FEEL FREE

by Nick Allison

Nick Anderson cartoon

To don a bright mask for the faithful to see
To placate the flock and pretend to believe
To drag the dead weight of unbroken chains
To laugh until laughter devours the pain

To plant the old flags and ring the new bells
To raise up the prices and see what still sells
To imagine that freedom is only a jest
To swallow your pride till it rots in your chest

To close all the windows and fasten the doors
To bury your secrets beneath the sea floor
To climb golden stairs till you stand at the top
To fall with the world when at last it all stops

To bolster your ego with glory and praise
To purchase a past with the fortune you’ve raised
To summon the fire and melt back the ice
To never look once at their sacrifice

To turn up the volume and smother the cries
To vanish in shadows and cover your eyes
To cut out your tongue to spite your own face
To put profit above the whole human race

To pull out your hair and to tear at the walls
To pave over gardens and silence the calls
To load up the cannons, the weapons of war
To never once ask who the cages are for

To dream of the faces you’ve lost all at once
To wake with their shadows and feel their cold touch
To walk through the mirror and linger a while
To shine your dark shoes and lie with a smile

To pin every failure on somebody else
To go to your grave deceiving yourself
To polish a crown and call yourself king
To scream for the stillness your riches won’t bring

To weep late at night in a bed all alone
Your palace of pleasure turned prison of stone
Surrounded by ghosts who won’t let you be
You’ll ask yourself why 
you still don’t feel free

Nick Allison is a former Army infantryman, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. “While the Elk Were Moving” is adapted from the introduction to that collection. More of his work can be found at TheTruthAboutTigers.com and @nickallison80.bsky.social.

WHEN FOOD SCRAPS FLOOD AIR LIKE HOODED CROWS

by Mary K O’Melveny

Blackened parachutes resembling mammoth falcon wings

tumble down from sleek cargo planes beneath cloudless skies.

Together, they add up to less than all the food supplies 

which might fill up one land-bound rescue truck. Things

we thought we understood, now take us by surprise –

broken hearts turn genocidal with all that terms implies.

Blame can fall to innocents as if they pulled all the strings,

as if they still held the power to defend their land, prized

for generations, Ottoman deeds spelling out their ties

to rugged hills, olive trees, sand dunes and desert springs.

No one knows how many will survive hunger’s debased stings,

though some families are erased forever. Those who’ve died

are always undercounted when world leaders shout, spout lies

while survivors watch flour, fuel, fava beans with famished eyes.

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird, is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.

THE DEMOCRATS' POST-MORTEM 2024

by William Aarnes

Graphic credit: Eniola Odetunde  Axios

That shamelessness could triumph is our shame.  

What tactic worked? Beyoncé’s walk-on song?

We have nobody but ourselves to blame.

Resentful people rule. So why inflame

them more with hopeful talk they hear as wrong?    

That shamelessness could triumph is our shame.  

You’d think by now we’d play a better game.    

Why hint at climate? Why not go along—

back fossil fuels? We have ourselves to blame.

The ads we ran were far too nice. So tame.

Why not something like Haitians don’t belong?

That shamelessness could triumph is our shame.  

Our nuanced stances came across as lame.    

Why didn’t we present ourselves as strong  

enough to bring—in days!—world peace? We’re to blame.

Next time let’s make attracting men our aim.

Why didn’t we bring up that golfer’s schlong?

That shamelessness could triumph is our shame.  

We have nobody but ourselves to blame.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

GRAB-'EM-BY-THE-PUSSY ℞: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

by Steven Shankman

The former guy and a detail of “Oedipus and the Sphinx” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, part of the collection at the Louvre in Paris. (Trump photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images; “Oedipus” image by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images via The Los Angeles Times) 

King Oedipus was certain he alone

Could fix it. When he heard his Thebans groan,

Then die en masse, he offered his expert

Advice. Blame Creon, blame the seer! Hurt

By the grim news, he vowed to find the cause

Of the great plague, to act at once, not pause

To look within himself. It soon was clear

He was himself the cause, his pride, his fear

Of self-examination. Sophocles

Saw Oedipus as Athens, her disease

A plague of arrogance. Our former leader

(Unlike King Oedipus), a bottom-feeder,

Has none of the ancient king’s nobility

But like King Oedipus he fails to see

He is the plague. Devoid of empathy,

Obsessed with money and celebrity,

He feeds red hats to haters. USA!

USA first! We’re winners, led the way

In COVID-19 deaths! The plague will stay

Until the voters make it go away. 

 

Steven Shankman holds the UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor of English and Classics Emeritus. His poems have appeared in a number of journals including Sewanee Review, Literary Imagination, Tikkun, Literary Matters, and Poetica Magazine. He is one of the co-editors of The World of Literature (1999), an anthology of world literature from a global perspective that contains some of his own poetic translations from Chinese, Greek, and Latin. His Penguin edition of Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad appeared in 1996. His chapbook of poems Kindred Verses was published in 2000. His book of poems Talmudic Verses (Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2023. He is the author of many scholarly books, including Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies (SUNY Press, 2010), which contains some of his own original poetry, and Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison (Northwestern UP, 2017).

QUESTIONS WE ASK OURSELVES

by Rachel R. Baum

A Moorpark College professor was charged Thursday with involuntary manslaughter and battery in the death of a Jewish protester who authorities said died after a confrontation with pro-Palestinian demonstrators at a rally in Thousand Oaks, CA.

 

Questions we asked ourselves 
   in 1930s Germany and in 2020s America:

Should we remove the mezuzahs from our doors? 
oh but you can see the shadow, the shape
the ghost mezuzah, clear as any sign. any target
 
Should we take off our Star of David necklaces? 
Christians’ crosses gleam from their throats
our naked tender throats invite, incite violence
 
Should we avoid attending demonstrations?
where angry people meet to blame 
Zionists or Jews, no difference to them
 
Should we hide our opinions, our politics?
even safe rooms we know are not safe
no matter, speak out or stay quiet, we die anyway.

 
Rachel R. Baum, a Best of the Net nominated poet, has tried unsuccessfully to avoid writing poems about current events. She lives in upstate New York with her dog Tennyson.

THE BETRAYAL OF TIKKUN OLAM

by Beth Heller

art by Nina Bonos

To repair the world, they said,

was our duty and our privilege
and the reason for our continued existence
 
Israel was supposed to be
the place where this work was embodied
and my body was put to use in its garden
 
I carried water in buckets
My 15 year old arms reaching toward trees
planted in the name of hope

We looked across the border
into barren desert and felt pride
And this was the mistake

This pride in green fields on one side
and desert on the other
We thought it meant they didn’t care

or couldn’t do the hard work of growing
We thought we had the right
and the power

And that THEY did not
And that THEY only wanted bombs 
and rage
 
This pride is the killer
the border, the dividing line 
between right and wrong

When all we had to do was step over 
a nonexistent line in the sand
drawn by meddlers and offer a hand
 
Now it is too late
The healing has flipped to genocide 
in no other name than power
The thing that was planted
was hate
on both sides of the fence
 
Tikkun Olam is for all of us
A responsibility and
a privilege

And the path is a walk
through a rain of blood
nurturing nothing

Same as it ever was
in this desert where humanity
has wandered far too long
 
Blame us
Blame them
Blame everyone

Or not, but walk
Walk that path 
towards oasis

The one fountain
contained in our bodies
everywhere

The same blood pumps through all of us
The same blood stains the ground
on either side of the fence

The same blood
calls out for 
peace

Beth Heller’s poetry has appeared in a variety of chapbooks and anthologies, including those of the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Houston Poetry Fest, Wild Word: Poets of the Gunnison Valley, and Fools Court Press, Houston, as well as newspapers and journals such as the Mountain Gazette, Fungi Magazine, and most recently and after a decades-long absence from public poeming, Medicine for Minds & Hearts: a MycoAnthology of poems inspired by a love of mushrooms, Fungi Press.  She moves around but is currently nested in Western North Carolina

A SLAP IN THE FACE

by Paul Hostovsky

One man slaps another
as hard as he can in the face.
A third runs up with a microphone
and asks the slapped man
how it feels to be slapped in the face.
And it feels like a slap in the face,
which the man begins to say but then
starts weeping, and his words
trail off as the camera goes in
for a close-up of the wet glisten
in the eyes of the weeping man.
How does it feel to be weeping? 
asks the man with the microphone 
while we sit at home and watch 
and weep for the weeping man
and rage at the man who slapped him,
who is standing somewhere off-camera
waiting for his turn to be asked
why he did the slapping and how
it felt and please pass the popcorn 
because as it turns out the man 
who slapped the slapped man 
is a slapped man himself, and though
he isn’t weeping now, we can feel ourselves 
feeling for the unweeping man who slapped 
the weeping slapped man who has just
slapped the man with the microphone—
and though we really can’t blame him,
we do blame him, and we don't blame
ourselves, and we keep on chewing.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

PURSUANT

by J.I. Kleinberg

National Transportation Safety Board investigators examine the recovered engine of the DHC-3 Turbine Otter, two weeks after it crashed off Whidbey Island last September.(NTSB) via The Seattle Times, August 24, 2023

     Stories seen in The Seattle Times, August 25, 2023:

“Lawsuits filed over seaplane crash off Whidbey in 2022”

“Maui County sues, claiming utility’s lines sparked blaze”

“Feds file lawsuit against SpaceX over hiring allegations”

“Group sues Kenmore over renter-protection ordinances”

 

In keeping with trending news,

I’ve decided I’m going to sue God.

It has become obvious and inarguable

that I bear no responsibility 

for my own fuckups or for my trespass

on others. Someone must be blamed,

and God, who seems mostly to do

nothing at all and has the deepest

of all deep pockets and all the time

in the world, is in the frame.

I trust that God will surrender

to authorities and will be held

without bail.

J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, and freelance writer. Her poetry has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Diagram, The Indianapolis Review, The Madrona Project, Sheila-Na-Gig, and many other print and online journals and anthologies worldwide. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA and online at chocolateisaverb.wordpress.com and has chapbooks forthcoming from Bottlecap Press, Ravenna Press, and Milk & Cake Press.

A WOMAN’S FACE

by Ana Doina

Tweet by Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad 9/16/22

Dark clouds covered the sky 

for months before the year 

Troy fell prey to a wooden horse.

 

Scientists now tell 

nothing had been growing 

for years before chieftains  

took their tribes

in search of better pastures,

warring one another for the right 

to greener valleys.

 

Homer decries 

the face of a beautiful woman

for the first war,

but tree stumps 

tell of darkness, drought;

the bowels of the earth tell

of roaming hordes 

drifting, losing their roots.

The underworld 

brings back abandoned hearths, 

jars still full of honey, tools, 

cradles, toys,

weapons

buried where a fighter fell.

 

The scientists can’t yet tell

what covered the sun, what 

drove the peaceful herdsman 

to take up arms and leave 

the simple habits 

of his pasture, 

but back there, where ancient empires

used to thrive, five thousand years on 

and, still, a woman’s face, 

even when veiled, 

is blamed. Is doomed.

Ana Doina, Romanian-born American writer living in New Jersey, left Romania during the Ceausescu regime. Her poems appeared in numerous print and online magazines, anthologies, and textbooks. She won Honorable Mention in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience contest in 2007, and three of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2002, 2003, and 2004. 

ROE V. WADE—THE PREQUEL, 1972

by Marianne Gambaro

I guess I can’t blame them

for feeling the way they do.

 

They weren’t there.

They didn’t see your ashen face

against the blood-soaked

laundry service sheets

on your dorm bed.

 

I wish I could remember your name—

Karen, I think,

or maybe Caryn—

your whitebread family

was pretentiously middle class

so would have spelled it differently,

not at all like that boy

who knocked you up.

Did he disappear fast when you told him!

 

You were a quiet girl, younger

than the rest of us freshmen,

smarter too,

with all your advanced placement classes.

 

I think it was your roommate who took you

to that bogus doctor in Pennsylvania,

who stayed with you

and finally called the RA

when she couldn’t stop the bleeding.

 

You never did come back to the dorm.

Did you come back to school?

Did you even live?

No one talked about you after you left,

at least not above a whisper.

 

I guess I can’t blame them

for feeling the way they do now.

But maybe you can.

 

Marianne Gambaro’s poems and essays have been published in print and online journals including Mudfish, CALYX, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Pirene's Fountain, Avocet Journal, Snowy Egret, and The Naugatuck River Review. She is the author of Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers (Finishing Line Press). She lives in verdant Western Massachusetts, with her talented photographer-husband and two feline muses.

DUPLEX: INHERITANCE

by Danielle Lemay

Studies in roundworms by biologists at the University of Iowa suggest that a mother’s response to stress can influence her children and her grandchildren, through heritable epigenetic changes. Their research, reported in Molecular Cell, demonstrated that roundworm mothers subjected to heat stress passed—under certain conditions—the legacy of that stress exposure not only to their offspring but, if the period of stress to which the mother was exposed was long enough, even to their offspring’s children. —Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, October 14, 2021

Study Suggests Maternal Stress Inherited

like passing down green eyes or curly hair.

 

          It’s not like passing down green eyes or hair;

          the scientists conducted studies with worms.

 

Scientists studied heat stress in worms,

so what does it matter to human mothers?

 

          Does it matter to human mothers

          that they will now be blamed for stress?

 

We know the moms will now be blamed for stress;

Of course. News stories manipulate us.

 

          Of course, news stories manipulate us.

          We learn from the world, starting with mom.

 

Perhaps we should calm the world, starting with mom.

Studies suggest maternal stress is inherited.

Author’s Note: I came across this story about heritable stress at the end of the work day, while I was quite stressed, and it made me think how I’ve probably passed stress to my children and how my mom was stressed and her mother before her, a whole lineage of stressed mothers, probably for as long as there have been Homo sapiens, or even worms. With each generation sharing stress with the next, like lines from one couplet to another in a duplex, I obviously had to write a duplex.

Danielle Lemay is a scientist and poet. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 and has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, ONE ART, Limp Wrist Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.

LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM

by Mickey J. Corrigan

What about the women who think
they are shore birds in startled flight
over the unruffled sand, eggs nestled
in jagged rock crevices slap-fed
by the bathe and bash sea?

Don't blame the shoreline, comfortable
in the lap and suckle, the eating away
the sloping of high grass dunes
hillcrests ever flattened by time
and growth spurts of starlit cities.

What about the clotted clapboard graves
narrow streets, neighborhoods blissful
in their ignorance, their pancake morning
sameness, their white cream frosting
smothering rich cakes of desire?

Don't blame the strong men barging
onto the ark, boarding forcefully
pillage in their knife eyes, hammy fists
full of weaponry, double strapped bullets
draped across broad hairy chests.

What about the meat-and-potato talk
in the pubs and pastel living rooms
all our fears shrunk to shadows
blued under hot white moons
gibboning in a lurching black?

Don't blame the suck and slur of the tide
days trailing by, forgetting themselves
in the flutterkick to a shared illusion
spoon-fed to us in flying dreams

the windswept sky like a blue door
that will swing shut behind us.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. 

SHOOTING THE LAST FEMALE WHITE GIRAFFE

by Martin Willitts Jr 

A white female giraffe, thought to the last of its kind in the world, has been killed by poachers, conservationists in Kenya have announced. The rare giraffes were discovered in 2016. Independent (UK), March 11, 2020

It has come to this:
everything wrong
is someone else’s mistake.

We need to resolve whatever we can.
We cannot let the world get set so far back
it appears intractable, beyond re-setting.

You have to be sensitive to have common sense.

Already, the polar ice caps have retreated,
exposing bare rock. We should have suspected
negative consequences when we tracked the dodo
into non-existence. Once, the sky was blackened
by carrier pigeons, and forest were crowded
out the light. Once, we practiced the love
we preached and summoned our decency.

Everything has led to this:

we consider it a triumph
if we live through each day.
We’ve turned the corner, turned our backs
when Adam and Eve cast out of Eden
never glanced back, learning why bother
preserving what you can’t ever keep.


Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award-winning The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 16 full-length collections including the 2019 Blue Light Award-winning The Temporary World. His recent book is Unfolding Towards Love (Wipf and Stock).

IN FIFTH GRADE HOME EC

by Megan Merchant

"The Art of the Hostage Negotiation" by Pia Guerra, TheNib

“Look what you made me do has emerged as the dominant ethos of the current White House.” —Jessica Winter, “The Language of the Trump Administration is the Language of Domestic Violence,” The New Yorker, June 11, 2018


I was taught how to microwave an egg, to transform
fabric into a skirt that fell well below my knees, but also

how to mend a tear, a fractured wing, a black eye. I pricked
my finger with scissors when it came time to cut out ads from

glossy magazines & construct the female body as nest. They
said to fill it with prayer, which hums the same as obedience.

Mine held a mixing bowl, silk scarf, pearls. I learned that
the joke about broken bones ends with—next time that bitch

better listen. I learned that some laughter requires permission,
but also how to pad & hide the red they kept calling fault,

while the boys next door sawed wood into loud splits just
so they could pound them back together, and when the nail

bent from too much force, they took turns saying look what

you made me do.

Megan Merchant is an Editor at Comstock Review. Her most recent book Grief Flowers (Glass Lyre Press) will be coming into the world this summer.