SONNET FOR THE COMPTROLLER

by Beth Cleary

He is showing us what to say, how to be, when
they come for us: upright, measured in tone and gaze,
Do you have a judicial warrant? You do not have 
the authority to arrest U.S. citizens. Show me
your judicial warrant. These are the ways, the phrases,
memorize them. I have memorized them, in the night
when footage of the arrest—I am not
obstructing anything I am standing here—replays
in the basement of my heart, near where my diaphragm
tucks up, presses down, basement where I store
cups, snippets, grains of information, instructions
for later. For when they come for us, soft body and cheek
jammed against a pillow/wall, gloved hands breaking our backs.

Beth Cleary's essays and poems appear in Ninth Letter, The Maine Review, Artist & Influence, Fourth Genre, and other publications. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the main No Kings! march was upwards of 60,000 strong despite shock about assassinations, unknowns about an active shooter, and warnings to stay away. 

THE LAYOUT OF TWO STORIES

by Barbara Simmons

San Jose Mercury News, March 18, 2022

It strikes me first because I want

to replicate the cover story, its

filling up the top-half of page one with

students costumed for their roles in Beauty and

the Beast, and fill the bottom of this page, the

story line the same, but now removing it from San Leandro,

taking it to Mariupol, setting up production there for

the same play, with young Ukrainians in the roles of Belle,

The Beast, the talking Armoire and the flickering Lumiere, 

all taking turns rehearsing for the opening night. The local

story tells of students whose dramatic arc

had lost two years, pandemic’s having moved them away

from stages and onto screens. The story from another world

shows readers columns, perhaps Corinthian, now holding air,

the theater they adorned now roofless, the drama playing out

a theme of death and rubble, shrapnel-scarred skeletons, smoke

the scrim. Who may have played these roles we do not know, those

killed as they sought refuge in a theater basement. 

The layout

is the story: partitioned narratives reveal two worlds, one

where drama’s curtain rises to roles donned, 

the other where the drama is demise, 

where nothing’s left for anyone, for any of us, 

to understand.

Barbara Simmons, a native Bostonian residing in California, a graduate of Wellesley College and The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins, is a retired teacher and counselor.  She explores the communion of words as ways to remember and envision.  Publications include Boston Accent, The NewVerse News, Soul-Lit, and Capsule Stories. Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums is her first book of poetry due in Spring 2022.

CLEARLY

by Barbara Loots





Clearly this explains a lot
about the president we’ve got.
For basement, substitute your bed.
Computer?  Say tv instead.
Every click of Twitter thumb?
Neurons in the brain go numb
until the whole damn thing is gone.
The skull is empty. Sad. Poor Don.


Frequent contributor to lightpoetrymagazine.com, Barbara Loots keeps an eye on the news from Kansas City, MO. New collection The Beekeeper and other love poems coming soon from Kelsay Books. 

IMPOLITE AND ARROGANT

by Joan Mazza

the Swedish Academy for the Nobel
says of Bob Dylan, who hasn’t acknowledged
his prize for literature or the invitation
to the event. He can be difficult, they say,

as if this is insightful news of his psychology,
as if he’d care what anyone thought about
his need to be alone, hide out. They say
his behavior is unprecedented, forgetting

Jean-Paul Sartre refused the prize, and that
Doris Lessing, returned from shopping
and approached by a reporter with the news,
responded, Oh, Christ! Not delight or prayer.

Were I indiscreet, I’d tell you where he’s
holed up. You sure wouldn’t believe that he’s
here, underground in my basement, playing
cassettes on the stereo so loud my floors

vibrate. He's smoking,  stinking up my entire
house. My cats like him, as does my old dog,
but he doesn’t always come upstairs for meals
I’ve fixed, only shrugs when I ask him

if he wants shrimp or crab. Don’t answer
the phone, he told me as soon as he arrived.
It hardly ever rings, I said, astonished
at his demand, when I recognized him

on my porch and let him in. He parked his
car out back, but there’s no one here to see.
I’m deep in the woods, far from the road.
Today I hear him singing, strumming

his guitar. He says prizes don’t mean a thing.
I ask if I can take a photo before he leaves.
(When is he leaving?) He sticks out
his pouty lip, says, It ain’t me, babe.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Slipstream, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.