WORDS, GRAMMAR, EVERYTHING

by Jen Schneider

CARTOON:  David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star, 2017

If for some reason you haven’t been clear about what President Trump thinks about traditional public schools, consider what he said about them in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. There was this: “For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.” What’s a “government school” to Trump? A public school in a traditional public school district. —The Washington Post, February 5, 2020

Some speak of failing
government schools. The cement-block
halls and crowded rooms I call home.
Rooms lined with pet turtles, donated books,
and color-blocked rugs. Often too hot.
Sometimes too cold. Usually just right.
Some speak of failing
government schools. Staffed
by hard-working folks—with tenures
of ten, fifteen, and twenty years and passions
for literature, mathematics, Us—I call family.
Some speak of failing
government schools. The 7 AM through 4 PM
world where I find breakfast, lunch,
and meaning. And where I learned the power
of Words. Of Grammar. Of Punctuation.
Of love. Mrs. P. Ms. T. Mr. B.
I miss them—All.
Some speak of failing
government schools. I, rather, speak
of schools that have been failed.
Mr. B taught me well. We have not failed.
We have been failed. Where failing is a verb,
not an adjective. With funding
denied, teachers declared
no longer hired, and students
deemed unworthy
of care. Of Love. Some speak
of failing government schools.
All I see, from the windows
of the school I Love,
is a failing government.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

THE DAY MY FALLOPIAN TUBES ASKED ME TO PLAY HOPSCOTCH

by Dianna MacKinnon Henning

Source: reddit

All lies are not the same.
That’s why I won’t watch the State of the Union.
A plague of misinformation.

Even my favorite merlot
fails to numb the pain of the times
and I wake with stains on my tongue.

Go tell it to the mountain
my ears admonish, or at the least tell it
to your closest friend.

But there’s no good in talking,
no one can do anything
with unabashed crooks playing guard.

I would walk my dog
to hush the horror off, but my dog
goes belly flop, won’t budge.

Because of this, my fallopian tubes ask me
to play hopscotch, with assurance that jumping
carries a fertilized egg into heaven

where the Catholic priest Gabriele
Falloppio, the anatomist, promises better days ahead,
that all oviducts aren’t created equal.

Dianna MacKinnon Henning is widely published. A three-time Pushcart nominee, she had work in 2019 in New American Writing and The Kerf. Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several CAC grants, and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program. Henning’s third poetry book Cathedral of the Hand was published 2016 by Finishing Line Press.

TIT FOR TAT

by Tricia Knoll

She calls it. The government’s down for the count.
The structure is collapsing. That’s the State
of the Union, and she issues the invitations.
A move on the board, not unlike his moves, play
as you go. This knight rider woman
goes for the jump over. She’s has played
this game for decades. Knows all the moves.
Has played against the best. Calls the moves.
Three tilts make a match. We’re at two
and counting. Tit for tat


Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who is delighting in seeing a woman call Trump out.

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH

by Jean Varda

Proximate image source: The New Yorker

               for Sergeant Cory Remsburg


Would you lose an eye, a leg, a hand
to serve your country
to bring us freedom and democracy

Will you lie in a ditch unconscious,
shrapnel in your brain,
to help us understand freedom and
give democracy to the family who
died in the drone strike

Will you lose your hands, your voice,
your mind, so we can understand
the bullets dug from the bodies
of the two pregnant women
the six children laid out on
stretchers, never to open their eyes,
the father who could not protect
them now in pieces

Will you lose your eye,
your leg, your hands,
your mouth
so the children that did
not survive the bomb
will know freedom and
democracy, justice
and equality


Jean Varda’s poetry has appeared in: The California Quarterly, The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Lucid Stone, Poetry Motel, The Santa Fe Sun, Avocet A Journal of Nature Poetry, River Poets Journal and Prompt Online Literary Magazine. She has published 5 chapbooks of poetry, most recently, Carved from Light and Shadow by Sacred Feather Press. Her poem “Sister Morphine” that appeared in Red River Review was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California where she works as a nurse and collage artist.