NEVER FORGET

by Scott C. Kaestner

Never forget 9/11.
Never forget Trayvon Martin.
Never forget climate change.
Never forget to tell someone you love "I love you."
Never forget Emmet Till.
Never forget the Holocaust.
Never forget Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
Never forget not all cops are good cops.
Never forget not all cops are bad cops.
Never forget to be kind.
Never forget to say thank you.
Never forget it's an athlete's constitutional right to sit during the national anthem.
Never forget to fight against fascists.
Never forget to seek shelter during a hurricane.
Never forget the United States is a country founded by and for immigrants.
Never forget the lives of soldiers lost fighting for our country.
Never forget a homeless vet.
Never forget our children are watching.
Never forget we're all in this together.
Never forget, never forget, never forget.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, dad, husband, son, and dream weaver. Google 'scott kaestner poetry' to peruse his musings and doings.

FIVE EXPLANATIONS

by Gilbert Allen

Kudzu kills or damages other plants by smothering them under a solid blanket of leaves, encircling woody stems and tree trunks, and breaking branches or uprooting entire trees and shrubs. Once established, kudzu grows at a rate of one foot per day; mature vines can be 100 feet long. Kudzu was introduced into the U.S. at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. From 1935 to the mid-1950s, farmers in the South were encouraged to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion. Kudzu is spread by vines that root at the nodes to form new plants. To successfully control kudzu, its extensive root system must be completely eradicated by cutting vines just above the ground and mowing every month for two growing seasons—all cut material must be destroyed. The U.S. Forest Service is searching for biological control agents for kudzu. —The Nature Conservancy

1. Next to that red American clay, bare
and beckoning as a billionaire’s
baseball cap, it seemed
like a giant green blessing.

2. What else to eat in Nagasaki
in September, 1945,
but its white
indestructible roots?

3. Without kudzu, April in South Carolina
would be too full of blue
skies, flowering dogwoods, azaleas
and itself.

4. Men planted it.
Pigs love it.
Why can’t men be pigs?

5. After the first cold Tuesday in November
it still gives death
a good name.


Gilbert Allen has lived in South Carolina for forty years. His most recent books are Catma and The Final Days of Great American Shopping.

THE SECOND BOMB

by Frederick Shiels 

Source: Yamahata photographs © Shogo Yamahata, The Day After the Nagasaki Bombing. The Japan Peace Museum via Morningside Center

Honorable Americans:
​there are not many of us left who were there,​
​to remind you that seventy August 9ths ago
you finished your war job
and 75,000 of our lives on green Kyushu island
three days and three mourning hours after killing even more--
Who knows how many?--
on big Honshu to the north, you ​well ​know ​the name,
Hiroshima, you teach it in your schools.
To be sure, we are linked with ​her​
​our  second, final​, high
superheated mushroom of death
​​Y​our Mr. Truman
didn’t give a speech about Us, we guess he just left
our boiling harbor, our children’s ashes
floating down
like leaves
for days,
to work things out
for themselves.​



Frederick Shiels teaches American foreign policy and history at Mercy College in New York. He has published in Sixfold, The New Verse News, The Hudson River Anthology, and elsewhere. He lived with his family on Kyushu Island, Japan, as a Fulbright Scholar, in 1985, the fortieth anniversary year of the bombing of Nagasaki, not far south. He is the author of a book of foreign policy case studies Preventable Disasters (Rowman & Littlefield) among others. 

ON NOVEMBER 11

by Gil Hoy

"Custer's Last Stand" by Harold von Schmidt. Image source: Smithsonian.

Veterans Day Weekend 2014

On November 11, honor the brave dead

from Afghanistan and Iraq, heroes against
German and Japanese imperialism

and the sacrificed souls in “the war to end
all wars.”

But also thank Custer’s soldiers
for not completing the genocide.

I went to bed and dreamt that Sitting Bull
saw Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in a vision quest

and then dropped an A-Bomb on Washington, D.C.

to stop invading Custer
from killing his women and children
like so many insects.

Upon awakening, I discovered that America
attacked Iraq for weapons of mass destruction

after murderous
pecuniary munitions manufacturers
crumbled twin towers
with their boomerang missiles

because recipients of evil often do evil in return.

Russian troops rhythmically
marched in the Ukraine,
a cruel video
beheaded a journalist,

ruinous bombs reined down
on rubbled villages of the weak,
and a bullet to a private’s leg became gangrene
as sepsis spread to amputation and death.

An obscure philosophy book said
that Custer should have refused
to attack renegades

because the Black Hills were the Lakota’s by treaty

and that God had ordered Custer’s men to lay down
their weapons or be shot for insubordination.

By river rapids, a sweating grimacing squaw
watched the blue cavalry approach as
she gave birth to a red son,

who drew his first breath,
wailed loudly and coveted white milk.


Gil Hoy received a B.A in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Gil also is an elected member of the Brookline, MA Democratic Town Committee, and served as a Brookline Selectman for 12 years. Gil 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, Eye On Life Magazine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.

THE BOOMERS' BURDENS

by Tricia Knoll

BBC Panorama has released footage of an apparent incendiary bombing of a playground in Aleppo, northern Syria, with 15-year-old Ahmed (pictured) among those injured. --The Independent (UK), Aug. 30, 2013.

We sang we ain’t gonna study war no more
     no more, no more, no more
     no one really believed it

we boomers
     the children of sixteen million who came home
         after the nuking of Hiroshima, Nagasaki
     children of ones who liked Ike
     we cowered under desks, in pencil dust,
        from atomic bombs
     everyone said wars were cold
     we couldn’t watch the war in Korea over dinner
       some people forgot
    
no one said World War II was the war to end all wars
     there’s no believing that in death camps
     there’s no hiding the snow and dust
     of camps in Tule Lake

Viet Nam: our lovers talked about Canada
    we sang, we marched, we swore
    war was no longer cold, just secret
    the agents were orange
    we heard death counts
    veterans came home, stooped
       to pick up pieces

We have been there
      green rocket traceries on the night sky
      friendly fire, civilian casualties
      surgical intervention minus surgeons
     Operation Desert Storm    Panama    Libya
     Afghanistan   Iraq   Somalia
     Syria

we declared wars
   on poverty    hunger     terror
   in the name of enduring freedom

I stand here today tempted to lay my burdens
down -- but there’s no safe place for rusted freedoms.
         Our children are hungry.
         They cannot afford higher education.
         We are still afraid.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet whose work has appeared in many journal publications. She is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.