OLD MAN IN THE BUNKER

by Robert Darken

Five-year-old Vladimir Putin with his mother, Maria, in July 1958.

You too were once a child.

Learned to lace boots, the rabbit round the tree.

Slung school books in a sack, 

crunched snow underfoot along the river,  

the Neva black enough to swallow dawn.

Rain dripped from the larches.  

There was only you–

your brothers ghosts before you were born.

One died under siege,

a casualty of co-conspirators:

Nazis, starvation, diphtheria.

You learned German, loved the clarity of Marx.

When the many act as one, they are an unstoppable engine.

Be sure to bury dissenters.

The bond of unity is their blood. 

Your grandfather knew who to serve:  

in the scullery, spiraling skin

from potatoes, simmering Stalin’s own soup.  

And now there is you: eyes lidded like hangman’s hoods, 

a smile like razor wire. Fingers that drum 

commands to missiles and men.

There: another apartment block, its insides clawed open.

There: the wet pavement, the body of a mother 

in her bright kerchief,

Beside her the body of a child, 

rain falling on its open hand.

Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and Red Eft Review.

SILVER AND GOLD

by Donna Katzin

On April 25, 2023, the world lost beloved artist and activist Harry Belafonte after nearly a century of barrier-breaking music and work for social justice.  He played a major role in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and anti-apartheid movement, and campaigns at home and abroad. He lived only five years after the death of his renowned friend, Hugh Masekela, who has been described as "the father of  African jazz."  Masekela gave voice to the struggle for freedom in South Africa—and around the world.

 

Their kindred cries

pierced our consciousness,

awakened us with irresistible reveilles

of "Day’O" and blasts of a sleepless horn

on two thirsting sides

of the same ocean.

 

On Calypso waves

and thunderstorms of jazz,

they bore us across seas and continents,

linking melodies and arms with others

in the push and pull of brothers,

igniting voices of a new time.

 

With silver tongue and golden trumpet,

they faced apartheid, Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow—

unblinking in the face of whips and bullets,

released our inner rivers when we tired,

rekindling the fire in our blood

and our rebellious hearts.

 

They filled our streets with relentless rhythms,

marched with Black miners, laborers hungering

for the promises that gleamed

like ripe bananas in the sun,

mended our torn souls with

lullabies and love songs.

 

Today they are together, once again,

and we are left with their legacies

and indefatigable rhythms.

We can listen, hear them

—Harry and Hugh—

raising hell in heaven.

Donna Katzin is the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest, which facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans.  She co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners, which helps feed and empower impoverished mothers and children in Nicaragua, and serves on the board of Community Change in the U.S.  A proud wife and mother, she is also a contributor to New Verse News and author of With These Hands—poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.

ABEL ASKS HIS BROTHER WHAT CAME OVER HIM

by Bonnie Naradzay

CAIN ET ABEL (CAIN AND ABEL), 1960, an original color lithograph by Marc Chagall designed for and published by VERVE for the volume Dessins pour La Bible.

after Agnieszka Tworek

 

If I gave the best when I offered my sheep

while your harvest fell short of the mark,

why turn against me? There was still time–

 

Now my blood cries out from the ground

you have claimed as your own. You know

the land mine you rigged to me will explode.

 

Alas, the loaf of bread I’d held, this pool of blood.

How could you choose to bludgeon my cows,

to wreak your vengeance against them too?

 

We are brothers; yet you attacked my humanity,

dragged me with your arms. Let me feel the snow

fall across my face as I say goodbye to life.  

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), Potomac Review, and others. Her essay on friendship was published in 2020 in the anthology Deep Beauty. For many years she has convened poetry salons with homeless people and with residents of retirement communities in the Washington DC area.

DISCONNECT

by Rick Gray

Image by Joe

In this dishonest script, my brother,
We must pretend no one is listening in,
and we are not men, but children
Put to sleep with lullabies so sweet
You’ll want to scream
When the next bombing hits
and our connection breaks into a
quagmire of static.


Rick Gray served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and currently teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. He was a finalist for the Editor's Award at Margie, and has an essay that will be appearing in the forthcoming book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock.