JULY 8

by Lynda Gene Rymond

Last night under my window

I heard a coyote clack its teeth.

Today’s skies grow dark, darker.

Clouds purr at first

but then it’s full-throated growls

breaking to thunderclaps

to shake the house

 

while in the city of angels

men on horseback stalk

like corrupted knights

to intimidate children.

Tactical vehicles prowl.

A small black woman,

Madam Mayor, confronts,

her fury rising like heatwaves.

 

Be furious. Be thunder.

Shake their houses.

Steal their horses, count coup,

paint their dishonor.

Find a mightier pen to wield.

Tell tales that crack walls.

Sing, sing all the way to morning.

Lynda Gene Rymond lives and works on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa. She is a winner of the Pennwriters Short Story Prize and a multi-year finalist for Bucks County Poet Laureate. Her latest publication, Spellbook, has just been published by Moonstone Arts.

DOWNTOWN L.A.

by Katie Kemple

A woman asks me how 

to find Hope Street. 

I'm not sure, I say. Maybe 

around the corner? The rest 

of the week Hope Street 

startles me. Finds me 

when I least expect it. 

On the walk to the library. 

After dinner with college 

roommates. At the end 

of my volunteer shift. 

The sign towers over me. 

You have to look up to 

see it. The font confident 

we will find our way.  

Katie Kemple is the author of Big Man (Chestnut Review Chapbooks, 2025). Her work has been curated by Frontier, Plougharers, and Rattle (Poets Respond). 

CITY OF ANGELS

by Raymond Nat Turner

“There is no power greater than a community discovering what it  cares about.”  

—Margaret J. Wheatley, Turning to One Another

City Of Angels where

Camouflaged kidnappers; Fascist wrecking-crews rip

Seamstress, roofer, warehouse worker, dishwasher families

Apart. Apart for private prison-profiteers. Apart for a flash-

Bang-buffoon-king of chaos and cruelty. Whose strongman

Handler has him by the short-hairs— Dancing for dollars

City Of Angels where 

Folks know that masters of misdirection mix fantasy with

Fascism. Sprinkle spectacle in with torture.  And laugh

In teargas and rubber bullets—All the way to the bank—

Stealing SNAP; Medicaid; Social Security; and veterans’

Benefits 

City Of Angels ruled by devils

Reflecting fire and ICE.

City Of Angels where everyday 

Angelenos strap on resistance

Wings— And fly in solidarity

Formations through fog

City Of Angels where

Everyday Angelenos strap on mutual aid

Wings— And fly warp speed

Through blitzkrieg. Through hurricanes 

Of big lies. 

Through whirlwinds of racist rubbish

City Of Angels where

“To protect and serve” translates into sonic boom slogans

Bouncing off buildings! Ricocheting as linked arms.

Morphing shoulder-to-shoulder. Out from unlikely alliances.

Into united fronts ten toes down! Into militant movements

Organizing and building. Mastering pressure, mastering choke-points

City Of Angels where 

Everyday Angelenos know it’s no video game

On colorful screens. Know it’s soldiers on their streets

And Marines. Know “less lethal” is Pig Latin for Palestine—

On the down-low—Cookin’ slow … Know Gaza is Raza—

Writ large …

City Of Angels where 

The streets are universities of class struggle

Attended by allies, accomplices, comrades.

The streets are universities of class struggle paved with smoking tear-

Gas canisters; bloody, rubber-coated, steel bullets. And goose-steppers

Coming for Mexicans in the morning— And back for Blacks by noon 

City Of Angels where

Everyday Angelenos hate The Orange Age—

Its latest outrage of tilted table. Loaded dice.

Marked cards. Everyday Angelenos hate the

Capitalist decay—that must be swept Away

With 8.5-hour days of resistance!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

EVERYWHERE FRACTURED BONE/IT SEEMS

by Al Ortolani

los angeles is in the air/a few

acres of protest within five hundred 

 

miles of city/stretched/tendons

in the streets/now

 

muscled by federal policy/bent 

to hyperextension/bone

 

in socket grinding: a home

for some/a charnel house

 

for others/this America 

not the America we learned

 

to love/the disruption/

the disunity/the distemper/

 

troops in riot gear/rubber bullets

a bicep flex/

 

the fist/well-knuckled

in the face of the weak:

 

this new scapegoat of migration

is shaken in our faces/blinding us

 

to the Samaritan within:

all the while/a sleight of hand

 

finger tipping through the

streets as planned

Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review.

THE ENGLISH TEACHER PENS A LETTER TO TECH CEOS

by Alejandro Escudé

An afternoon grading on the internet, I walk out

To the November skies of Los Angeles, warm,

A day moon more orb-like than usual in the east.

The sun a shining lake behind fair weather clouds.

I’m thinking of you. How you stalked us in our 

Classrooms for years, removing first our books.

Taking our grades and popping them on screens

That would never time out, even on vacations.

It’s you I blame whenever I can’t direct students

To a specific page, numbers eliminated long ago,

The corners, dog-eared, the scanning of the hand

Across print to mark a quote, to seize an argument.

But I’m a gnat on a remote beach of the economic

Planet to you staring at a sea of adolescents with 

Endless passwords tattooed on their brains. Strolling,

I spot a Yellow-rumped Warbler shadowing me along 

The side of the road. An intelligence, a god, birthed

Of the moon and sun. Buffering, my human hopes.

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.

HINT OF AN ELEGAIC SUMMER VOICE

by Earl J. Wilcox

for Vin Scully (1927-2022)

Some say his dulcet tones

Soothed the raucous hard ballers.

 

Some say his mellifluous vocals

Quelled the rabid Dodgers horde.

 

Others say his soothing cache

Of insightful swag saved the day.

 

The wonderful horde of baseball

Lore and treasure allured us forever

 

the day he arrived in Brooklyn &

the era he shined in his city of angels. 

 

We shall not hear again his storied

Trove of love for our nation’s game—

Our man with a voice for all seasons.

Earl Wilcox writes from his retirement balcony in upstate South Carolina. A collection of his poems—It Goes On, Life Poems—will be published in 2023.

DRESSING ROOM

by Shirley J. Brewer

The funeral for a 14-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet fired during a police shooting at a North Hollywood clothing store is scheduled for Monday in Gardena, family attorneys said. The funeral for Valentina Orellana Peralta is scheduled for 11 a.m. at City of Refuge Church. The Rev. Al Sharpton will officiate and deliver the eulogy, family attorneys said in a statement. Valentina was shopping for Christmas clothes Dec. 23 when she was struck by a stray bullet fired by Los Angeles police who opened fire on a man attacking shoppers. A bullet went through an exterior wall of the dressing room and struck the girl, police said. —NBC Los Angeles, January 5, 2022

Growing up, I spent hours in dressing rooms

not much larger than an upright coffin,

lined with hooks and distorted mirrors—

my mother and I in such close proximity

the space felt like a birthing place.

Every zipper resembled an umbilical cord

I longed to slice in two.

Buried under a cluster of plaid skirts,

ugly corduroy pants—I ached for fresh air.

Holiday sales or back-to-school bargains

signaled dread. It wasn’t all torture.

Mom’s agony while squirming into

stiff girdles and voluminous brassieres

stirred laughing fits I could not suppress.

“Hold these pins,” she’d say

as I doubled over, spilling my M&M’s.

Sometimes we both dissolved in giggles.

Prom time called for battle tactics,

Mom fighting off the billowing crinolines,

eyeing bust and hem before the price tag.

She earned her corsage.

Looking back, I recognize the miracle—

how my mother and I emerged alive

from a thousand dressing rooms, how we walked

together into the safe burst of afternoon light.

A recent Pushcart nominee, Shirley J. Brewer serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for the Arts in Baltimore, MD. Her poems appear in Barrow Street, Comstock Review, Gargoyle, The New Verse News, Poetry East, Slant, among other journals and anthologies. Shirley’s poetry books include A Little Breast Music (2008, Passager Books), After Words (2013, Apprentice House), and Bistro in Another Realm (2017, Main Street Rag). Shirley was a 2020 guest on The Poet and The Poem with Grace Cavalieri, broadcast from the Library of Congress.

WISH-WASH

by Charlotte Innes

The city’s all a-wash with rain,
wish-wash the water goes,
down gutters, litter-clogged, down drains
and pipes—and, there they blow,
the coffee lids, a sock, a cane,
some cartons, butts, a picture frame
bobbing atop the flow.

Post-drought, the rain’s a candy store
(including crap), the drub
of drops on my umbrella or
green shoots of grass that mob
an arid patch or crack. But water’s
driven baby seals ashore
(the warming-ocean “blob”),

and heat and rain together rob
our coastal townships more
and more, as seaside cliff-tops drop
away. Some call it “war,”
as if some ancient pagan god
like Zeus, enraged by hubris, were lobbing
bolts of shock and awe,

to lift the ocean up nine feet,
(the forecast), flood our Basin,
disappear our beaches, shear
the edges off our nation.
Predictive climate maps delete
whole countries, tracking Earth’s defeat,
shutting down salvation.

But gentle rain tonight prolongs
my day, and keeps at bay
the Marshall Islands, Venice, their long
drowning—despair at how to stay
alert to horror, play and song,
to rain and grass, to wrongs and wrong,
to more than I can say.

Charlotte Innes is the author of Descanso Drive (Kelsay Books, 2017), a first book of poems, and two chapbooks, Licking the Serpent (2011) and Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles (2009), both with Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Rattle. She has written on literary topics for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation and other publications.  

A HUNTING WE WILL GO

by Stewart Shaw

“It’s been two years since a 26-year-old Black gay male died in the West Hollywood home of a 63-year-old white man and 243 days since the second one died. That’s not a typo. Yes, I said the second one. Despite the many young Black men who stepped forward in the wake of the deaths of Gemmel Moore, and later Timothy Dean, with text messages, plane tickets, voicemails, screenshots and videos recounting similar stories about Ed Buck, a Democratic activist and major donor who they say has a Tuskegee Experiment-like fetish which includes shooting meth into young Black men that he picks up off the street or via dating hookup websites, no charges have been filed against Buck in either death.” —Jasmyne Cannick, The Advocate, September 11, 2019. “The first pre-trial court hearing will take place on Monday [September 16, 2019] in the wrongful death civil rights lawsuit filed against Ed Buck, L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey and Assistant Head Deputy D.A. Craig Hum in the 2017 meth overdose death of 26-year-old Gemmel Moore in Buck’s West Hollywood apartment.” —WEHOville, September 10, 2019. WEHOville photo above: Jerome Kitchen, a friend of Gemmel Moore’s, speaking at the rally on Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood in July with Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, at left, and organizer Jasmyne Cannick at right.

for Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean

Pt.1

No one can hear the crying. The white man who plays daddy or god, who wants my awe, my bended knee tribute, his ears that do not pick up the frequencies of such lonely cries, are on backwards, are not attune to blk boy misery.

I can hear the echoes of past supplicants; they walk over my grave. I ask him if he feels the heavy, vibrating air circulating through the room.  His soft-spaced body pitted with an excess of hubris, self-loathing, only detects its own insatiable appetites for worship and dick and ass; a blk body more synecdoche than spirit. He

Does not believe in blk pain, just white pleasures. So, I give this god his want, give him my blk body to fill with poison, give him my neediness, my hopes in exchange for his lust and pieces of silver. I will indulge his fantasy, bow down at the altar of his self-righteousness; swing from his lustful ego. When I die

Bury me in the blue of divinity, let no white sheet adorn my skin. Drop me into the ocean, let the salt cleanse my veins, carry my body away from the hunt.

Stewart Shaw is a poetry and fiction writer and the author of the chapbook The House of Men from Glass Lyre Press. His poems have been published in African American Review, Temenos Literary Journal, Serendipity and others, as well as short stories in Mighty Real: An Anthology of African American Same Gender Loving Writing and African Voices. He is a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow.

BILLY COLLINS

by Erren Geraud Kelly

People use tents, makeshift plastic coverings and blankets as shelter in a block-long encampment that runs down San Pedro Street. Photo: Theonepointeight for The Intercept

Tried to get a ticket to
The reading, but it was sold out
So, i settled for watching his
Documentary
While i snacked on nachos
And beer.
I read another rejection letter
Earlier, i kept  thinking
Maybe if i wrote "safer"  poems
The New Yorker would love me
But the only safe place is in
My mind.
I tried to eat  Osso Busco once
But i kept thinking about the
Tent cities, strung along
Sixth street.
I want to be P.C., but everytime
I write polite poems,
I see dead black bodies
Floating between the lines


Erren Geraud Kelly is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Los Angeles whose work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, PoetryMagazine.com, Ceremony, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications, most recently Black Heart Literary Journal. He is the author of the book Disturbing The Peace (Night Ballet Press) and the chapbook The Rah Rah Girl forthcoming from Barometric Press.

LA MOTHER'S LAMENT

by JeanMarie VanDine

Ron Chapple/Getty Images

Another Saturday night
someone dies
in this welt of a town.
Black, brown.
Someone goes down.
Someone’s prized son
never reaches twenty-one.
Like the crow of the rooster,
the call comes before the sun rises.
Beacons glare in black puddles
on a balmy summer night.
Rage plays like an oldie,
under a skipping needle.
Brothers, like broken glass,
can’t mend themselves.
Mothers can’t restrain
their young,
pit bulls yanking
on choke chains.
Tears fall, fade
like chalk marks
on asphalt.


JeanMarie VanDine lives in Southern California, and has taught English in urban high schools—where she has witnessed the loss of many young men—due to violence.