IF I HAD A HAMMER

by Akua Lezli Hope

AI image… assisted by Akua Lezli Hope

all over this land oh over this Land all over this land/ we are dissolute and

unwise we are fractured and fracturing we are falling failing falling/ into an

exegesis of convenience/ of a grasping not at straws but at unreason/ creeping

decrepitude in our body politic/ a petulant dementia/that sanctions Breaking

and entering Breaking and entering    harm/ waging one million tiny Wars

inflaming warped hearts/ causing this conflagration that burns votes and

batters husbands in their homes/ endangering everything in this too late

hour/where we teeter totter slip on blood  blood pooling  bleeding

everywhere/ the deaths of our defenders responders resisters/ our climate

screaming at us slaying us/ flooding the water-full drying the drought stricken

shaking the fractured earth burning tinder-full  forests/ all at once  all fiercely

now/ and somehow I weep for that old man alone at home/struck in the head

and falling                down

  

Author's Note: On October 28, Paul Pelosi, 82. was attacked by a man undertaking “a suicide mission” to kill his wife, speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi.  The nightly news has been assaultive, as 33 million Pakistanis face despair UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “I have seen many humanitarian disasters in the world, but I have never seen climate carnage on this scale.”  1.3 million in Nigeria are displaced by floods. Somalia, like much of the Horn of Africa, is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Following the failure of four successive rainy seasons more than 7 million of the country’s 15 million people are experiencing severe hunger. Experts warn that the next rainy season between October and December will also likely fail, pushing several parts of the country into famine before the end of the year, unless aid efforts are urgently ramped up.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, & Best of the Net, Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations.

KARMA PLUS

by David Radavich





See what pure narcissism
brings forth: a great rot
in the communal apple.

The body politic
spoils top to bottom
and back again.

Every inequity
becomes deadly
as a snake.

We have long since
been thrown out
of the garden.

We roam streets
like zombies
in search of medicine
and care.

How can we be
one family

and not hug
our neighbors
as ourselves?

Pathogens know
our vulnerabilities
and strike
with clear knives.

In the dark night

we become
what we do
for one another.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe.

THE BODY POLITIC

by John J. Brugaletta


How all dissensions strip the body politic

and cast each virtue into festered stench.

Is this a stammer of our history
or the corroded end of moral life?


Our garden is unweeded, and the gorge

gives rise to venomed cates and fetid lies.

Where stand the heroes, heroines to salve
our running sores with clean and dauntless truths?


They speak despite the tide of predators

who seek their heads to dangle at our gates.

But still carnations kiss the air with scent,
birds build, the friendly sun still shines.


And still we counter blows unflinchingly.



John J. Brugaletta is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at California State University, Fullerton, where he edited South Coast Poetry Journal for ten years. He has published over 370 poems in 75 venues and has six collections of his poetry in print, the latest of which is Peripheral Visions (Negative Capability Press, 2017). A seventh volume, Selected Poems, is in press with Future Cycle Press. X.J. Kennedy has called his selected poems "a vital contribution to American poetry."