WORK WE'VE FAILED TO DO

by Barry Koplen

In the wings,
trouble greets submission;
guns speak. Murder calls
random numbers.

Mine? Yours?
The guy who commands
Curiosity to find water
on Mars?

He's distracted or
he will be
when the Super Bowl draws

nigh or when Miley
wears little or nothing but
the gunman is not

distracted. Like an actor,
he loves his role so much
we can't keep him
in the wings.


For more than fifty years, Barry Koplen has been writing poetry and prose. Often published by friendly journals too arcane to mention, he received his MFA from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. Recently, he completed the second half of a two-volume collection of poems and essays. The first, Whale of Grief, complements Wail of Joy, the second; both are related to impressions of life as a Jew in a non-Jewish world. His No Gold Stars tells his personal story of the integration of the Greenville, SC school system. His latest Why Don’t They Believe Me? Four of Us Saw the Saucer will be available in January. Currently, he is completing two collections of poems while teaching Creative Writing in Virginia at Danville Community College.

CYRUS VS. SYRIA

by Greg Scott Brown

Khan al-Assal Massacre

I imagine the young man kneeling in a ditch
in Syria would rather hold forth on Miley
and twerking, to wit: simply awkward,

morally bereft, or downright un-American?
The young man kneeling in a ditch
in Syria is not American, of course.

No matter.
Given a choice to debate the reprobate
Miley, or taking a bullet to the brain,

I imagine which choice (which is no choice)
he might make while waiting
to add his blood and brains to the ditch.

Might he imagine something more
than Miley in a Syrian ditch
where his voice is blood and sand and void?


Greg Scott Brown lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he teaches Composition, Critical Thinking and Literature at Los Medanos Community College.