BLACK AND WHITE

by Donna Katzin

for Peter Magubane

Born in Johannesburg in 1932, Peter Magubane documented the brutality of apartheid and suffered from banning orders, solitary confinement and beatings as a result. From teaching himself as a boy with a Brownie camera, he went on to work for the influential magazine Drum and became Nelson Mandela’s official photographer. He died on New Year’s Day aged 91.  Photo: The Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976, when more than 15,000 children protested against an editct making Afrikaans the medium of instruction in black schools. At first, the refused to be photographed but Magubane said a struggle without documentation was no struggle and they had to show the world what was going on in South Africa. The students agreed and this picture was taken by Peter Magubane. —The Guardian, January 12, 2024

With shadow and light

you engrave enduring images

in our collective consciousness,

lend us your eyes as microscope 

that bores deep beneath the skin,

telescope that scans beyond the stars.

 

Broken bodies scattered at your feet—

one camera concealed in a milk carton,

another in a loaf of bread or Bible—

you chronicle histories of struggle,

reveal the beast that lurks within

and humanity that is possible.

 

Confined to solitary

blocks of cold cement,

you do not let them hold

or break your indomitable will, 

bequeath your hammering heart

to our beleaguered world.

 

You squint far beyond the time

you have seeded with your vision,

reclaim the radiance of rainbows,

splendor of the setting sun,

knowing, somewhere,

it will rise again.

 

Donna Katzin has served as the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest, a 30 year old non-profit organization that facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. In that capacity, she was privileged to meet and collaborate with Peter Magubane, and honor him. She currently co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners, which helps feed impoverished children and empower their mothers in Nicaragua. She also serves on the Board of the Fund for Community Change, as well as the Tikun Olam Commission of Reconstructing Judaism—working on reparations in the U.S.  A proud wife and mother, she is a contributor to The New Verse News and author of With These Hands—poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.

FOUND POEM OF WAR

by Ellen Austin-Li

Newborn twin brothers sleep in a basement used as a bomb shelter at the Okhmadet children's hospital in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A line from Yeats’ poem that reverberates

like a bass chord that becomes a strum,

combined with an image of babies 

kept alive in a bomb shelter, underground,

each breath bagged by ambu into tiny lungs.

This hum an undercurrent—under, under, under

my thumb. This rough beast lumbering, a ton,

a hundred years running, but truly thousands before, 

more’s the sum of history in a new poem—not new, 

but old. What crumbling humans, such endless war.

My hands weary as if I’m delivering each breath.

I know what this means—we cannot take a rest

or the children expire. I tire, but the poem is found.

The cannon, the fodder: explosions of sound. 

Ellen Austin-Li’s work has appeared in Artemis, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Maine Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Rust + Moth, and other places. Her two chapbooks were published by Finishing Line Press—Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). She is a Best of the Net nominee. A recipient of the Martin B. Bernstein Fellowship, she earned an MFA in Poetry at the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen lives with her husband in a newly empty nest in Cincinnati, Ohio.

JANUARY COUP

by Mark Danowsky

J.D. Crowe | jdcrowe@al.com

Vulgar 45, self-chosen wunder-king Insists he can take a life with a 45 Fifth Ave, broad daylight No one stops him Ha, as if he would stop himself Hang any henchmen Who defy a single wicked whim He begs you call him a joker A clown, a magician He calls himself master Of misdirection, of monopoly A game, he jests That one about life Behemoth of rage & spite Batter truth with lies Until truth cowers in a corner Smirk of feckless beast Mirror, mirror, what of this hair Send a few minions Storm the Capitol Torch the word of fair Suit of Big Mac & Diet Coke Asks only the McPoem be gilded 45 laughs & laughs Knowing a loss will be refused As only a loser can lose False god of the not unforsaken majority False demon elite who preys on the powerless He who claims to love what he loathes He who cannot sanitize what he is He who lets disease run rampant To disenfranchise those already wronged He who barks orders at the grotesque To carry out the obscene He who breaks the back of a thousand innocents To grease his palms in 18 holes Let us hope, yes, let us hope Some few brainwashed undrink the Kool-Aid There is no time like the present to accept Our past is full of atrocity And yes we can choose a new path Back towards democracy

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Senior Editor for Schuylkill Valley Journal, Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine, and a Regular Contributor for Versification. He is author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press) and JAWN forthcoming from Moonstone Press.

KOKO AND THE BEAST

by Neil Creighton

This week, two stories.
One beautiful, sad, heart-rending.
The other?
Make up your own mind.

In one story an inflated emptiness
struts and preens in hollow vanity,
boasting of wealth and power
as his mirror audience
claps and cheers and chants

whilst the world fills with tears
from children of the poor,
hiding under space blankets,
their crying for their mothers

rising high above the clamour,
the lies and self-justifications,
the heartless mis-use of law and Bible,
the faux “I’m a mother and a catholic” outrage.

In the other story Koko,
the western lowland gorilla,
dies peacefully,
aged forty six.

Intelligent Koko,
who could sign 1000 words
and understand 2000.

Gentle Koko,
who, tired and near the end,
signed to her friend
“I’m getting old”.

Loving Koko,
who, though childless,
raised two kittens
and thought of them as hers.

Mourned Koko,
missed by Ndume,
who, arranging blankets around her body,
signed  “I know” and “Cry”.

Koko,
let me also mourn for you.
Let me praise you too.
Strange consolation
to know of life such as yours,
intelligent, simple and pure,
utterly without vanity,
a light in the darkness
of all the coiffed, self-serving horror
now strutting the stage of the world
and beating at the hollow chest
of its own vast emptiness.

Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama has brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It also made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work reflects strong interest in social justice and the tragedies involved in colonisation. His poetry has appeared in various places, both online and in hard-copy. He is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual.

TROPHY HUNT

by Pepper Trail

Image source: The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant, what man
Not driven by hunger
Not confronted by your bulk, your tusks
Not defending his house or farm

Knowing what we know
Of your vast and furrowed memory
Of your lines of mothers and aunts
Of the slaughter pursuing you across the continent

What man
Thinking of you, elephant
Your dignity, your utter majesty in this world
Thinks of killing

Travels thousands of miles
Spends a useless fortune
Is led to you, elephant, quiet in your life
Asks for the heavy gun, and shoots

What man
Cuts the tail from your great body
Poses for the pictures, fills out the forms
Flies satisfied away

Leaving an erasure in the map of Africa
Your circuit of waterholes, lost
The hiding-place of your family bones
The silent harmony of your song, sung through the earth

What man
Consults the record books
For spread of ego, weight of pride
Fills a trophy-room with ignorance
Elephant, what beast?

Pepper Trail is a conservation biologist, poet, and photographer living in Ashland, Oregon.  His poems have appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Pedestal, and other publications, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards.  He has long been involved in efforts to protect wildlife and wild places.  His collection Cascade-Siskiyou, a cycle of poems about Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument (currently under threat by the T***p Administration), was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

THE CORPORATOCRACY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley





The beast has many bellies
The beast has many eyes
But does not have a single ear
To hear the children’s cries

The beast has certain methods
For entering our heads
For trampling on our spirits
And leaving them for dead

It sells us worthless trinkets
And artificial dreams
It hijacks our tomorrows
With twisted scams and schemes

It threatens and intimidates
To silence all our voices
While chillingly intoning that
There are no other choices!

The beast is always famished
Lucre’s what it eats
It finds the pennies of the poor
Particularly sweet

And when old people die of cold
And infants starve to death
The gorging beast feels not a twinge
Of sorrow or regret

The beast has many bellies
The beast has many eyes
But does not have a beating heart
To heed the children’s cries


Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.  He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective).  He lives in northern California.