GOODBYE, KYIV

by Donald Sellitti

Goodbye, Kyiv and thank you
for the chance to stand in solidarity
with you at safe remove to
write of you with passion and with
anger in my slanted rhymes.

I cared a lot, I really did, and bared
my heart in lines I broke in
unexpected places, taking 
risks you wouldn’t 
understand.

You’re not a poet.
I was just as brave as you.

The moving zeitgeist though
has moved and left you 
far behind as winds of war
have blown again and lauded us with
new and fresher outrage for the
dead and dying. My anger needs
new tinder, not the charcoal
of your cities, for its burning.

I’m back inside my garden now
where themes of death and
inhumanity present themselves
in quaint and small tableaux.

A newly fallen tree; a spider that
I’d stepped on carelessly
with one leg tapping. Death is 
all around me as it is with you.

I might write of you again, Kyiv,
if something fresh emerges from
the blandness of unending war, 
a bomb as blinding as the sun 
perhaps, awash in metaphor.

But for now, goodbye Kyiv. 
Best wishes for the future,
really. 


Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.

WHEN MY GRANDSON LEARNS ABOUT JIMMY CARTER

by Jane Patten

But for a photo

Neither of you will remember

That day in front of Maranatha Baptist Church—

He, because he had held so many babies,

And you were one of many in 

Such a long and layered life. 

And you, because you were so new

That your life was in the moment.

But we others there rejoiced

How he reached out to hold you,

The aged hands against your soft ones,

His white hair in contrast to your brown,

His wide smile at your

Wide eyes.

 

You did not know then

How we traveled down the Georgia roads

Of open fields and flatter ground

Just to hear him teach 

And to shake his hand,

Or that that this elder holding you

Had made each numbered day

In a long life count—

Sage, peacemaker, 

Man of the earth,

Man of the people,

Who rolled up his sleeves

To work.

 

A little later, just a little later,

You will learn more about the man who

Showed the world how to live:

Use knowledge.

Have compassion.

Give.

Be present.

Be fair.

Have courage.

Care.

 

And with a photo we will begin:

There you are.

You’re with him.

After retiring and moving to Huntsville, Jane Patten decided to write about her adventures, including growing up in Delaware and her career as a teacher in rural Georgia. Her writings have been published in Out Loud HSV: A Year in Review anthologies, The New Verse News, and Reckon.

A NEW WINSTON CHURCHILL STATUE

by Tom Bauer

‘Self-indulgent’: Churchill statue plans stir public controversy, perplexity over motivation. Statue will be installed at Calgary’s McDougall Centre in 2023. —Livewire Calgary, August 27, 2022

Like deadly white mold, signs keep surfacing.

The skin of life develops pustules and blisters;

past echos of a fierce disease of dominance

resurfacing to blight the natural landscape.

Looking at faces I see hope and care.

I see landscapes of spontaneous growth

moving as one towards some shared outcome

each of us unconsciously wants to see.

Statues do not see, and will not see us through

their purpose, ownership of all we seem.

Their stone presence blocks our human landscape.

The greatest monument might come to be

feeling connected when we come together

and see the real enemy: the harms we cause.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

POEM FOR THE INAUGURATION

by Amy Elizabeth Robinson

So much blood

on his lie-drenched tongue.

Too much

to explore

in a poem. This poem

chooses

to turn in a new direction. 

It hears 

the heavy gates

of justice 

closing 

on his reign of infancy 

and terror.

It applauds 

the sharp-shinned 

hawks 

of empathy

who guard the precarious 

scales. This poem

will not forget, yet

it turns

towards 

the dawn. 

You know this dawn, this

tender filigree of

sun-soaked web. 

The spiders have been spinning

all through the night.

Their webs of diligence,

and promise, and 

shimmer of delight. This poem 

insists on making

a plea deal

with the moment. Guilty

of exhaustion, 

it ends its 

fractured sentences

with care. 

Amy Elizabeth Robinson is a poet, writer, historian, mother, and many other things. She did live in the eastern mountains of Sonoma County, California, but her collectively-owned community recently burned in the Glass Fire. She is a community leader at Flower Mountain Zen, and her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Literary Mama, West Marin Review, West Trestle Review, Vine Leaves, Rattle’s Poets Respond program, and elsewhere. She blogs at www.turningplanet.org.

CONGRATULATIONS

by Michael L. Ruffin

In a 5-4 ruling, the US Supreme Court sided with religious organizations in a dispute over Covid-19 restrictions put in place by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo limiting the number of people attending religious services. —CNN, November 26, 2020

Let us congratulate

the people of faith

who successfully

used the secular courts

and the secular Constitution

to secure their right

not to do what their

faith should compel

them to do willingly, 

voluntarily, and gladly: 

care about people.

Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, 3 Moon Magazine, and U-Rights Magazine.

DISTANCING

by David Rosenthal

David Rosenthal lives in Berkeley, California and teaches in the Oakland public schools. He's been a Pushcart Nominee and a Nemerov Sonnet Finalist. His collection The Wild Geography of Misplaced Things was published by White Violet Press.

IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

by Alejandro Escudé

When the so-called Black Death swept through northern Lincolnshire during the middle of the 14th century, sick and desperate people turned to the nearby Thornton Abbey's hospital for care. So many people died there that the members of the abbey's clergy were unable to prepare individual burials and instead had to bury the bodies in a so-called plague pit … But even though dozens of people were consigned together to a shallow mass grave over a period of just a few days, the remains were nonetheless treated with respect and received individual attention, according to a new study. Photo: A close-up shows part of the mass grave at Thornton, where the deceased were carefully positioned and placed in an organized manner without any overlapping. (Image: © University of Sheffield/Antiquity Publications Ltd.) —Live Science, February 18, 2019

Forty eight humanoid figures
on the archaeological diagram
of the Black Death burial site;
Thornton Abbey monks, patient,
pious, wrapped each individual,
performed last rites, conscious
of the space between negligence
and love, light separating all us
pilgrims making the trek out
to the country to die with hope
of afterlife. Why does the cross
resemble a key? Why is the answer
always more patience, a power
more like prayer than habit?
I won’t forgive some around me
despite our woes widespread.
Rat-psyche world, words heady
as a virus, our bodies buried
side by side so they don’t overlap
even in life. What is love but hope?
When one looses hope does
one loose the ability to love?
These monks didn’t. Wouldn’t.
I see their bony, medieval hands
sorting it all out in the dirt,
disease, blood, vomit, their
screams suppressed by prayer
and see the same monks in
the people wearing hazmat suits
today, leading those sick with
a new disease down the stairs
of an airplane, the disease itself
the shape of the airplane,
a cruise liner, an old couple
quarantined in their cabin,
taking it all in stride, they say,
unabated fear in their hands,
their jittery faces, those carried
away in China, yelling like
hostages, stowed away in clear,
plastic houses. Abbeys whose
hymns we’d rather not hear.


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.

AN INVISIBLE COMMUNITY OF LOVE AND CARING

by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard

At her regular spot on East 46th Street and Park Avenue, Nakesha Williams could often be seen surrounded by her belongings, including books that she was reading. Credit Luis Alfredo Garcia via The New York Times, March 3, 2018.

thrived around a grate on 46th street in New York City,
where people hurry past to their destinations. Nakesha,
a brilliant and promising student whose life spiraled
into homelessness because of mental problems
made this grate her dominion. Surrounded by a cart,

bags of clothing, books and papers, she read
Anna Karenina, The War of Worlds, and wrote letters,
refusing to stay in homeless shelters, because she knew
they were unsafe or to accept medical care because
she didn't want to be labeled. But there were people who

passed by and became her friends. P.J. who brought
her toiletries, a raincoat, leather boots, and underwear.
A street vendor, a Moroccan immigrant, who parked
his coffee cart near the grate made her a breakfast
of eggs, a bun and cranberry juice, and protected her

from a man who taunted her, blocked another one
from stealing her purse. Another vendor,
an Egyptian immigrant who operated a sandwich cart
prepared her favorite lunch, chicken and rice. An optician
who passed by left her small gifts, hand lotion,

socks, and sneakers. When Nakesha died, P.J. knew
that her body would have been buried with unclaimed bodies
in a mass grave, and so she had her cremated, placing her ashes
in a mother of pearl urn flecked with gold. An office worker
who learned of P.J.'s efforts collected donations for the funeral

service and sent P.J. an envelope with money
and 21 signatures. Nakasha's college friends
gathered at the grate and lit candles for
her memorial service, reminding us of the
light that too many pass by.

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard is the author of nine poetry books, two of which have received awards. She has also written a number of non-fiction books on social justice, human rights and women's rights. She is a former professor of Political Science and Poetry and is now a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Studies Program, Brandeis University.

IT IS BROKEN

by Janet Leahy

Because the veterans are waiting
their names on a list at V A hospitals.

Because we don’t know the stories
of the men and women who return from war.

Because we do not ask, do not visit
do not reach out.

Because the truth is illusive
and we stumble with language.

Because care is delayed
records falsified.

Because appointments are canceled
calls not returned.

Because when names fall from the wait list
someone receives a bonus.


Janet Leahy writes poetry in New Berlin, Wisconsin.  A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she has two collections of poetry, The Storm, Poems of War, Iraq and Not My Mother’s Classroom.

COLUMBINE, SANDY HOOK, TUCSON, AURORA, LITTLETON, BLACKSBURG, DECATUR (ALMOST), AND NOW THE D.C. NAVY YARD, ON AND ON

by Judy Kronenfeld

We've all seen, or heard of it--
some chemical  sparked by pain
does a crazed dance
in the brain, and the geek nephew
everyone thought a natural, can’t
face another year in school and
come September, comes unglued, almost froths
at the mouth by the breakfast bar,
spittle roping from his lips,
violently throws off the arms
that try to comfort him, and who knows
what next; the co-worker not yet
in the news, who’s had it up to here
plus, with more work and a benefits
cut, rampages in the Men’s,
pulling sinks from the wall
and smashing them, or goes home
where his wife mysteriously falls
and breaks her arm. O.K. they’ve always
had a tendency, drank too much,
yelled at their wives or parents,
bullied their classmates or younger
brothers, locked themselves
in their rooms; O.K. some of us
tried, we really did, got them
to counselors, it’s not our fault,
is it, if they refused to go,
or quit their meds? And some of us
closed our eyes because familial
ties make anything familiar,
and the desire to protect can blind,
and some of us sternly disallowed
the inappropriate—“Pull up those
bootstaps, kid! Right-face!”—
and some of us kicked the fellow
to the side of the road. And some of us—
lots of us—have no way to recognize
what goes awry, ourselves already brutalized,
and so many of us have no way
to guide, no knowledge, no resources,
not a dime to spare to soothe
a crazy head. We don’t help
these people—we give them
guns.


Judy Kronenfeld's most recent collections of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of  Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, winner of The Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize for 2007 (Antrim House, 2012). Recent anthology appearances include Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012) and Love over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals such as Calyx, Cimarron Review, The American Poetry Journal, Fox Chase Review,  Foundling Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Natural Bridge, New Verse News, The Pedestal, Poetry International, Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and The Women’s Review of Books.