PIETA

by Kay White Drew

for Women’s History Month

To the women in the Vietnam memorial:
One of you holds the dying soldier, one hand
to his chest. One hand, not two. You seem to know
he is beyond CPR, past the point where
anything can save him. The new volunteer
who crouches behind you, stricken,
in her fresh fatigues and boonie hat, must
know this too, green as she is. Your hand rests
on his shrapnel-filled chest not to rescue,
but to comfort, to say, “You’re not alone.”
Your sister-in-arms who’s become
the best friend you’ll ever have,
lays her hand along your arm
for mutual comfort and support
as she calls for help out of habit
in her resonant voice. To a compatriot:
“Need a doctor over here!” To the universe:
“Enough! For the love of God, enough!”

In a time when petty tyrants rewrite
history to suit their bigotry, your granite
tableau stands solid in resistance.

Kay White Drew is a retired physician whose poems appear in various anthologies and internet outlets including The New Verse News. She’s also published short stories and several essays, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and a memoir, Stress Test. She lives in Rockville, MD with her husband. Spending time in nature helps her stay sane in these difficult days.

RUBIALES KISS

by Paul Hostovsky

They call it football because
you can only use your feet.

Though sometimes you can also use 
your head, your chest, your legs.

But you can’t use your hands.
And you can’t use your arms. 

Those are the rules.

They call it a kiss on the mouth because
it’s a kiss on the mouth.

You can only kiss the mouth of someone 
with whom you are intimate. 

A lover. A spouse. 
Sometimes also family.

Use your head. 

That’s the rule. 
In all countries and in all languages. 

True, it is an unwritten rule,
but that’s no excuse for breaking it.

And now that you’ve broken it, Luis,
now that you’re flaunting it 

and famously showing your contempt for it, 

you can be sure the rule 
will get written down after this.

And though you probably won’t end up
in jail, you just may end up 

giving your name to this kind of unwanted kiss. 
Even without your consent. 

Because that’s the rule with eponyms.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

FINDING THE WORDS

by Darrell Petska

On the lookout for Chinese balloons for as long as it takes to be photographed.

Where within our nature that calls forth deities

exemplifying boundless love and mercy

Where on intellect’s rich plain that grows
a bounty of life-affirming arts and sciences

Where within the confines of flesh that spark
unbounded imagination and indomitable will—

Where are the words to convince us
that wars are not intrinsic to human nature, 
the road to lasting peace never passing 
through war, arms build-ups, and nuclear threats? 

What words are we missing to let us see
beyond sides to the one and only human side?

The words exist, but unless we find them soon,
we could miss forever our chance to use them.

Darrell Petska is a Middleton, Wisconsin poet. His faith in humanity, though sorely tested right now, holds strong.

ON CASSIDY’S COATTAILS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

You have affirmed my faith Cassidy Hutchinson
in telling the truth, in speaking it openly before
the camera, in real time, before Congress, before
history and its judgments, before the criminal
watching from his Mar a Lago mansion, before
my children, before all people interested
in seeing the line that cannot and will not
be crossed no matter how many tantrums,
and lunges for the clavicle, and requests
to overturn an election fairly won come down
from the boss, the besotted and dangerous fool
who took control of the powers of state and sought
to make them serve himself first, his acolytes second,
and damn the people, his charge. Damn even
the deranged, armed with rifles, handguns,
spears and flagpoles and bear spray who marched
to stop certification of the US election. Amazing

that we saw this defacement, as Cassidy said,
of our Capitol. Amazing that we got through
that plunder, and are still living and loving
and moving about our United States. We were
driven to the brink. And the violation of 
women’s rights called Dobbs, and the approval
to carry guns in public, and I don’t know what
else, will come out of that radicalized building
on 1^st Street NE, but let me speak for the not
silent majority. No more. We will not allow
Januuary 6^th to happen again. Not in one day.

Not incrementally with elimination of
our human rights. There is a new day
in America charged, recharged, driven
by ethics, faith in the republic, in
undeniable rights. Morning again
I call it, for the mother and father
of all marches, in America. Not
on the Capitol, but in the conscience
of all our people. for truth, for justice,
for liberty. for the American way
not the highway, not the forked
road, not the Kool aid served
by the deluded prophet in a MAGA hat.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). 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.

ANNIE

by Judith Terzi

Arm me, I'm a teacher. Give me the best

that you've got. A pistol won't cut it. With 30 kids

in a class, a couple of shots too few. I'll need

an AR-15 to prevent the next slaughter. And give me

time above all. I'll need time off to learn what I'm not

trained to do. And give me a double to plan all my

classes, correct all the math, the history, the English,

the science, geography. The reading. And give me

another one to attend all the conferences, the meetings.

The kids will get why their teacher's not there.

They heard those big men on TV declare

that teachers are the absolute key to keeping them safe.

Oh give me the guts to learn how to kill.

Make me a sharpshooter, an Annie, if you will.

Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay), as well as of five chapbooks, Judith Terzi's poetry appears in a wide array of journals and anthologies. Her poem "Ode to Malala Yousafzai" was read on an episode of BBC/Radio 3's Words and Music. A new chapbook, Now, Somehow, will appear later this year. She taught French for many years in Pasadena, California, as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE U S OF A

by deb y felio

The former guy "is scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association's Annual Leadership Forum on Friday. But audience members at the group's annual meeting, being held this year in Houston, won't be able to carry guns during his address. The conference is going ahead in the shadow of Tuesday's mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school that killed at least 21 people—including 19 students." —NPR, May 25, 2022

Let us now raise our voices

for the freedom we have to make our choices

of who lives who dies 

and not on the battlefields where all are armed

but at schools and churches newly charmed

with flowers and toys, memorialized.

Let us now send out our thoughts and prayers

and pay no notice to the real players

who love to make a stand

not against the gun lobbyists

or restrictions for purchases

those real actions would be too grand.

So Texas before you can bury the children

the NRA you will be welcoming

and after all it isn’t guns that kill.

But if that eighteen year old had entered

that school today and stuck out his finger

would so many lives have been stilled?

deb y felio is a poet writing as witness to the mundane and miraculous and the under-represented sides of historic and current issues while working as a family and child therapist in Colorado. Published credits include anthologies Hay(na)ku 15; Gabriel’s Horn: Startled by Nature (2020); Refuse to Stay Silent (2020). Her cherita sequence was a finalist in MacQueens’s Quarterly March 2021 ekphrastic challenge.

PRAYERS OF WAR

by Peter Witt

On May 20, Dmytro Kozatskyi, a soldier of the #Azov Regiment posted his photos of the defenders of #Mariupol, calling on the world media and those who can help to distribute them. "Well, that's all. Thank you for the shelter; Azovstal is the place of my death and life. See you".

I.

I hear the drums of war banging

as recruits shoulder their weapons,

while merchants of arms pray

half-heartedly for peace knowing

money is to be made

off the mayhem and suffering.

II.

Somewhere safe and hidden,

a barely 19 year old guides

a drone capturing images

of hospitals, schools, that

will soon smolder with

the aftermath of airborne

mechanized chaos...silently

he offers a prayer for the living

and soon to be dead.

III.

Mother with teething child,

walker propelled grandparent,

and shivering family dog

board a train that chugs

its way to the western border,

rails singing "pray with me,

pray with me."

IV.

Someday, when bodies

are counted, refugees

and soldiers hobble home,

there'll be an annual day

of remembrance of victory

and defeat, speeches made,

loved ones honored,

as the priest asks

the assembled to bow

their heads and pray.

Peter Witt lives in Texas.  His poetry has appeared in a variety of online and print publications.

TO BEAR OR NOT BEAR ARMS /FUGITIVE SECURITY

Two Poems by Alex Nodopaka

📸VISUALS📸

❗️Video from inside the apartment during a missile attack in Kyiv.#Kyiv #Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/SRgk0WXU5F

— Aarian  (@Worldnews195) February 26, 2022

NOTE: This video is NOT from Alex Nodopaka's niece's apartment but from Twitter.

1. To bear or not bear arms

 

As my niece in Kyiv

is being shelled

I write poems

based on her words*

and what I see

on our TV.

 

I hold my Siamese

the way I imagine

her holding hers.

It seems odd to me

with the repressed

memories I held

 

for over 80 years

but that's all I can do

except bear arms

and join her.

I never in my life

thought I'd say

 

Damn Russia.

 

2. Fugitive security*

A poem based on the words of Alex Nodopaka’s niece in Kyiv.

 

The daily shaking of the 5th

floor of the building

where I live frightens me.

 

Nightly I put down

a few blankets on the floor

of my bathroom.

 

The only place that offers

a false sense of security.

Wedging my head

 

between the toilet

and the wall for protection

I try to sleep

 

despite the rumbling

keeping me awake.

 

Alex Nodopaka originated immaculately in Ukraine in 1940. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & un poquo de Madridista. He sings in tongues after Vodka, has studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author and visual artist in USA.

ELEGY FOR LVIV AND STANISLAWÓW

by Joel Savishinsky

As Russia’s vicious attack on Ukraine continues, the western “safe haven” town of Lviv (top photo) is bracing itself to join the theatre of war. “We expect there could be an attack,” says Olga Myrovych, 34, head of the Lviv Media Forum. “We are far from Putin’s border, but this will distract the efforts of the Ukrainian army.” Lviv is a central European jewel, an exceptionally elegant town with a long history of culture and tragedy. —Institute for War & Peace Reporting, February 27, 2022. In the lower two photos, Ivano-Frankivsk (formerly Stanislawów), a city located in Western Ukraine, had its airport, fuel, and lubricants depots destroyed by the Russian missile systems. The city, formerly Stanisławów, is almost 600km away from Kyiv. With the city airport bombed, the people of Ivano-Frankivsk are being evacuated to bomb shelters. —SAYS, February 26, 2022.

The heart can be broken

in so many ways: lost love,

position, regard and address.

Janus is a novice when staring at

the diamond faces of disappointment.

 

We fear that even poetry may not

matter, that we have no voice, that

we have one but cannot be heard.

Shall we carry our broken hearts

before us like a banner, shouting

rage into the wind, using our mouths

and pens to signal from, or to,

a distant land.

 

When arms have been withheld,

can the body of words suffice

where other parts have failed, or

is hope already the disembodied

ghost of those about to die.

 

Crushed by the alien arms and armies,

the four-chambered heart of

our grandmothers’ homelands

may soon be a million lost freedoms,

the ones our leaders and

the whores of Babylon have each

mis-filed in the archives of revelation.

 

 

 

Joel Savishinsky is the author of Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America (Cornell University Press, 2002), winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s book of the year prize. His parents and grandparents, and those of his wife, immigrated to the US from western Ukraine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, escaping pogroms, anti-Semitism, and the impending invasion of the Nazis. Their communities of origin are named in the poem’s title.

IRON RULE OF DAS DRUMPF TRUMPF FUHRER

by Matthew Scott Harris

Image source: YouTube

Tell me this haint no nightmare, or refashioned twenty first
century episode of the twilight zone from the outer limits
of believability! Reiteration of oft told hankering before
these forty eight contiguous established whirled wide webbed
surveyed enclaves (plus Alaska and Hawaii) wove a tapestry
withal as one benightedly August democratic continent got
trampled, sear suckered, and punched thru with utter jingoism,
narcissism, and racism, activating ramifications radicalizing
homegrown terrorism (where hot pockets of anarchy a minor
threat during last Democratic dénouement), now finds nearly
every citizen righteously bear arms to the teeth, so please do
feel at ease to question me if ye will be so brave of heart to risk
your life and limb to hear mine kempf redolent recitation, when
(by George) bushwhacking days of yore, this generic garden
variety guy revisits (ha, then how populace did quail!) at scant
qualification of post Clinton dynasty, now appears quaint in
retrospect, and my parlaying such opprobrious opinions
condemning, damning, and emasculating current Baby loving
T***p (as aired in this communiqué), could find me punished
for note treason at all in attempt at expression per usurpation of
dereliction against the rubric of our forefathers furtherance for life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness, free trade and TruMark brand
(ye oh man lumpenproletariat feigning deprecation loathing)
pacification since day one, there rumbled a seismic shock, a
throwback to King Kong, chest pounding oppression, now illegal
immigration stopped dead in the tracks viz secret service agents
privileged with narco-trafficking leeway in collusion with forced
emigration, such public events commander in chief warrants,
whereby notification amongst G-men stationed at every and any
strategic borderline for maximization, the White House a coven
and denizen grooming henchmen toward lionization catering,
favoring, inculcating, levying taxation without representation
privately parlaying billions of dollars per proscribed philanthropy
(pivotally predicated upon particular political partisan programs—
there’s no app for that), where said action committees passively pander
(provided penthouse suites as an incentive) to cozy up and keep in
Czech insubordinate slow vox sing traitors, who v lad lee host pewter
tinned (miniature Taj Mahal) shaped coffee cakes (tea total ling
participants) possibly celebrating a birth err day, and/or crowning
of baron ness (exhausting government coffers) behold Kenya bully
eve klatch cha feted victory, pillaring (with figurative little rocks).

Hi (Matthew Scott Harris—berthed January xiii, mcmlix). Hi yam juiced a penniless dime a dozen bitcoin (a chip off the ole nick culled blockchain) bending, bloviating, branching... off the rushing limb bough tree (shawn of ha nitty conformity) with men dos city skeined webbing courtesy humanity.

CREDO

by Rasma Haidri

“At least 12 were killed in an attack at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Four cartoonists are among the dead, including editor and cartoonist Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier, seen here defiantly holding one of the magazine’s covers. The magazine was fire-bombed in 2011 for publishing a cartoon of Muhammad and is know for its provocative satire. The Guardian has live updates here of developing events.” --Ann Telnaes, editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post, 7 January 2015.

I believe in One Art
Father of Cartoon
Begotten of the Pen Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth
I believe in Drawings
Visible and Invisible
Born not made
Being of one Substance
The Ink, the Pen and the Lead
I believe that Art,
Giver of Life, Begotten of man
Came and dwelt among us
Suffered and was buried
So the multitudes would rise
Take up Arms of Pens,
Draw Cartoons a Thousandfold
In world without end.


Rasma Haidri grew up in Tennessee and now lives in the Norwegian arctic where she is a newspaper columnist, textbook writer and teacher. Her poems and essays have been widely published and are forthcoming in Songs for a Passbook Torch, an anthology of poems about Nelson Mandela and Veils, Halos and Shackles, an anthology about violence towards women.

SHOOT THE BASTARDS DOWN

by Janice Lynch Schuster

They will know us by our guns
The fierce industry of our arms
As we drag our heavy bodies
Loaded and overwrought
Into coffee shops where we never sit
With our backs to the door

We will think they love us
When really, it is fear that keeps them
Frozen at our sides, unable to turn
In any direction.  We can take them out
And never feel a thing.

We will carve our names and terrors
Into wood and steel, the way we once
Left our initials in trees and school desks

We will want someone to know
That we were here, and by damn
When the levee breaks
We will shoot that water down.


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.

WHEN THE FISH WILL JUMP INTO THE NET

by Jeff Burt 

When the fish will jump into the net
Gladly
Then I will as well.
When the grain will gather and compose itself to be ground
Gladly
Then I will as well.
When the rich will give up their wealth
Gladly
Then I will as well.
When the glaciers stop calving and breaking silence
With thunderous roars like fathers and mothers
Who have lost their sons and daughters to war
Squelch the deafening cry in their throats
Gladly
Then I will as well.
When the warriors come home happy
And we take them in the envelope of our arms
And they wish to be taken in by the same arms
That sent them to war
Gladly
Then I will come home happy as well.


Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California and works in manufacturing.  He has work in Barnwood, Rhino, Verse Wisconsin, The Write Room  and Red River Review.  He likes the aroma of freshly sharpened #2 pencils.

CHAMBERED NAUTILUS REVISITED

by Mary Cresswell

           after Oliver Wendell Holmes

Image source: Carnivoraforum

This is the ship of state
swimming backwards through a grimy sea
spewing foam, its hundred sticky arms
waving wild and pale and aimlessly.

Chamber after chamber fills and closes
blocking out what’s gone before.
No contamination can leak out –
thoughts sealed inside appear no more.

Adding empty gap to empty gap
the hulk is finally cast up on the beach,
where we toss it back and forth, and ask
what kind of truth had one time grown beneath.


Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. Her third book, Trace Fossils, came out in 2011.