THIS IS A TEST. THIS IS A TEST.

by Tricia Knoll

 

 

 

Today on the radio the Bach fugue in B minor stands in for the emergency alert system two-tone blast before a three-tone blurt signaling end of alert. Theme, counterpoint and fragments in the coda. While missiles explode over Tel Aviv, ignite a Dubai hotel. One got the Supreme Leader. Another pulverizes a girl’s school in Iran. Kansas declares IDs of transgender people invalid. A preacher explains intergenerational trauma within the legacy of slavery. The BBC reports 72 tigers in Thailand have died recently of distemper. If it takes a minute to open a bottle, pour out a pill and take it, I have spent 456 days of my life swallowing an antidepressant. (And I thought it was lame that I have spent more than 12 weeks celebrating Christmas Days.) This is a test. This is a test. Going forward, how sad will life be?

 

Vermont poet Tricia Knoll is writing a book of poetry about sadness, The Run-on Story. Her next poetry book Gathering Marbles about aging will come out from Fernwood Press in 2027. 

JURASSIC PARK, FINAL EPISODE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

The age of dinosaurs is over—ferocious ones who ate

meat, tearing off opponents' skulls, stomping on them

for breakfast, predecessors of Atilla the Hun, Bokassa

who ate human blood, and the island potentate who

negotiated surrender of the remaining Tiger leaders to shoot

them down while they held white flags. No. Not on our watch.

The new dinosaur, killing by thousands in the neighbor's house

of Ukraine, will be stopped in one way or via the highway,

that glorious road leading not to exile or a humanitarian

pause, but as with dictators of childhood nightmares—Hitler,

Stalin, Tonton Macoute, wherever we draw our fears—into

the light we shine on his crimes as we put him on the dock

in absentia, not by 'Frisco Bay but in the Hague, while some

of our family members stagger out of the cave, blinking, still alive.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.