke for King! fascists yell.
I want Ted Nugent! the Alaskan nincompoop drawls.
On second thought, I want me! Anarchists, nihilists,
and poets celebrate with a three-day bacchanal.
T***p disappears, descends into the earth via ICBM,
lands in China, deported to North Korea.
SUPREME LEADER STUPID HAIRCUT
BEHEADS ORANGE FACE!!! shouts
New York Post. Putin mourns, then farts.
Throngs cheer and party in the world’s megacities.
Back home, T***p’s cronies and their carpet bags
red-eye to the North. Little Jeff Sessions preens
in the mirror of the Justice Department toilet,
tokes his Alabama Bound weed, and dances helter-skelter
like Lorde, collapsing. Eddie Munster! Eddie Munster
for Prez! Gut Medicare, Eddie! Gut Social Security!
his toadies leer and chant. We love Hillary! progressives
scream. Bill Maher, we demand Bill Maher! millennials
moan. GO FUCK YOURSELVES! Bill Maher megahorns.
You’re dreaming again, honey. Wake up,
my wife says, shaking my shoulders.
What’s he done now? I ask.

David Spicer is a retired proofreader for a medical journal and has had poems accepted by or published in Reed Magazine, Alcatraz, The Mocking Heart Review, North Dakota Quarterly, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Nude Bruce Review and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

ORGASMO DE NEGOCIOS

by Ashton Jaymz

Cartoon by Jeff Darcy

White hoods give way to smiling white faces
Trim suits, white shirts, smooth in all the right places
Plantations give way to shimmering new offices
When you’re licking balls for status, you can't tell what a farce is
But it's all so shiny, neat, and clean
Your insides are all sanitized, so the dirt can't be seen
We're all fucktoys of a freshly printed bill
I'd die for a green orgasm, and let my tomb eat its fill


Ashton Jaymz is an English major currently residing in St. Louis, with a fondness for cigars and the theater.

THE THIRTEENTH MORNING AFTER

by Lyndi O'Laughlin

Image source: Loyal White Knights

Someone put an Amazon box
with a dirty bomb
under the Wizard of Oz’s throne,
blowing millions of barefaced replicas
into a blameless wind,

some lined-up right now
outside the local tattoo parlor,
needles buzzing over the raw flesh
of “Stars and Stripes Forever”.

The Victory Klavalkade Klan Parade is
planned for December, pale guys
and the women who love them
will wave from the beds of
pick-up trucks slithering down
a slick shiny boulevard in
North Carolina, and light will try to glint
off the gun metal barrels of dusty rifles
hanging on racks in back windows;
confetti and balloons will thrill
the children of the children and
maple trees along the parade route
will blow backwards into
the indifferent faces of crows,

and there is so much joy
around me that I turn away,
walk myself into the ocean,
breath salt water and fish scales,
stroll by anemones and sea stars
hiding under vast islands of
Huggies, Big Mac wrappers,
condoms and water bottles.

I’ll nap in a kelp bed, wake to
my own whimpers and howls
bubbling forth like the bays of
a three-legged red bone hound
tethered underwater to a coral reef,
head straight back, mouth an open gash,
seven billion balls of air bubbling forth.

It’s a comfortable enough seat,
this rocky outcrop, and I hardly
have to crane my neck at all
to see the soft underbelly
of that great white shark,
circling the shipwreck on my left.

Nothing to be done today
but keen bad poems,
let them rise in bubbles that
break the surface with a feeble crack
like the chipped edge
of a flat oar,
knowing I will never again
have to wonder—
how the Holocaust was
able to happen in the first place.

Lyndi O'Laughlin has a degree in nursing, but spends her time writing poetry from her home in Kaycee, Wyoming. As a progressive living in a rural, conservative area, poetry has become her way of expressing views that question the status quo. 

SPECTRUM: NOVEMBER 8, 2016

by Deborah Kahan Kolb

The day the red-ones drew the curtains and chose the orange-one
to mind the white oval that had embraced the black-one
nearly three thousand days --- that day

was the day the blue-ones formed
a veined parenthesis to contain the pulsing mass
of the red-ones, spilling sideways,

was the day the red-ones and the blue-ones
never turned to purple and the green-ones
stayed scattered, shoots pushing up to be counted,

was the day the brown-ones huddled and burst, and
waited for the white-ones, the eye-holed pointed ones,
to bear a burning broken cross, its twisted arms akimbo,

was the day the pink-ones, like the blue-one who
missed her grip at the finish, snatched steel from
between their legs and bound themselves each to each,

was the day the tan-ones veiled themselves
into invisibility,

was the day the yellow-ones shifted, and strove
for the exits,

was the day the beige-ones bent double, and breathed
dios mio,

was the day the rainbows clung together, their colors melted
and shriven,

was the day a keening Hallelujah rose up from the teeming streets
and evanesced into the violet sky,

was the day I waited for the raging ones to bring a yellow star
for me.

Deborah Kahan Kolb is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Windows and a Looking Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Poetica, Veils, Halos & Shackles, and Voices Israel. She lives in Bronx, NY. 

HOW TO BE THE BEST REPUBLICAN EVER

by Bill Livingston

Image source: Forward Progressives

Set your clocks back to 1950

Remove all foresight, no need to look forward

Be white

By any means necessary

Be a man

Only your wife or mother can control your body

Be the loudest one in the room

Let the meek inherit the rest of the earth

Listen to country music exclusively

Except Keith Urban – being married to Nicole Kidman ain’t country, Hoss

Actually live in the country

Don’t be that stubborn ball of flour in the melting pot

If you’re rich, live next to a country club

Toast the minorities who tend the greens, yet could never be members

Stay far away from cultural institutions

Such as libraries, museums, theatres, art house cinemas and bars featuring poetry nights Everything you need is on FOX, FOX NASCAR and the internet

Buy a gun, then another, then another, then another

Buy more bullets than you can possibly use in any kind of apocalypse

Protest abortion and Planned Parenthood with the same fervor you protest gun regulations

Let others appreciate the irony

Show your Southern pride and fly the Confederate flag

Show your Northern ignorance and fly it in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, etc

Love thy neighbor

As long as they’re straight, white, Christian, Republican and actually your neighbor

Go to bed early

Late night talk show hosts mock your heroes incessantly

Make love only in the Missionary position

You can get creative when the NEA is obliterated

Fill your nightstand with exciting works of fiction

Start with Rand, Clancy, Le Carre and, of course, the Bible

Instill envy in your peers

Take a selfie with Donald Trump, Sarah Palin or a dead lion

Support lawmakers who defund public education

While you teach your children to hate, hate, hate

Adopt a firm grasp of right and wrong

Remember, cops are always right and Black Lives Matter is always wrong

Ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?”

Then do the opposite

Always offer Thoughts & Prayers

Without actually thinking or praying

Numb yourself to war, but choose your enemies wisely

Start with Muslims, Mexicans, filthy liberals and the irksome truth

Read this poem, hate this poem

It doesn’t even rhyme

Burn a cross on my lawn, ignite it with these words

Because I’m very different from you

Originally from Altoona, PA, Bill Livingston is a poet, humorist, screenwriter and advertising copywriter who has been published in Danse Macabre, Saturday Afternoon Journal, Treehouse, Flipside, Mobius, and forthcoming in Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge. He is a supporting member of The Poetry Project and an original member of Brooklyn Poets and Bowery Arts + Science. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and twin daughters.

DRESSING UP THE TRADITION

by Margaret Rozga

It’s still raw there, there at the lunch counters
of our minds, our souls. Closing Woolworth’s
could not erase it, not given its firmly-fixed seat,
nor could putting sheets back on beds,
snarling dogs back in kennels.  Patronizing
faces in high places, crosses still
burn, codes still smolder, singe
those too young to know what a noose is.
Suit and tie it, it’s still a night rider.


Margaret Rozga has published three books: Two Hundred Nights and One Day, Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad, and her latest   Justice   Freedom   Herbs.

LOW BEAMS IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

by James Croteau

Along the Mississippi Delta. Image source: My American Odyssey

Only low beams lit the road

as my parents drove Highway 61

from Memphis through Clarksdale

to Cleveland with civil rights marches

all around us. I never knew

it's not a delta at all, no mouth

until further south. It's all alluvial

plain, this place of my birth. Grandpa

disembarked in Baltimore's harbor

in 1921, moved south when

cotton was still king but

he never planted. Instead he owned

a five and dime on Main Street

in Cleveland. I was proud

to help clerk. Sometimes he'd aim

squinted eyes my way, talk the Italian

he taught me “follow that N-word."

"It's the longest stretch of straight road

east of the Great River," my dad

always said as he drove, low beams

to avoid blinding the oncoming

drivers like us. We got used to not seeing

anything beyond the white

cotton by the side of the road.

Living legacies are often at the periphery

of the privileged. Even amid

outcries at the murders in the streets

and the churches, we whites miss

the lay of the land by

low beaming our questions--

Was the officer following policy?

Was the shooter mentally ill?

Isn't the KKK really to blame?

But I've been lucky, my eyes

have been pried apart by

a few good people. I see some

beyond the well-meant

intentions in front of my face.

The fertile flatness was freely

brought by the floods of the Yazoo

and Mississippi, then it was stolen

and exploited--Indian removal, slavery,

sharecropping, Jim Crow de jure

and de facto, this history's alive and

denied. If I high beam my heart

I can see that I could have been

Darren Wilson, even Dylann Roof.

I learn how the land of my birth

really lies, only when I can feel

the white of my finger placed

everyday on the trigger of the gun

I was given on the day I was born.

James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, The New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing. He has a series of poems upcoming in April 2014 in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry.

KLANSMEN

by William Ruleman

The self-proclaimed largest Ku Klux Klan group in America plans to rally outside the South Carolina statehouse next month, state officials confirmed. --The Washington Post, June 30, 2015

Good Christian men in white
Ride into the night
To keep their women pure
And families secure.

Good Christian men in white
Know that they are right
But tend to wait till dark
Before they will embark

(Good Christian men in white),
For their own brand of might
Tends not to thrive by day
On what mild judges say.

Good Christian men in white
Wake to see dawn light,
Their white robes stained in mud,
Stallions’ foam, and blood.


William Ruleman’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Galway Review, The New English Review, The New Verse News, The Pennsylvania Review, The Recusant, The Road Not Taken, Rubies in the Darkness, The Sonnet Scroll, and Trinacria. His books include two collections of his own poems (A Palpable Presence and Sacred and Profane Loves, both from Feather Books), as well as translations of poems from Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (WillHall Books, 2003), of Stefan Zweig’s fiction in Vienna Spring: Early Novellas and Stories (Ariadne Press, 2010), of prose and poems by Zweig in A Girl and the Weather (Cedar Springs Books, 2014), and of poems by the German Romantics in Verse for the Journey: Poems on the Wandering Life (also from Cedar Springs Books). He is Professor of English at Tennessee Wesleyan College.

BY ANY STANDARD

by Kenneth Salzmann

The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said. In an interview with the News-Leader on Monday, she said the flag represents faith, family and freedom — not slavery, racism or white supremacy. On Thursday, the News-Leader was alerted by readers that Robb’s husband Nathan, co-owner of the store, once tried to adopt a highway in Arkansas on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Nathan Robb’s father is Thomas Robb, the national director of the KKK. (Photo: Valerie Mosley/News-Leader) —Springfield News-Leader, June 26, 2015

Far be it from me to rag on
the beloved flag that yet waves
not (as some say) to celebrate
the keeping of slaves but (as you
assure me) to pay all due tribute
to your valorous ancestors
who waged brave war against
the relentless arc of history even as
they carved your glorious home
land out of stubborn red
clay and soft lacerated flesh.

All praise be to those
who came before you bearing
whips and shackles ax handles
at the doors of shabby
roadside restaurants christly
crosses fierce fires
of redemption and the proud
blood that even now
flows freely in your veins.


Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies, including The New Verse News, Rattle, Comstock Review, Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents (Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises), Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press), The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press).