THE OTHER NEW YORK

by Susana H. Case

A view shows a petrol station, which bears the name of New York in Donetsk Region, Ukraine March 3, 2021. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich. See also Wikipedia.

There is a town called New York in Ukraine.

Stalin gave it a Soviet name that didn't stick.

Many of its houses are empty,

along with the streets and parks.

Young people dream of leaving.

At the store in the town center,

they are out of bread.

In a room with balloons, a child

holds a chocolate and cherry birthday cake,

while the sound of gunfire blasts out

a few miles away. How naive we are

about power, profits—like children holding sparklers.

The few adults at the birthday party fret an errant 

artillery round might hit the chemical plant.

Even in peacetime, it spits out fumes 

from phenol production into the air. 

The streets are worn and tired.

Oh, New York: where is your Donetsk Times Square

full of excited tourists, your skyscrapers

that cause neck aches from people looking up in awe?

Where are your people—like in that other 

New York, the American one—who complain 

how much they suffer because the air is chilly,

the bus ten minutes late?

Susana H. Case has authored eight books of poetry, most recently The Damage Done (Broadstone Books, 2022). Dead Shark on the N Train (Broadstone Books, 2020) won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. She co-edited, with Margo Taft Stever, the anthology I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk and Cake Press, 2022).

LEFT BEHIND IN AFGHANISTAN

by Tricia Knoll

“Taliban Try to Polish Their Image as They Push for Victory: The insurgents are trying to rebrand themselves as effective governors as they capture new territory. But there is more evidence that they are unreformed.” —The New York Times, July 6, 2021. Photo: Members of the Taliban in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan last March. Credit: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times.

American stuff. Artificial Christmas trees. Humvees. 

Boots that mark the Afghan soil with the treads

of Americans. Little shops sell discards

like aluminum mugs. No longer sell the body armor. 

They do sell Jif peanut butter, alarm clocks, 

backpacks festooned with swooshes, 

instant coffee, exercise stretch ropes, 

hand sanitizer and tea bags. 

 

Bagram first the pulverized Soviet airfield, 

turned burgeoning American stronghold

with Pizza Huts and Subways, field hospital

and a prison gifted to the Afghan defense ministry.  

 

Then the women left behind. What will they be asked

to wear, to think, to learn? What will divide urban

women from rural? Will medical care advance?

What happens to the voices of the poets, activists,

radio DJs, victims of domestic violence? What music

will they hear? What input to the terms of peace? 

Will electricity return as swiftly as sharia justice? 

When women hold up half the sky,

never leave behind the hope of soaring.

Tricia Knoll is a feminist poet who never takes for granted the freedoms she has enjoyed while advocating for the role of women in our world. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies. 

LINES

by Bonnie Naradzay

Sculpture depicting a Great Depression breadline at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C.

This has been done before, standing in line for a long time.        
Think of Soviet women who queued for hours for bread.              
And I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression:        
men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines.                

Think of Soviet women who stood for hours for bread                
or Akhmatova outside the prison waiting for news of her son.    
Here, men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines.    
These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online.        

Akhmatova outside the prison waited with women for news        
and the chance to send a loaf of bread, or a note, inside.              
These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online.        
Still, Camus said the plague is within us, here to stay.                

I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression                
where hope envisions a loaf of bread, a note from inside.              
Camus wrote that the plague is within us, here to stay,                
as it has always done: waiting in line for a long time.      

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, EPOCH, the Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, and Ekphrastic Review and are slated to appear in Kenyon Review Online, AGNI, and others.  For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC. 

PASSOVER

by Mark Danowsky

At first, Rustem Kadyrov could barely make out the mark outside his house, in the Crimean town of Bakhchysarai, but it filled him with terror. It was an X, cut deep into the gray metal of the gate, and its significance cut even deeper, evoking a memory Kadyrov shares with all Crimean Tatars. Kadyrov, who is thirty-one, grew up hearing stories about marks on doors. In May of 1944, Stalin ordered his police to tag the houses of Crimean Tatars, the native Muslim residents of the peninsula. Within a matter of days, all of them—almost two hundred thousand people—were evicted from their homes, loaded onto trains, and sent to Central Asia, on the pretext that the community had collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Crimea. -- Natalia Antelava, The New Yorker, March 6, 2014

Image source: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

They say it’s happening again—Xs
mark the doors of Crimean Tatars.
They say Stalin was responsible
the first time around, but he was not
first to come up with the idea.
The ancient texts speak of markings
made in blood from sheep or goat
slashed on doorposts lest
the Angel of Death take your first born.


Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Snow Monkey and The New Verse News.  His poem "5am Summer Storm" won Imitation Fruit’s “Animals and Their Humans” Contest, in 2013. He resides in Northwest Philadelphia and works for a private detective agency.

PRAVDA

by Kelly Jadon

Nicholas Roerich, "Guests from Overseas"

Awaking in spring, gaunt from nursing cubs
in darkness, alone, in her den
So is Mother Russia with Ukraine, Georgia
buffers which she keeps within reach

Her snowy fur hiding blackened skin
for warmth against ancient frigid tundra
Crossed by Vikings, Rus', a brutal heritage
ancestral blood violented by Mongols

Hunting hares across drifts
she returns with raw prey
offerings of peace to cubs
Feeding rebellious spirits within her states

Drawing her babes outward,
she nudges them to follow
in her footsteps they plod,
Unbalanced, weak, young
not fully independent democracies

To the sea’s ice
she dives fishing
gazing into air holes of whiskered seals
her territory
As is Kiev, taken by Grand Prince of Rus'
Oleg

Swimming miles across open waters
she leads growing cubs
in her wake
Old Soviet thinking controlling masses
hammer and sickle
Berlin wall, Afghanistan, Georgia—
all unforgotten

Two years cubs follow the mother
learning her hunting and survival skills
As Viking thoughts prepare for Mongol behaviors
the Rus'
bear witness
truth of who they truly are


Kelly Jadon is a graduate of Spring Arbor University and holds a degree in English with a focus on poetry.  She is a teacher, poet, and writer.  Her poem "To Taste The Oil" was recently published by The Voices Project and was featured at the University of Colorado "Eye Contact" event as an audible poem.  Her poem "the snow pile" was published at Everyday Poets (1/2014).  "Destination Hamamatsu" to be published in Pavilion Magazine (Fall 2014).