ANIMALS IN PARADISE

by David Spicer

“Shelter in Place,” by Christoph Mueller

Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.
Peacocks strut through the streets of Dubai.

Peacocks have strutted, but not in Dubai.
Twenty ducks quack in unison in Wales.

The twenty ducks aren’t wailing. They’re quacking.
And mountain goats have descended into Bern.

The goats aren’t causing shops to burn or collapse.
Christchurch rabbits aren’t afraid of the few cars.

A family of them drive a Suburu.
A man sees pumas in Santiago, Chile.

The pumas purr, eat big bowls of chili.
Monkeys throw bananas at the T***p Tower.

Monkeys, bears, wolves are trumping us humans.
Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.

David Spicer has published poems in Santa Clara Review,  Moria, Oyster River Pages, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks, the latest being Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second full-length collection Waiting for the Needle Rain is now available from Hekate Publishing.

DEATH COMES FOR THE COMMANDANT

by Bruce Dale Wise

Castro will be buried at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in southern Cuba. Photograph: Jonathan Watts/The Guardian.

        "Cambiar de amos no es ser libre..."

                —José Martí

The flags are at half-mast, beside the palms out in the air.
The Sun is shining over Revolutionary Square.
The people stroll about, meandering. Not much has changed.
The silence shows. The individuals are rearranged.
The statues and the towers, still, remain . . . another day.
The avenues, the walkways, and the latest news are gray,
as are his ashes, his cigars: Fidel Castro is dead.
Havana cannot hold him longer in white, blue, and red.
It's time to go, to leave the capital, alone, uncoil,
to Santa Ifigenia in Santiago soil.

Bruce Dale Wise is a poet and essayist who writes under various charichords (anagrammatic heteronyms). The creator of new poetic forms, like the tennos (10 lines of iambic heptametre), his publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms. This tennos is an example of his docupoetry. Among poets he admires are Cubans José Martí and Nicolás Guíllen.

EXHUMING NERUDA

by Catherine Chandler

Was Pablo Neruda killed by Pinochet? When the great poet died 40 years ago in Chile, it was said to be from cancer. Now, lawyers say it was murder. --Nick Clark, The Independent, June 2, 2013

At Isla Negra, Neftalí, you sang of joy and pain,
of poverty, Matilde, birds, of artichokes and rain.

And once at Isla Negra, they searched each corner of
your hideaway, but all they found was bread and wine and love.

And now at Isla Negra, they are digging up your bones;
they'll fly them to the capital then rearrange the stones.

In Santiago, Chile, nearly forty years have passed;
may this, your final journey bring the truth to light, at last.


Catherine Chandler is the author of four books of poetry, including Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011) and This Sweet Order (White Violet Press, 2012). Her second full length collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons will be published by Biblioasis Press (Windsor, Ontario) in March 2014. Catherine is a native of New York City, but has lived and worked in Canada for many years, most recently as lecturer at McGill University's Department of Translation Studies.