I MUST SAY SOMETHING

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

It seems necessary to say something

Just to keep our heads from exploding

The horrors Bibi and the Orange Idiot commit

Never stop

All unspeakably cruel

All that leave us at a loss for words

And yet we must say something

 

This morning I read 

That Israel bombed a home in Gaza

Where a family was asleep in their beds

Six people were burned alive

As they slept

I am at a loss for words

And yet I must stay something

 

This morning I read

That Donald Juniper Trump

Cut billions from a government food program

Meant to provide sustenance 

For the children of the poor

Many of whom will now experience extreme hunger

Many of whom will starve

I am at a loss for words

And yet I must say something

 

What shall I say?

Sorry family who were burned alive

Sorry starving children

How utterly inadequate the words seem

How pathetic in the face of the deaths

Being arrranged by the powerful

For the powerless

I will always be at a loss for words

When coming face-to-face

With the cruelty of the plutocrats

As they dance on the graves of the powerless

And pick the pennies from their pockets

And yet I must say something…

Buff Whitman-Bradley podcasts his poetry at thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE CEASEFIRE

by Bonnie Naradzay

More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in   their intent, said Amnesty International today [November 27, 2025].

after Ilya Kaminsky

We were so satisfied with our stuffing recipes

and so when they bombed tent encampments

blocked entry for prosthetic limbs

for child amputees

blocked machinery for uncovering corpses

from the rubble

blocked doctors who’d earlier been given

“permission” to enter Gaza

 we (forgive us)

looked the other way again

as Israel violated the Cease Fire

over and over again with the slaughter of hundreds more,

atrocities committed with impunity

how easily we looked the other way

as Israel asked us for billions more in aid today

from our house of money

we (forgive us) lived happily during the Cease Fire.

Bonnie Naradzay has been leading weekly poetry sessions for homeless people at Street Sense and at Miriam’s Kitchen and also at a retirement community, all in Washington, DC.  While at Harvard University in the late 1960s, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize–-a month’s stay in Northern Italy–-in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. A 2017 graduate of the St John’s College (Annapolis) Graduate Institute, her book of poems Invited to the Feast was published by Slant Books in October 2025; three of the poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. 

A BILLION TONS

by Pepper Trail

A highway leading to downtown Los Angeles, California, is empty last month during the coronavirus pandemic. The view of downtown is clearer than usual as the city and the world sharply cut daily carbon dioxide emissions. But a new scientific study says the long-term effects of months-long reduction will be quite small. —AP, May 19, 2020 Photo:Mark J. Terrill/AP

Outside the window, a billion tons of CO2 are not there
I take the billion tons, wrap my arms around them
Muscle them down, get them into a shape I can handle
Fold them, fold them again, and smaller again,
Press them at last into what else but a diamond
Put it in a box for my daughter, for her wedding
If I would have a daughter, if she would have a wedding

Outside the window, 375,000 people are not there
One sang “Angel from Montgomery”—you can hear the echo
One thought the disease was a joke, until it wasn’t
One gave me the key to all the plants, and I have it still
They are beating against my window softly as moths
Against all the windows, and we look through them
When we look out, which is what we are always doing

Outside the window, my father and mother are not there
They left in good time, and were spared this particular nothing
My father is free to walk the Carolina forest, forever looking
Quietly content with bird or frog, bloodroot or lady-slipper
My mother can sing in her choir, too short to be seen
Behind the ranks of Easter lilies and the tall candles
But I know she is there, and I know where he has gone

Outside the window, my life is not there
The flight to Australia, the places never to be seen
The meal in the restaurant where we would have quarreled
Or where I would have said you were right, all along
The baseball games, your art show, the old too and fro
They say if you add it all up, it makes a billion tons
And also that, in the end, it makes no difference at all


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.