THE TURTLE GAME

by Susan Terris

Kira Rudyk

In Ukraine, Kira Rudyk—member of Parliament—told

Wolf Blitzer on CNN, she has just been trained to use

a Kalashnikov rifle to help defend her city of Kyiv.

Our women, she said, will protect the soil same as our men.

Then she mentioned her young daughter. Instead of

trying to explain if/when/how/why Russians invade,

she teaches her child to play the game. If you know 

an attack’s imminent, you lie on your belly in the safest 

place that’s near. Hands on your ears, mouth open, 

 

so then you’re a turtle. It’s a don’t move/lie next to me/

pretend thing. As I watched, listened, tears slid down

my cheeks, and I thought for a moment that Kira was

the mother of my grandchildren, protecting them

with a Russian rifle and a game learned on the internet.

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, Denver Quarterly, and Ploughshares. Poems of hers  have appeared in Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

NUCLEAR WASTE

by Charles Rammelkamp

Ukraine has initiated a defensive strategy for the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, one of the most radioactive places on Earth, which lies on the shortest path between Russia and Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Photo: A Ukrainian border guard on a joint patrol with the Ukrainian police inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. —The New York Times, January 22, 2022

“It doesn’t matter if it’s contaminated,

or if nobody lives here,” Yuri declared,

responding to the unspoken skepticism 

in the sheen of the reporter’s dark eyes.

“It’s our territory, our country,

and we have to defend it.”

Shouldering his Kalashnikov, Yuri patrolled 

the snowy fields of the Chernobyl zone;

winter in northern Ukraine.

“I remember reading about the Soviets

parading the children on May Day 

through the swirl of radioactive dust

right after the accident 

to try to make us—and the world—believe 

nothing serious had happened.

Thank goodness I wasn’t alive then.

“Pripyat’s a ghost town now;

used to be the biggest city in the area.

You can still see the old Soviet propaganda –

a sign extolling the virtues of nuclear energy.

‘Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier.’”

Hunching his shoulders, as if to toss away his anger,

shifting the rifle, Yuri went on:

“Now we don’t know 

what will kill us first,

the virus, radiation, or Putin’s bombs.”

 

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife Abby. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, Misfit Magazine, and The Compulsive Reader. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.

THE LAST DAYS OF TYRANNY

by Mukund Gnanadesikan




Mustachioed Napoleon
Kalashnikov-bearing Narcissus,
Stands on his balcony, waves
Proclaims his potency
Knowing he is but a puffer fish.
The coalescing crowd
Becomes a famished tiger shark.
He must depart, fade into shadow
Or blood that flows
Will no longer spring from innocents
But from his pump that counts its mortal days.
Even uniformed lackeys stand aside
Listen as harmonic voice of millions
Rises in unison, crescendos,
Pries the strongman’s fingers from his weapon.
Let sentiment engrave in stone
Collective Will and Testament.

Mukund Gnanadesikan’s poetry and short stories have been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine,  Ayaskala, The Bangalore Review, Calliope on the Web, The Cape Rock, Tuck Magazine, Junto Magazine, Meniscus Literary Journal, Blood and Thunder, Poets’ Choice, and Dream Noir, among others. His first novel Errors of Omission is due out in fall of 2020 from Adelaide Books. He lives in Napa, CA, where he practices psychiatry.

MY THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS GO OUT TO YOU

by Melissa Balmain

Well, of course your mom was precious and I'm sad she's not alive, 

but the answer's not to confiscate my HK MP5—

it's to hand all moms their own! You'd still be Mama's honeybun

if, instead of brunch on Mother's Day, you'd thought to give a gun,

give a gun, give a gun, give a love-your-mama gun.

As for spouses, yours was beautiful before her head blew off—

how I wish you'd bought yourselves a his-and-hers Kalashnikov,

and avoided parties, films and other useless couples' fun.

Friday night's for weapons training, it's a chance to date a gun,

date a gun, date a gun, date a hot-o-matic gun.

And your little boy? Adorable—a shame he couldn't bolt.

He's our proof that every teacher ought to have the latest Colt,

plus a practice range where tire swings and tetherballs once spun.

Skip those silly games at recess till each Teach can aim a gun,

aim a gun, aim a gun, aim a Core-required gun.

So come on, quit being haters, don't you give my rights a shove.

There's a way for me to keep my gun, and you the folks you love!

All it takes is recognition that your highest goal, bar none,

is to plan your daily lives around my need to own a gun

that is deadlier than any used from Vicksburg to Verdun,

while ensuring that this right belongs to nearly everyone,

even online-shopping crazies who buy rifles by the ton.

Love my gun, love my gun—you're the planets, it's the sun—

Love my gun, love my gun: if you don't, you'd better run.


Melissa Balmain's poems have appeared in such places as American Life in Poetry, Lighten Up Online, Poetry Daily, and The Washington Post's Style Invitational; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and Success. She's the author of Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award).

MORE DARKNESS AT NOON

by George Held

The Swedish authorities have filed criminal charges against a Syrian man who is suspected of having participated in the mass killing of captured Syrian soldiers in 2012. The police arrested the man, Haisam Omar Sakhanh, on Friday, in the town of Karlskoga, Sweden, and charged him with a crime against international law. —NY Times, March 14, 2016

It is a late-winter day, chilly,
so the nine standing men wear a jacket
or a vest, and seven, two with masks,
point AK-47s at their targets

on the ground in front of them: seven
young men, torsos stripped bare, five
with their foreheads pressed to the ground—
two with hands bound behind their back,

three with hands restrained below the waist,
and two with hands free, one of whom rests
his forehead on a bare right arm, while
the other, at the extreme right, lies legs

spread, his chin on his left fist, his eyebrows
and nose visible for his last picture.
We can only guess at their last thoughts
and prayers, but each one knows

that any second a bullet will crash
into the back of his skull, and he will be dead.
The standing man at the extreme right
holds a pistol and looks down the rocky field,

maybe for a signal to begin shooting.
He will soon start the execution, firing
the first shot into his helpless victim.
The other armed men follow suit; all the bare-

backed men are now dead, and maybe so
are some of the rebels. Life is violent,
brutish and short for men at war, especially
a civil war, and usually it is better

to be a man with a Kalashnikov than one
stripped, prone, and waiting . . .


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Muddy River Books, Bleak Splendor.

THE MOURNING AFTER 11/13/15

by Don Hogle

Image source: The Hip Paris Blog by Carin Olsson

On the bus to Lambertville this morning,
and the sadness and anger at 129 dead in Paris
hang over a stunning fall day
like the last note of the piano
concerto I heard last night,
Trifonov's delicate finger
barely grazing the key,
the lightest vibration, and then
the lingering silence…

What does it sound like
when a life dissolves?

Boucler Votre Ceinture
Abroche Su Cinturón de Seguridad
Fasten Your Seatbelt
the seat in front of me advises.

Bataclan, Charlie Hebdo
Atocha Station
Tower One Tower Two

No strap of nylon web will protect
us against the Promise of Paradise
and a Kalishnikov, the explosive
strapped to the heart, the Pilot
of the Terrible Belief.

What to do
is not a question
but a dilemma
set down in an open field
not for contemplation
nor consideration
nor inspection
but for interrogation.

For now,
three pieces of construction paper
one blue one white one red
taped to the window
of my living room
facing out onto our world,
and a black rectangle
posted on Facebook
pour la France,
for all of us,
but only
for three days.

Most of the trees are already stripped
here, but the green grass of central Jersey
rolls on, as the bus proceeds
toward Frenchtown.


Don Hogle is a poet, blogger and brand and communications strategist living in Manhattan.  Poems have appeared recently in Mud Season Review, Minetta Review, Blast Furnace, Shooter, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable and TheNewVerse.News among others.  He was a finalist in the Northern Colorado Writers’ 2015 Poetry Contest. 

KALASHNIKOVS

by B.Z. Niditch

MIKHAIL Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47 rifle, told the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before his death that he felt guilty for those it killed. -- news.com.au

The arms trade
profits at the world's
children's expense,
who merely ask for love
or just a chance at living
now with no arms or legs
begging for food,
body parts now seen
on technicolor screens
with scars on skin
that cannot be erased
or some without remains
only the memory
of historical or geographical
error of being existentially
at the wrong place or time.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

ODE TO THE AK-47

by Judith Terzi

                    after the obituary for Mikhail Kalashnikov, Los Angeles Times, 12-24-13


He was born hearty without
a heart in 1947, weighed eight
pounds but had few moving parts.
He screamed six hundred bursts
of fire blood that ricocheted
from his banana-shaped clip-crib
through jungles and steppes and
tunnels and flesh and now. He is
the Lego for child soldiers who
crave him, caress him with agile,
wide-eyed fingers. He is their
playmate; they deconstruct him,
then rebuild him for pleasure.
They drag him into sandboxes,
into the silt of rivers and creeks,
through grasses of marshes,
the grime of exile, crime of
hunger. Drug lords fondle him
during drive-bys and executions.
The chouchou of the Hutu,
Saddam, Bin Laden, the Afghan
mujahideen, he became a Russian
icon for creative genius. He is
the most lethal firearm in human
combat. Yet, with so few moving
parts, without a heart, he can be
bought for the cost of a live chicken.


Judith Terzi holds an M.A. in French Literature. Recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies including Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's (Barefoot Muse Press), Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo Press), The Raintown Review, and Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes Press). Her fourth chapbook, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, was just published by Finishing Line.

GIVE US OUR DAILY KALASH

by Martha Landman 

 
                  ". . . the world has moved a little." --Phil Kafcaloudes

Peace-time peasants are born ignorant of
the Pill, the Apple Mac and breast implants

Looking like ordinary men they coin money
from vodka, umbrellas and pocket knives. In

honesty, they work for the good of the people.
Iconic, as Gatling and Colt, their Siberian son

receives the Order of Saint Andrew, wrapped in
a Mozambique flag, a hero of socialist labour.

There are no regrets in his photograph or
in poetic dreams buried in shallow graves

where the counterfeit child soldiers of Africa
pray that their crayon boxes be filled with

enough bullets and Big Macs to crack all the
cocaine plants of the world during short break.

If Russia had a Bill Gates they would patent
him Kalashnikov and be proud as a mother

They would let him battle Bryansk and Brody
and decorate him with more than a lawnmower.


Martha Landman lives and writes in tropical North Queensland, Australia. Her most recent work appeared in Poetry 24, Every Day Poets.

PEACE RIOT: KABUL, 9/11/13

by Rick Gray

Horns honked nonstop, and car radios blasted Afghan pop and patriotic tunes. Dancing crowds overwhelmed traffic circles as grinning police looked on. Flares and rockets arced and sparked overhead, and celebratory gunshots rang out, but no one flinched. . . . "It was not lost on the celebrants that Wednesday was the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that had branded their country a terrorist haven and plunged it into war once more. All day, national television stations here replayed film clips of New York’s twin towers falling and featured solemn interviews with experts about the event." --Washington Post, September 12, 2013. Image source: Twitter.

From a distance it sounds like
More war
But drive in closer and reach
Your open hand
Outside the cracked window
And feel it take hold.
This is nothing like what you dreamed.
It leads you recklessly into cheering mobs
beside your taxi, and won’t let go.
You are together now, and committed
Just like you said you always wanted
And with its free hand it pulls
the trigger of a rusted Kalashnikov
That shouts in English, just for you,
Straight up into thirty years of darkness
It’s over! Afghanistan two! India nothing!


Rick Gray has poems forthcoming in Salamander and Rkvry. His essay Total Darkness will appear in the forthcoming book Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. When not in Kabul, he lives with his wife and twin daughters in Florida.