ALMA MATER

by Catherine Gonick

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest at UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

A goddess of silence carries

my severed right arm

 

my Zionist  

arm they call 

 

genocidal among

many other names.

Silently moving

out of sight

through camps

where the righteous

sing from tents 

it waves goodbye.

   

I hear

the blood of words dry

feel the pain

of my phantom limb. 

Catherine Gonick's alma mater is U.C. Berkeley. She has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate. 

SALMAN: ELECTION

by Indran Amirthanayagam

“[Salman Rushdie’s wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye... He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack….The world is going through a very troubled period. I think nationalism is on the rise, a sort of fundamentalist right is on the rise… From Italy to… throughout Europe, Latin America and the US, where… half the country seems to think that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump. And they admire this man who is not only completely incompetent and a liar and a crook, but just a farce. It’s ridiculous.” —Andrew Wylie (Rushdie’s agent) in an interview with El País, October 22, 2022

 

Salman has lost

an eye, an arm

paralyzed, but

 

nobody has

stolen his mind;

he thinks freely,

 

sees, and turns

to see the rest of

what a man can,

 

gazing on the

horizon into

future time

 

on the cusp of

another election

where intolerance

 

rages at the gates

and in Congress,

and he directs

 

his other hand

to write.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

WHAT FEMINISM MEANS

by Devon Balwit

Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti courts controversy after ‘feminist tattoo’ is spotted on her arm.
—The Independent, June 1, 2016

for Taraneh Alidoosti

on your arm, a fist
in the news, a buzz
in the responses, venom

on your arm, a symbol
in your heart, yearning
in the threatened, rage

on your arm, a choice
in choice, desire
in the blinkered, fear

on your body, breasts
in all chests, hearts
in the old guard, scorn

in your body, a womb
from that womb, a child
to the State, your role

in your reach, a wish
in all wishes, potential
in us, support


Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher living in the Pacific Northwest.  Her work has appeared in TheNewVerse.News once before.  Her recent work has appeared or will soon in The Fog Machine, The Cape Rock, The Fem, Of(f) Course, drylandlit_press, and The Prick of the Spindle.