THE ALPHABET IS NOT ENOUGH

by Miceala Morano

From an experimental alphabet by Max Morin combining real paintings with digital manipulation. In collaboration with Jim Lepage.

We learn, but we never do. 

A as in apple, B as in ball, C as in cat,

D as in the desks we shield soft bodies with. 

Rewind, repeat. A as in active shooter situations.

B as in blood, scarlet staining the halls. 

Rewind, repeat. A as in America, is this 

what you meant by red, white and-

B as in blue lips, C as in CPR. 

I am shielding their bodies in the grocery store, 

in the classroom, in my nightmares each night. 

It is still not enough to protect them. 

C as in clear backpacks. D as in 

don’t make a sound. E as in ending, 

as in breath interrupted. Rewind, repeat

repeat, repeat. A as in active shooter,

F as in freedom, delegated to weapons 

and never to women. We throw our alphabet

at the bullets, B for books, C for chairs, D for desks, 

the classroom deconstructed into a war zone, 

our breaths deconstructed into silence. 

A as in America, never learning. B as in bullets, 

falling like rain.

Miceala Morano is a writer from the Ozarks whose work is published or forthcoming in Berkeley Fiction Review, Eunoia Review, Kissing Dynamite, The Shore, Gone Lawn, and more. Find her on Twitter @micealamorano .

REFUGEES

by Frederick Wilbur

Drawing by Zhenia Grebenchuk, 13, who fled Cherkasy, Ukraine, with his younger sister and mother, Tanya. His father took them to the bus and then returned home. Tanya said she and her children planned to wait out the war in Poland. Zhenia hoped it would only be a matter of weeks before Ukraine wins and he can kick around his soccer ball at home with friends again. —The Washington Post, March 15, 2022

They hear the drone of planes

like the chorus of evil angels.

 

They do not raise their eyes.

 

But with their lives in skulls

and backpacks, their feet follow

the single file person before them,

freedom stitched to sleeves.

 

It could be anywhere—

distant curve of horizon or jungled

too thick for a view.

 

I cannot say I have worn out shoes,

or begged for shelter—

my anguish is not their anguish,

my hunger is not theirs.

 

Arrogance and greed for power

cannot live among them,

their power is to survive—

survival may not be enough

until they cross the border

that cannot be seen.

 

Frederick Wilbur's poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and The Conjugation of Perhaps.

THE THIRTEENTH STATION — CHARLESTON 2015

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

If only the women had carried
Guns in their Bibles and prayed
With rage, not love

If only the children had carried
Guns in their backpacks
Their teachers might
Have been spared

If only the boy playing
In the yard had something
Real to fire

If only the suffocating
Man had had gunpowder,,
Not tobacco

If only we armed us all
Who worship at the glamorous
Fortresses of our fears

Brought to us
By the NRA and Congress afraid
Itself to say no

If only we let the bloodbath
Baptize us daily in horror
While our blue hearts
Beat on and we tweet

Hashtags of despair
As if to absolve ourselves
Of the killings we did not stop
And the ballots  we failed
To cast


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.