NIGHTMARE IN UTAH

by Dawn Corrigan

A sign at an abortion-rights rally in Miami on Thursday. (Lynne Sladky/AP via The Washington Post, May 26, 2019

A particular kind of dystopia has arrived, and we’re beginning to see its fuzzy outlines. It would involve a whisper network on social media. It would entail announcing “Off to go see Navy Pier!” and then going instead to an abortion clinic. Thousands of women would have to learn—or remember—how this all worked before 1973, when desperate women also had occasion to visit their cousins, old friends, and aunties. —Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, May 26, 2019

Last week they closed the border
and ever since we've been on the run,
wearing black clothes, travelling at night,
food and water in packs on our backs.
We've arrived at the state line and stare
longingly into Nevada. The sentries
are scattered but they have a clear shot
at us here. We're not far from the railway.
I've heard they're stopping the passenger trains
but maybe we could hide in a freighter.
Given time and a lot of luck we might wake up
somewhere new, someplace with more rights
and bodily autonomy than we're used to.

Dawn Corrigan works in the affordable housing industry in Pensacola, FL and serves as assistant editor at Otis Nebula.

MADNESS

by T R Poulson

Nevada looked like its NCAA tournament was going to come to end Sunday in the second round. But after trailing by 22 points in the second half, the Wolf Pack rallied to beat the Cincinnati 75-73 and advance to the Sweet 16. Nevada’s stirring comeback – the second-largest in tournament history – came just two days after the No. 7 seed rallied from 14 points down in the second half to beat Texas for its first NCAA victory since 2007. “Nothing feels better than this,” Nevada coach Eric Musselman said. “Nothing. Sweet 16!” —USA Today, March 18, 2018

A snow hiker finds fifty-four hands: frozen hands, unfettered hands,
gnarled hands, grisly hands, bloodstained hands, dissevered hands.

So many cats:  cougars, bearcats, panthers, tigers, wildcats
pounce on blue jays, bulls, highlanders with their weathered hands.

A thundering herd evades the cowboys’ ropes, pursued by shockers,
those pesky prods pressed to haunches by men’s leathered hands.

The quakers fight, their weapon, inner light, as those jayhawks
swoop and fly, yellow beaks like iron, wings like feathered hands.

Even friars shake in fright, as lawless aggies bare their whips
and guns, no honor to men bound to God with forevered hands.

From myths, the titans from old kingdoms rise to snuff out fires
of boilermakers, crush the torches, hammers of endeavored hands.

Will the gods send hurricanes to spin and drench and swirl,
to tame all claws, talons, hooves, with wind’s untethered hands?

But wait.  Imagine the wagging retriever, prancing, dancing.
He takes the bone from cavaliers’ unwilling, levered hands.

We’re in the madness.  We back our pack of wolves who dodge
the long, curved horns.  The bearcats loom.  We lift together-hands.

T R Poulson, a Nevada Alum (yep, I proudly sign my ghazal with support for my Wolf Pack. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, Verdad, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Tuck Magazine), currently lives in San Carlos, California.  

THE FATHER IN SUMMER PLAINETH FOR HIS SON

by Cally Conan-Davies






O western fire
Take this day back
Reverse the truck
Unburn the wreck.
The fire fighters
Of the forest service
Hell-bent to save us,
Rain down on them,
Drown every forest plant.
Then bring him home,
Because for every day to come
I can't.


Cally Conan-Davies hails from Tasmania. Her poems can be found in periodicals such as The Hudson Review, Subtropics, Poetry, Quadrant, The New Criterion, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sewanee Review, The Southwest Review, The Dark Horse,  Harvard Review and various online journals.

OF FISH AND FISHERMAN

by Jim Gustafson

Image source: Business Insider

Just South of Lovers Key
the whales have hit the beach.
It is said they are pilots,
though one must wonder
about whales that come to land.

Just outside Sparks, Nevada
100,000 fish washed-up on shore.
It is said the lake‘s ran out of oxygen
and the catfish, bass and trout
died in its breathless water.

Just above Rio De Janeiro
lightening has touched Jesus.
It is said, his finger broke,
He will be healed. He will point
once more to the fish in the sea.


Jim Gustafson’s book, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013. A 2013 Pushcart Prize Nominee, Jim is poetry editor for the Tampa Review OnLine, a MFA candidate at the University of Tampa, teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University, and lives in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.

INNOCENT BYSTANDERS

by Liz Dolan

Michael Landsberry

Lying on the ground of the Nairobi mall
the blood-soaked woman had been lusting
after a pair of Manolo Blahniks in a boutique window,
shards now sparkle in her chest. Are the bits
of skin floating about her dogwood petals?
Al Shabaab took credit. In Mecca
where my cousin studied, the traffic
halted in the circle for beheadings and hand choppings.
I never looked, she said. I stared
out the window to the right
where they say the unlived live. I fancied myself
baling hay in the cool hills of Kilkeel.
In Sparks, Nevada, a twelve-year-old shot
two classmates, killed his teacher who tried to talk
him down. A former marine who survived two tours
in Afghanistan. I smashed a mosquito feasting
on my hand. A bubble of blood spurted out-his or mine?


Liz Dolan’s manuscript, A Secret of Long Life,  nominated for the Robert McGovern Prize will soon be published by Cave Moon Press. Her first poetry collection, They Abide, was published by March Street. A six-time Pushcart nominee and winner of The Best of the Web, she has also won an established artist fellowship in poetry and two honorable mentions in prose from the Delaware Division of the Arts. She recently won The Nassau Prize for prose. She has received fellowships from The Atlantic Center for the Arts and Martha’s Vineyard. Liz serves on the poetry board of Philadelphia Stories.

SCHOOL SHOOTING

by Kit  Zak



School Shooting, Washington Post: 10/22/13
garners page three

                         no front page treatment      
          
           a kid wielding a semi-automatic

               middle-school battlefield
                                                                                  common
as  dirt  
                                                                   twelve-year-olds
with PTSD 


                                                                    nightmare’s
undying sun-blot
                                                                   childhood
obliterated
We shrug weary shoulders 

        the politicians’ dead words  
                                                                                   await
the NRA's whitewash


Kit  Zak retired from university teaching and moved to the beach in Delaware, where she has been involved in environmental causes. She  has published most recently in The Broadkill Review, The Blue Collar Review, A Time of Singing, and Avocet.