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. 

TRUMPNACHT

by Sonya Groves

Residents gathered this month on a corner in Coquille, Ore., in anticipation of rumored (nonexistent) busloads of antifa activists.—“When Anifa Hysteria Sweeps America” by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, June 17, 2020. Photo Credit: Amy Moss Strong/The World

And when shall Kristallnacht occur and whose bodies will he pull into the street...black, brown, bilingual, dual citizen, naturalized citizen, undocumented, Democrat, liberal, atheist, poor...how shall he kill us, with the good book in his hand, with the poison on his tongue, with the chaos that follows him, snaking through our fiber pipes dumping hate, candy from a dispenser? When shall our night of terror begin or has it come and gone and we dying in our walled ghetto from tear gas, spittle from his unmasked minions, and ignorance on how to turn it off, turn it all off, walk into the light and reach for a hand out of the pit and onto the surface of compassion. Because we are dying down here, I am dying down here and the bodies are piling up, up so high he never has to see anything, anymore.

Sonya Groves is a teacher in San Antonio. She has poetry publications in over 20 journals, including  TheNewVerse.News, La Noria, The Voices Project, Aries, Carbon Culture Review, and FLARE: The Flagler Review.  Currently she is pursuing her PhD at The University of Texas San Antonio.

THE STUMBLING STONES

by Mark Tarren

A candle and roses laid on a set of Stolpersteine in Berlin at a commemorative ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Photograph: Eliza Apperly —The Guardian, February 18, 2019

So they walk.
This invisible procession of ghosts,
a march of mist.

Hidden amongst the alleyways
and cobblestones

of forgotten footprints
in stone and snow.

A fingerless glove
caresses a patch of brass.

Here I am

His words
shadows in the air.

Kristallnacht.

His home
the face of the past.


The girl recognises him.

The Boy with the Jasper Eyes.

They used to play and sing
in the alleyways of
snow and school satchels.

She could smell the scent
of leather between them.

His musty jacket.
The fragrance of childhood.

She could only see
the back of his head
as they walked.

An innocent almond
in its collared sheath.

She remembers his gentle hands.
His careful smile.

Please turn around.

The Boy with the Jasper Eyes.

His words fell to the floor
of stone and snow
in their quiet knowing.

Three pebbles rolled
off the tongue onto

The Stumbling Stone

Here I am

Then she was alone.


The girl suddenly felt tired.
It was as if the whole of history
was buried deep behind her eyes.

A Grave for the Jews.

It was then she noticed the fire.

A window. A fireplace.
Laughter. Papa’s arms.
The smell of pine.

The taste of boiled lollies.

There was no brass plate
beneath her feet.

No Stolpersteine.

My name is Anna

and I live here.


Mark Tarren is a poet and writer based in Queensland, Australia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including TheNewVerse.News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press and Tuck Magazine.

KINDERNACHT

by j.lewis

Rob Jacobs Artist

there are no shards
no shattering glass this time
only the shattered lives
the small voices begging
"donde está mi mama?"

breaking windows would be
clichéd, a dull repetition,
a cheap imitation of an old trick
but this, this breaking of families
the splintering that leaves
sharp, heartless, cutting edges
shredding those tiny hearts

"we take them to the showers"
the lies roll easily off tongues
devoid of human conscience
devoid of basic decency
why not just tell the truth
"vamos a matarlos"

boxcars are replaced with
abandoned big box stores
warehouses converted to hold
not goods, but alleged "evils"
as if a year old toddler
could be evil before he can speak
evil before he can walk

this is the path we condemned
this is the hate we fought against
the tyranny our fathers bled to halt
the destruction that we so arrogantly
swore would never come again

and here it is
in the land of the free
the night air thickened
by children's cries of terror
as AMERICA THE GREAT
pulls a blanket of darkness
over this unholy night
this carefully calculated
cruel and cowardly

kindernacht

j.lewis is a father, a grandfather, a healthcare provider who is sickened by the treatment of immigrants at our southern border, especially the children, and who sees too many parallels not to be frightened for what may yet come. His first collection, a clear day in october, pairs his poetry with his own photography.