SHAPED LIKE A FISH

by Bonnie Naradzay

Earlier this year, scientists discovered that there is about as much microplastics in the brain as a whole plastic spoon. The paper, published in Nature Medicine in February, revealed that the amount of microplastics—tiny plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters—in the human brain appears to be increasing: Concentrations rose by about 50% between 2016 and 2024. —Fortune, May 20, 2025

Reading about how NASA astronauts

grew edible zinnias while orbiting 

above us in space, I think of ways

we've chosen to live on this earth. 

 

Red lilies and oleander were the first 

flowering plants to thrive in Hiroshima’s 

charred remains.  In the rubble, gamma 

rays made the blooms even brighter.

 

Fields of sunflowers, grown in Chernobyl, 

change the radioactive dirt effectively, 

scientists say. Meanwhile, Agent Orange 

is everywhere in the soil in Viet Nam.

 

Flowers that have grown mutations, 

though near Fukushima, may be 

a mistake. Could that happen anyway?

On islands in the Tasman Sea, birds 

 

mistake ocean plastics for food to feed

their chicks, and dead birds were found

having ingested single-use soy sauce 

plastic bottles, shaped like a fish.  

 

When you mistake the song of a bird
for the death rattle of another species, 

It’s already over.  The world is filled

with microplastics, like our brains.

Source: Heliograf

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations. 

CRYSTAL BALL

by Laura Rodley

In the knuckle of the nightmare what does he see?

He swivels the joint around, sees faces

of children, no longer innocent, their faces blank,

then blown up. It is not that he had to bury any;

that was not his job. Instead, he was flown

above the rice paddies where the women worked,

their wide hats resembling shiitake mushrooms

when seen from the sky, their tiny hoes

hoeing the fields, gathering the grain,

letting the water out, sprayed with napalm

and agent orange; they all ate it, its perfume

a pollen of poison. He was up in a helicopter,

delivering paychecks, manna from

the government. What is easy to ignore

when survival demands it comes back to stare

you in the face. The children’s faces below,

his fellow soldiers, a flip of propeller blade

and they are gone, but not now, not fifty-five

years later, a whole other lifetime. He still carries

butterscotch lifesavers in his pockets

that he handed out to the children that came begging;

they saw him as Santa Claus, one of his many

camouflaged elves. He can’t turn time back

but his nightmares do it for him, every night

he reenters the war zone he left behind,

taught as a man from birth not to have feelings,

then returning from duty, not to have feelings,

with no one buying him a drink at the bar

or asking him to speak at the high school,

as the World War II vets were so honored. It’s a long

way back, to the fields of yellow pollen that was not

the dust of Ailanthus trees, a long way back to the drugs

that were offered to make you forget, to the beers, to women offered,

to the honor you held tight to your chest.

He knew all the lyrics to The Doors, the Beatles,

Dion and the Belmonts; where does that

get him now? He’s held tight in the fist

of his commanding officer suck it up, be a man.

He’s held tight in the fist of his own heart, squeezing the life out

of him and into him, regulating his every action,

his every breath. But the rhythm of the heart

is not the territory of nightmares, the nightmares

leave notches, catch his breath; he wanted a gentle life,

honor held tight in the fist that is his heart,

caught off balance, flailing, ceaselessly trying

to get into the groove, pay attention.

His life depends on it.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

YOU DON'T

by Laura Rodley

The roll call of deceased unit members, which included 10 men killed in action, was an emotional time for Vietnam veterans who reunited in Berea, Ohio on August 9, 2019. "Even though we have had some sleepless nights, some dreams we want to forget, the remembrance of PTSD, and Agent Orange that just won't let go, we continue to be grateful and to stand for our flag," said the Chaplain. Photo credit: Beth Mlady/Special to cleveland.com, August 17, 2019

You don’t know him, he doesn’t
ask to be known, he won
a bronze star for valor
in Vietnam, he shops
on senior discount Tuesdays
at Big Y, at least he used to.
He doesn’t go out anymore,
even outside. You wouldn’t
recognize him, he’s just an
average Joe in a linen shirt,
rhythm of helicopters whirring
in his head. The Fourth of July,
Friday night fireworks in Ocean Park?
He’s seen enough fireworks, mortar
shell explosions, lights exploding,
himself exploding, he doesn’t want
any reminders. But ask for recognition,
no, valor of Vietnam vets unspoken,
stationed in Da Nang, ground zero for Agent Orange,
his early heart attack just a fluke
the doctor said, hearing loss due to age.
He slept next to a mortar shell field.
They blew up all the time.
He’s not asking anything
from his country that he served,
just to be left alone.

He only has to be as tall
as the ceiling of his livingroom,
where he chomps Fritos, swallows Cokes,
he doesn’t have to see behind him,
beside him, below him as the chopper
brings him base to base to allocate
and release funds, he doesn’t
have to see through forests, they
were denuded by Agent Orange,
someone could drop down on him
from above, but not while
he’s in front of the T.V. The front
door is locked, a cheap remedy
against machine gun fire.
He only has to manage the space
of the couch, the clicker, even
the screened-in porch reveals
too much green, someone could
be hiding in those maples, oaks,
kudzu, and that’s not paranoia,
it was real for him for two tours,
someone hiding to do him harm,
annihilate him and nothing but
his dog tags to know his name.
He would not call this being afraid,
nor is he: he is aware, hyper-aware
of leave rustle, door closing, pop-top
of the can breaking open, the fizzle
of foam. Everything he does saves
his life and those of the men he
served with- not one of them taught
to act alone but as a unit, always
aware of his buddy, aware of combat
boots squishing in the mud of rice paddies
beside him. Hyper-aware of
everything outside of him to save
them all, but nothing but his finessed reaction
for shooting or readiness to bail out of the chopper
of his own internal life. He
lived outside himself, his body, and
having survived when so many
he knew did not, he brought
it all home with him, where
it breathes in the livingroom
with him, he can’t close his eyes,
it’s inside him now, it won’t get out,
won’t let him go.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Publisher Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. She was accepted at Martha’s Vineyard’s NOEPC and has been a participant in the 30 poems in November fundraiser for the Literacy Project of the Center for New Americans. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

UNCLE SHAM

by The Bangkok Bards 
Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

   Decades of incessant bullyrag meddling
    Dysfunctional US versus THEM universals
    Imposing patriotic homeland socialized insecurity
    Anti-communism anti-terrorism anti-violence anti-clockwise rotation
    
    Having rained napalm white phosphorous
    Agent Orange misty bunker busters
    Misguided drone missiles peed upon
    Raging bonfires burning themselves out
    
    Contrived false truths catastrophic consequences
    Innocent Vietnamese Cambodians Iraqis Afghanis
    Pakistanis Yemenis Serbs Somalis Libyans
    Prejudged guilty debunking good intentions
    
    Bloated Cold War machine should’ve
    Been dismantled demobilized long ago
    Collateral damage exceeding exaggerated threats
    Spymeister propaganda bamboozling public awareness
    
    Taxpayer loot morally bankrupt squandered
    Faceless faded greenback Monopoly revenue
    Funding well-greased assembly line productivity
    Chancy condemned Boardwalk private property
    
    Thousands of minors major challenge
    Overburdened underage deprived of childhood
    Dispossessed ghosts haunting boogeyman nightmares
    Brainless etchings permanent indelible tattoos

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

GREETINGS FROM FORT McCLELLAN, 1944-1995

by Laura Shovan

Image source: Transition Force, US Army Garrison, Fort McClellan, Alabama

This is a really beautiful camp.
I found George in excellent health.

Love,_____

                                    Please help.

I was stationed at Fort McClellan.

I have developed a symptom of passing out.

Doctors called it "Syncope".

None of them could figure out

what caused it. 

Hi my name is: _____

I went through Basic training

in Echo 1 company. We had to go through

that building they called the Gas Chamber.

Does anybody know what type of gas

or chemical was in there?

I want to hear from you.

We were exposed to toxic substances,

big time. The McClellan Cocktail:

depleted Uranium, Sarin gas, mustard gas,

and let's not forget that old standby,

Agent Orange.

                                    I drove track vehicles

through dust and mud, unknowing the danger.

I taught troops to make the smoke

that covered the base, was told Fog Oil SGF2

was harmless. We breathed it in for hours.

I went thru the live nerve agent chamber.

They drew blood to check us but never

told us why.

                                    I was face down

in toxic-smelling stuff on the firing range.

They sprayed stuff to keep the bugs away.

They sprayed us in the "gas chamber,"

said I had "sensitive skin" when I broke out

in weeping blisters and dizzy spells.

We were "just women." It's a damn shame

they couldn't tell us what we were

crawling around in.

                                    Tell you more

when I get home.

Author’s note: This is a found poem. The italics in this poem are taken from a used postcard, cancelled in 1944. All of the stanzas not italicized are taken directly from blogs and internet postings by veterans who trained at Fort McClellan. I deleted a word here and there, but have not changed the vets’ language.

Editor of Little Patuxent Review, Laura Shovan was a finalist for the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the Harriss Poetry Prize. She edited Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems and co-edited Voices Fly: An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program, for which she teaches. In January and February, 2013, Laura is blogging 44 poems inspired by antique postcards at www.authoramok.com..