THE BOOK OF QUIET GIRLS WHO BURN

by Linda K. Sienkiewicz

To the pediatrician who insisted on taking a rectal temperature with me across his knees,

To the pediatrician who tweaked my nipples during a physical,

To the neighbor’s grandfather who worked his fingers into my shorts,

To the stranger in Woolworth’s who grabbed my hand to rub against his crotch and ran,

To the boy who called me into the pool for one last swim and tried to drown me,

To the mechanical drawing teacher who rubbed his elbow against my breasts while checking my work,

To the employer who told his female, high-school-aged staff that whoever got the most sales would win an overnight date with him,

To the guy who raced his car through town while I screamed for life from the passenger seat after I said I was breaking up with him,

To the recruiter who told me to wear a short skirt to the job interview,

To the hiring manager who instructed waitress applicants to go heavy on makeup,

To the neurologist who sat on the arm of my chair, pinning me there in nothing but a hospital gown, while discussing my options,

To the employer who gave me a gold necklace but told me never to wear it at work,

To the guy who date raped me in a warehouse loft,

To the guy who parked in the woods and shoved my head into his crotch,

To the guy who said he should rape me after I broke up with him,

I remember every one of you.

Quiet. Quiet piggy.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of the multi-finalist award-winning novel Love and Other Incurable Ailments, forthcoming novel In the Context of Love, five poetry chapbooks and a children’s picture book. Among her awards are a poetry chapbook and a Pushcart Prize Nomination in poetry. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and serves as Honorary Director of Detroit Working Writers.

BEATRICE'S TURN

by Michelle DeRose

Beatrice (a Portrait of Jane Morris) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

If poets are the unacknowledged 

legislators of our world, then may

their list come out as a sonnet,

an epic, an elegy for their lost

childhoods. They have more cause

than Dante to assign names

to descending rings. Only in dreams

and nightmares have sinners paid,

limbs frozen in impotent angles

like bent wisps of straw, forced

to face forever through lids locked

on open how their flesh partook in fraud.

Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is Professor Emerita of English at Aquinas College, where she sometimes used her specialty in epic poetry in her teaching. Every new nation/kingdom/regime established in an epic is built upon or requires the destruction of another.

WELBY

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, on Tuesday announced his resignation, days after a report concluded that he had failed to ensure a proper investigation into claims that more than 100 boys and young men were abused decades ago at Christian summer camps. —The New York Times, November 12, 2024

Welby may have seen faith as the key 

English Church teaching: faith means to be-

Lieve what cannot be seen—

But does not also mean

You can then not believe what you see!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

EPITAPH FOR ALICE MUNRO

by Gifford Savage

My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him. In the shadow of my mother, a literary icon, my family and I have hidden a secret for decades. It’s time to tell my story. —Andrea Robin Skinner, Toronto Star, updated July 15, 2024. Photo by Steve Russell.

We mourned her passing,

those of us eclipsed by her shadow,

who place words on pages

in vain attempt to come close 

to her masterful levels of wit,

humour and care.

Amongst the greats of short-story fiction,

she was honoured and celebrated,

commemorated in glowing eulogies.

Lifted to the heights of genius

in obituaries dwelling on achievement.

Perhaps we can understand

why they didn’t mention the unmentionable,

those writers who loved her words so much,

for whom Her stories are life itself.

A month later it all fell crashing down to earth. 

What the tributes had carefully left unsaid,

what they had known since the verdict in 2005.

This mother who wrote so powerfully

about the complications of everyday life,

who wrote from a feminine perspective

of girls and boys, of men and women—

while all along, beyond the pen and page was

the guilty abuser she protected,

the dirty secret held close,

the terrible reality denied,

the Nobel prize gathering dust,

the little girl she had betrayed,

no longer a child, bravely breaking her silence—

along with our delusions of greatness.

Gifford Savage is from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His poetry has been published in various journals, including The Storms, The Bangor Literary Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Agape Review, and previously in The New Verse News. He was included in the Community Arts Partnership anthology "Across the Threshold," has performed his poetry on local television station "Northern Visions TV," and was winner of the Aspects Festival Poetry Slam 2022.

SOME OF THEM ARE BRAVE

by Lynn White

Medical workers in Israel have told the BBC that Palestinian detainees from Gaza are routinely kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded, sometimes naked, and forced to wear nappies – a practice one medic said amounted to “torture”. —BBC, May 21, 2024

Everyone knew it was happening
the unheard story
the tens of thousands dead,
the millions displaced,
the decades of rubble,
the destroyed schools.
hospitals, universities
everyone knew.

Everyone knew it was happening
the unheard story
even though the journalists were dead
or expelled and banned
everyone knew.

Everyone knew it was happening
the unheard story
of the hundreds
or thousands,
or tens of thousands
who had disappeared
uncharged with any crime
or misdemeanour
everyone knew.

Then three Israeli workers
blew their whistles loud
and everyone heard
what everyone knew.

Now the trick is to listen.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

AN OPEN LETTER EXPLAINING ELEMENTS OF OUR NEW, IMPROVED, AND DECIDEDLY UNWOKE CURRICULUM

by Dick Westheimer

Dear Parent,

 

We believe in children. We believe 

in padded playgrounds and unscuffed knees 

and helmets and a bubble wrapped curriculum 

lined with velvet and free from troubled ideas.

 

We believe our teachers should teach

that enslaved Africans got vocational skills

like painting and planting for their personal benefit,

that residents of Auschwitz knew the trick of how 

to lose weight and look so fit, that members 

of the Five Tribes, removed for their own good, 

got to “pursue happiness in their own way.”

 

We believe those seeking refuge (whose boats 

overturn) might learn to swim, that those 

with black-lung get to sit in front of their TVs

in their BarcaLoungers with their very own 

government issued oxygen tanks, that Catholic 

boys get personal tutoring in anatomy from 

respected men in their white collared shirts, 

that trafficked girls get to travel the world 

and meet new friends.

 

We believe children should learn nothing

about those pre-teens head-bent in sweatshops

sewing their shoes, or two-year-olds toddling 

in electronics junk yards recycling their PCs

or tweens armed and taught to harm their kin. 

 

We do this for you, dear parent 

because, we are committed to protect 

you from Judgement Day when 

Johnny or Susie asks what 

you could have done and why, 

dear parent, you didn’t. 

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Journal, Gyroscope Review, Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritual Well, One Art, and Cutthroat. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.

THE SAGA OF AN ABANDONED PUNJABI BRIDE

by Vivek Sharma

They Married for a Life Abroad. But They Never Saw Their Husbands Again. —The New York Times, June 14, 2023.

 

Thousands of brides in India are being abandoned by their British Indian husbands after they are married. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that Indian women are continuing to fall for British suitors. —BBC News, November 23, 2009.

In Candana, England, called Vilayat,
      My husband abides alone,
                   or with another,
he visits me sometimes in winter,
       some years, not at all,
                   and I live with his mother.

I am a middle-aged Punjabi dreamer,
      I practice English at home,
                tears smudge my notebook.
He promised me a visa and visits,
      but what if they were gambits
                 to freehire a family cook?

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne,                                       
         Mawan, dhiyan, khetran, gawan nu,                     
Undi raah kyun takdi aye,                                              
kyun aaun ge o tainu le jawan nu?                              

 

Those who have abandoned mothers,
         fields, daughters, villages, and gone,
Why do you wait for their return?
        Why would they take you along?

Occasionally, he calls from Vilayat,
       sweet-talker, whiskey breath,
                  I crave his love and sweat,
I rage, and he lends me an ear,
      tells me he hates it there,
                but says he hasn't made it yet,
I feel fallow, tell tales to my buffalo,
     she moos at my discontent
              and the choleric of my kith and kin,
prevents me from calling him a rogue,
     though he has left me to wither here,
             though he has left me alone.

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne…                                       
        Those who have abandoned us and gone…

Throughout Punjab, we are scattered,
        throughout Punjab, we are alone,
        why did you wed us?
        Why did you leave our home?
What good is the foreign penny,
       slavery of foreign tarts and pimps?
       Come back, o black-hearted,
       Come back to our sweet home.

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne,                                       
         Mawan, dhiyan, khetran, gawan nu,                     
Undi raah kyun takdi aye,                                              
kyun aaun ge o tainu le jawan nu?                               

Those who have abandoned mothers,
         fields, daughters, villages, and gone,
Why do you wait for them?
        Why would they return to take you along?

Your forefathers fought invaders,
       never quit, never let their land go,
kept heads high in proud turbans,
       never balked or gave their women woe.
“O Ranjheya, your banter: how do you translate it?
      Your Punjabi heart-to-heart: how do you communicate it?
Are you legally there? Are you really there?
      We are aging. We'll die. When will you ever make it?”

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne…        

                             Those who have abandoned us and gone…

But what can I say, had you stayed back,
       I would have urged you to leave,
when destiny calls with dollar bills,
       staying back for mud-dung is grief.
But I was wrong, marjaaniyan
      how I wish he were never gone,
I know he must be more miserable,
      at least I am in my home,

What pagli is this 'lady',
      lives in a world of make-belief,
if the bride was ever worthy,
     why would the groom ever leave,
But tell me what I must do,
     but tell me where I can go,
In this dust, I must live and die,
    maybe after death, reunite in a Canadian home.

Jede Chadd ke chal gaye ne...                                       

Those who have abandoned us and gone…

Vivek Sharma's first book of verse, Saga of a Crumpled Piece of Paper (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 2009), was shortlisted for Muse India Young Writer Award 2011. His work in English appears in Atlanta Review, Bateau, Poetry, The Cortland Review, and Muse India, among others while his Hindi articles and verses appear in Divya Himachal (Hindi newspaper, India), Himachal Mitra, and Argala. Vivek grew up in Himachal Pradesh (Himalayas, India), and moved to the United States in 2001. Vivek is a Pushcart-nominated poet, is published as a scientist, and he lives and teaches chemical engineering in Chicago.

WARNING SIGN

by Diane Elayne Dees

The sign is hard to miss,

as shoppers cross 

the parking lot to buy

t-shirts, groceries, toys,

bath towels, cosmetics.

The sign next to it 

is even bigger, and 

just as serious, warning

patrons that abuse of any kind

toward staff will not be tolerated,

and that law enforcement

will be notified. Maybe someday,

those signs will appear normal—

the new normal, that assumes

that we are all under threat of attack

at every moment in any place.

Or maybe someday, 

in a parallel universe, 

it will be normal not to carry

shotguns and knives on errands,

or—in a different galaxy—

normal to treat people with respect.

In the meantime, every time I pass,

I wonder about the little girls and boys

—already anxious, already frightened,

clinging to their teddy bears—

I wonder what must have happened

inside that glass-enclosed pediatric clinic,

and I wonder what will happen next.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books) The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

THE TALE OF THE HORSE'S ASS

by Samantha Pious

In times of old (but not so old

as Greece or Rome, nor yet, I’m told,

so recent as the Renaissance)

disaster struck the realm of France:

war with England, war with Flanders,

the king’s own family prone to scandals,

mounting deficits, inflation,

civil strife, unjust taxation,

the summary burning at the stake

of enemies of church and state,

the persecution of the Jews... 

in short, the usual abuse.

But, worst of all, the royal court

was currying favor with—a horse!

This horse’s coat, it’s strange to say,

was neither chestnut, brown, nor bay,

sorrel, black, white, brindled, gray,

nor any color known today

in France or the U. S. of A.

From head to hoof, this horse was orange.

Most people viewed it with abhorrence

but some decided (whether they

grew foolish or were born that way)

to fatten it on oats and hay,

to pander to its every neigh, 

to stroke its coat with brush and comb,

to let it make itself at home 

behind the lofty palace walls,

to clean its hooves, muck out its stall... 

all in the hopes that it would give

its friends a handout. Which it did!

Sporadically, it would provide

good luck in spades. It also lied.
It lied about the coming plague.

It promised it would never raise

our taxes. It would drain the swamp.

With utmost circumstance and pomp,

it would transform mice into men.

The nation would be great again.

Ah, what a gallant, noble steed!

And it was lying through its teeth.

This orange horse (of yellow mane)—

tell us, Muse, what was its name?

Was it Fauvel, the word for “fable”?

Was there a placard for the stable

genius? Come Judgment Day,

when every horse is called to pay

its debts, say, when they sound the trump,

who will be driven by the rump

down to the fiery pits of Hell?

Say, who but Tr——I mean, Fauvel?

Samantha Pious is a poet, translator, editor, and medievalist with a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. "The Tale of the Horse's Ass" is inspired by a  14th-century French and Latin satire, the Roman de Fauvel, which really does feature an orange horse as its anti-hero.

JOHNNY DEPP WINS, AND I, LIKE SO MANY OTHERS, THINK OF THE MAN WHO ABUSED ME

by Emma Rhodes

I’m in a courtroom with him in my dreams.

Years live, tangible and growing inside of me.

Stench rotting from the inside out makes me gag, and

the judge thinks I drink and doesn’t believe a word I say.

 

As things rot, their appearance, smell, stories change. 

Leave something to fester long enough it becomes absence, 

memories warp but sickness remains. 

 

We beg you to believe our guts even when they stink.

 

There is a constant drip on the windshield of this car. The evidence is shown 

through the screen so it’s water-warped & memory-warped & 

dream-warped but he doesn’t deny a thing

 

The jury appreciates his honesty, his charm. 

 

Court takes a break. He says we need to play laser-tag—the judge said so. 

That can’t be true and yet suddenly I’m shot by light from all angles, 

put me under a spotlight and call me a liar.

 

The water continues to drip on the windshield.

 

They tell me I had the means to get out. Look at me now. Just drive away they say. Just drive away if it was so bad why didn’t you leave but facing the other wall is a boot on the wheel and I am stuck in his bed, his bathtub, pacing the one single hallway while he left in a car to see 

 

his parents (who are so proud of him, by the way. He was always a great boy.)

 

And Taylor Swift hasn’t said anything this time, none of the #MeToo baddies have spoken.

The water on the windshield breaks through and shatters. 

Glass shards in the courtroom. Everyone yells 

 

“violence!”

 

And I am left. Picking up one shard after another. He walks by, stomps on a shard so it crumbles into a million more (another inconsistency), says 

 

“thanks for keeping me around.”

 

I’ll stop writing about violence when I stop seeing it. 

I’ll stop writing about violence when the world stops trying to kill its women.  

Emma Rhodes is an emerging Queer writer currently living on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people. Her work has been published in places such as Prism International, Plenitude, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere.

DOWN

by Joan Halperin

"King Gone" by Michael Ramirez on Twitter.

Watch him step down, taking with him

the taste of a stolen kiss, an unwelcome hug, resting

in his back pocket with the obligatory silk handkerchief

and a long list of "the way things used to be."

Oh for the days when a man could slide

his hand over a woman's backside,

brush against a breast, whisper profanities

into a perfumed ear. When did these flowers

become so uppity? And how did he fall,

splat on the hard earth while holding tight

to the way life used to be? 

Joan Halperin has been published in Confrontation, New York Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, and others. Until retirement, she was a Poet in the Schools in Westchester County and also a Poet-in- Public Service. She now lives in Orchard Cove, a continuing care community in Canton Ma. where she continues to teach, write, and keep in touch with grandchildren. Her oldest grandchild Hanna Halperin has just had Something Wild, her first novel, published to rave reviews.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER WOMAN

by Hafsa Mumtaz

Police in Pakistan have opened cases against hundreds of unidentified men after a young woman was sexually assaulted and groped by a crowd of more than 400 men in a park in Lahore as she made a TikTok video. The shocking assault was captured on several videos, which went viral and showed a mob descend on the woman as she was in Lahore’s Greater Iqbal park making a TikTok video with friends. In broad daylight, the men picked up the young woman and tossed her between them, tearing her clothes and assaulting and groping her. The woman registered a case against 300 to 400 unidentified persons with Lahore police, according to the case report seen by the Guardian. “The crowd pulled me from all sides to such an extent that my clothes were torn. I was hurled in the air. They assaulted me brutally,” the woman said in a statement to the police. She said the crowd also stole her money, earrings and a phone. —The Guardian, August 19, 2021

Another day, another woman.   

But the headlines remain the same –

But this time, it wasn’t just a man, just a gang,

But a mob of 400 men...

But this time, it wasn’t just private milieu,

But in the open outside Minar-e-Pakistan...

But this time, it wasn’t just a secret hour,

But the time of Azaan (the prayer call) ...

Another day, another woman,

Just like many previous targets,  

She was dressed decently – so stop this ‘the victim was a victim because

they were wearing such clothes’ nonsense right here.

But why would the maulvis say anything?

For all they need is a woman to blame for her brazenness

For all they need is to hold the axe of ‘Deen’ (religion) and behead the victims

For all they need is a woman to criticise and condemn

For all they need is Islam to exploit.

Another day, another woman. 

Oh, what a free land! 400 predators, 1victim, and no one to bat an eyelid!

Oh, what an Independence Day for the predators whose minds are still enslaved by their lust!

Oh, so this is the country founded in the name of Islam...

I read a random WhatsApp status, saying,

We merely celebrate the Islam (alluding to Ashura),

We don’t adopt Islam.

Similarly, we merely celebrate Independence Day

We still haven’t absorbed the essence of it.

Hafsa Mumtaz is a 22-year-old Pakistan-based emerging poet, a recent graduate of English Language and Literature, and a Muslim. Her poetry was first published in Visual Verse Anthology, and then in Rising Phoenix Review. 

A WREATH OF HAIKU

by Karan Kapoor

Children’s shoes and toys were placed in front of the former 7 after the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3, were found at the site this past week. Photo credit: Dennis Owen/Reuters via The New York Times, June 7, 2021.

a radar 

penetrates the ground:

215 little corpses

not corpses

remains—

skeletons and screams

unmarked—

all burial sites

are not graves

laughter of children 

at a school,

a concentration camp

an escape plan:

jump

from the highest balcony

riddle: a four-letter word

with six more letters:

indigenous

let's play a game

stick out your tongue—

pins and needles

bless the Lord

you who serve Him,

undoing His will

we are children of god

let us show you the light

six feet underground

Karan Kapoor is the author of a novelette Maya and the co-author of a novel The Dreaming Reality, both independently published. Long-listed for Toto Funds the Arts awards, his poems have appeared in The Indian Quarterly, G5A Imprint, Stride, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. He's currently working on his debut poetry collection. When not reading or writing, he is obsessing over classical music. Currently in his final semester of MA in Literary Art Creative Writing, he wants to continue to live a life devoted to music and literature.

RELATIVE RIGHTS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Graphic by Brian Stauffer to accompany The Washington Post editorial “Mohammed bin Salman is guilty of murder. Biden should not give him a pass.”

Jamal Khashoggi has been killed

for a third time. The first killing

happened just before a bonesaw

shaved his bones in the Saudi

consulate in Istanbul after

he had been kicked, stabbed,

dismembered. The second killing

took place during the show trial

in a Saudi high court, which led

to three acquittals, three prison

terms, five men condemned

to death. Described as foot

soldiers in the murder, not

the masterminds who got off

free, the five were pardoned

later at the behest of Khashoggi's

children. Now, Khashoggi,

father, journalist, betrothed—

remember he visited

the consulate to sign papers

regarding his new love,

impending marriage--

is killed again, this time

by friendly fire. The US

government has decided

that the special relationship,

the oil, the wars in the region,

preclude any punishment

for the crime. The Crown

Prince who ordered

the killing of the scribe

will remain free to engage

the US and any other

government he wishes. Where

do the scales break down?

Why does Jamal Khashoggi's

memory get sawed again,

and how can we live with

our failure to condemn abuse

everywhere, every time?

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.