WHAT POPE LEO MIGHT BE THINKING

by Lynne Barnes

Your mother was ill and away

when you were very little.

Did this mean that one of your

foundation beams was laid out as clay,

creating that listing psychic gait

that seems to have hobbled you

since toddlerhood?

 

Your early language threw darts

of defense against harm inside

your family’s nest of punishment

alternating with neglect.

You began sharpening knives

of revenge, destructiveness

back then, just to survive.

As you matured, you were mentored

by those who were traumatized like you.

 

Oh, if only your resilient spirit had been

gifted just a little more warmth

at your first hearth, perhaps your sense of

self-worth would not have become pea-sized,

inside and protected by, a hot air balloon.

Heated molecules of fear inflate

that bubble of space around your core.

 

Your borders are so thin and vulnerable

that you must strike first, slur people away

to feel safe, and your re-tells of conversations

all have others referring to you as sir.

 

You use loser, lowlife, liddle, lightweight,

for others. And for yourself you say

tremendous, perfect, winner, greatest,

and speak with clueless pride

that other humans kiss your ass.

 

You, dear sir, learned so early to strike first,

before anyone could breach your fragile border,

see the size of your ego infirmity,

but now, power has enriched, fused your childhood’s

uranium grains into a global nuclear cruelty.

 

We must fight, drain your power, disarm you whose wounds

block you from the language of human love and care.

As we face off we’re terrified, but also Sad!—witnessing

a fellow human walled off from the beauty of empathy as prayer.

Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

CRISIS AT THE HEDGES

by Lisa Seidenberg

In my town they dislike the falling leaves.

Taking up real estate reserved

for pristine green lawns

And tenderly tended flowerbeds.

Crossing borders in disheveled groups,

no respect for property lines,

or the privileged space of fenced-off estates.

Who are they—these usurpers?

Where did they come from?

Spending the day lounging in the sun

as if they had nowhere to go.

Can’t they apply for residency

like proper foliage?

I watch with satisfaction as armies 

of landscapers chase them 

with their high-powered blowers

Into waiting trucks and vans

to be hauled away and out of sight.

Thankfully, the workers, 

most of whom are immigrants,

are there to take care of the problem.

Lisa Seidenberg is a writer and filmmaker residing in coastal Connecticut where there has been a noticeable influx of leaves falling this Autumn, due to the lack of rain. Her recent writing has appeared in Gyroscope Review, Atticus Review, Asymptote Journal, The NewVerseNews, One Art: A Journal of Poetry. She is currently a peer poetry reviewer for Whale Road Review.

IMMIGRANT’S SONG

by Jim Burns

Riots broke out in Philadelphia after Nativists burned down a Catholic church in May 1844. This lithograph shows the Know-nothings (in the top hats) clashing with the state militia.

Out of the vapors
of the past
I come
to sing you a song
of the poor and huddled masses
who have gathered at your gates.

I am the inscrutable Chinese,
one of 20,000 from my land
who for a dollar a day built your
grand railway of the golden spike.

I am the drunken Irishman,
the mobbed-up Italian,
the ignorant Pole
who sweated and died
to forge the iron and erect
your palaces of steel.

I am the Shylock Jew 
whose sweatshop toil
made the clothes on your back,
but whose financial acumen you blame
for relieving you of your earnings.

I am the the suspected spy,
the German who had to change my name
to protect me from your Klan
when first our countries fought.

I am the devious Japanese whose family
were reviled as turncoats
and dwelt in your internment camps
while in Europe I fought and died for you.

I am the wild-eyed son of Middle Eastern deserts
denied entry into your land 
and murdered in your cities
because of the evil of a few
who, like me, pray to Allah.

I am of those deemed not human at your southern border,
who braved deserts and human predators
to pick your crops, roof your homes,
tend your lawns,
do the jobs your sons won’t do.

Think of me as you will,
but Lady Liberty, 
raise your torch to me.
I am America,
I am you.

Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana and received degrees from both Indiana State University and Indiana University. He then spent most of his working years as a librarian. A few years into his retirement he turned to a decades old interest in writing, especially poetry, and in the last two years has been fortunate enough to have published 18 poems and two short pieces of nonfiction online, in print or both. He lives with wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.

THE ROLE OF THE POET

by Bonnie Naradzay

Israeli soldiers will not face criminal prosecution for the death of an elderly Palestinian-American man who was stopped at a checkpoint, dragged from a car, bound and blindfolded and then left unresponsive on the ground overnight after apparently suffering a heart attack due to his rough treatment. —AlJazeera, June 14, 2023. Photo: Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank village of Qafin on May 30, 2023 [File: Majdi Mohammed/AP via AlJazeera]

I am thinking of the role of the poet

is it to read through the morning news

and try on the horrors of people’s lives

like today reading again about 

the 78year old American stopped 

by IDF soldiers in the West Bank at night

during a “routine incursion” in the village

of Jiljilya since after the man was dragged

from his car for 200 meters he was gagged 

his wrists bound was left face down for hours

in a cold warehouse with others called 

“detainees” by the news report that said

after hours like that he was found dead 

but his death could not be determined 

to be caused “specifically” by anything

the soldiers had done after leaving him 

which was their routine since he was also 

Palestinian and so the case was closed 

or is the job of the poet to imagine being 

forced to cross the border into Belarus 

or Mexico at gunpoint or watch again 

the video of the Greek Coast Guard

rounding up asylum seekers, including

young children, then taking them to sea,

abandoning them on a raft.  Or is the poet

called on to describe the patterns of leaves 

as someone suggested to me without irony.

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems haver appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, and many other sites. She was awarded the New Orleans MFA’s poetry prize:  a month’s stay in the castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  For many years, Bonnie has led regular poetry sessions at shelters for the homeless and at a retirement center, all in Washington, D.C.

350 PAGES

by Thomas J. Erickson

i

The battle for Madrid [during the Spanish Civil War]… was decided in lecture halls, laboratories, and classrooms at the sprawling campus of University City… Brigaders stacked books in the windows as shields from snipers; bullets usually did not penetrate past the 350th page, so they sought out the thickest tomes of German philosophy and Indian metaphysics. —Dan Kaufman, The New York Review, February 24, 2022, on The International Brigades by Giles Tremlett. 

 

If a book can stop a bullet

then it stands to reason that words

can unite a world in ways

that are surprising

to its sense of normalcy

 

On page 351, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

and Grossman were just getting started

 

If only the power of the grand Russian novels

of war and peace and crime and punishment

and life and fate could prevail across the borders,

from east to west.

 

Of course, that’s not going to happen, I think,

as I lie in bed and check Babel’s Red Cavalry

for thickness.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His latest book is Cutting the Dusk in Half by Bent Paddle Press.

WHAT MOTHERS KNOW ABOUT WAR

a pantoum by Sandra Anfang

"I’ve never liked my daughter’s stroller. I put it on the baby registry without trying it in person and when it arrived the dimensions felt wrong. The button that was supposed to facilitate one-handed folding did not facilitate one-handed folding. But over the weekend I saw a photograph of this stroller—the same style and color—sitting on the platform of a Polish train station, and this was the thing that finally obliterated what was left of my journalistic steel and made me sob about Ukraine. More than a million Ukrainian refugees have now poured into neighboring Poland, most of them women and children. When Polish mothers learned of this, it seems, they went to the railway stations and border crossings where the refugees were arriving, and they began dropping off baby strollers. A photojournalist [Francesco Malavolta/AP] covering the conflict snapped a picture of seven empty ones waiting at the Przemysl Glowny station [at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland]." —Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, March 9, 2022

I never liked my daughter’s stroller

I bought it unseen from an online store

when the box arrived I opened it and cried   

somehow the dimensions felt all wrong 

 

I bought it unseen from an online store

gave it to the family across the square

somehow the dimensions felt all wrong

today I found it—same model, same make

 

I gave it to the family across the square

I felt ungrateful for I had so much

today I found it—same model, same make 

abandoned with others at the Medyka station

 

I felt ungrateful for I had so much

the sight of it triggered deep despair

abandoned with others at the Medyka station

waiting for refugees’ lives to begin 

 

the sight of it triggered deep despair

as we welcome the mothers—one million and more

waiting for their lives to begin again

storming the border, babes at their breasts

 

As we welcome the mothers—one million and more

who pour into Poland on tides of tears

storming the border, babes at their breasts

all that they own strapped like mail to their chests

 

They pour into Poland on tides of tears

packed strollers await them, fit for a prince

infants strapped like mail to their chests

piled blankets and diapers to warm their new lives

 

Packed strollers await them, fit for a prince

refugees flow in wearing thin cloth coats

piled blankets and diapers to warm their new lives

symbiotic survival—mothers’ hard truth of war

 

Refugees flow in wearing thin cloth coats

after heat was shut off, the water lines cut

symbiotic survival—mothers’ hard truth of war

starved by the greed of the Russian state

 

after heat was shut off, the water lines cut

women were forced to flee and to hide

starved by the greed of the Russian state

victims of men’s urges, tossed like ashes

 

women were forced to flee and to hide

and after their flight, raped and tossed again

victims of men’s urges, tossed like ashes

their bodies are beachheads where battles are won

 

after their flight, raped and tossed again

their bodies as shelter, as instruments of war

their bodies are beachheads where battles are won

the things we don’t mention that all mothers know

 

their bodies as shelter, as instruments of war

I never liked my daughter’s stroller

the things we don’t mention that all mothers know

when the box arrived, I opened it and cried

 

Sandra Anfang is a much-published poet, poetry teacher, and visual artist who lives in Northern California. She's been hosting a monthly poetry series since 2013. She walks and writes daily to process her overconsumption of news stories. Her grandparents hailed from Minsk and Budapest, and she feels a deep connection to Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

SUNFLOWER PEOPLE

by Robert Knox 

You hide in the subway tunnels

of life’s unending nightmares

You walk, or ride, or hire cabs for thousand-dollar journeys

     to a border crossing

that is no longer open

You struggle down roads, carrying your baggage,

your children,

who belong not only to you,

but to your country,

      and to us all

 

You shelter in rubbled cities,

holes blown in once-solid blocks

of home and hearth,

sacred refuges that once housed human bodies and souls

by the hundreds,

people no more, nor less breakable than any of us,

 

left abandoned and vulnerable,

now that death has come to a land

     where sunflowers bloomed

 

You, who flee

and carry one another’s burdens

along pitted roads to the hope of a tomorrow

somewhere safer than today,

that haven

we have all promised ourselves.

That earthly haven

in which we may celebrate another spring,

another birthday of the earth

 

You carry our lives in your journey

as well as your own,

and those of your loved ones, your ancestors,

and the memory of ours as well,

There is room enough, I know, in your souls,

     to carry all these

 

as there is world enough for you

in ours

Come, walk in our shoes as well:

there is world enough for all. 

Robert Knox is a poet, novelist, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of House Stories, a recently published collection of linked short stories. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site. His essay on Putin's war on Ukraine is up on Medium.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY8 MARCH 2022

by Mary K O'Melveny

Today, please celebrate all

the women we have lost.

In every war and cease fire.

On slaver’s ships. On thirsty

desert treks to walled borders.

In back-alley rooms without

anesthesia. Locked in basements,

without papers or escape routes.

Asleep in bed. Hitching a ride.

Nursing bruises or starving babies.

 

Our losses rise like mountain peaks.

Ukrainian women huddle in subways,

clutch children, family pets, a few

hastily gathered objects from lives

they will likely never know again

or tattered photographs of loved ones

they may never see again. Even in

safer worlds, friends die of causes

that repurposed money, refocused

attention could have remedied.

 

Some fade away from neglect,

inattention, dreams downsized

by school guidance counselors,

religious zealots, patriarchy.

Others drop dead without a whimper

on a sun-dappled afternoon. One friend’s

memories vanished by midnight

stroke; another’s by subtle daily

erasures. Open our mouths wide in

praise of all. Let songbirds loose.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

CHESS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

by Claire Matturro

We ran and jumped and bounced

over monkey bars in sandy school yards

then raced inside at the bell’s

shrill scream and covered our heads

as we crouched beneath wooden

desks that smelled of crayons and

fruit punch while outside

the open jalousie windows

cardinals and mockingbirds sang

their sweet wild songs

as soulless men hid

missiles in Cuban silos and

played chess with the end of the world

but we didn’t worry

because we were seven

and our mothers stockpiled

food and juice in pantries

and our fathers turned

the TV low so not to wake us.

 

We ran and jumped and lobbed

volley balls in sandy school yards

and the slap of leather against

our hands made us laugh

while soulless men

tested nuclear bombs and

played chess with the end of the world

but we didn’t care

because we were thirteen

and besides one of us had

a left-over bomb shelter

in her broad backyard where

we once played dolls and drank

canned juices from stockpiles

hidden behind concrete and steel.

 

I no longer run or jump and

the sandy school yard is silent

with pandemic and children gone

inside and the bomb shelter

long traded for a swimming pool

and its stockpiled juices tossed

into landfills yet soulless men still

play chess with the end of the world

as troops mass at borders and

the hurricane which will find

me in my glass house

breeds silently in melting ice

and the oil keeps flowing and

the coal keeps burning and

the missiles stockpiled in places

where children hide

their heads under thin arms

guarantee the collateral damage

we’ve learned to turn away from

as cardinals and mockingbirds

go quiet in the world outside my windows.

Claire Matturro has been a journalist, a lawyer, and a legal writing teacher at Florida State University and University of Oregon. She is the author of seven novels, including a legal thriller series published by HarperCollins, and is the co-author of a recent novel. She is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and lives in Florida.

TWENTY-ONE WORDS ON A WINDY NIGHT

by Penelope Scambly Schott

BBC Graphic January 26, 2022

Empty bird feeder

starts banging,

keeps banging

against my window.

News report:

troops at borders.

Birds and I

share bad dreams.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

FOSSIL FUGUE

by Dustin Michael

Researchers in Australia have confirmed the discovery of Australia's largest dinosaur species ever found. Australotitan cooperensis was about 80 to 100 feet long and 16 to 21 feet tall at its hip. It weighed somewhere between 25 and 81 tons. For comparison, the Tyrannosaurus rex was about 40 feet long and 12 feet tall. Photo: Scott Hocknull and Eromanga Natural History Museum Director Robyn Mackenzie hold a model of what the humerus of the dinosaur would have looked like next to the fossilized remains of the humerus. Credit: Eromanga Natural History Museum via NPR,June 8, 2021.

What is the price for a puppet show with 

fewer puppets but more stories? Always 

the same story endlessly staged, 

every age’s marionettes and the same 

tired tale, a shifting cast of shadows 

behind the age-old screen.

Study any desert, and behold 

that same sun blistering their backs,

baking their bodies and bones, the breadcrumbs 

of immigrants, their grim trail markers and that same

the docile plodding rhythm, a drumbeat of footsteps 

from the fossil record ringing through time. 

Here is another variation. 

They walked, shielding their young 

with their own bodies, their necks 

like cracked leather, craned high

toward new skies, the breath

of hunger, thirst, and danger fogging 

each footfall, their scaled feet disturbing 

the dust, scattering already ancient rocks, stale

wind whistling faint melody in the world’s eternal 

fugue.

The news reports these dinosaur bones came 

from creatures as big as basketball courts

whose Patagonian ancestors crossed connected 

continents and arrived in Australia. 

No boats to be turned back, no papers to be denied, 

no armed agents or bureaucratic barriers to halt them—

only land in stretches longer 

than even their tales and necks,

and vengeful heat, and hungry earth

whispering Not to worry, not to worry, 

even if they never find all of your bones

the story of your journey 

will always be retold. 

Faith-based groups are working to protect migrants and honor those who have died while attempting to cross the southern border from Mexico into the United States. Humane Borders is an organization that sets up water stations in the Arizona desert on routes used by migrants to cross the border. The group also works with Pima County chief medical examiner Dr. Gre Hess to document the discovery of bodies of those who died on the journey. According to the Associated Press, Hess's office received the remains of 79 border-crossers this year as of late May. In 2020, Humane Borders documented 227 deaths, the highest in a decade after a record hot and dry summer in Arizona. Activists fear this year will be even worse. —Newsweek, July 5, 2021. Photo: Unidentified bones found in the desert and suspected to be that of a migrant are assembled together for examination at the Pima County Medical Examiner's forensic labs in Tucson, Ariz. Credit: Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press via The Journal, July 5, 2021.

Dustin Michael lives in Georgia and teaches college writing and literature. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and his favorite dinosaur is stegosaurus, not that anyone asked.

OH BEAUTIFUL

 by Shyla Shehan

The last we saw our king his head was deep 

in the crotch of some alabaster city gleam 

tweeting love notes to his adoring fans

twisting our once beloved patriot dream. 

While our halcyon skies are shrinking

spilling grief across our amber plains

he gathers up his Proud Boys

and hides his capital gains.

Our borders littered with families separated

huddled masses he has reviled

and presses portentous his own agendas

his unwrought thoughts run wild.

America. America! You are still beautiful 

and mine. There is space inside my heart—

a hope for you, again, to shine.

As our thoroughfares of freedom are stretched 

thin across from all cities to the sea.

America, I beg of you now!

Please show your grace his leave. 

Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo who has spent the majority of her life in the midwest. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska and lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband, children, and four wily cats. Shyla spends most days tending to a healthy household and is pleased with her role as Managing Editor for The Good Life Review.

FROM PAX AMERICANA TO PAX AMERIQUE

by Joan Leotta

Do you recall the era—
Pax Americana—
after World War II when American passports
were king? We traveled everyone, alone, in groups.
some discerning some disdaining.
Our journeys were bathed
in the glow of Pax Americana,
peace to the world, good will toward us, a protection
bestowed on us not merely by troops sweeping in on
winds of war, but by good will
floating on the gentle breeze
of peace through Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift.
I studied then, traveled, picked up
mail at American Express, secure
in the knowledge my country uber alles
had molded a peace so all could
move freely, safely, from place to place.
Our new era, not even dignified by Latin,
instead simply pas Amerique, non ai americani
No, no , no, no. Now we can’t go—anywhere.
We are barred from their sacred
places, our passports, worthless paper.
Can we console ourselves with
America the beautiful? Would that we could.
Instead, pandemic hotspots
boil over from sea to shining sea.
Our purple mountains offer no safe majesty.
Pax America no longer applies within
our borders or without.
Shootings, riots in the streets, virus
feverishly consuming young and old.
All of this, all of this in four short years.
Survival is still within our reach,
it takes only a small act of faith, kindness,
and reliance on the science
God has given us—wear a mask,
wash your hands, stay apart.
Even in Dante’s time, these things were
known, yet so many ignore them,
marching like lemmings into
ventilators.
Pax Americana,
how I mourn your passing.

Joan Leotta is a writer and performer. She writes about and performs tales of food, family, and strong women—and is often touched by  how moments in history affect the daily lives of ordinary people.

BRITAIN AND I

by Nina Parmenter

Image source: Meijburg & Co

Back, back we go,
Britain and I,
back to those heady days
when we sat in our studies
gruff and moustachioed
and barked at the children.

Out, out we go,
Britain and I,
out to our verandas
in rakish hat-and-slacks combos
to take pot shots at Johnny Foreigner.
Ruff-ruff-huzzah!

Off, off we go
Britain and I,
to shake hands with petty despots
and trade their spice and silks
for gold, favours
and averted eyes.

So goodbye, Gerhardt,
farewell, François,
and so long, bland, borderless tomorrow.
Hand me my hunting stick, Britain,
and let us stride on
to glory.

Nina Parmenter is a mother to two busy boys. In her spare time, she is a marketing manager. Her poetry has appeared in Light and Lighten up Online, and on her blog, itallrhymes.com. She lives in Wiltshire, UK, and is currently working on her first children’s novel.

GOOD FENCES MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

by Gil Hoy



Last night I dreamed, 

workers painting my house

Brought all of their children

to work in the morning

With brushes and buckets 

of water, to wash and to clean

To scrub and to scour
the faces,

Like paintings on canvas,

That had appeared overnight
on the walls of my house.

Black faces, white faces,
yellow, red and brown

Faces of every hue and tone,
every size and shape,

And the children all the while
washing and scrubbing

But never hurting the faces.

And me, all the while watching
the children hard at work.

And then, in my dream,
the parents and their children

Began to tear down the Wall
surrounding my house.

By the end of the day,
they had torn down every boulder

And every stone, torn down
the ground-swell beneath,

Until nothing remained of my wall
but green grass and brown earth.

And me, all the while watching
the families hard at work

With a growing sense
of contentment

Coming from deep inside.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, The Penmen Review, I am not a silent poet, TheNewVerse.News and Clark Street Review.

CASAS SEGURAS: A MESSAGE FROM THE CARAVAN

by Sarah Edwards

Elvira Choc, 59, Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal's grandmother, rests her head on her hand in front of her house in Raxruha, Guatemala, on Saturday 15 December 2018.) Jakelin was the first of two Guatemalan children detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection who died in government custody this month. Felipe Alonzo Gomez died in custody on Christmas Eve. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros via The Independent [UK])

You live in safe houses,
get mail in a box outside your door.
You walk on streets, paved and lit.
Your homes have walls and roofs,
bedrooms to wrap babies in blankets,
kitchens that smell like clean.

We live in no houses.
Our address is the same for all,
Pueblo San Fronteras
Village Without Borders.
Streets are numbered by how far
we can push them ahead each day,
by what work we find
for money to eat,
buy space to sleep.

We travel on paths worn down
as thin as our sandals,
carry barefoot children on our backs.
We make a caravan together
because it is fearful to walk alone,
speak and not be heard.
We seek what you call asylum.
To us, it is asilo, a home safer
than we have ever known.

Step after step, day after day,
hope of welcome paves our way.
Then we will get mail,
build walls and roofs,
bedrooms to wrap babies in blankets,
kitchens that smell like clean.

Sarah Edwards is a retired pastor in the United Church of Christ with many publication credits, including two books of poetry, Pandora, Let's Talk and the newly-released What the Sun Sees. She is outraged at the treatment and disregard for people who want to find safety and make a life in the United States. The so-called freedoms that we espouse are only figments of our egocentric imagination unless we understand them to belong to everyone.