CATALOGUING OUR NAMES

by Karen Marker

 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. —The New York Times, February 13, 2026


Still in the down of the dream world a text 
comes from Mona that says you are so brave
which means she must have seen my Facebook post 
about ICE and knows of the threats made 
about collecting names. I also named 
the commandment from Exodus about how 
we should treat the stranger. 

Such a long list of us, once strangers ourselves. 
Will they record our names, imprison all of us, 
including the thirteen-year-old who read the torah portion 
and the rabbi who said all who want to take a stand rise
and come up for the blessings?  No one was left in their seats.  
We were packed so tight together, all of us touching 
someone who was touching the parchment, another name 
for light holding the words like a mother. Like the mother 
who stood beside me holding her child 

with deep brown eyes staring straight into my eyes.
She didn’t look away from my tearing up 
like I can’t look away from what keeps me awake 
at night thinking of the children in the prison camps,
the names I need to speak so I won’t forget.
Receiving blessings, touching light, 
we were one breathing body.  

What can I text Mona that will soothe her fear
for the dark skin she got from her Indian Hindu 
father, her Mizrachi Jewish mother?  Even 
with her credentials that made her a top doctor
specialist, gave her a beautiful suburban life, 
she’s still afraid for her son and tells me she couldn’t 
survive without her medicines, not one day 
in that prison camp and I admit I’m just as scared 
of being sent away. It’s all that’s unhealed 

that makes us even more afraid.  It is the cage,
the chains, the clanging doors of our brains, 
how the past climbs back up and casts us out. 
But now Mona is calling, telling me how
everyone’s been working so hard in Ohio, like one
family.  At least for today there’s a stay by the judge, 
the Haitians in Springfield are safe.

    
Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist and retired school psychologist whose poetry of protest and hope in response to the news will be coming out as a book in the coming year.  Her poetry has appeared in NVN and various other journals including The MacGuffin, The Monterey Poetry Review, the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Slant, and WordPeace. Her book of flash memoir and poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella is available through Finishing Line Press and explores resilience in face of family trauma.  

A FAIR WITNESS

by Gina A. Turner

 

A Fair Witness [a profession invented in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein] is an individual trained to observe events and report exactly what is seen and heard, making no extrapolations or assumptions. – Wikipedia

I hear that people who shouldn’t be in this country are eating pets

I see state troopers at schools in Springfield, Ohio

I hear a candidate say “I have to create stories so that the media pays attention”

I see Springfield’s CultureFest cancelled over safety concerns

I hear what the 45th president said: people from Haiti “all have AIDS”

I see colleges in Ohio holding classes remotely

I hear lawful residents in Ohio called “illegal aliens”

I see elementary schools evacuated due to dozens of bomb threats

I hear what our country’s former leader said: Haiti is one of the “shithole countries” 

I see my Haitian friend promote her book on achieving a just economy

I hear a member of the Haitian community say

“We’ve been receiving a lot of threats, physically and verbally”

I hear parents say that their children are terrified

 

I hear people say that they are still undecided about their vote

Gina A. Turner is a Professor of Psychology at a community college in Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Poets Online, The New Verse News, and her school’s literary magazine The Laconic. She lives with her husband and dog in Lambertville, New Jersey. 

THE GREAT AMERICAN AMISH POWER TRIP

by James Schwartz 

Now, some Amish across northern Ohio find themselves clashing with a new state law designed to reduce accidents and enhance traffic safety by requiring flashing yellow lights on Amish buggies and other animal-drawn vehicles. …officers have been issuing citations, and some Amish have been summonsed into courts across northern Ohio on minor misdemeanor charges punishable by a roughly $150 fine. In Ashland County, some Amish are citing their religious beliefs and have told a judge they don't plan to obey the law and that "paying a fine is not an option." —The Daily Record, November 18, 2022

Memories of Monarch butterflies amid spring songs, clover flowers behind the old weatherbeaten shed, the Gregorian-esque voices in praise, the harmonies to heaven, the crisp white shirts, stark black pants & dresses, descendants of martyred interpretations, heretics of our own making, motherless rebels inter-bred in a defiant democracy. We will not guard the Holy Father. We hustle our humble wares amid warfare, bloody handed Bishops playing God, #AmishTikTok survivors. The sinful government wants to lower the body count. Ohio Bishops flex, above the law, statistics be damned, warning signs on dark roads & lost harmonies to the Lord. 

James Schwartz is a poet & author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (Kindle, 2011), Punatic (Writing Knights Press, 2019) & most recently Motor City Mix, Sunset in Rome (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He resides in Detroit, Michigan.

MISGUIDED: A SOUTHEASTERN OHIO TRAGEDY

by Renee Williams

 

On October 29th, while on a gravel bike ride in Vinton County, Ohio, three unleashed, uncontained pit bulls attacked Eva Simons, pinned and mauled her. Thankfully, three Good Samaritans happened to drive by and were able to save her life. Eva underwent emergency surgery and the amputation of the left leg above the knee. She has a long road ahead and will require multiple surgeries to reconstruct the remaining leg. —from the Gofundme for Eva Simons

An innocent,
walking down a rural road, alone, away from the other bicyclists, 
wanting to get back to her vehicle to fix a flat, 
when she became quarry to three unchained pit bulls, 
knowing no other way than to attack, 
their so-called area invaded, 
by an unknown person, diminutive, vulnerable.
Barking, growling, snarling, 
incisors like blades,
biting,
tearing, ripping, slicing skin,
feasting on flesh from bone, savoring the salty taste of blood,
chewing, gorging, vivisecting,
mauling, mangling,
destroying, devouring, dismembering, 
eating her alive 
like pack of lions in the veld, gnawing an impala,
for twenty minutes
in a delightful game of mere response, 
base, vile, predatory instincts kicking in, 
untrained,
reacting.
 
The owners,
at a bustling urban hospital, so far from the country lane, 
a newborn child, sick.
Did the dogs offer protection in the depths of the forest, 
or the illusion of power, toughness, 
as we human animals fall prey
to the intoxicating allure 
of controlling what shouldn’t be controlled
like domesticating a lion or tiger, leading it, guiding it, exerting dominance?
Or, perhaps the first dog was taken in, alone, afraid, desperate for care,
mirroring the pitied human discards of Appalachia,
victims of a poor economy, limited employment options, and no place to call home.
It’s said that bad choices make great stories.
But why do you need three pit bulls?
Unwanted dogs multiply like rabbits,
and who has the time to tend to a dog that wasn’t wanted in the first place,
that was dumped in front of the house, 
and the kids wouldn’t stop crying until it was taken in, 
but it has killer instincts, jaws that could snap a bone in a heartbeat,
and work is calling because someone is sick with this damned Covid,
the kids have that new math homework to be done,
and the refrigerator just went on the fritz
for the second time this month?
 
Pit bulls, bred for fighting, vicious, beastly
can be caring, loving pets.
Yet the stereotype is perpetuated,
again, and again…
 
Just another country road,
in another county township,
sycamore leaves falling,
sunlight waning,
gunshots from the sheriff’s pistol. 

Renee Williams is a retired English professor, who has written for Guitar Digest, Alien Buddha Press, and Fevers of the Mind.

AS A TEN-YEAR-OLD OHIO GIRL

by Laura Grace Weldon

file photo… not the author

I lived the lives I read in books.

I wandered English moors,

raced my horse past Russian wolves,

befriended dolphins, spoke in whistles,

made my home in a hollow tree.

Made a pact with Kim—we’d never

grow breasts, agreeing the encumbrance

made girls act stupid. Boys, stupider.

I’d grown well past playing house

so no longer stuffed a baby doll

under my shirt, letting it drop

into my hands to make me a mama.

I hadn’t grown out of stuffed animals,

Barbies, hula hoops, or bubbles.  

At ten I rode my bike, climbed trees,

giggled with girlfriends. I wasn’t old

enough to babysit. Wasn’t sure

what sex was, exactly.

Now a ten-year-old girl 

is deemed old enough 

in Ohio to be the mother

of her rapist’s child.    

Laura Grace Weldon served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. Laura lives on a ramshackle Ohio farm and as a book editor. 

SHE ALSO SOMETIMES ATE SALAMI

by Sean Kelbley

BOLIVAR, Ohio (AP) — Authorities in eastern Ohio say a grocery store employee has been charged with felony theft for helping herself to deli ham for years. Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Hale tells The Columbus Dispatch that an eight-year employee of regional grocery chain Giant Eagle was charged Friday with stealing food estimated by the store to be worth $9,200. The store’s loss prevention manager received a tip that an employee had been eating three to five slices of ham nearly every day over eight years. Authorities say she also sometimes ate salami. —AP via TV10, September 10, 2018

Bolivar (Ohio) rhymes with Oliver!
As in “Please Sir, I want some more.”
Not that she asked. None of us does.
It’s always worked: a pound of ham for you,
a slice for me. $9000 worth of meat

seems like a lot, but calculate the cost
of all the paperclips and pens and Post-It
pads you’ve carried home. Or think of
Government. It’s never just about the
ham. She kept parking in somebody’s
special spot, or got too many weekends
off, or got the ten-cent hourly raise, or stole
a man. Somebody told. Was it the one

who helps herself to bulk nut overweighs?
The one who picks off “spoiled” shrimp?
I’m sorry, we’re like you. How we pretend
to look the other way. How we keep score.
How we watch little things add up until
they’re big enough to use.

Sean Kelbley lives in southeastern Ohio, where he works as an elementary school counselor. His work appears in Crab Creek Review,  and online at Poets Reading the News, Rise Up Review (2017 Best of the Net nomination), and Tuck Magazine. He does not endorse employee theft. He dislikes hypocrisy.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE DELEGATES

by David Feela






I’d prefer if you counted
the red, white and blue balloons
instead of politicos,
inhale the rhetorical helium


that transforms normal voices
into falsettos of hypertension,
words lost in the vast empty
ceiling of a Cleveland arena.


Try stabbing a finger
into the paunchy gut
of the next vacuous promise
inflated by rage.


Oh Ohio, all week you’ve built
a future on a platform of fear,
thinking it will rise
for the next four years.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

TERROR IN ATHENS

by Howard Winn

ATHENS, Ohio — A Hocking County gun shop owner may have prevented a mass shooting at Ohio University in Athens, authorities said. John Downs, owner of a Logan gun shop, refused to sell a gun to 25-year-old James Howard. Howard passed a background check, but he made statements that indicated he may want to harm himself or others. “There was a red flag for me," Downs told ABC 6. "I won't allow that; I don't want that to be on me." Howard left the store angry after Downs refused to sell him a long gun. When Howard returned to the store more than an hour later, Downs hid his customers in a backroom, locked the store, and called 911. Police later arrested Howard at a nearby Walmart. He was buying camouflage clothing, gloves, and ammunition. Police found a .22-caliber rifle and mental health paperwork inside Howard's car. Authorities said Howard had purchased another weapon at an Athens gun store. "Apparently he was frustrated about something that happened at OU in Athens," Hocking County Sheriff Lanny North told ABC 6. "I believe [Downs] did prevent a mass shooting that was probably going to occur at Ohio University in Athens." . . . Howard is a former Ohio University student and hockey player. —Cleveland.com, March 27, 2016. Image source: WBNS-TV.

No, not Greece, although it has
its share of terror both literal
and economic as Europe runs
amuck with collapsing economies
and murderers hiding in the
crowds of pathetic refugees
from war and other horrors.
It is actually domestic again
this time berserk athletic
response to humiliation of
a college hockey player whose
notion of self-worth depends
on the macho role of male
games which are not played
for fun but for fame and bucks
so the terror is part of Ohio
in the middle of America where
sports serve for our religion as
does the demoniac god of the
middle east some place with
no compassion outside of the
fearsome faith retrieved from
selected images out of the past
but in Ohio one can purchase
the tools of revenge at your
local big box store where
everything is for sale including
human conscience and scruples
and the necessity to kill can be
satisfied with just the swipe
of the modern credit card.

Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Descant.  Antigonish Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, The Main Street Rag, Wisconsin Review, Harbinger Asylum, The 3288 Review, Stand, and Blueline. He has a novel being published in July 2016 by Propertius Press. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His M. A. is from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program and his doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

AN UNJUST LAW

by Gil Hoy

The drawn-out execution of Dennis McGuire has prompted many to question lethal injection in Ohio. McGuire's execution took about 25 minutes; a state expert said he expected it to happen in a matter of minutes. -- The Plain Dealer, January 26, 2014.

Can’t get Ohio out of my
head, damn.

Took 26 minutes to kill
him, some new-fangled
poison not the usual,
a half-baked horror show.

Sour drugs flowed through
blue veins, the prisoner
strapped to a gurney gasped
vacant eyes staring,

rattling,
nose snorting,
choking almost guttural--
like food stuck in your
windpipe
on and on, convulsions.

By all accounts, he was
a horrible savage man

25 years ago,
raped, tortured and killed
a young woman with child,

just married, still to live
and be enjoyed.

So nothing cruel or unusual
here, an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth,
Lex talionis, as prophesied.

But this death more
like a Macabre blunder
at a public square picnic
hangin’ from days old,
when the man’s head
in the too-tight hemp noose
might come clean off,

Minute after lingering
minutes, following terrible
60 second minutes
Strangling from the inside,
a mammal gasps for breath.

Heard that his blood in the
crowd had to cover their ears
and wipe their tears from
soaked ashen faces,
I say listen up, after what he did.

If you agree, show the
video play-back to your son,
so he can see what we do,
though slow suffocation
is not for the squeamish,
something to Hide?

Murder: premeditation
and unlawful killing,
the state does you one better,
premeditation and ceremony,
and who are we
to tell the state what to do,
sounds AOK to me.

Much ado about nothing.
Throw to hungry lions
crush ‘em with fat elephants,
devoured by wild sweaty-toothed beasts
does the trick
tear them apart by Galloping horses,
burn him like an over-cooked
headless turkey for your Thanksgiving roast,
crucifixion, decapitation, boil until cooked.

Firing squad? Pass the loaded Gun
please, stoning? A duplicitous
contest to see who casts the first
stone. Disembowelment, OK,
dismemberment, tie him to a
cannon and set the charge, so cool

your mouth just drips with blood
like a stale English Pudding,
gas, hangings, electric chair,
That covers it.

But somewhere I read and
believed to the marrow, now
shaking terrified: turn to him
the other cheek also, or we
will all be Toothless and Blind.

No one’s listening or caring
anymore,

Blood red Hearts disgorged on a
winding cobblestone trail that leads
to a distant dream
That our eyes don’t hear anymore
and that tastes forgotten anyway.


Gil Hoy is a trial lawyer in Boston, and grew up in Brookline, MA. He received a B.A in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. degree in Government from Georgetown University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Gil is an elected member of the Brookline Democratic Town Committee, and served as a Brookline Selectman, the Town's highest elected office, for 12 years. Gil is married, with three children, and lives in Brookline, MA.