YOUNG GIRL WITH CANDY

by Michael Brockley

“Girl with a candy,” photo by Oleksii Kyrychenko of his daughter to draw attention to the war in Ukraine. (Photo: Facebook/Oleksii Kyrychenko via Zyri, March 12, 2022)

You sit on the ledge of the wreckage that was once a window. A pose much like Audrey Hepburn’s while she sings “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or Marilyn Monroe’s reading a book in a black-and-white glossy. Your back braced against the window frame so you can look over your right shoulder. A young sentry, perhaps, or an auburn-haired sniper. In your arms you cradle a pump-action rifle. And nurse a lollipop, like any nine-year old deciding between a stuffed dog and a doll in a market. Between bread for yourself or your sister. The glass has been bombed from the window that landmarks your vigil, but a mask that is fixed in an expression that is neither frown nor smile leers from the graffiti on the scarred wall behind you. The future holds your gaze along the horizon where courage is measured. Where invaders reduce schools and maternity hospitals to rubble. You are not an actress flirting with glamour in your fur-lined boots, new winter coat, and jeans. But the capri blue and traffic yellow of your nation flow through your ponytail like an anthem being sung around the world.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana where he is looking for a dog to adopt. His poems have appeared in The Parliament Literary Journal, Young Ravens Literary Review, and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan. Poems are forthcoming in RockPaperPoem, Lion and Lilac, and Of Rust and Glass. 

ALL THOSE PATRIOTIC SONGS

by Alan Walowitz

. . . In a democracy, you can only ignore the will of the people for so long and get away with it.                                                

                                                                                                         --John Boehner

Grammar School we sung them 

till the vocal cords popped from our throats,

such scrawny things we were, 

Adam’s apples bobbing, toes tapping,

the girls lined up the other side of the room

their skirts gently swaying in the breeze the radiators made—

all to please those witches, either evil or kind,

who had us in their clutches all day, a year at a time,

these ladies out of Normal School—Miss Johnson and Cochran,

Mrs. Murtaugh and Golsner—with their black high-top lace-up shoes

and penciled brows and rouged cheeks

that always made them look like they’d come through a storm—

and in the wake of the war, maybe they had.

My Country is of Thee—what the hell did that mean?—

O, say does the Star Spangled Ba-a-nner yet wave?

Just look in the corner of the room

where the flag’s hanging limp as the janitor’s mop.

God Bless America, never mentioning the guy who wrote it

was born on the other side.

And shouting the refrain, This Is My Country,

giving it all we had, just like the Mitch Miller record

we’d learned it from. 

They even said we might get to build it.

Though one look now, soft and creaky most mornings,

lovers of the easy life—you’ll know we didn’t help much. 

But our grandparents and parents did—

after hunkered down in steerage, a long, bitter crossing.

Still, that’s not walking from Guatemala

one kid in hand and another tugging at her breast,

and climbing in the back of a rickety old school bus 

to cross pitted roads and streams

and sleeping in rotted VW vans 

along with the hosos and the other takers

who might as soon rape you as get you there.

That’s courage worthy of sparklers and Roman candles

and bottle-rockets whistling, and bombs bursting in air.  

All those patriotic songs--

This is my country! we sung, sometimes even shouted.

Loud and proud, our teachers told us.

Build that wall, my ass!

We say, what Woody Guthrie said,

This land is your land, this land is my land—

you can only hold us off so long. 

Alan Walowitz has been published various places on the web and off.  His work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2018 and he is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love is available from Osedax Press, and his full-length book The Story of the Milkman and other poems is published by Truth Serum Press. 

DILEMMA

by Joe Amaral

The large, bold woodcut image of a supplicant male slave in chains appears on the 1837 broadside publication of John Greenleaf Whittier's antislavery poem, "Our Countrymen in Chains." The design was originally adopted as the seal of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England in the 1780s, and appeared on several medallions for the society made by Josiah Wedgwood as early as 1787. —Library of Congress

Six minutes until game time
and the anthem is about to begin.

I’m afraid to kneel for inequality
in front of 11,000 drunk people

holding their hands half-heartedly
over hearts awaiting the start of

a collegiate soccer game where voice
rather than tangible action counts.

I want to avoid the hostile sneers of fans
awake in fake patriotism, ignorant to

police brutality. My kids follow the lead
of the crowd and stand. I ditch my family,

climbing concrete steps into the breeze-
way, my back to the flag, ducking into

a bathroom. The blood and soil floor is
piss-stained. I sort of kneel, listening as

the reverberation of a bad singer gravels
something antiquated and fragilely austere.

I feel for those going through the motions
dead-eyed. They know dutiful conformity

is an empty gesture unspoken. But a fist
in the air, a knee on the ground, now that

is no small token.

Joe Amaral works 48-hour shifts as a paramedic on the central coast of California. He has two young daughters, Zelia and Rui, and his wife Marina is a surgical nurse. They love spelunking outdoors, camping, traveling and hosting foreign exchange students. His writing has appeared worldwide in awesome places like 3Elements Review, Arcadia Magazine, Crow Hollow 19, The Good Men Project, The Rise Up Review and Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora. Joe won the 2014 Ingrid Reti Literary Award. 

BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR

by Jean L. Kreiling






You gasp and smile at bright chrysanthemums
that bloom for just a moment in the sky,
and hardly give a thought to what becomes
of them, the black ash falling as they die.
But sometimes, buffeted by mighty booms
that follow flares of patriotic pride,
you think of patriots who met their dooms
amid such noise—red-white-and-blue’s dark side.
Why do we want to watch bombs burst in air?
Did Mr. Key imagine that we would?
That we’d perpetuate the din and glare
of combat?  Maybe we’ve misunderstood.
His anthem hailed a hard-won victory;
we’ve prettified the fires of tragedy.


Jean L. Kreiling is the author of the recently published collection, The Truth in Dissonance (Kelsay Books, 2014). Her work has appeared widely in print and online journals, including American Arts Quarterly, Angle, The Evansville Review, Measure, and Mezzo Cammin, and in several anthologies.  Kreiling is a past winner of the String Poet Prize and the Able Muse Write Prize, and she has been a finalist for the Frost Farm Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award.