AMISH GOLDEN AGE

by James Schwartz 

America's famously private Amish people are unreachable by phone or email and refuse to have TVs in their homes. But that didn't stop members of the conservative Christian group turning out on polling day in a trend that appears to have helped Donald Trump win Pennsylvania. —MailOnline, November 6, 2024

I'm walking down Piquette,  

& John R.

Past abandoned Harris-Walz signs,

& ochre brickwork,

On a crisp afternoon, 

After the election 

In Motor City,

Coffee & Sugar Sweet Donut ™ 

In hand,

Heading to work, 

Past the 

Construction workers,

Who shout,

Over their machinery din,

"What the election?!...

I'll tell you what happened with the election...

The Mexicans & those racist ass 

Amish people!"

Their laughter,

Carried by the wind,

In our coming Amish Golden Age,

Or 

Old Order Apocalypse. 

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (2011), Punatic (2019), Motor City Mix (2022) and most recently Some Are and Most Aren't and It's Always Been Like That: Selected Poems 2004-2024 from Alien Buddha Press. @queeraspoetry 

BLIZZARD OF OZ ‘23

by Scott C. Kaestner

Frostbitten existential mood swings

my fingers can’t feel my toes

numb 

        frozen

try to twist, try to wiggle free

nothing. My mind is a mine field

explosive blue diamond 

in snow drift icicle sky

and damn it gets so cold

when an angry sun scorches

everything in sight. The world is

upside down, reason I know

do you hear the shit coming out

of peoples mouths? The aliens

no doubt are bored with us and

have moved onto planets with

                intelligent

                                 life

something religion and politics

and 24 hour news cycles

eliminated from Earth

quite some

         time 

                ago

so here I am, here we are

freezer burnt waiting for the end

or a new beginning or at least

some warm socks to apocalypse in.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and an invisible man in plain sight. Google “Scott Kaestner Poetry” to peruse his musings and maybe even buy a book.

I DREAMED LAST NIGHT

by Gordon Gilbert

I dreamed last night of seasons of unrest that lie ahead:

Saddled on nightmare steeds with fiery nostrils,

eyes of cold blue light and blood pouring down their heaving flanks,

apocalyptic horsemen rode over our lands,

setting farms and fields ablaze and poisoning the wells;

pestilence, drought and famine followed in their wake.

Monstrous firestorms swept across tinder-dry forests,

consuming all, obliterating every living thing  in their path;

whirlwinds that followed gathered up the dust and ash

and blotted out the sun.

Insufferable desert heat by day, 

unbearable desert cold by night.

All of our tomorrows, 

only the broken promises

of those who too long led us in denial.

All of our future days, 

each and every one in turn,

fading away into a long parade 

of sad and sorry yesterdays.

This morning I awoke to the radio:

The meteorologist was saying 

it’s unseasonably warm for this time of year,

and the temperature is rising.

Long-time NYC west villager Gordon Gilbert has found solace and inspiration during the pandemic in walks along the Hudson River, photographing and writing about the wildlife, flora, and river traffic as the seasons change. It gives him hope in these terrible times, but he knows that is not enough. Change only comes when we act to make it so.

DISPLACEMENT

by Erik Schwab

Graphic source: The Daily Plant.

It’s not that they’re screaming. It isn’t pain exactly,

in the market garden, these kohlrabis and cabbages,

these garlic scapes: it’s that they’re in shock. Harvest

is our word, theirs must be apocalypse. But another

word is anthropomorphize and someone told me

once I shouldn’t do it and I believed them and found

the stump of my root dunked in a washbasin and divested

of holy dirt. Now near the end of time

I wish medications were poems, I wish I were floating

over lakewater, skipping silver marbles instead of

saying the new things I say every reluctant day: I’m

on the mend, thanks, thanks, I’m grateful for the

prayer, for the sea urchin, for the red beetle, for

the cabinet of curiosities you sent and for the gig driver

who lost three family members while my heart was 

locked behind a thick pandemic door.

The right kind of time traveler would go twenty years back

and plant that tree, but we service-patched cyborgs

haul our untested upgrades in one direction only, toward

the gracious refusal, toward the retirement of connections, until

the building falls in the middle of the night, the slumbering tenants

dreaming of skydiving and waking to astonishment.

Erik Schwab lives in Seattle, WA. Last year he started writing poems for the first time since college, with the invaluable help of a weekly workshop at Community Building Art Works.

ONLY ONE TICKET PER FAMILY PER DAY

 by Susannah W. Simpson

Photo: The Seemapuri crematorium in eastern New Delhi, on April 29, 2021. "As India's second wave of coronavirus sweeps through the country, bodies are piling up faster than workers can cremate them or build new pyres… Demand is so high that Seemapuri crematorium has expanded into its parking lot, where dozens of workers construct new cremation platforms from bricks and mortar. There is so little space and so many bodies that families have to get a ticket and wait in line for their turn." —CNN, May 1, 2021

Delhi... 2031... 

Blue-grey haze hangs low over

bundles of bodies and bundles of wood.

When the wood runs out, blankets

and chairs, shutters, both yellow

and green serve double-duty to carry

and to burn, ashes—snowdrifts

of mothers, daughters, uncles

float on the Ganges.  No one left to fill

Diwali lanterns with oil, no one left

to string up lights, to sweep or wash streets,

no one left to weave marigolds into their hair,

or wrap saffron saris round the young and old

no one left to feed the water buffalo,

or to tie ribbons to their tails.

Susannah W. Simpson is a hospice nurse. Her work has been published in The North American Review, Potomac, The Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Xavier Review. Her poem "Lily" has been anthologized in Full Moon and Foxglove (Three Drops Press, UK), and her book Geography of Love & Exile was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2016. She holds an MFA from Bennington, a Ph.D. from SUNY/Binghamton and is the Founder & Co-Director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches.

OLD GUY AWAITS VACCINE

by Earl J. Wilcox

 "Time waits for no man,” watercolor by SuayaArt.

So far I have outlived whooping cough, measles, mumps, shingles,

strokes, dementia, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, three years eleven

months of the T***P madness, perhaps one Kardashian, zombie

uprisings, my dear mate of six decades, three siblings, one child, eviction,

twenty-four Marvel Universe movies, hundreds of episodes of Friends

and Big Bang Theory, dear Alex Trebek, bankruptcy, cancer, plus

millions of maladies and diseases about which I am totally ignorant.

If I live another few days or weeks, perhaps the vaccine will find me

and my generation still optimistic we can add Covid-19 to the lists

of days and hours of this world we miss.

Earl Wilcox in his late 80s awaits the vaccine in South Carolina.

IJS*

by Judy Juanita

Imma be ok

Even wif lightening ‘n thunder 

setting de trees on fire

& dogs howling up a storm

but if I were a spooky sort 

(which I is deep down)

I’d say we is coming into 

de apock-a-lips

* = I’m just saying

Judy Juanita’s poetry has been published widely. Her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). She appears in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Season 5, Laney College where she teaches.

TRUMPET MINISTRATIONS*

by Jennifer Davis Michael




Perhaps the application
of an ear trumpet

to amplify the cries
of a ravaged nation.

Or the sounding of a blast
heralding the doom
of democracy,
the triumph of bombast.

The ancient shofar
has yielded to tweets—
“My button is bigger”—
braying for war.

Jericho town
had beautiful walls
until Joshua bugled
and they all fell down.

John of Patmos heard seven
trumpets, unrolling
the scrolls of apocalypse,
unveiling heaven.

Our manacled minds
check Facebook and hope
for Shelleyan prophecy:
can spring be far behind?


*After mishearing the phrase “Trump administration” on the radio.

Jennifer Davis Michael is professor and chair of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, specializing in British Romanticism. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Poetry Reviw, Cumberland River Review, Literary Mama, and Mezzo Cammin, among others. She has also published a book of criticism, Blake and the City (Bucknell, 2006).

THE VALUES

by Jon Taylor




Ecocide,
genocide, slavery
and war are the four horsemen
of American greatness.

America didn’t invent
these riders of the apocalypse
but has embraced them wholeheartedly
from her first day to her latest.

Ask the felled forests
or the disappeared tribes
or those paraded in the markets
or the lands invaded.

America rose
and became great
and exceptional and indispensable
and will founder on the same steeds.

Jon Taylor is the author of Berry Picker’s Blues, a volume of Michigan/Northwoods/Upper Peninsula poems. He can be reached at taylor.jon440(at)gmail.com.

SECURITY

by Joan Mazza

Drawing by Tom Gauld for The New Yorker, January 10, 2017

In scary times, I have my ways to cope.
I make art and distract myself by listening
to books or reading. I get some neglected
chore done, one unpleasant overdue task.

I purchase supplies to last more than a year.
Paper towels, toilet tissue, Kleenex by the case.
Soap and bleach, lotion, dental floss, toothpaste,
cotton swabs. Of course, I buy more six-packs

of canned green beans, corn, tuna by the dozen.
I maintain my stash of pasta. Who knows what
tweet might interrupt the flow of goods in shipping
containers crossing the oceans? Even

my cold tablets, nail polish, and art supplies
are made in China, all Smithfield pork processed
there. So I buy while I can, not quite the prepper,
not rich enough for a condo underground

in New Zealand or a pilot on call to take me there,
but I’m good at this, once an adept and eager
camper. Watch me rake my wood paths
and place Band-Aids on the coming avalanche.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Slipstream, and The Nation. 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.

APOCALYPTIC LULLABY

by Richard O'Connell

After the Portuguese of Domingos Carvalho Da Silva

Because the moon is bright and the night

Is simply announcing the dawn

And because the sea is hardly the sea

And the hose doesn't weep on the lawn

And because we've fouled the water and air

In this best of all possible hells

And because the light is simply a vibration

That excites our nervous cells

And because rock music hurts our ears

And the wind plays an aeolian harp

And because the earth breeds plenty of snakes

And goldfish are only carp

And because the plane is about to depart

And the raven repeats nevermore

And because we have to sit here and smile

Before the final big encore

And because yesterday does not exist

And the future will never come

And because we are doing a ballet

On the pin of the Hydrogen Bomb

Let's not rush to the wall and weep

And tear our hair and bewail our fate

We did as well as anyone could

Given our love and hate

And because we are pathetic clowns

Confronting the Apocalypse

Caught in the ruins of a collapsing world

Between earthquake and eclipse

Let's dance high on the hurricane deck

Before the ship slopes under our feet

Let's soak up the wealth of the sun

Before it loses its light and heat

Let's laugh at the whole wide universe

In our eyes reflected

When we close our lids it will be

As if it never existed

Let our laughter crackle across the cosmos

Where galaxies scatter and dim

Since win or lose we only leave

A trace of ash on the wind

Richard O’Connell lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Texas Review, Acumen, The Paris Review, Trinacria, The Formalist, Light, etc. His most recent collections are Dawn Crossing and Waiting for the Terrorists.

AT THE LOCAL LOCKSMITH SHACK,I ORDER AN EXTRA HOUSE KEY

by Alejandro Escudé

The locksmith grinds it, sparks flying, but he stops to point
to the TV screen, the news on, cop killings in New York,

and sternly the locksmith warns the killing signals the end of days.
I tell him cops have been shot before. He looks at me, his eyes 

peering over his glasses, “Do you read the Bible?” I answer, no.
He says, “You should, for you, for your family.” 

When he hands me the new key, I look down
at the the locksmith’s fingers, stained black, phosphorescent. 

In the reenactment on the news the shooter is fire engine red
and the cops are blue. One falls, then the other falls too. 

They do not animate the red man shooting himself.
I wonder the life that brought the locksmith to the Apocalypse. 

A myriad keys hanging above his head, lying around; silver
and gold keys, keys to free anything from its locked place.

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. 

VIKING APOCALYPSE

by Jennifer Lemming

The Gjallerhorn. Image source: Swide

I waited for the Viking apocalypse,
nursing a cup of hot chocolate,
like it was mead, thick with brewing,
reading Beowulf, looking at the moon set
in the western sky, wondering if the young boy
with the hoodie pulled up and dark circles under
his eyes, walking past my window

on this milder day, after a winter that feels
like it was eleven years long, is the wolf son
of Loki, escaped and battling for the last hundred
days. I’m thinking I could go outside and pull
bark from the tree, scratch on it some

Viking graffiti that says, “kiss me,” the scent of
alpine clover in the air,
and return into my lair, take up my mead/hot chocolate
burrow under the blankets again,
waiting for the world to fall into the sea,
waiting to dream of Valhalla, laid in state
on my bed, a proper Viking funeral.


Jennifer Lemming’s works have appeared in Tipton Poetry Review, Earth’s Daughters, Ichabod’s Sketchbook, Out Rider Press Anthologies, Foothills Press Anthology, Rufous Press, The Idiom Magazine, and The Poetry Garden. Jennifer was a Finalist in February 2011 for the “Poems for Mr. Lincoln” contest sponsored by Brick Street Poetry. In the San Francisco based poetry contest, The Dancing Poetry Festival, she won first place for her poetry in 2004 and third place in 2009. In 2012 her latest chapbook The Clever Level was published by Celestial Panther Press.

THE APOCALYPSE GOES UNNOTICED IN NEWTOWN

by Catherine McGuire

No one needs predictions, there.

And on Turkish borders, huddled tents

have no preps for crisis. Trenton slums,

the barrios of Rio, the drained and droughty deltas

of Tigris, or Sudan – Apocalypse can knock

and enter; no one will care.

Which is to say, the world is always ending;

our treasures crumble, dust to dust.

The myth-inflated bogeys threaten

while behind our backs, our futures rust.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep interest in philosophy, the “Why we are here?” question that lurks under so much of our lives. She will have a chapbook released by Uttered Chaos in September. It is tentatively titled, Reflections, Echoes and Palimpsests. She is webmaster for the Oregon Poetry Society and claims her entire garden as her 'poetry office'.

A CHRISTMAS LYRIC FOR THE NVN SURVIVORS

by Earl J. Wilcox

If (as the old adage goes)

only two things are certain,

death and taxes—

and the Apocalypse did not

happen, then what

are we left with. Right!

Taxes and Christmas fruitcake.

Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.

A CALENDAR BROKE

by Martha Landman

            for John

            and heaven is imagined as whole and unceasing

                        -- Christina Murphy

Dawn enlightens a Puter jungle

a classic world

ends

in different time zones

God grins

yesterday

my Mayan calendar broke —

guess it’s no use

claiming on the warranty.

The moon, the earth

the stars dance a wild galaxy

a small eternity

this earth

this planet

a last cigarette

suffocates a man’s son

Gerald Benedict broods in

silence

tomorrow has come.

Martha Landman is a South African-born Australian poet residing in tropical Queensland.  She has published on- and off-line and recently co-authored a book of poems and short stories with Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke, titled The Paradoxophies, which is available on www.lulu.com.