FIRST BOMBLESS DAY

a tanka sequence

by Chen-ou Liu

hometown

once a place of human warmth

and safety

now a pile of stones and dust

where memories crumble

family

once a source of love and help

now whispered names

on trembling lips

with a question, "still alive?"

ruins and ruins ...

under Gaza's smeared sun

childhood memories

scatter like splintered shards

that can’t be fit together

ceasefire deal

once a sunbird singing nonstop

now a mute swan

battling the chilly winds

of hunger and despair

Author’s note: The Palestine sunbird pictured above (Cinnyris osea) is a small passerine bird of the sunbird family, Nectariniidae, and in 2015, the Palestinian Authority adopted the species as a national bird. Native to Eurasia but migrating south for the winter, the mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a rare winter visitor to Palestine.

Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards.

SEARCHING

by Karen Warinsky

I type “Is Bisan” in the search bar

and the next two words appear automatically

with their furtive question mark, “still alive?”

 

Bisan, a Palestinian journalist popped into my Facebook feed

one morning during this latest Mideast roil,

her fresh, round face full of promise 

her troubled brown eyes alert as she posted

cell phone videos of the wreckage of Palestine, the slaughter of the people.

The videos are raw, wound the eyes, sear the soul.

She posts each time she must flee, relocate,

so many displacements now she’s lost count.

One day she shows us her favorite flower

the passionate poppy, Hannoun, red, alive

pushing forth in the spring air,

another day she videos a small boy selling homemade potato chips.

“Delicious, tasty!” she says, almost smiling,

boys flying kites on the beach behind her.  

These moments are her sustenance 

as she shares pictures of her home in the Gaza ruins,

a video of the day a bomb at Al-Shifa hospital just missed her

by two minutes,

her refugee life in Rafah,

stories of others spit out by this war

hundreds of thousands with no safe place to go,

their way home stalled, like the peace talks.

 

Bisan is 27.

She is forthright, emotional, outraged, 

bewildered.

She wonders, "Where is help?  Why is this allowed to go on?"  

Seven months now.

 

She looks into the phone’s lens. Begs, “Don’t get used to

what is happening in Gaza!”

She is searching for rationality, for assistance.

I will keep searching for her, 

pray she can send more videos of children flying their kites, 

sending up wishes,

pray that those wishes get answered.

Karen Warinsky is the author of three collections: Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press); a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest; a Best of the Net nominee; and runs Poets at Large.

DELIVERED

by Julian Matthews

“Dinner With Friends” Painting by Victoria Coleman

A poem on our first meeting after being in a writing workshop on Zoom for six weeks, and in various lockdowns for a year and ten months.

And so we sit at the table partaking of a meal,

the home-made, home-cooked, home-delivered

a gathering of friends, new and old,

unmuted, unzoomed, live, in-person, fully embodied,

greeting each other like refugees

meeting on the dock, our boats having survived

the treacherous crossing of middle class suburbia

and stepping back onto the shores of human connection again, 

wetting our cold feet and lapping up warm chatter about pets, 

pasta, pastries, prices, politics and the pandemic, always the 

     pandemic,

and, thankfully, of our common love of books, and writing and 

     poetry

and missing sitting in darkened theatres with strangers, to watch 

     a movie,

or a play or just chilling with a warm-up, pre-concert cocktail, 

     perhaps a long island tea, 

or two, before listening to an orchestra, fingers fondling keys, 

     bows caressing strings,

lips pressed against mouthpieces, hugging tubas, the tsk-chizz 

     of sticks on cymbals, 

being enveloped by the sensurround sounds of music played by 

     real, in-the-flesh humans...

And in the end there is laughter, ribbing and the teasing out

of each other's backgrounds, our reasons for being, why the 

     need to put words

on rectangular screens, this unboxing of the isolation inside us, 

     this shedding of thickened skins,

double-vaxxed, immunized, and unmasked, fully ensconced in 

     that most singular of human acts,

the Art of Conversation, manifesting our ancestral DNA of 

     gathering around the embers of dying

fires under stars, trading stories, sharing opinions and yes, even 

     gossiping,

just to know we are alive, 

we are still alive.

Julian Matthews is a former journalist finding new ways to express himself in the pandemic through poetry, short stories and essays. He is published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nine Cloud Journal, Poor Yorick Journal, Borderless Journal, Second Chance Lit, Poetry and Covid, the anthology Unmasked: Reflections on Virus-time (curated by Shamini Flint), cc&d magazine, a Scars Publication, and forthcoming in the American Journal of Poetry. He is based in Malaysia.

SURVIVOR

by Pepper Trail

Nearly 30 years after its last documented sighting, a silver-backed chevrotain was spotted by a camera set up in the forest of southern Vietnam. (Southern Institute of Ecology/Global Wildlife Conservation/Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research/NCNP) —NPR, November 11, 2019

Delicately, it steps into the frame,
an animal living its life, seen only
by the camera, no larger (we are told)
than a rabbit, called (we are told)
the Vietnamese mouse-deer, and
also the silver-backed chevrotain,
the world’s smallest hoofed mammal,
suddenly returned from the dead.

In the image, it makes its ordinary way,
slender limbs rising from the dry leaves,
clean white belly and throat, flanks buff
and silver, alert pink ears, large dark eyes
seeming to look inward, slight smile
on the narrow muzzle, as if remembering
an amusing incident from the night before,
unaware that it is, to us, a miracle.

Discovered (shot) by scientists in 1907,
then no trace for 83 years, then one more
seen (shot) by scientists in 1990, then not
again, and so declared a species “lost,”
perhaps (probably) extinct, another fatality
of human appetite, but now, in 2019, seen
(seen) by hidden cameras, walking quietly,
thinking private thoughts, this survivor.

Yesterday it was an entry in a ledger,
nothing but a name in spidery black script,
Tragulus versicolor, written off,
the dusty book closed, not to be re-opened.
Today I gaze and gaze at its photograph,
seem to hear its quickly-beating heart,
smell its warm scent, and I see the world
it makes (still is making) with its life, alive.


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

TRICK OR TREAT

by Gil Hoy

Corporations are no longer
inanimate sterile things.

They’re now breathing fleshy
with blood money flowing
through wheels levers pistons
rhythmically turning
deep sea blue to ghoul red

anointing black robed
Victor Frankensteins
to keep Fiends well nourished
and magically cause Creatures
to rise from the dead
with their wild incantations.

While Monsters use up
all free speech that is uttered
mere mortals can't buy a word
just a consonant here and again
found in a graveyard.

Some Adams of Victor’s Labors
think (?) contraception
against religion (!), then
Wretches trump people (!?)
as The Modern Prometheus

dissects ghostly law
like a science school project
held together by webs
taken out by morticians
with the afternoon’s trash.

With all mad scientists
the Vile Insects may elect
the black sky’s the limitless.
In the meantime

have mercy
on the poor corporation
yellow lips watery eyes
shriveled face
resist the temptation
to be a bigot.

Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. Since then, Gil’s poems have been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, the Clark Street Review, Eye On Life Magazine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.