THE RUSSIANS

by Suzanne Morris

Top photo: ‘Things Will Only Get Worse.’ Putin’s War Sends Russians Into Exile. —The New York Times, March 13, 2022. Bottom photo: Sasha (played by Jeffrey Rockland), son of Tonya and Zhivago in the 1965 film Doctor Zhivago.

He is the only child

in the photograph–

ten, perhaps,

no more than twelve–

surrounded by a small crowd of

students and young professionals,

wearing jeans and

heavy sweaters

seated anxiously on a long couch

or straight-backed chairs

around a table

in a sunny apartment

in Istanbul

where they’ve fled,  

fearing arrest for

protesting a war

they didn’t believe in

waged by an autocrat

they all despise.

And no one is holding

a phone.

Women with long hair,

men with short, neat beards,

eyes fixed on the speaker

outside the frame–

intent as we were

on events unfolding

across the

movie screen.

The boy stands alone in the

center of the floor; and

he’s looking, too, but with

body angled away

as if the speaker had

interrupted his play.

His eyes old and serious

for one his age, he

reminds me of

Zhivago’s young son

whose life was upended

by the Russian Revolution.

How romantic it seemed:

so long ago and far away

yet the huge

Panavision screen

made it seem we were right there

living through it all when

families were forced apart

never to be together again.

The boy is right there

in the small crowd,

the speaker instructing them

on what to do now.

How to begin.

                                           

A novelist with eight published works spanning forty years, Suzanne Morris now focuses largely on writing poems. Her poetry is included in the anthology No Season for Silence—Texas Poets and Pandemic (Kallisto GAIA Press, 2020). Examples have also appeared in The Texas Poetry Assignment and The New Verse News.

MAKE DINNER WITH THE TELEVISION ON

by Alice Campbell Romano

Photo of @AdamParkhomenko’s family trapped in Ukraine.

Face what you have to face. Chop onions. Let your

eyes sting for the kitchen screen where a city is rubble,

nothing stands, all the ground is chunks of bricks

and stones, a wreckage more extreme even than the

leavings of a tornado the TV showed you last hour.

What does it profit an autocrat, an absolutist,

unless that his obliteration is more terrible than a work

of nature. I am that I am, God the destroyer. Onions

sauté now with sliced red peppers in a little olive oil.

You feel so feeble. But you don’t flip the remote to

California’s Gold. You add the chicken tenders, while a

newscaster tells you what you know. Children starve.

Alice Campbell Romano is a New Yorker who spent more than a decade in Italy, adapting Italian movie scripts into English. Her work has been published in print journals and online, most recently by Willows Wept Review and Ekphrastic Review's Starry Starry Night Anthology; this week in Prometheus Dreaming and forthcoming in Beyond Words.

PRIORITIES OF A TYRANT WANNABE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

unfinished notes from the Philippines 

by Leo Cosmiano Baltar

wordplay (or what to name incompetence)

a. lockdown

b. community quarantine 

c. enhanced community quarantine 

d. modified enhanced community quarantine 

e. general community quarantine 

f. modified general community quarantine

travel ban (except China) 

 ̶f̶a̶c̶e̶ masking his political intentions 

police and military over medical frontliners

Bayanihan to Heal as One Act 

(or more special powers that will be abused) 

mass t̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ arresting 

COVID-19 public address past 1 am 

(or late night tantrums on televisions 

with unlimited cursing) 

social [class] distancing 

money money money 

(or public funds that did not materialize 

& other trillions of debt)

mañanita fiasco: a party gathering 

involving a police chief and his 

cops even when it is not allowed 

but they will not be arrested 

according to the president

jeepney phase out under the 

guise of modernization

[not] listening to doctors & experts

taxing online sellers

more cops to shoot the virus

 ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶a̶c̶t̶ tracing the communists 

(or red-tagging advocates & activists) 

media  c r a  c k d o  w n 

exhibit a: ABS-CBN network 

exhibit b: Rappler 

exhibit c: alternative media

anti-terror law (or daily martial law) 

House Bill 4953, declaring the balangay 

as the national boat of the Philippines

̶f̶l̶a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶v̶e̶  & other delusions

changing an airport's name 

bullying effective local leaders

quarantining basic civil and human rights 

& other fascist dreams

Leo Cosmiano Baltar is a Filipino writer, a poet, and an activist. He is currently taking his bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of the Philippines Diliman. When he is not writing, he is thinking of what to write next. 

ATTEMPTED OVERTHROW

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Empty Vessel Stomping on the US Constitution
Trump Sculpture Series #4 by Judith Peck

Maybe you held the moon in your hands
and watched it morph
into a spiked border wall
in high-definition.

Maybe you saw your shaggy body
perfected
in a mirror of hashtags
believing the world wanted you.

Maybe you were soulless and filled
with explosives timed
to go off at just
the wrong time. Or not.

A king, you see, is a window
into the house. Into the heart. I meant
to say such a man is a door
into what we dream, what we think.
Not all doors open. Meanwhile
you let the rest of us
dissolve on your tongue like nitro.

Don't you know everything
you ever said or did
will be used against you
in the court of public opinion?

Maybe we can rearrange
your disorder to some kind
of warped metal sculpture
that reflects us, no longer
a bad reflection on us.

Moon or no moon
hands contain veins,
old blood. When you leave
the gilt throne you erected
in your own image
please take your fake weather
with you.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016), Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017), and Final Arrangements (Prolific Pres, 2019). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.