THERE IS NOT ENOUGH SNOW

by David A. Goodrum

by Daryl Woods at Dreamstime

To cover the battlefields.

To soften the blows.

To fill the caskets with snowmen.

No blizzard to interfere

with news transmission, offer

the comfort of momentary quiet.

 

The country drifts

into one war then another.

There will never be enough snow 

to blanket the lies of politicians,

which seep out like the blood

of eviscerated rabbits.

Whichever way the wind blows

there is never enough snow

to level-fill the trenches.

There is always a hollow

a depression that shows

where the civilians are buried.

David A. Goodrum is the author of Abrupt Edges (Bass Clef Books, 2025), Vitals and Other Signs of Life (The Poetry Box, 2024) and Sparse Poetica (Audience Askew, 2023). Recent journal publications have appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal (which awarded his poem “Winter Inquisition” a Pushcart Nomination), Cirque, and Triggerfish Critical Review, among others. David lives in Corvallis, Oregon. 

DONALD TRUMP’S BIRTHDAY PARADE AS IF CELEBRATED IN GAZA

by Roberta Batorsky

U.S. Army photo by Bernardo Fuller • Public domain

In orderly formation 

the parade’s vanguard 

advances:

a scrawny teen carries 

a flag depicting an empty bowl,

leads a battalion of stiffly marching, 

starved children.

The main detachment 

follows. These children, 

missing various limbs, 

some aided by crutches or 

in wheelchairs sport head bandages,

slings, plaster casts or eye patches,

proceed down the fairway 

in wobbly, uneven rows.

The rear guard, made up of

several pint-sized caskets,

is solemnly wheeled 

past the reviewing station,

its tail end brought up 

by a lone small girl

soulfully bugling “Taps.”

These casualties-

heart-rending results

of senseless war;

We must break ranks 

with our generals,

blend into their procession,

embrace fully their humanity;

no other way.

Day is done

Gone the sun

Thanks and praise

For our days

As we go

This we know

God is nigh

Roberta Batorsky is a Biology teacher, poet and freelance science writer. She has published poems in Fine-lines and Heron Clan and is working on her first poetry book. Her science blog is https://solipsistssoiree.blogspot.com and her instagram is RobertaBatorsky_poetry.

THE BURIAL BOYS OF EBOLA

by Alexa Poteet

Sherdrick Koffa, estranged from his family because he helped burn bodies during the Ebola outbreak. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times, December 10, 2015

In Monrovia,
the wakes used to go on for weeks.
The living applied ointment to the dead
with gentle fingertips, kissed
their eyelids shut. Scrubbed under fingernails,
pressed through earrings. Sewed garments of gold, green
for those who would never dress themselves again. Bodies
were not washed but made new and dirtless
for the next life. Their pockets stuffed

with coins. Working men
went days without food to buy
mahogany caskets, marble markers
and plots large enough for houses.
On Decoration Day, brigades
of families brought bleach and good towels
to polish the hand-chiseled tombstones.
This, Liberia once said, was how to cross
into the next life. To keep ghosts
from weeping at your bedside in the night.
There were no burial boys then, you see.

Now—goggled, gloved, otherplanetary—they arrive. Breath
and sweat trapped in a terrarium of plastic. The medical
membrane that keeps good in and bad out. Underneath,
the pockets of their oil-stained clothes
brim with matchbooks. The tools
of this trade are plain.  The boys don’t cry
anymore because the masks fog in the heat. Burning,
the state says, is the only way

The mourners scream, beat their heads with fists
for children set ablaze. Their hair curling into
charred sulfuric tendrils, skin blistered
black.Their pooled blood—an acrid human ore.
Burial boys is a misnomer;
usually, they don’t have to.

Guardians of a safety no one can bear
to want, their belongings litter the street
outside childhood homes. Familiar voices break
in the telephone: You burning body?
Then I’nt want see you no more around me.
The Ministry of Health did not invite them
to the ceremony where foreign doctors
clasped hands with the president.

It sends them moonshine in old cassava crates
once a month. Easy, because they live together;
there’s nowhere else. At night, they pour
cloudy liquor for each other. Clean fingernails
before shooting up
until their minds are spotless.


Alexa Poteet is a poet and freelance writer from Washington, DC with a master’s degree in poetry from Johns Hopkins University. Her poetry has appeared in Reed Magazine, Lines + Stars, and PennUnion among others. She has also enjoyed staff positions at the Washington Post, The Atlantic and The National Interest.

KATRINA ANNIVERSARY SONG

by Diane Elayne Dees

Uptown; 2012; ©David G. Spielman; from The Katrina Decade: Images of an Altered City (THNOC 2015) Photo source: The Historic New Orleans Collection via Curbed NOLA

corrupt Corps, Federal flood
blue roofs, insurance scams
trashed car, no house
no phone, no job
abandoned pets, missing corpses
toxic water, staph infections
black mold, asthma worse
dying patients, floating caskets
gangs of looters, schools gone
Danziger Bridge, shot in the back
lead exposure, can’t think
murdered dogs, suicide
recurring nightmares, lifetime Xanax
blame the victims, heck of a job


Diane Elayne Dees is a writer and psychotherapist in Louisiana. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including the 2006 anthology, Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women's professional tennis.

IN THE HANGAR ON LAMPEDUSA

by Lois Elaine Heckman

“The Italian authorities have so far retrieved 301 bodies from the smugglers’ boat, which caught fire and sank just a quarter-mile off the island. Of the estimated 500 people on board, only 155 survived.” --Gaia Pianigiani, New York Times, October 9, 2013

No, they are not
the undertaker’s casket samples
laid out in rows for choosing.
They are all filled with loss:
a mother and child
still connected by their cord,
a boy proudly wearing
the Italian soccer team’s t-shirt.
They hold people
who desired, searched, struggled
for a better life in another world
and found it in a different place
than they imagined.
There are more stories still
in the cemetery below,
covered by salt water,
like our faces.


Lois Elaine Heckman is from Los Angeles and now lives in Milan, Italy. She has had works published in Tilt-a-Whirl, Lighten Up Online, Prole, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Persimmon Tree, and others. She won the 2010 New England Shakespeare Festival Rubber Ducky Sonnet Contest and placed in the Poetry on the Lake Competition in 2012 and 2013, and the Hungry Hill Poetry Prize in 2012. Her chapbook, Out of Nowhere (White Violet Press), was published by Kelsay Books in 2013.