CONVICTION IN XXXIV MOVEMENTS

by Erin Murphy

Altoona, Pennsylvania—May 30, 2024

 

I.

We are sitting in a tavern by the railroad tracks when the verdict is announced.

 

II.

A wave of gasps ushers in a hush as patrons scurry to check their cellphones.

 

III.

Like when a hawk swoops through a copse of trees and all breeds of birds chirp warnings, then fall silent.

 

IV.

Overheard: I’ll bet all the jurors were Democrats.

 

V.

In our town, 2020 election signs are still staked in lawns like tombstones.

 

VI.

When we moved here, people asked Whose house did you buy? Surely they knew the previous owners, went to church with their parents, played football with their brother or cousin.

 

VII.

Overheard: Hot damn! He’ll raise even more money now!

 

VIII.

Here, even the rain moves slowly. Some days it’s pouring in our front yard and dry in the back.

 

IX.

A few evenings ago, two women with clipboards came door-to-door encouraging registered Republicans to vote. Wrong house, I said and urged them to Take the rest of the night off—better yet, the rest of the year.

 

X.

Overheard: He can just pardon himself.

 

XI.

Overheard: I don’t think he can pardon himself for a state crime.

 

XII.

Overheard: When he’s re-elected, he’ll change the law so he can pardon anyone he wants.

 

XIII.

Spitting distance from this bar in 1855, the first spark of the Civil War when two men leapt from a moving train: runaway slave Jacob Green and slavecatcher James Parsons.

 

XIV.

Overheard: He’ll send ’em all back to where they came from.

 

XV.

Overheard: Do not pass go, do not collect $200!

 

XVI.

Overheard: More like $200 million—that’s how much they’re stealing from us.

 

XVII.

Overheard: laughter.

 

XVIII.

Townsfolk confronted Parsons, demanding he prove Green wasn’t a free black, and in the scuffle, Green was able to flee. Parsons was charged with kidnapping, infuriating the South.

 

XIX.

Mason Dixon Line.

 

XX.

Blood line.

 

XXI.

Toe the line.

 

XXII.

Cross the line.

 

XXIII.

Line one’s pockets.

 

XXIV.

Bottom line.

 

XXV.

Flatline.

 

XXVI.

New York Herald headline, Jan. 31, 1856: “Threatened Civil War Between Virginia and Pennsylvania.”

 

XXVII.

From the Herald article: The common courtesies of life, good-neighborhood…should have been sufficient to induce the State of Pennsylvania to aid the people of Virginia to enforce the rights of her citizens to such property.

 

XXVIII.

Earlier this spring, a local middle school cut “Lift Every Voice and Sing” from its choral program after parents complained that the song was “divisive.”

 

XXIX.

Let our rejoicing rise/

 

XXX.

High as the list’ning skies

 

XXXI.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us/

 

XXXII.

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us

 

XXXIII.

Overheard: That judge better have a good bodyguard.

 

XXXIV.

And yet. Last month we landed in L.A. during the solar eclipse. Under the baggage claim atrium, I pulled out the sleeve of eclipse glasses I’d packed just in case. I looked up. There it was: what Wordsworth called something night and day between. Is there a word for the urge I felt to share it with all my fellow travelers? As weary passengers came down the escalator, I offered them glasses, summoning the word sun in every language I knew: sol, soleil, sonne. Some hung back skeptically as others eagerly pressed the dark lenses to their eyes. Flight attendants and pilots from Russia, Korea, Poland, Japan, Tahiti. A man with a handmade ukulele. A maintenance worker with a walkie-talkie. Parents, children, young adults who ran to retrieve their grandparents in wheelchairs. Tio, you have to see this! one teen told her uncle. A boy said Mommy, Mommy—the moon is like Pac-Man taking a bite out of the sun! Even a few skeptical passengers shyly came around. So many ohhhhs. So many smiles. So many faces tilted toward the same sky.

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry, Fluent in Blue, was published by Grayson Books in April 2024. She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

PANDEMIC ON MY MIND

by George Salamon

In my head nobody

knows anybody else,

men and women come

and go from long ago

and far away, but don't

say where they're going.

George Salamon had his two jabs and the booster shot in St. Louis MO where people ask each other which high school they attended, pandemic or no pandemic. He does not know if that is a good or bad thing.

SARAH'S LEAVING

by Jeremy Thelbert Bryant

“So long, Sarah Huckabee Sanders” by J.D. Crowe

In her heavy makeup and pearls,
she spouts cheap words no one
wants to hear—
sounds of nothingness,
mantras of division.

I think back to the restaurant in Virginia,
how they had heard all they wanted,
asked her to leave, sent her on her way.
People wept because she was an “honest” woman,
a god fearing being.
What god I ask, the one of greed,
of lust,
of war?

As I watch images of her now,
during the last days of her post,
I wonder if heavy rouge and white baubles are enough.
Can they lure voters to make her governor?
Will her southern church chirp call them
                to submission,
                convert them into believing the unbelievable?

Jeremy Thelbert Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His work may be found in TheNewVerse.News, Pikeville Review, EAOGH, Anima Magazine, and Prism. He finds inspiration in the red of cardinals, in the honesty of Frida Kahlo’s artwork, and in the frankness of Tori Amos’ lyrics.

OUR AMERICA

by Susana H. Case

I tried to explain the origins of blackface

to my bewildered Italian tutor,

who grew up in Perugia

and doesn’t read American

newspapers. I, too, had never seen blackface, 

growing up, but that was in New York City,

where burnt cork or grease 

would not have been thought funny, I hope.

Vaudeville, I think . . . I hesitated, 

or the earlier minstrel shows.

I was bewildered too. We shook our heads,

thinking of Italian companies 

that recently had to pull 

a Gucci balaclava sweater and Prada 

charms for purses,

blackface imagery on luxury.

Fat red lips on a black background

startled passersby on the East Side,

including me, who would never 

again enter their stores, both companies 

not having understood America, 

or having understood it too well.

Susana H. Case is the author of six books of poetry, most recently the erasure book, Erasure, Syria (Recto y Verso Editions, 2018). Her most recent book of traditional poetry, Drugstore Blue, was published in 2017. She is also the author of four chapbooks, two of which won poetry prizes. Her first collection, The Scottish Café, from Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press in Poland. Her work has appeared in Calyx, The Cortland Review, Portland Review, Potomac Review, Rattle, RHINO and many other journals. 

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPOKE LIKE A CHILD . . .

by Marsha Owens

When did he have an epiphany? she asked
unclear about how one is racist and then is not.

I know how life meanders, doesn’t march
in straight lines like VMI cadets stepping
around Stonewall Jackson’s horse, its body
stained with white and black blood before it
was stuffed and saluted, forever revered.

Her name was LaVinia, her body stout,
her words few, her work for my Mama—
clean toilets and stiffly pressed sheets,
her days long, two bus rides from Richmond
to the freshly coifed suburbs, all-white.

I didn’t know why LaVinia fixed sandwiches
for my brother and me but none for herself.

His name was Pete, lanky and dark, head bowed
to say, Mornin’ Ma’am to my Mama, Mornin’ Missy
to me, a five-year-old. His work for my Daddy—
boards nailed, shingles hauled up the ladder, laid
out just so—a few dollars at day’s end.

I didn’t know why Pete sat outside on the stoop
at lunchtime, eating his hot dog on a paper plate.

I swam in the culture into which I was born,
1950s, somewhere between slavery’s end
and the Act called Civil Rights.

I stumbled with other white people away
from horrible injustices and strode towards
desegregated neighborhoods, integrated schools,
JFK, MLK, Trayvon Martin, President Obama.

I listened and learned, read and reflected,
laughed and cried with new friends whose
memories were not mine, nor mine theirs.
No epiphany, just life. And I voted

“for the person who cares about all people,”
Daddy said in his old age, simplistic political
advice that had evolved over a lifetime
and became the politics I chose to follow.

Marsha Owens is a retired educator who still lives and writes in Richmond, VA. She voted for Ralph Northam and Mark Herring, not because they are perfect, but because their policies support "all people."

SONNET FOR GOVERNOR NORTHAM

by Diane Elayne Dees





I had to shine my shoes that day. I might
have inadvertently smeared polish on my face.
I don’t recall—but I’m more or less contrite
(for those who get all worked up about race).
I know that I’m a doctor of neurology,
but I have a lot of brain fog and confusion.
That photo in my yearbook’s an anomaly;
it may even be an optical illusion.
I may have donned a baptismal-like robe—
pure white (and perhaps it had a hood)—
and though I’m trying really hard to probe
my memory, it isn’t very good.
In summary, I’m the short guy. No—the tall!
But wait.....I think I wasn’t there at all.


Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

WHAT SEEMS TO FOLLOW US

by Carol Parris Krauss

The kitchen is disorderly.
The small camping stove, cooler,
And bottles of water whisper
Pine trees, honeysuckle, and rustic cabins
Nestled near the George Washington National Forest.
But this is no weekend excursion,
but instead
Hurricane readiness at its best.

We thought we left the lengthy gas station lines,
Empty grocery shelves, and
Sandbags sentries behind
When we moved from
Florida to Virginia.
Hurricane Flo. She said no. The old folks
Say a hurricane is a do-over, a chance at a second chance.
A clean slate.

I need to see Florence to explain that
my move after
28 years
In Florida was my do-over. Scream in the wind,
Shake my fist. Look her in the eye.
She needs
To take her squat, spin, and spit,
Her erasure.
Elsewhere.

Carol Parris Krauss is a teacher, mother, and poet who is fond of college football and cats. She lives in the Tidewater Region of Virginia. Her work can be found in Blue Collar Review, TheNewVerse.News, The Amsterdam Quarterly, Fall Lines, The South Carolina Review, Storysouth, and other online and print magazines.

WHEN I SAW JESUS IN RICHMOND, VA

by Marsha Owens

Volunteers Mary Akemon (left) and Alexandra Marcus and, with Let America Vote, talked with Farrukh Kahn as they canvassed a neighborhood on Friday, October 27, 2017 in Woodbridge, Virginia. Let America Vote, formed by former Democratic Missouri Senate candidate Jason Kander debuted its electoral field operations in Virginia with a field office in Manassas that drew 114 interns from across the country to help knock on doors for 10 Democratic delegate candidates. (Pete Marovich/For The Washington Post)

Lo, in the year two thousand and seventeen,
I walked among Democrats and knocked
and the young woman, wearing a friendly
smile, opened the door to me and said,
yes, we will vote tomorrow
for the one who is good to all people,
to my black family and to my Muslim
neighbors, the one who does not hurt
women, does not steal from the poor,
and I said, that is good, and my gaze
fell on the old woman on the couch,
her hand patting the tiny baby,
and she asked me to name names
of the others who care about others
and I showed her the list, and she
rejoiced and was grateful
and I saw, too, the man seated on a stool,
the old woman’s foot on his knee,
and I watched this young man wash
the feet of his mother-in-law who was lame,
saw him file her splintered toenails,
and my eyes did not deceive,
and his child—an old soul—waved her
baby hands, and his young wife spoke
again—do you see what my husband is doing?
and I saw, then turned away, walked through
golden leaves and the sun reached down, and I
heard nearby loud voices praising Sunday
football and seemed to hear heavenly voices
sing blessings for this holy shit, and within
the loudness, a small voice, maybe my own,
whispered, This is good stuff, damn good stuff.

Marsha Owens lives and writes in Richmond, VA and celebrates her roots in the Chesapeake Bay area. She is pleased to say that she survived 18 years of teaching English to middle schoolers. Her poems and essays have been published at The Wild Word, Feminine Collective, Rat’s Ass Review, TheNewVerse.News,The Literary Nest, and the Dead Mule School of Literature.

LOVING V. VIRGINIA 1967

by Sally Zakariya




The case hit home for me—
Virginia born and bred, Love
is my middle name, chosen Southern
style for the great-great-somebody
who rode to college in a boxcar
through Confederate lines bringing
her piano and her favorite slave

Virginia Is for Lovers the slogan says
but only certain lovers in those days
certainly not me and the black man
I lived with way back when

A hundred years plus four it took
for marriage to catch up
with Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation
for a suffering nation to bind
this one heart-deep wound—
at least to make a start

I love Virginia’s hills and valleys
its rich red earth where blood
of black and white is mingled
where black and white lie
equal under headstones
but there’s still healing to be done
one nation divided
      still wounded
            still bleeding

Sally Zakariya’s poems have appeared in 60-some print and online journals. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011); and the editor of the poetry anthology Joys of the Table (2015).

NO AVAILABLE BEDS

by Alejandro Escudé

Young black man jailed since April for alleged $5 theft found dead in cell. Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, had been held in Virginia jail without bail for nearly four months, accused of stealing a Mountain Dew, Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake. —The Guardian, August 28, 2015

No bed for the sick young man
who stole a bottle of Mountain Dew,
a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake worth
a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven,

the young man found dead in
his jail cell, his emaciated body melting
like an ice sculpture on the floor.

One official said it was hard to tell
who was in charge of the young man,
losing muscle mass, deteriorating
like a city after a colossal hurricane.

It’s always hard to tell who’s in charge.
Blame is a language with its own structure,
Saussure’s signifier and signified.

I too, who also serve the masses,
might’ve refused the bed, let him die,
peering at the numbers crawling
over my screen like undeterrable ants.

In the cell, he had a mattress, a toilet,
a sink, a shelf and a slit-like window
from where he wore out his mind
rotating realities like a reversible coat.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

A REDSKIN FAN TAKES OFFENSE

by Chris O’Carroll

RICHMOND, Va. – Three Virginia lawmakers have formed the “Redskins Pride Caucus” in an effort to help Washington Redskins keep the nickname some people deem offensive. --CBS6, June 23, 2014

They gave my team a trademark on its name,
But now they say they’re snatching it away.
Political correctness is their game,
And Injun giving is the way they play.

I want my team to sound badass and scary,
Like warpath savages with tomahawks.
I want every opponent trembling, wary,
Fearful of brutal tackles, sacks, and blocks.

Since “Redskin” is a byword for ferocity
(I’ve seen the Westerns, so I know the score),
To change the team name would be an atrocity.
In fact, I am convinced there should be more

Franchises getting ethnic in your face --
Spearchuckers, Wetbacks, Spades, Bogtrotters, Chinks.
There’s big-time juju in names based on race.
Who cares what some Cochise or Tonto thinks?


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  His poems have appeared in Literary Review, Per Contra, Shot Glass, the Spectator, and the Washington Post, among other print and online journals, and in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.

THE CICADAS ARE COMING

by Joan Mazza





Seventeen years they’ve been burrowing deep in tree roots,
waiting for their time to wriggle out of their exoskeletons
and take wing, males singing to attract females. The woods
in the afternoons transformed into a noisy singles bar.

The last time the red-eyed brood emerged, I was visiting
in Virginia, guest from Florida, not a resident.
I slept with windows wide, welcomed that chorus
louder than frogs, natural and shrill, an improvement

over motorcycles, sirens of ambulances and fire engines,
Fort Lauderdale’s ceaseless traffic spewing exhaust.
A bonanza of a buffet for wildlife, they dropped
from trees onto our lunch tables. Delighting in delicate

segmented wings, I photographed portraits. Listening now,
I anticipate the din, thunderous as a jackhammer,
with earplugs and an extra feather pillow for over my head,
ready to welcome the natural world I moved here to love.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, sex therapist, writing coach, and seminar leader. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Rattle, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Permafrost, Slipstream, Timber Creek Review, The MacGuffin, Writer’s Digest, The Fourth River, the minnesota review, Personal Journaling, New Verse News, Playgirl and many other publications. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.