WATERBOARDED

by Ben Evering

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes

Today

She’s a man, she said, sue her.

Epstein in the Trump files, sue them.

Climate change damages? Sue each other.

Not her, too thin.

Today

Too thin

Seven month old babies look like newborns

Promised food and shot

Limbless

Shot in the places they said were safe

By the weapons you sold to them

And you wrote a letter

the drip drip drip of the news waterboards me 

I wish I was drowning 

but I can swim

Ben Evering seeks clarity in complexity. They are a scientist in London, reading fiction and hoping for change.  

ROCK CREEK

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

-for Roberta Flack

Today Roberta Flack reunites with Donny Hathaway at a Carter Barron concert among crowds of Washington’s famed cherry trees peeper frogs visiting dignitaries

Marvin Gaye in attendance an alternate inauguration out of doors among glorious birds

Ben Shahn might paint a syrinx chorus oh how the capital creek flows Amanda Gorman

Richard Blanco Robert Frost Maya Angelou read their work

 

I grew up here and I’ve strolled the park with the crows and the deer

watching winter turn to spring  

from far away its song of the public good is still softly killing me

 

Roberta Flack is about as well known among the mandarins in the Maison Blanche

as Richard Wright James Baldwin and Ralph Bunche Emmanuel Macron comes to town

and between correcting facts and straightening records he says France isn’t just a remembrance

of past things like the Somme the Ardennes and Maginot it’s also Nina Simone Josephine Baker

 

I grew up here have often wondered  

where is the love?

not among trees and flowers natives and exotics imperial gifts and the green thumbs

of Lady Birds in our quondam swamp of Camelot the Brain Trust on the Potomac

Rather within those amnesiacs who cannot see what it takes to get to be how great we already are

the ranging octaves and ingenious melodies rhapsody of a people who keep offering everything 

after every betrayal because getting my own means putting it out but as Ms. Flack asked

Compared to what?

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. His latest book is the short fiction collection, Captain's Kismet (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). You can follow him @Sandcounties on Substack.

NEW CALEDONIA NATIVES FIGHT FOR RIGHTS

by Lavinia Kumar

New Caledonia has been under French control since 1853. The indigenous Kanak population, who make up approximately 40% of the territory’s 270,000 residents, has long sought independence from France. The 1998 Nouméa Accord provided a framework for gradual autonomy and promised three referendums on independence. The first two referendums in 2018 and 2020 saw close results against independence, while the third in 2021, heavily boycotted by pro-independence groups due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in an overwhelming vote to remain part of France. The recent violence erupted after the French National Assembly approved a constitutional amendment allowing French citizens who have lived in New Caledonia for at least 10 years to vote in provincial elections. This change is viewed by pro-independence leaders and most Kanaks as a threat to Kanak representation, as it could significantly increase the number of pro-France and non-indigenous voters. —Mirage, May 23, 2024. Photo: Police forces pushed back rioters near a shopping center in Dumbéa Sur Mer, New Caledonia, on Wednesday. Credit: Bruno Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock and The New York Times, May 22, 2024.

3000 BC is when Kanaks made home

in the west Pacific, in Oceana,

          south of Papua New Guinea, 

          north of New Zealand.

 

10,000-miles-away-France, took over

the islands in1853, parked its prisoners,

          destroyed crops of the Kanaks,

          forced labor, and brought disease.

 

1854 marked the discovery of nickel,

began years of foreign mine expansion –

            nearly ten mining sites –

            one selling nickel to car-maker Tesla.

 

A 1998 Accord enscribed island voting rights. 

Then 40,000 more French arrived, and

          today rights undone by Paris law—

          expanded migrant voting, diluting Kanaks.*

 

Today Caledonia’s nickel is third in world.

Today Kanaks have no control over the mines.

Today Paris has sent President, ministers, 3000 troops, police.

Today Kanaks block roads, fight for freedom.

* President Emmanuel Macron says he will not force through a controversial voting reform in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia following deadly rioting. Speaking on a visit to the main island, Mr Macron said local leaders should engage in dialogue to find an alternative agreement for the archipelago's future. —BBC, May 23, 2024

Lavinia Kumar writes in New Jersey.  Her latest poem is here.

THE VIGILANT

by Alejandro Escudé

From “The Parade,” 1957, from Si Lewen’s Parade: An Artist’s Odyssey (2016) via Literary Hub

Merkel warns of populists’ rise in Europe —AP, May 28, 2019

from the trenches.
they rise,
the easy translucent stride
of ghost-men

in gas masks
run the cobblestone
streets between
the ferrying buses,
old France, old Spain,

dust brown boots
weaponized fences
torched children
shot out of chimneys

"La Marseillaise" sung
backward, the gaze
of the European
upon the hard American

wearing bones
around his neck
a ring of fiery stones

Druid masters
wearing blood-drenched
capes calling for
crusade war
war upon war
gardens of dead

silent proletariat
families marched
by illiterate armies
who never spoke
or learn the proper sound

each word passing
like a market ticker
above them Merkel,
T***p, Putin, Macron

angel of Patton
and Robespierre,
dark angel of Bormann,
warned and warning

electronic horses
galloping over glass churches
shattered idols and guns
replacing each letter
on the keys

and the irreverent typist
culling new plots ending
in plots unmarked,
unedited, whole,
unpublished, divine.


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.

ARMISTICE COMMEMORATION IN PARIS

by Alan Catlin

T***p appears disengaged,

outside of the spotlight, except

when greeting Putin and his thumbs

up salute.  Forced to listen to solemn

solo by cellist Yo Yo Ma, the day after

failing to lay a wreath on graves of

the fallen due to inclement weather,

he seems  preoccupied. Compelled to

listen to President Macron deliver

a speech decrying Nationalism, directly

criticizing him, T***p appears tired

as if formulating new ways to become

unchecked and balanced as autocrat-

in-chief, electoral defeats, and late night

television viewing, is wearing him down. 

Protestors raise new trial balloons of baby-

in-diapers-T***p to see if anyone salutes.


Alan Catlin is poetry editor of online journal misfitmagazine.net. His latest book of poetry is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.