WHITE BIRD

by Marilyn Mathis

in memory of Wong Ching Ping

HONG KONG — Under the cover of darkness early Thursday, authorities in Hong Kong tore down a public sculpture dedicated to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, accelerating a campaign to erase the crackdown from public recollection and stamp out dissent in a city that until recently was one of Asia’s freest. The 26-foot-tall artwork, known as the “Pillar of Shame,” had stood at the University of Hong Kong for nearly a quarter-century and honored the hundreds, if not thousands, of students and others killed on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese military crushed pro-democracy protests. —The Washington Post, December 23, 2021

You send the kite skyward,

Unknowing

If it will fly or fall.

You speak

In Hong Kong

Unknowing if you will last the day.

But the kite,

Saying only a single word,

Is still an opinion,

A dangerous breath.

See, already winter branches have stopped it.

Fragile, 

Wind-shredded,

Fluttering desperately.

Silk and paper? Or a living bird?

It is of no matter.

The State will remove it.

 

 

Marilyn Mathis’ poem “On Turning Seventy” was published in 2021 by Sylvia Literary Magazine, U.K. She is the winner of the 2020 Ageless Authors Poetry Prize, third place, for “White Bird” which remained unpublished until now. She received international awards in writing, magazines and promotional projects throughout her career in corporate communications. Marilyn has edited a nonfiction book, Thriving Beyond Survival by Martha Germann. She has authored local and national magazine and newspaper features. She is currently at work on a mystery novel, several short stories and more poetry.

AT LI WENLIANG'S DEATH

by Yuan Changming

The death of a Chinese doctor who was silenced by the police for being one of the first to warn about the coronavirus set off an outpouring of grief and anger on social media. The New York Times interviewed him last week. Photo: Mourners at a vigil for Dr. Li Wenliang on Friday. Credit: Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times, February 7, 2020

Your humanistic lungs have no more air to pump out
But your whistle-blowing is echoing afar
Like a whale’s call, far beyond a whole continent
Louder than all the songs ever sung in modern China

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, eight chapbooks & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1639 others worldwide.

O EGGS, DON'T FIGHT WITH ROCKS

by Aaron Hicks

A protester at a rally in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in support of ethnic Uighur Muslims in China. Uighurs in China are being forced into “re-education” camps for indoctrination. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency via Shutterstock via The New York Times, January 2, 2019

Even the tiniest pebble has
Many brothers in the valleys of liberation
Despite the distance between them but,
An egg in great numbers whether far or near
is still fragile, still spineless
Still an
egg

Do not fight against the good
People
Whose patience is that of
Stone and passions are ignited
By a garish will comparable to
The sun

What is hidden today, will be
Uncovered tomorrow
and the fragile flesh of censorship
will be gashed in coming time as
the truth bleeds out
bountifully gifting death to
the brawny body of injustice

Your tanks have made you shielded
And your clubs have extended your arms,
And your weapons have armed you
but oh eggs
You will always be just that

As the virus contaminates the news
Let us look closer under the scope
As we keep our eyes on the oppressed and
Give a voice to the silent

Keep your eyes on the mighty
Rocks as they wage war against
The many villainous eggs


Aaron Hicks is a writer from Wilmington, North Carolina. He enjoys well crafted movies, creamy coffee, and standing on the side of those who are oppressed. #FreeChina

POEM FOR THE POETS OF MYANMAR

by Jo-Ella Sarich

Myo Yan Naung Thein "spent six months in prison last year after posting a satirical poem to Facebook deemed insulting to the then president Thein Sein. Two of the lines read: 'I have a tattoo of the president’s face on my penis / My wife is disgusted.'" —“Free speech curtailed in Aung San Suu Ky’s Myanmar as prosecutions soar,” The Guardian, January 8, 2017

That time you
lay, wine-numbed, upon the bench
cling-wrapped like luncheon meat, and branded
yourself ‘Slut’ in another language
(accidentally, you didn’t discover until that
night out in Roppongi)

When you ran outside and cried
into the sun. And
That friend had
her twin’s names tattooed
on her wrist, and tattooed
Angel wings around
the name of the one
who first learned to Fly.

When That razor
was like a river in your hand
when you dug deep so they would see,
that being is just a hair’s breadth. When you carve
Freedom, and it’s just a word written in another language, just
thousands of tiny pin pricks that span the world. Like
light seen from space, if you see his back it’s
golden with his scars. I want to

Run

my fingers along them with the lightest touch,
connect them like humanitarian corridors. Because you can’t
lose those scars. But That leopard
could change its spots just by dreaming it can Fly, so

turn the page quietly, and I’ll write you a poem
in a place where no-one will ever read it.

Jo-Ella Sarich lives in Petone, New Zealand beside the beautiful Wellington harbour. She has worked as a lawyer for a number of years, and has a husband and two small girls. She has recently started writing again in her spare time. Her poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine and The Galway Review, and will be appearing in the upcoming Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017.

SAMIZDAT

by Tracey Gratch

A Russian court has convicted poet and teacher Alexander Byvshev of ‘inciting enmity’ and sentenced him to 300 hours of community service, confiscated his computer and prohibited him from working as a school teacher for two years.  His ‘crime’ – the poem ‘To Ukrainian Patriots’ in which he expresses his opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and suggests Ukrainians should ensure that not one inch of Crimea is handed “to Putin’s chekists”.  —Human Rights in Ukraine (KHPG), July 14, 2015

The storefront windows dim with filth and soot.
Cyrillic, signs hold sway and hang above
the wooden-blocks paving the streets in rot.

In nineteen-twenty-one the husband's shot –
The committee puts its strangle-hold on nearly
everything the others wrote, and thought.

Damp fire-wood and famine, typhus rages
in darkened spaces – their words, to memory,
then burned.  An apartment bare, but for the language,

whispered in the cold rail cars which pass
beneath the towers. Outside a prison's gate,
in the crowd she waits to see her son, for hours.

Here, a crimson-history is wrought:
"Can you describe this?"  She said, "I can."  She thought.


Author’s note: Alexander Byvshev’s situation is reminiscent of the plight of other Russian poets, including Anna Achmatova, (whom the poem is about) in post-revolutionary Russia, when Achmatova's work was officially stifled, though it continued to circulate in secret (samizdat), her work hidden passed and read in the gulags. With the conviction of Alexander Byvshev it seems that Russia is returning to the practice of censoring  and persecuting its writers for their political views. 

Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four children. Her poems have appeared in  publications including Mezzo Cammin,  The Literary Bohemian, The Flea, Annals of Internal Medicine, Boston Literary Magazine,  The New Verse News and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. Her poem, "Strong Woman" is included in the American College of Physicians, On Being A Doctor, Volume 4.

WRONGED RIGHTS

by Charles Frederickson

Pakistani teenager and Indian activist
Awarded 2014 Nobel Peace Prize
Chosen for horrendous struggle against
Oppression of vulnerable young people

A Hindu and a Muslim
An Indian and a Pakistani
Join in common cause denied
Educational rights imposed by extremists

In 2014 Malala Yousafzai was
Shot in the head by
Taliban right to schooling
Denied to strong-hearted weaker sex

Kailash Satyarthi follower of Gandhi’s
Tender mercy non-confrontational approach
Kashmir caught between nuclear powerhouses
Borderline youth deprived of childhood

Child bonded labor exploitation for
Financial gain bribery slavery trafficking
Cheapest employer option parental poverty
Illiteracy ignorance lame cop-out excuses

In conflict-ridden areas refugees raped
Violated leading to hapless continuation
Generation-to-generation suppression for daring protest
Censored Expression definitely not free


No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson  proudly presents YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

ERASING HISTORY

by Janet Leahy

Image source: 7NewsDenver

"A newly conservative board for the Jefferson County School District, which is Colorado’s second-largest, raised the possibility of pruning the curriculum of books and material that could be seen to exalt civil disobedience and promote unpatriotic thoughts. Where does that leave the civil rights movement? Vietnam?" --Frank Bruni, “The Wilds of Education, NY Times, September 27, 2014

"The organization that oversees the Advanced Placement curriculum, whose history course is being defended by massive, ongoing student protests in a Denver suburb, has now said that it backs those protests. The College Board’s Advanced Placement Program supports the actions taken by students in Jefferson County, Colorado to protest a school board member’s request to censor aspects of the AP U.S. History course," said a statement from the College Board released on Friday. --HuffPost, September 27, 2014


In Colorado
students march with teachers protesting
the school board’s agenda to change
the AP history curriculum.
Why teach evolution, climate change,
the civil rights struggle, the exploitation
of Indigenous People?
Why teach critical thinking?
Just erase the chapters of the past that might
cast a negative light—
the bombing of Hiroshima, slavery.
Rip whole chapters from history books.
Red-flag for omission accurate facts
that show Americans
treating others as less than human.
The scholarship of history in question.
Yet these students
keep their eyes on the prize,
demanding an education aligned with truth,
knowing
ignorance is not bliss.


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.