THE FIRST DEATH

by Thomas R. Smith

So a lost brother has taken a bullet.

We grasp after a coherent motive.

Another of the terminally online?

Noticing the victim did nothing to help

protect others from this kind of death.

Said a few deaths are worth his “freedom.”

Would he have considered his own death

by the gun worth it? Are we allowed to ask

whether this is irony or karma?

The mind unmoored from spirit, scrambled

by strange signals, tears loose from the real.

Can we be honest about our part in this?

Life is change, but fear turns change to death,

fear rooted in hatred, self-hatred

of the changing different one within.

I mourn his first death, the earlier one

when he turned away from decency and kindness

to join the church of the desecrated heart.

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

THE OAK AND THE REED

 by Judith Terzi

1906 illustration by Benjamin Rabier for “Le Chêne et le Roseau”

a very, very loose translation of "Le Chêne et le Roseau" by Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695)

So an oak says to a reed, "No wonder 

you hate Mother Nature. A tiny bird's 

a tremendous weight for you. Tremendous

weight. If a little breeze ripples a pool,

you have to bow your head. Me, I can 

almost touch Mount Everest. Amazing. 

Not only can I block the sun's rays, I can 

make it through the worst hurricane. Really, 

really amazing. For me, that north wind's 

just a tiny breeze. People say it's a zephyr. 

People say. I think they call it a zephyr. 

Terrific wind. Look, if your people would 

have been born in my neck of the woods, 

you wouldn't suffer so much. Believe me, 

my spread could defend you, but your 

kind comes from the wet, lowly other side 

of the wind's tracks. Nature's unjust

toward you and yours. Very, very unjust."

"Hey, I get where you're coming from," says 

the reed. "But get over it. I deal with wind 

much easier than you. I bend, I never ever 

break. Up until now, you've done ok––gotten by 

without breaking your back. But hang on!" 

Just then, a fury of a north wind was whipping up 

its breath. The oak holds tight. The reed bends. 

Le roseau plie. The wind doubles down. So bad 

that the oak is uprooted. Oak––with its head nearly 

touching the sky, feet digging into the dead.

Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay), as well as of five chapbooks, including Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus), Judith Terzi's poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Web and Net nominations and have been read on Radio 3 of the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English and French at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

KARMA COMES FOR CARL

by j.lewis

Carl Paladino, a western New York builder, one-time Republican candidate for governor of New York and political ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, came under fire on Friday for racially offensive comments about President Obama and the first lady, who Mr. Paladino said should be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford,” said Mr. Paladino, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2010, making an apparent reference to the Hereford cattle breed. He said he hoped the disease killed the president. Asked what he most wanted to see “go away” in the new year, Mr. Paladino — who has a reputation in New York political and business circles for speaking in an unfiltered manner reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s — answered, “Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla,” he said. —The New York Times, December 23, 2016. PHOTO CREDIT: HANS PENNINK/REUTERS via HuffPost, December 26, 2016

the knock at the door
startled him from half-dreams
into an irritated shout
who's there?
who's there?

no answer

thinking perhaps the single knock
meant, what else, but opportunity
his curiosity carried him
to the door where he queried
'that you, trump?'

again no answer

so it had to be, just had to be
something special for him and him alone
door opened slowly to quell his questions
and there they stood
gorilla on a hereford led by karma
who urged them forward
'get him, my loves, he's yours'

no answer

but with a shove into the room
the hereford took a mad stance over paladino
while the gorilla waited patiently
to drag the terrified peddler of hate
to a cave in zimbabwe where things

require no answer

j.lewis is a nurse practitioner, musician, and internationally published poet, as well as a contributing editor for Verse Virtual. His poems have appeared online and in print in numerous journals from California to Nigeria and the UK. His first collection of poetry and photography A Clear Day in October was published in June 2016. A chapbook is forthcoming from Praxis Magazine in early 2017.

TIS THE SEASON

by Howie Good

A street person
with fingers as fat

as sausages holds
a piece of cardboard,

Kindness Is Karma
shakily written on it

in black Sharpie. Just
do what everyone does.

Pretend not to see him
and walk straight past.

Tears can drown even
the strongest swimmer.


Howie Good is the recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his new collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

TEMPERAMENTAL: HALF TEMPER, HALF MENTAL

by Charles Frederickson

Image source: Gricni

Absurd lonesome planet as sensitive
As exposed ice cube nerve
Dripping teardrop slivers awaiting thaw
Collapsed meltdown lost nth dimension

Don’t judge others through prism
Uncensored stereotype warning labels stuck
White light contains all drawn
Shades multiversity spectrum phantasmal rainbow

Karma spinning color matters wheel
Primary secondary tertiary pure hues
Dynamic equilibrium balanced artistic harmony
Music poetry ice cream sundae

Dysfunction not exception but rule
Mind can be prism or
Prison feel free choosing former
Refracting own ever-changing multifaceted image

Dysfunctional cosmos emotionally spiritually disabled
There’s no shame in openly
Expressing authentic heartfelt dreams inspiring
Kinder more tolerantly compassionate humanity

Dysfunctional puzzling world 8-cornered Rubrik’s
Cube imitation of life itself
Use algorisms solving prideful enigmas
Restored initial configuration saving face

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson  proudly presents YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

MAYBE SANDY IS ANOTHER NAME FOR KARMA

by Ngoma

some say they should have
named her karma
i'm not sure
if she was a conspiracy theory,
or an act of god
bible thumpers called her
a revelation
a halloween trick or treat
a politician's opportunity disguised as disaster
some claim it was punishment for sin
but churches were flooded too
steeples and oak trees in the wind
proof that global warming deniers can't ignore
we could say I told you so
and maybe this is a wake up call
as roller coaster rides are buried in the flood
and marathoners take up hotel space
while many victims have no food
or a place to lay their heads
bodies still being found
in flooded burnt out homes
with no escape by subways
filled with water like underground cesspools
as Jamie Curtis talks about survival kits on Jay Leno
and tells us to donate money to the Red Cross
yet to show up in Mount Vernon
with gas lines around the block
for gas stations that are empty
meanwhile the major news media
act as though disaster only happens in america
as the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba
are ignored by major media
and there is no FEMA to guarantee votes for Obama on election day
suddenly we see what it may be like to live in a 3rd world country
where lack of gas and electricity is an everyday experience
and half the world is a disaster area
waiting for a relief concert to raise funds
that would not be needed if the wealth was redistributed
and warnings of global warming had been heeded


Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka's Spirit House Movers and Players and of the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry and songs that raise contradictions and search for a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review, Bum Rush The Page/Def Jam Anthology, Poems On The Road To Peace (Yale Press) and Let Loose On The World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. Family Festival of Environmental and Social Justice (Yale University, New Haven, CT) since 1996. He was a selected participant in the Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Cape Town, South Africa in fall of 2009. In December of 2011 he was initiated as an Obatala Priest in Ibadan, Nigeria.