KRISTI NOEM’S MIRROR

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

meme by witchofsouthernlight at Instagram

A federal judge issued a last-minute temporary stay on Monday to block the Trump administration’s attempt to remove temporary legal protections for up to 350,000 Haitian immigrants across the United States. In a brutal 83-page takedown, Judge Ana C. Reyes of the US District Court for DC specifically laid into a December X post from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that claimed foreign “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” are ruining the vision of the founding fathers… Reyes said that it was therefore “substantially likely” that Noem had moved to end TPS status for Haitians due to “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” —Mother Jones, February 3, 2026

Ice queens must be manicured, beautiful,
at least from a distance. Hence, Botox 
 
serums, facelifts, veneers, fillers, lashes,
skin resurfacing, Medusa extensions.
 
Athena sprang helmeted from the bully Zeus,
She was divinely fair, they say, the gray-
 
Eyed patron and protector of violent men.
Kristi hatched from an old orange thatch
 
to sit at the right hand of Daddy. A son
might have overthrown Zeus, as prophesied. 
 
Such loyal daughters must envy witches.
Cruella de Ville was her own woman, the Wicked
 
Witch of the West, unmoisturized, answered to no one.
But like a witch, ice eventually melts. 

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s latest novel is The Waters, W.W. Norton, 2024.
 

THE ASTRONAUTS SEEK TO REASSURE ME OF THEIR SAFETY

by Kathleen McIntosh

In a news conference from aboard the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said they had confidence in the troubled spacecraft to get them home. (NY Times, July 10, 2024)

 

 

I know in their place I would worry, seeing earth whole

––oceans, continents, poles––

and they themselves . . .

 

No, says NASA, the astronauts are not in danger, not stuck in space; they’re just doing some additional testing of the thrusters. But the questions continue, variations on a theme:  How confident are you that the Starliner will get you home safely? Butch and Suni are patient, though they have taken time out of their work for this. A reporter persists: Can you give us examples...  about the status of Starliner as far as being able to bring you back to earth safely?  Suni smiles, bats away his concern:  It’s great to be up here.  Her casual manner seems grounded in certainty; her wavy hair flies out from her head in all directions, wiry, Medusa-like––will we be turned to stone for questioning the logic of this optimism? 

 

I know about the vanishing rain forest,

melting ice sheets, spreading desert and yet,

how thrilling it would be to see it all as they do:

our one and only         so fragile         suspended out there... 

Horn of Africa,

Malay Archipelago,

Isthmus of Panama––delicate waist of America,

the poet called it. Hell on earth

say those crossing the Darien Gap     

from Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Ethiopia, India, China,

Democratic Republic of the Congo––

no, from up there I wouldn’t see the ant-like procession,

ragged, polyglot,

on any given day a planet worth’s sampling, citizens

of nowhere-on-earth-that-is-safe––

 

Yes, the astronauts confirm, they were able to watch the hurricane that became Beryl. The question gets more personal: What have you heard from your family? Was there any damage to your house?  Still smiling, they pass a mike back and forth between them or allow it to float free for a few seconds. Well, says Butch, we’ve got some downed trees like most people...  but thankfully we’ve got good church folks and good neighbors that are coming by... 

The news conference is coming to an end.  In Texas, concludes Suni, everybody pulls together. She launches herself into a weightless backward flip.

 

Author’s note:  NASA is now considering bringing the astronauts home on a Dragon SpaceX capsule, an option which would mean that Wilmore and Williams would need to remain on the space station for six more months. A decision about this will be needed, says NASA, by the end of August.

 

 

Kathleen McIntosh moved to New England following a peripatetic childhood.  She remained there, teaching language and literature for many years. Now retired, she lives in Connecticut where she writes poetry and serves on the Board of the Connecticut Poetry Society.

OF SNAKES AND STONE

by Olivia Fortier

 

“Self-portrait in the style of Medusa” by Andrea Mantegna c. 1474 Uffizi Gallery. 
Photo via Web Gallery of Art

 

Though afraid of the water, 

my mother hand-scooped the lake 

to wet my skin before she blew up 

water wings, and slid them to the tops

of my arms. 

 

I floated on the surface of a calm lake, 

the flotsam of a failed marriage;

my father had sided with the man 

who’d raped my mother, when he, 

the rapist, denied any wrongdoing, 

as rapists often do, and it was then 

my mother lost her head.

 

From the water, I watched my mother 

walk the beach in search of driftwood 

for garden ornaments. An hour later, 

her pile was small, her harvest thin, 

so I swam back to shore to help her, 

my skin burned from the sun’s reflection 

on the lake’s mirror top. Seeing her error, 

my mother glossed me with sunscreen. 

Then, stony-faced, as single mothers 

must be at times, doing everything alone, 

she removed my wings, deflated them, 

and withdrew into herself.

 

When it comes to driftwood, 

gnarls and knots are lovely decorative 

features. Dead tree roots are rare finds; 

initially disturbing to look at, yes, but 

given a couple coats of shellac to bring 

out their natural beauty, they transform 

into octopi, or staghorn coral. Or, as 

my mother explained to me as I grew,

the rape survivor Medusa’s head of snakes—

 

snakes being her punishment for Poseidon's

assault against her body with his venomous 

viper; the rape turned any future hopes she had 

for normalcy to stone, which is to say, as Medusa

lied under his shadow, Poseidon projected himself 

onto her—a terrifying appearance, a petrifying gaze.

Then she was called monster while he continued 

to reign freely. Any man who slayed Medusa 

with his long, sharp blade would be called hero, 

and brave; her severed head and deadened mind, 

a trophy. But until then, she was forced to withdraw 

from society and live alone in a cave,

 

for shame. Before Mother died, she told me nothing 

has changed for women, and that I am Medusa’s daughter, 

and that statistically speaking, I will also become

Medusa.

 

I am Medusa.

Olivia Fortier’s work has appeared in multiple literary journals. She is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate.

MEDUSA

by Akua Lezli Hope

AI-assisted images by the poet.

First lady Michelle Obama considered wearing her hair in braids while living in the White House. But then she thought of the American people. —The Washington Post, November 17, 2022

U.K. Tells Schools They Can’t Ban Afro Hairstyles. School rules about what styles are allowed that mostly affect Black and mixed-race children are likely to be illegal, a government rights commission said. —The New York Times, October 27, 2022

Almost half of Black and mixed-race women have experienced race-based hair discrimination at school, according to a new study. Of these, more than half (57 per cent) say they continue to deal with hair-related trauma today. —Independent (UK), October 7, 2022

Medusa was the serpent-goddess of the Libyan Amazons, representing "female wisdom". (Sanskrit medhas, Greek metis, Egyptian met or Maat ).  She was the Destroyer aspect of the Triple Goddess. Called Neith in Egypt, Ath-enna or Athene in North Africa.  Her inscription at Sais called her "mother of all the gods, whom she bore before childbirth existed." —Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

You think god cursed me, 
that this morphing nimbus petrifies beholders
when it is only your eyes seeing snakes 
and being struck by a beauty you cannot decipher 
 
These S&Z curved electric antennae 
are defense against the gray arts, 
channeling, channeling ancestral energies 
an armor of creation’s forcefield and being 
 
Remove your transgressive hands 
or feel the casual, stinging shrapnel
from misbelief shattering against truth

 
Author's Note: I ache for the children who have been abused for their hair styles. I had a corporate career and wore my hair in what is now called protective natural styles, along with my suit, pumps and—a tie from 1979, until I retired in the 21st century. Here it is another century and the same old stupidity.
 

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, & Best of the Net, Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations. 

PILGRIMS PROGRESS

by Deborah Gorlin

Phineas Pratt's Grave in Charlestown MA

The inscriptions a kid could cartoon

on a gravestone, crude and simplistic,

the skull-soul effigy a kind of gothic lithic

Jack-o-lantern, wide hollows for eyes,

triangle for nose, slotted mouth,

snaggle-toothed, Medusa-like heads

winging hair. A second childhood

for the Puritan church as some feature

breasts, amen, as God-besotted poet

Edward Taylor wrote unblushingly,

his syntax, don’t ask, “to put these

nibbles, then my mouth into and suckle

me therewith humbly pray.” Gravestones

that put one in mind of crumbly English

biscuits, taken at teatime. Their headboards

face east towards the sunrise, when the dead

will wake one fine Sunday morning to the smell

of pancakes the Lord makes at a sleepover.

 

But the news today tells me they won’t

wait—rebranded their black white outfits,

buckled shoes, top hats, dressed this time

as the half-naked shaman in bear skins,

horn helmet, face paint, just like their old

enemies the Indians, why not, it’s on their land,

the Senate floor, to save us from those devils

in Pederast Forest. Fake 'em out. Boys. 

An impatient breed these new pilgrims, grown

young, who, in their first iteration, claimed

that specters in dreams and visions, those

with a third nipple, an ugly birthmark, a black

cat familiar, were evidence in a court of law

for burning witches and warlocks. Emboldened,

always exceptional, they invent new ways to rise

from their shallow graves of history, their scraggly

tombstones askew, who refuse, even their God, to die.

 

Deborah Gorlin is the author of two books of poems, Bodily Course (White Pine Poetry Press Prize) and Life of the Garment (Bauhan Publishing, winner of the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize). She has published in a wide range of journals including Poetry, Antioch Review, American Poetry Review, Seneca Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Harvard Review, Green Mountains Review, Bomb, Connecticut Review, Women’s Review of Books, New England Review, and Best Spiritual Writing 2000. Recent poems appear in Plume, On the Seawall, Chicago Quarterly, Trampoline, and the Ekphrastic Review. Emeritus associate faculty of the Writing Program at Hampshire College, she serves as a poetry editor at The Massachusetts Review. 

DORSIMBRA FOR COURTLAND SYKES

by Diane Elayne Dees

In Missouri, an acolyte of President Trump is running for the U.S. Senate and denouncing “manophobic hell-bent feminist she-devils.” The candidate, Courtland Sykes, . . . is worth quoting as a window into the backlash against #MeToo and empowered women: “I don’t buy into radical feminism’s crazy definition of modern womanhood and I never did,” Sykes wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page. “They made it up to suit their own nasty, snake-filled heads. . . . I don’t buy the non-stop feminization campaign against manhood. I want to come home to a home cooked dinner at six every night, one that [my fiancée] fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix.” —The New York Times, January 31, 2018

My head is filled with snakes of many kinds—
huge pythons, cobras, moccasins, and corals.
Unlike Medusa’s, mine are hard to find;
they lurk within and poison my morals.

The venom of equality
is stored in my fangs,
paralyzing your patriarchal limbs,
rendering you unprivileged.

The reptiles crawl; they hiss, prepared to strike
at monsters who are deadlier than they
could ever be. You hold me in contempt,
for my head is filled with snakes of many kinds.


Editor’s note thanks to the Poets Collective: The dorsimbra, created by Eve Braden, Frieda Dorris and Robert Simonton, is a 12-line poem consisting of (1) a quatrain of iambic pentameter rhyming abab, (2) a quatrain of "short and snappy" free verse, and (3) a quatrain of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). The final (12th) line is the same as the first line. The form's creators suggest the use of enjambment, interlaced rhymes, and near-rhymes to bind the three stanzas.

Diane Elayne Dees's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women's professional tennis throughout the world.