ILL

by William Aarnes

  

He feared he was becoming ill

when, reading the news of the crime,

he could not only see the words

and, when he wanted his wife

to hear, say them aloud but could also

smell them— the gunpowdery musk

in separatists, that hint of antiseptic

in airliner, the electric whiff

in wreckage.   Grief and disbelief

and relief not only rhymed

but also shared the faint aroma

of rot in the refrigerator,

even the ands gone vinegary.

And after he stopped reading,

he could not escape the odors,  

the off-putting essence of altitude,  

the lingering perfume of doomed,

the metallic bouquet of evidence.  

 William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.  His work has appeared recently in Field, Heron Tree, and South 85.

SAME AULD LANG SYNE

 by Gil Hoy

Ukraine

Gaza

Tidings as worn
out as a tree with
200,000 whorls---

You disemboweled
our first-borns, we’ll
decapitate your lawmakers,

You put mines on our
highways, we’ll take the
wheels off of your planes---
Tit-for-tat, tit-for-tat.

Seasons circling in their
rhythmic macabre cadence---
always ending in winter:

We’ll do this to yours,
so you won’t do that
to ours---we’ll set the charge

in your most pious churches,
so you won’t put cyanide
in our park water fountains,

Your spears did what to ours?
Our arrows will pierce your hearts---
Your grenades did what to us?
Our armies will torch your farms.

Different stories
and characters---but always
the same plot---rows of
bronze, field stone and
iron markers show the way,

Scratch up that foul
record loop, so it won’t
play at all---
better yet, burn it---

at an overdue Memorial
Day celebration in Gettysburg,
Robert E. Lee the
guest of honor,

apologizing again to the
Virginians for Pickett’s Charge.
We’ll vaporize your cities
if you put anthrax

in our schools,
we’ll put E Coli in
your meat for
good measure---
Tit for tat, tit for tat.

After all is said
and done, Sir---
can it truly be told
that we are still on

that same broken trail,
founded by our ancestors'
bones, with blood for mortar
and still covered by ice?


Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. Since then, Gil’s poems have been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, the Clark Street Review, and Eye On Life Magazine.