FLIPPING BACK AND FORTH

Between the Artemis II Launch Live Stream and the Live Stream of the Supreme Court Hearing Arguments Regarding Birthright Citizenship

by Liz Ahl

 

Someday, humans may be born on the moon.

Whose moon may or may not be in dispute

in that future I imagine, as I flip from laptop tab

to tab on April Fool’s Day, feeling a little foolish

with the thrill-flutter summoned by the fully-fueled

rocket; feeling also a little edgy with my Gen X

rocket-gone-wrong memory. But thrill wins out

and I don’t look away as the biggest rocket

we’ve sent up since I was a toddler burns skyward,

moonward. As the nation burns deathward—

a rocket-spitting machine both fueled

and made rickety by insatiable greed, a sadistic

hybrid of automation and a deeply human cruelty.

I was born in the wing of a Naval hospital

that’s torn down now; the people who

conceived me in the moon-foolish summer

of 1969 and parented me for decades

are dead, and I’m feeling a little adrift,

a little nationless. A little unsure of my name,

my place. As if I’d been born on the moon.

Liz Ahl is the author of A Case for Solace (2022), winner of the 2023 New Hampshire Literary Award for Poetry. Her other collections include Beating the Bounds (2017) and a number of chapbooks, the most recent of which is A Stanza is a Place to Stand, published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2023. Poems have appeared recently in Rogue Agent, Cherry Tree, and River Heron Review. She lives in New Hampshire.

DISAPPEAR

by Mark Danowsky

Art by Alex Bennett

Who? They insist
some darker other
 
We give 
the real villains 
too much rope
 
Time is on
the wealthy side
 
Don’t ignore
matters of class
 
Call out
all the horrors
& misdirection
 
If you wait just
a moment too long—
 
Knock knock knock

on your door

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry and Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine. He is the author of several poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Take Care (Moon Tide Press).

FINE PRINT

by Tricia Knoll

Corporations make it so small you don’t

    read a word of it as if they save paper

    by cramming everything together 

what privacy you give up

hidden costs

contraindications, side effects –

one decreases cognitive abilities

on a drug doctors said I needed

as I age. Getting old

brings out glasses,

prescription or straight 

from the pharmacy rack. 

Woe: when it isn’t 8-point 

type, when it’s spelled out big

with a flaunty signature 

of a President who hates they, them

pronouns, turns the tables on being born

on safe soil, pardons killers, changes

the name of the highest mountain 

on the continent—the Great One. 

And on and on, writ large.  

Might as well be billboards

his words that make

my heart ache—what irony

I can’t even read his floozy signature. 

 

Tricia Knoll is an aging Vermont poet and feminist who hasn't yet conquered the heartache for women of losing the write to choose health care in so many states. She has nine collections in print, both full-length books and chapbooks. She is a Contributing Editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. She wonders how liberal folks will move forward in the coming years. 

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

by Alejandro Escudé

The face of the oldest species that unambiguously sits on the human evolutionary tree has been revealed for the first time by the discovery of a 3.8 million-year-old skull in Ethiopia. Above: A partial facial reconstruction using the fossil. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian, August 28, 2019.

“President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was looking ‘very seriously’ at ending the right to citizenship for babies born to non-U.S. citizens on American soil. Trump spoke to reporters as he departed the White House for a speech in Louisville, Kentucky. He said birthright citizenship was ‘frankly ridiculous.’ —Time, August 21, 2019

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” —The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

He died beside a river
and now, four million years later,
his cranium—his face, eyes looking through us
as if we were the moon in fog
four million years ago, a Wednesday,
though there were no Wednesdays and no
citizenship, only toddlers climbing trees,
only the chewing of grist,
the rock, the rock, the rock, the tree, the tree, the tree.
For what is birthright? Who belongs to what nation?
Can a nation really exit? Exit what?
Ask Australopithecus anamensis. He will tell you,
that loopy grin, earthy beard. Skin of our skin.
Heart of our heart. What do we feel
for him? Love? Ignorance is intolerance.
Historical, the complete skull.
No Lucy counterpart, a separate being.
What of the son born in a common territory
across the sea? Will he climb trees
with his brothers and sisters? Will he murder
other species of human? Or mate?
We may never know the ancient map-way
of genes that led here— the trail
of skulls shattered by time,
but we have that face, his face,
and we have the love that dissolves time,
and understanding, yes,
our birthright going back to Ethiopia,
our citizenship papers rolled
within the hollow bones of the birds.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.