READING, WRITING, ARITHMETIC

by Ron Drummond

Sign up at Vote Forward

“The library is open.”

– RuPaul Charles

 

 

“Turn the page,” my candidate says,

and we are even more delighted 

with this ambassador of sanity 

than five-year-olds at story time.

 

I turn the page of a roll of voters

registered to the same party as me

and continue personalizing notes and

envelopes to possible “for” votes,

 

my handwriting in each letter

paired with a QR code spelling 

how, where and when to cast

their vote. I band stacks of stuffed,

 

stamped envelopes – this batch

of over three hundred going to

a state where all zips begin with

two, the numeral that allows for 

 

my finest work: a slight, lovely curve 

that swoops to a taut, crisp horizontal.

At some point, I will put on some music,

but for now, I am flying solo.

 

I picture the recipient’s odd experience 

of holding a hand-addressed envelope to be

like Sondheim’s Joanne pausing her song

to ask, “Does anyone still wear a hat?”

 

I relive the tedium of my factory job

working with extruded plastic, and those

night-shift endings at Denny’s “marrying”

the ketchups” – wedding the contents

 

of the bottles so that none are partly full, 

leaving each with the sediment of ancient 

condiment at their bottoms – when all 

I want is dawn, and to go home to bed.

 

Within reach of where I stamp and seal

is a cigar box of campaign buttons, mostly 

from lost crusades. I’m not a snob about them.  

I don’t take pride in backing failed runs. 

 

Most of the buttons promote anti-war pols,

and half are red, white and blue discs 

with the much-later-to-be-assassinated 

Allard Lowenstein’s name on them. 

 

But when this current election is over 

and I add a shiny new navy-blue one 

to my collection, I envision this old 

El Cid Corona Minors box – it once held

 

25 seven-inch (54 ring-gauge) cigars 

with open feet & capped heads – being 

transformed. It will no longer be a flat, 

hinged urn. It will no longer be a grief box.

 

“Turn the page,” my candidate repeats,

using a gesture even the non-literate

can understand.

Ron Drummond is the author of Why I Kick At Night (Portlandia). A founding editor of Barrow Street, his poetry and translations have appeared in over forty journals, as well as in anthologies and textbooks. He has received fellowships from Ragdale, VCCA, Blue Mountain Center, and the Macondo Foundation. He lives in NYC with his husband Terry Cook.

POWDER KEG

by Mark Danowsky

Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it.
—  The Matrix
 

I wake with teeth clenched
 
I find myself holding my breath
 
We’ve pitted brother against brother
too long
 
In the end, it doesn’t even matter
who starts a war
 
They call it suicide by cop
when a gunman refuses to disarm
 
Sondheim reminds us
we lionize assassins
 
A conservative leader insists
The Left has choices
 
False prospect  
for a bloodless revolution
 
Shots fired

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of four poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Meatless (Plan B Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025.

YEAR IN REVIEW

by Barbara Simmons

“In the weightlessness of space.” Oil on canvas painting by Anastasia Balabina (Ukraine).

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. —Joan Didion

 

What were the stories that seemed mental U-turns,

that needed returning to, never ending?  At year’s

end, 2021’s review heralded tales most told,

the big look back compactly written,

the headlines sculpting what had happened

into what we should remember.

I’ve skimmed the stories alphabetically, but find the letter C

for COVID is my alpha, tireless virus with infinite variations. I 

flip quickly to the Fed, to China, climate, revivals

on Broadway, deaths we expected someday, but maybe

not this year, like Didion’s, Sondheim’s, Tutu’s.

The story I return to most takes me on SpaceX travels,

finding weightlessness a way to reconstruct my sight,

no longer lineated up and down,

but now a new fluidity, a chance to stream myself beyond

the time and space of just one journey,

just one life, to understand how we are multitudes,

how we are singular, how we are both chorus, soloist, conductor

in a musical rendition of this year reviewed

and what we need most is to listen to stories we’ve composed,

and play

and play

and play

until we fully hear.

 

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, graduated from Wellesley, and now lives in San Jose. As a secondary school English teacher, she loved her students who inspired her to think about the many ways we communicate. Retired, she savors exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, always trying to understand human-ity. Publications have included Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Writing it Real, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition, and OASIS. Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums will be published in Spring 2022.