PENNED IN

by Patricia Davis

"Back to the Grind" by Pia Guerra at The Nib.

A thing half wild
carries a menace
             more complete than
the wild thing itself.
Farmers in Canada
               know this. They imported European wild boars
when the market for the boar meat
was good, several decades
             ago. The wild boars—
a number of
them—escaped
            and have since
mated with pigs.
Pigs are bred for bulk
            and have many more litters
and many more piglets per litter
than boars. Now, roaming northern
            and western Canada,
are colonies of pig-boars, spotted,
like domestic pigs
            and six hundred plus
pounds, with bristles
            and tusks.
To survive the winter, when temperatures
fall to 60 below,
           they make snow
burrows and line them with cattails
they've cut with their teeth.
           Pigloos, they’re called.
Porcine prodigies, they root
           through cultivated fields
like small backhoes.
They eat all that fits in their mouths:
           barley, wheat, small reptiles
and mammals.  They are spreading
           across the border into Montana,
North Dakota, hooved
Sasqueals whose habits have been
           only recently discovered.
This is all true.
There are stranger things than
           the odd killer pandemic.
Pigs, intended for slaughter, escape, mate
           with hirsute strangers from the woods,
build nests of soft weeds
that steam in winter from the heat
          so well made they are; pigs
give it all up—the feeding hour,
the predictable grain
         for freedom.
To die at the right time, not at the hand
of greed; not for the market.
Consider this: maybe
the fence is weak
          and our future is something
other than this, this
          waiting.

Patricia Davis has published poetry in Poet Lore, the Atlanta Review, Smartish Pace, Third Coast, and other journals. She works as a human rights advocate in Washington, DC.

NORTH DAKOTA

by Carl Boon




See the snow, the fire
in the snow, a native girl
swinging through the cold.
See what happens
when the water cannons
finally turn away,
the steed retreat,
the acute limbs
of authority and order
look elsewhere.
Hear the temporary joy
of a mother, maybe
yours or mine; listen
as the wind keeps her
eyes still distant
from what we love
and often despise—
the shopping mall,
the restaurant, the news.
It is almost 1823, it is why
we write songs
that tremble in the gut
all-conquering,
that verb that needs
a thousand more
to make a story. Hear
empire’s sound
moving back again,
white hands, white
ears that finally listen
in suburban rooms
of a thousand books
and a thousand quaint
mistaken phrases.

Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Burnt Pine, Two Peach, Ink In Thirds, and Poetry Quarterly. He is also a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee.

CONFRONTING THE GHOST OF BULL CONNOR AT STANDING ROCK

by Dana Yost

Pray With Standing Rock November 26th at 3:00 PM Central US Time

So.
Bull Connor lives
again, dragging his water hoses
to North Dakota. The spray of hate
and intolerance. The dogs, the nightsticks,
broken bones and open wounds.

But.
Bull Connor
forgets. On the streets of Birmingham,
people slipped and fell as his hoses shoved
them, slickened their footing, exposed a shin
to dog teeth and paw. But they got back
up. They outlasted the water, the spray
that sliced flesh. They stitched and bandaged and stood
and took it again, the sidewalks resolute
with the content of their character.

In North Dakota, they get back
up, too. They will let their flesh be split,
they will outlast the hoses. Duty and justice
will overtake the ache. Open wound, broken bone: honorable sacrifice
for the right to march over the bridge. Bull Connor with his nozzle
always ends up the embarrassment, the one slip-sliding
down the drizzle, down the sidewalk of disgrace.

A lifelong resident of the Upper Midwest, Dana Yost was a state and national award-winning daily newspaper journalist for 29 years. Since 2008, he has published four books. His fifth book, a history of 1940 Middle America, comes out early in 2017. 

STANDING ROCK RESISTANCE

by Akua Lezli Hope





Hey-ya Hey-ya Hey Hey O O

where is it that you go
cars stopped and searched
on their way to the gathering
where others sing and pray
land protectors, land protectors
sing and pray, police, police
stop intrusive machines
that churn holy ground
that plow the sacred into memory

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey O O

gather all ye tribes to save
life water in North Dakota
Standing Rock Sioux
started in prayers in April
avert the threat to sacred earth
defend clean streams
at this end of the fossil fuel era
battle pipelines which burst
which quench an alien thirst for profit
trespass on treaty lands

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

a german shepherd pants with blood on his mouth
his nose drips with Indian blood
his handler yanks him this way and that
other dogs snap at horses’ legs which dance away
charge protectors, bite and wound
other handlers advance, spray the eyes
of protectors, mace Indian faces

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

come all defenders
stand by those whose land
has been blooded by slaughter
drowned by dams, washed away
confront the threat to who remains
from 17 banks, $3.8 billion
arrayed to transgress, to dig under rivers
dirty the clean, desecrate holy places,
intruders threading poisons
through the precious warp of earth
to steal again First People’s land

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

this is prayer ground
this is sacred water way
this is where First Peoples stand
this is where protectors stay.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, adornments, and peace whenever possible. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. A crochet designer, she has published 114 patterns.  Her manuscript Them Gone won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in fall, 2016.