BONES OF THE REPUBLIC

by Earl David Freeland

I weep.

The king didn’t take the throne.
The elephant knelt—
tuskless,
trumpeting fear,
its weight crushing the roots
of a nation it once carried.

Palms open,
backs bent,
offering the crown
wrapped in fear,
cheap flags for bows.
Will there be midterms?
Will it matter?
When power hums the same note,
ballots dusted under a golden sneaker,
lines redrawn to cut out the noise—
cut out us.

Maps don’t divide now.
They silence.
States, neat and obedient,
stacked under a crown.

What world waits for my son?
A place where truth
gets dragged—
hair tangled in fists,
paraded like a lesson.

Freedom?
Traded for chain-slick comfort.
Easy.
Cheap.

The anthem plays.
Hands rise—
not for hearts.

I see it—
the Mouth of Putin,
slick, wide, laughing.
Spitting out slogans,
black seeds rooting into
boots,
barbed wire,
burned books.

Long live the king,
they say.
And mean it.

I weep.

But I’m watching.
And if democracy dies here—
I’ll bury it with teeth.
Bared.
Fists raw.
Tear the ground open
and dig through the bones
the elephant left behind

Earl David Freeland is a mathematician, former cartographer, and teacher whose poetry balances precision with raw vulnerability. His work explores societal critique, existential themes, and human complexity with unflinching honesty. His poems have appeared in Poets Reading the News and reflect a deliberate rejection of polish in favor of visceral authenticity.

TWO VIEWS

by Jonel Abellanosa





Do we get to decide
what world we live in?
Old world babblers of peace and quiet,
birdsong in our neighborhood still treed.
I still believe tyranny isn’t armed
to the teeth. I still go to burial grounds
in a culture that holds
memory like a coffin

*

Placards and megaphones
alter streets, revulsion here to stay.
I’m familiar with the strange,
songs like barbed wires, grating
to my ears. I’m unable to think
with clarity, except that mine
isn’t the first religion
of public self-flagellation.


Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, the Philippines. He is a nature lover, an environmental advocate, and loves all animals particularly dogs. His poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary journals and anthologies, including Windhover, The Lyric, Star*Line, Poetry Kanto, Marsh Hawk Review, That Literary Review, Bosphorous Review of Books and The Anglican Theological Review. His poetry collections include Meditations (Alien Buddha Press), Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), 50 Acrostic Poems (Cyberwit, India),  In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art), and his speculative poetry collection Pan’s Saxophone (Weasel Press).

AN AGING IRA FIGHTER REFLECTS ON BREXIT’S UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

by Mary K O'Melveny




Borders are on everyone’s mind these days.
Not just the ones where two-year olds
are stolen from their parents and sent
to courtrooms to plead their cases.

I’m thinking back to how the way one prays
could turn quite deadly if one strolled
down the wrong street, or someone’s accent
might cause them to vanish without traces

of guilt on men wearing soldier’s berets.
I used to live in Derry’s bogside, patrolled
night and day by those who aimed to prevent
our claims to history’s rightful places.

More than most, I know there are multiple ways
for lines to be drawn. Then, as truth unfolds,
we seem surprised at first, before we lament
our decisions. Occasionally, we wonder if grace is

a solid thing we can retrieve. I am amazed
still at our will to oppose treaties to control
our destinies. At first, peace arguments
made us skeptics. We stared at those sad places

where rigid boundaries left us dismayed
and divided, household from household,
and our viewpoints stiffened in dissent.
We fervently believed that no place is

safe except the one that meets our gaze
with like-minded visions. As tales were told,
we often found it necessary to augment
details that would emphasize the basis

for the walls we built. Soon, malaise
transformed us. As barbed wire unrolled
to top our fences and gates, we vented
and raged while men with briefcases

drew up documents filled with clichés
that some judge would use to uphold
our divisions. Eventually, if we went
on this way, we would be locked in stasis,

staring out from colored passageways
of green or orange, martydom tales retold
until it was time for us to invent
new heroes to take up their places.

The Good Friday accord was praised
for pushing back against the grief we hold.
We hoped it would allow us to reinvent
ourselves after the Troubles had disgraced us.

I am not eager to return to those days.
I drive tourists around now. I’ve been long paroled.
Yet, my days on the blanket can still disorient.
My tribal thoughts will fill in bordered spaces.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age will be published by Finishing Line Press in September, 2018.

THE CARTOGRAPHER

by Mark Tarren

Manus prison camp yestetday about 11 Am pic.twitter.com/t64mGQfnng

— Behrouz Boochani (@BehrouzBoochani) November 24, 2017

“Manus detention centre cleared of all refugees and asylum seekers. Up to 60 men left without a place to stay, sources say, because new accommodation is either not ready or overfull.” —The Guardian, November 24, 2017

Above: Video of Manus prison camp November 24, 2017 tweeted by @BehrouzBoochani


In his father's gentle hands
among his world of maps
lay his son's uncharted heart.

It was given to him in the desert
without borders
presented to him without fear
without shame.

These were

The Sands of his Father's Heart
that held the young boy's body
that marked a place of returning
to bathe in the safe waters.

These things were stolen from the boy.

The winds of another country
trapped the boys heart
in barbed wire
in speechless tongues
in blood
in beatings.

These were now collected in

The New Papyrus

where the uncharted heart
must be destroyed and broken.

Where the ancient learning is undone
in these new maps there must be
metal against bone
waterless caverns
the hunger of absence for young men.

As a man he remembers
The Sands of his Father's Heart
that once held his small body
that once bathed in the safe waters
that once marked a place of returning
in his father's gentle hands.

These things were stolen from the boy

lost in the sands of Sahul

the arms of Australia.

"Peaceful protest continues in the new prison camps. Here is West Haus, the place that is not ready on Manus Island." Tweeted by @BehrouzBoochani, November 26, 2017.

“Australia built a hell for refugees on Manus. The shame will outlive us all.” —Richard Flanagan, The Guardian, November 24, 2017.

Mark Tarren is a poet and writer based in Queensland, Australia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including TheNewVerse.News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press and Spillwords Press.

THANKSGIVING 2016—A RETROSPECTIVE

by Joan Colby

Image source: Cooking with Drew

Sky of beaten tin
Addressed by the bare
Limbs of the hickories.

We gather to eat
Tradition—our politics
Aligned in fortune.

We plan to march in the new year
Against dark forces
That lean like barbed wire
Upon the liberty
Of an open range.

Today, the pasture has gone
Brown and dormant. Like
Those who say give him a chance.
Those who hunker down when the Nazis
Pound on a neighbor’s door.

It won’t be us, we vow,
Unfolding our napkins,
Slicing the breast and the
Good dark meat,
Ladling the gravy
Of our lives so far.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

MARS

by Howie Good

The god of carnage has grown

a balding man’s stringy ponytail.

Red, he says, means danger.

He shrugs his cruelly thin shoulders.

A tractor stands abandoned

in a field of what looks from here

like black puddles of blood.

The future will burn a full 40 days.

We will walk beside our coffins.

Starvelings will stare out

from behind barbed wire.

Mothers will shriek. There will be

nice grass in the cemetery.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has a number of chapbooks forthcoming, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. goodh51(at)gmail.com.