A TANKA FOR THE TWO PEOPLE KILLED IN KHARKIV BY A RUSSIAN MORTAR SHELL

"A loaf of bread on a park bench, collecting snow. A puddle of blood nearby. Those were the traces of two lives lost this past week, two people killed as they sat sharing a late lunch or an early dinner, or maybe just feeding pigeons. No one seemed to know their names. They died at around 5:30 in the afternoon on Sunday in the southeastern Slobidskyi district of Kharkiv from a mortar strike, residents said, describing the victims as an older woman and a middle-aged man." —Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak, The New York Times, April 6, 2022. Original photo by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Jimmy Pappas is the Zoom moderator for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.

THE BASEBALL HALL OF SHAME

by Earl J. Wilcox

@AsteriskTour on Twitter: 2020 Astros Shame Tour

Squatting in the dirt was never anything
but awkward looking, humbling to say
the least for these hefty men, baseball’s
catchers, men strong—stand and squat
stand and squat—and willing enough
to spread their thighs, junk protected
by a cloth or metal cup, shins and ankles
and knees all grinding and grinding as up
and down he goes, bone against bone
taking a foul on his thumb, his shoulder,
crotch clipped by a fast ball often enough
to bring tears to his eyes and ours. What
mad magpie manager steals signs from
the heart of the team, players with such
unassuming names—Posey, Piazza, Yogi,
Molina, Campanella, Fisk, McCarver,
Bench. What hit or run or victory abides
such thievery, such, stealing a sure sign
of gutless guile, forever favoring hall
of shame, the hadesland of thieves.


Earl J. Wilcox lives in a small city in upstate South Carolina, where once the St Louis Cardinals had a farm team, and Sparky Anderson was the manager in 1965.  

ON A CITY BENCH

by B.Z. Niditch

Rinsing dollops
of rain shadows
on a city bench
before the new year
through a foreign
body of thoughtful
reflection,
with his dark glasses
and unshaved manner
in veteran overalls
from another era
since the cold war
of another season
took a few years
off him,
wearied from exile
homeless,
yet still marching
for peace
now with a walker
on rubble
of pavements
pacing near
the back waters
on your city bench
exhausted
in stretched
out fatigues.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.