LESSONS OVER 80 YEARS

by Royal Rhodes

Physicians for Social Reponsibility

     "...then uncontrollably I began to weep..."
           —Derek Walcott, Another Life


The original child bomb
at an early hour
in the Far East
burst in the August air.

It made the atmosphere
truly luminous
like god-particles
in transfiguration of light.

Pedestrians on a bridge
were silhouettes
racing to paradise
as Buddha's smile froze.

And now after decades
the terror birthed
there, a monster
birth, is wombed again.

Treaties are twisted into
origami devil dragons
and peace bells again
are blessed but silenced

new technology multiplies
death for millions while
protesters are sent to jail,
making death much safer.

We have disremembered
the faces moistened
with molten jellies
from upturned, burst eyes.

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News.

MONDAY

by D. Gilson

Image source: Mahogany Airplane Models

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 gone missing
on Saturday local time. Why am I just now
hearing about this? Cue my missing credit card.
Thank you for calling Chase-Visa, this is Mike.
Cancelled, remitted fraudulent charge, lower
interest rate in less than five minutes time.
Somewhere in the Pacific, 239 people missing.
I question the preposition: “in” or “over” or “under.”
I question memory: a single teenage night,
a school project due. Father builds a one-inch
model of the atom bomb, Little Boy. Boy,
he tells me, don’t let this happen again.
We’ve no access to flight logs, how many boys
might be crying or dead. Or will die. I lied
to my father. Put off the project so Nathan
and I could play terrorist, Israel and Palestine,
in the shed behind our house. I bind Nathan.
Demand ransom. In the shed we kiss, a mistake,
and I lop off his head. I wonder when the news
switches from “missing” to “presumed dead”
as the treadmill slows down, pulls time under.


D. Gilson is the author of Crush (Punctum Books, 2014) with Will Stockton, Brit Lit (Sibling Rivalry, 2013), and Catch & Release (Seven Kitchens, 2012), winner of the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Indiana Review, and PANK.