LEGEND OF WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Reported birth of rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone park fulfills Lakota prophecy: “The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more,” said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle… Lakota legend says about 2,000 years ago—when nothing was good, food was running out and bison were disappearing—White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared, presented a bowl pipe and a bundle to a tribal member, taught them how to pray and said that the pipe could be used to bring buffalo to the area for food. As she left, she turned into a white buffalo calf. “And some day when the times are hard again,” Looking Horse said in relating the legend, “I shall return and stand upon the earth as a white buffalo calf, black nose, black eyes, black hooves.” A similar white buffalo calf was born in Wisconsin in 1994 and was named Miracle, he said. —AP, June 14, 2024. More photos by Erin Braaten here at YouTube.

When a bison calf appears white-furred

On a patch of yellow stone prairie 

The People know it is mine   Me:

Dark-haired/Dark-eyed 

When first I came to them   Yes:

Miracle   Yes:

Sacred-birth leucism   Rarest

Of rare   Lakota-blessed prayer   Grass-

Rolled   And a pipe I left   Change

Among the geysers/Great

Change meaning What most excites

Returns   Like hunger   Just totally totally

Floored a woman says in a baseball cap:

White   Holding a camera: a long-range lens

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds would like to acknowledge Nadia Colburn, of Align Your Story, and Tom Daley, both of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for their indispensable writing workshops; Doug Holder, of Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, for his ongoing support; and Susan Richmond, poet and children's book author, who coaxed Ms Reynolds into Plein Air Poetry at Old Frog Pond in Harvard, Massachusetts, a collaboration of poets that lasted ten years and produced as many, beautiful, chapbooks. She is grateful to all.

AQUAMARINE

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

Smoke billows as wildfires destroy a large part of the historic town of Lahaina.

Associate with me—

an aquamarine ring gifted to me

on my seventh birthday. Years later,

a family trip to an island few could

name. Water off the island the same

color as my ring. Pelicans dive-bombing 

for fish in the bay. On the path to dinner, 

no electric light—stars flung on black.

Now tout le monde, and hurricanes like nuclear 

bombs, know this island and every 

paradise you ever loved. I want to resize 

my ring and slip it on my finger, but

it will change nothing.

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, pacificREVIEW, Topical Poetry, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence and HerWords magazine.

THE SEA CANNOT SPEAK FOR ITSELF

by Renée M. Schell

More than half of the world’s ocean has changed colors in the past 20 years, a phenomenon that is likely driven by climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study, which analyzes decades’ worth of satellite data, found that 56% of the global ocean—a territory larger than the total land area on Earth—experienced color change between 2002 and 2022. While the researchers didn’t identify an overall pattern, tropical ocean regions near the Equator seem to have become steadily greener over time. (Photo: Edoardo Fornaciari—Getty Images) —Time, July 13, 2023

Fifty-six percent has become green.

Can we still say azure ocean

or blue sea?

 

Now Aqua, the research satellite,

reflects back the lush color

of phytoplankton,

 

tells us with its seeing eye

that for the past twenty years the vast

waters of Earth have been changing 

color.

 

With chlorophyll out of balance,

how can our oceans,

the teeming gallons,

 

survive this attack?

Revert back?

 

 

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection Overtones was published in 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in The New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She taught for seven years at a Title I elementary school in San José, California. 

THE HEART OF IT ALL

by Bradley McIlwain

Whitman—

I hear the chains

Across N. America

At Capitol Hill

Where we’ve all become 

Capital—

Loose change

In the pockets 

Of pirate politicians

We elected 

To change—

Only to decline it; 

False prophets 

Who paid God 

To burn Sodom & Gommorah 

But they can’t kill my pride 

The way they put a bullet 

In Bonnie & Clyde.

People are still dying—

Trayvon. Floyd. Till—

Still, they shot Lewis in bed

Like Billy the Kid 

20—unarmed 

Dreams spilling out onto the sheets.

Ohio weeps in the streets.

Neil Young heard the drums;

Police are cutting us down—

What’s at the heart of it all?

You abolish slavery,

But commercialize prisons;

One shackle for another, 

Brother divided by brother

Under the foot 

Of the blood spangled banner

Still soaked in the soil

Of migrant workers

From the states to the border 

Across bus stops and shelters—

The buck doesn’t stop

At Roe v. Wade

When in a state of insanity 

Some judge decides 

In a state of supremacy

That women no longer 

Have control 

Over their bodies?

Over… my… dead… body

It’s time

To untuck injustice where it lies

Unbury the dead

And loosen their tongues

So we can unlearn

The things our fathers 

Have done—and do.

I no longer trust in God

The way I trusted in you.

The all seeing eye 

Has lost its shine 

And I see you

In tent cities

Crying out for food—

Whitman, 

Our people yearn. 

We are the choir 

Of others raging 

For freedom across the voiceless night, 

Rattling the chains for change.

Bradley McIlwain works as a Teacher-Librarian, where he strives to provide meaningful and inclusive spaces for knowledge exchange and advocacy. He believes that poems and poets can be agents for social change. Bradley’s latest book, Dear Emily, was published by Roasted Poet Press in July.

AMERICAN DREAM ‘22

by Scott C. Kaestner

The American Dream Art Print by cindy nguyen

We have to unlearn everything 

we’ve come to know.

Forget the past so as not to

forsake the future.

Be the change coming.

Believe it’s possible.

The Milky Way understands.

Asteroids do slam into planets.

And dinosaurs will disappear.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and deadbeat dreamer extraordinaire. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

THREE DAYS TO CHRISTMAS

by Laura Rodley

She panhandles at the long traffic lights

on corners of Federal and Main,

easier to have people drop money

into her hands.

She used to sell odd homemade clay jewelry

while sitting on the sidewalk,

leaning against the Martial Arts studio.

No one’s buying now.

Today, she’s dyed her hair dark brown,

holds her cardboard sign: Homeless, anything helps,

sits to the left of the entrance of Green Field’s Market.

They rarely ask her to move.

I have no change, not even for the meter,

and walk towards the market door.

“Hey, hey,” she calls, “They’ll give you a ticket.”

“I don’t have any change,” I say.

“Here, I do,” she says, unzipping her tracksuit pocket.

“No, no, I can’t take any money from you.”

Inside the store, I shop, use my debit card,

extract money for her, return.

“Here, thanks for protecting my car.”

“I do it for everybody,” she says. “It’s not good

to get a ticket, it goes against your license.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Wendy,” she answers.

Wendy, all grown up, no longer led into Neverland,

protecting my car, sitting

on the cold hard sidewalk,

teeth chattering.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

FOR THE BOY ON TRIAL

by David Southward

From left, Judge Bruce Schroeder, Kyle Rittenhouse and defense attorney Mark Richards watch a video Nov. 12 during Rittenhouse’s homicide trial in Kenosha, Wis. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool/AP via The Washington Post)

I don’t wish death

or solitary confinement

or even the hell

of half a life wasted

behind bars. No:

I want him to be stricken

with disgust—at the blood

he’s spilled, at the horror

of his rash heroics. I want God

to part the clouds of his mind

and set afire

its nest of fear and folly.

I want the clearing smoke

to open his eyes

to true manhood: the facing down

of an enemy hiding

within—the answering

of a people’s need

for sobriety, not messiah.

I want him to rise

above the buzzfed grapevines,

the twitter of rumor

and rumble of propagandas

and remember history:

to become his republic’s

most disarming

spokesman. I want him

to march and preach

civility—to be Prince Hal

to a nation of Hotspurs,

to become (in the unpredictable

flowerings of time)

our next King

of change.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020). 

D IS FOR DELTA

by Mary K O'Melveny

In math, Delta means change.

An isosceles triangle points the way

to changes in quantity:

  more sick

  more hospital beds

  more ventilators

  more dead

  more masks

  more six foot limits:

    apart from each other

    down in the ground.

 

Changes as in differences in.

  As in:

    yesterday there was reason to hope

    last week we went to a concert

    the airport was full of tourists

  As in:

    the rate of change is significant:

    red lines rise on graphs

    there are no lines of people seeking vaccines

    there are now some lines but not enough.

Changes as in variables.

  As in:

    yesterday I met you at a party

    today I am at the doctor’s office

    tomorrow my family will hold a zoom remembrance.

In science, Delta means a sometimes triangular mass of sediment.     

  As in:

     silt and sand lodged in a river’s mouth

     spit into the sea  or a lake  or a plain

        as in Mississippi    or Okavango   or Kalahari

     tides and waves create sandbars and dendritic silt

        as in the Nile   or the Ganges

     estuaries of brackish water form at the confluence of sea and river

        as in China’s Yellow River.

   Some Deltas become abandoned  

the rivers leave   discard their channels   dry up

   that too denotes movement   change. 

  That change is called avulsion:

    As in:

      the sudden separation of mass from one place to another

      the sudden separation of reason from the brain

      the sudden movement from reality to fantasy.

 

Delta can be a girl’s name:

   books of baby names call it appealing   chic  unique

       fit for a child of grace and distinction.

 This too will change. 

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 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.

EARLY IN THE MORNING, DECEMBER 2020

by George Salamon

Credit: Brian Stauffer illustration for Foreign Policy.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost." —opening words of Lord of the Rings, cited by David French, "Yes, America Could Split Apart," The Dispatch, September 20, 2020.

Woke up in the dark of morning,

looking out the window I saw

street lights competing with the

light of the stars, but across the

way in the office building where

men used to come and go, not

even the lights for cleaning

women were burning, and I

recalled "man is in love, and

loves what vanishes," closed

the window and wondered if

that was still so.

George Salamon, after teaching German in five colleges, reporting business news, editing a military magazine, and writing in corporate public affairs, is "retired" and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, One Sentence Poems, and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

KNOWING YOU ARE A POET (OUTSIDE WASHINGTON)

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

“Truth/Poetry,” a painting by Cameron Holmes.

There is nothing quite like knowing 

that poetry is your calling  

when you’re growing up in a Washington 

D.C. suburb where the word is power 

for in the nation’s capital no poem passes 

laws no verse crafts policy no poem ever 

delivered a constituency 

Poetry is a gesture so vital 

as to be without use 

it’s like telling the truth

about the deficit 

how we should curb our penchant 

for violence Poetry is a useless means 

of pulling bounties off wolf heads it is hardly

a writer’s rubber to hatred’s glue 

for nothing bounces off of me 

and sticks to you 

why write a poem to change the world 

when you could become a lawyer 

or banker 

a dynamite maker 

whose lucrative investments 

bear witness to capital’s power 

why write a poem when you could 

become a shield to the truncheon’s 

bludgeon hear 

a bomb’s whistle bullets over Baghdad 

or the silence that comes when there’s no one 

to listen to the words you’ve just written.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. New work appears this fall in Anti-Heroin Chic, Dissident Voice, So It Goes, Chiron Review, Bewildering Stories, The Last Leaves, Unlikely Stories, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Boog City, and Ginosko Review.

ELECTION

 by Marguerite K. Flanders

Photograph by Kim Seng of Red Shoulder Hawk Perched on Live Oak at Riverbend Park in Jupiter, Florida. Via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

 “Soul selects its own society” —Emily Dickinson

 

Oaks are the last to cast their burdens.

Air is full of the athleticism of change.

 

Chickadees greet the end of the straight road

of night with their tally, the decisive chill.

 

The science of what must turn will leave us

bereft. We wait for all to be revealed,

 

as if choosing will shift the relentless

trajectory of stars, restore what has been

 

felled. Hawk, oak, brook, co-trustees

of winter’s approach, know better.

Marguerite Keil Flanders is the Managing Editor of Crosswinds Poetry Journal.  For nine years she was part of the Ocean State Poetry team running a poetry workshop in the Men’s Medium Security prison in Cranston, Rhode Island.  Margie is the author of a poetry collection, The Persuasive Beauty of Imperfection. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Boston Review, Yankee Magazine, Comstock Review, Nimrod International Journal, Connecticut River Review, and Main Street Rag.

ON FUTURES FOREVER TANGLED IN A SYSTEM OF FLAWED KNOTS

by Jen Schneider

Florida Rights Restoration Coalition policy coordinators Sharon Madison, right, and Kellie Atterbury present Cynthia Craig with a receipt showing her last court payments have been paid at the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami in early March. (Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post)

Washington, July 16, 2020 (CNN)The Supreme Court on Thursday said Florida can enforce a law barring ex-felons from voting if they still owe court fines or fees that they are unable to pay associated with their convictions. The unsigned order likely means the law will be in effect for the November election, although the court did not declare the law to be unconstitutional or limit ongoing court challenges. Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented. "This Court's order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida's primary election simply because they are poor," Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. "This Court's inaction continues a trend of condoning (disenfranchisement)," she added.


She sat in her beat up Chevy on the right-hand side of the road. Window down, radio up. Oldies streamed ribbons of light in the unseasonably cool air. Beatles and Bruce, mainly. Billy Joel, too. Piano Man got her fingers moving. Her left arm dangled, fingers tapped the exterior car door panel. Striking notes a few inches above the door’s deeply dented exterior. Not unlike the beat she’d use for nightly rituals when imprisoned. She and the girls had a system. Tap, Tap, Tap. Intentional pauses and extended rhythms. A form of Morse code—of sorts. Everything was some sort of something in there. Generic and off brand only, of course. No matter. Always made them feel smart - smarter than the system. Only now, she realizes the system had them all along. Damn fines awaiting her release. The others’, too. Piles of unopened envelopes—stacked on the linoleum kitchen table. Most yellowed. Some stained in coffee, soda pop, and a mix of bitter jams. Never did understand how they expected her to pay those fines. Not until she could find work, that is. And even then. Didn’t they know she had babies to feed? Especially after having fed the mouths and egos of grown men for far too long and in far too many ways. Late at night, she and the others would dream of release day. Lofty talk of voting. Making change. In many ways the dreams got them through - and out. No matter most of them should never have been there in the first instance. Out was always the goal. On the other side, where the sun’s rays beat down on open backs, freshly washed heads, and bare feet - no socks, no shackles. Only to once again be silenced. And tied to a system with no conscience. She wasn’t having it. Sat curbside for upwards of six hours on primary day. Planned to do the same come election day. Until she’s welcome behind the curtain. No doubt, she’ll push buttons wherever permitted. Wherever tolerated, too. The passersby didn’t want to hear her talk. She knew it, but spoke no matter. Their voices mattered. Of course they do. As does hers.

When systems lay bare their many flaws and faults that serve only to penalize those for whom change is most needed, and work only to silence the voices of those for whom there is no recourse, and far too must resignation for there is too often no other way, on whom does the opportunity to speak rest and on whom does the responsibility to act fall—yet too often falter?

Signatures are checked
as licenses are confirmed.
Go ahead, Sir. Please.

Old fines resurface
to silence a right to vote.
Not today, Ma’am. No.

Dusty curtains drop
as inside voices whisper.
Seal the status quo.

Red painted fingers
tap as outside voices speak.
Time for change is now.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

GEORGE FLOYD'S LEGACY

by Crowfeather

George Floyd by Sam Dunn

One life ended
by an unyielding knee
and ice-bound hearts.

One man’s private death,
ghastly and obscene,
stunning millions.

Not just another death,
but maybe a catalyst
for change.

Crowfeather is a 72-year-old woman who writes and tells stories in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

THERE'S NO SPITTING IN BASEBALL

by Michael Mark

The Major League Baseball Players Association informed MLB on Saturday night that they are done negotiating and want an answer by Monday on how many games they’ll play and when to show up for work. —USA Today, June 13, 2020

In earlier news:
Baseball released a thorough health and safety protocol to help protect its players during the 2020 MLB Season. But there’s one new rule that will certainly be tough to follow: No Spitting.
—Fansided, May 22, 2020

Crude are the subtleties of the double play
compared to the majestic hock and graceful spray
of spittle professionally spurt. Slaver to

mound, slicking home plate—wet thwack
of saliva oiling well worn mitts. See that!  I’d say
after a bulky loogie—caught on TV

back in the old days (last season). Leaping
from the couch, I’d grab the remote, hit
playback and slow-mo

the slobber projectile. Freeze frame
itsemergence, rising flight and Pollack splatter.
“See that cheek suck, check out that lips purse,
that thick tongue flick—that bountiful gush!”

O beautiful for spacious fly!

If you don’t understand the spit you don’t understand baseball.
If you don’t understand baseball go back to the shithole
you came from—to toss around today’s cheap seat
banter from the trash talker in chief.

Let the bowlers groan, yuk, eww, gag, groan, gross!
If you ban spittin’ seeds—you might as well outlaw outs,
strikes, fouls, hits. What’s next, Commissioner?
Crotch grabs and sack realignments?

It’s an American fan’s right to recount celebrities of sputter
and spew: Why, have a seat my child, I’ll tell ya
about Legendary Lefty the Lip
who could launch a loogie further than the Bambino’s

most prodigious rip and was every bit as accurate –
pointing out his expectorant’s dart, arc
and splash-down. O yes! To the very speck
of red dirt he’d swamp

with juicy Tennessee chaw—outta
both sides of his maw.
Not to your taste? Take a walk.
Good as a hit in the score book.

So, when you see a crappy pitch, take it, kid.
Like the old timers said, “just spit on it.” That’s how
the greats played this hard-scrabble, historic game.
It’ll be sad not to know shit about spit—

soon just a dried-up old asterisk. I for one
will rise from my chair - let the chips fall—
sing proud our national hymn
and hum a prayer:

Play ball againboys! But please take care—
we don’t want anyone hurt by squirt
in dirt or thin air. And remember it’s still legit—
here, my heart does thump—
behind your MLB approved Covid masks –
to holler, Kill the ump!


Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Salt Hill Journal, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Waxwing, The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily. He’s the author of two books of stories including Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). @michaelgrow

TO BE EQUAL

by CeCe NeQuai

Photo by SOLIDCOLOURS via Louisville Business First, June 12, 2020

My People stand
in the streets with masked faces
and painted signs,

to rage against,
not the “dying of the light,”
but the dying of our kind.

My Brother stands
eleven years old, holds
my hand when I

cry, because
the tear gas and bullets are loud,
and we can’t hear the chants of the crowd.

My Grandma stands.
Watches at the door when I go,
because the people

in our town that
she doesn’t know
look too much like they might call me
something.

The system stands
on the backs of its people.
On those who scream proud that

We want change.

That we want chains gone.

To be equal.

CeCe NeQuai is an Ohio based creator of poetry, fiction, screenplays, and films. She is a writing, film, and media student at Bowling Green State University. Keep up with CeCe NeQuai via Twitter at @nequai_

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.

ANY FUNCTIONING ADULT 2020

by Marc Swan




On a lawn down a side street off a main drag
in Portland Maine, it catches my eye—
simple phrase in red, white and blue
with a big bang center stage
to that intact region our current leader
can’t claim—a brain that thinks, acts,
feels with compassion, caring, humanity.
A sign in a yard can’t change the world
but it can open thinking beyond
media thrum and whimper—
insult, injury, uncertainty, and help us feel
we can make a difference
as clichéd as that may be. Grab your pen,
paper, keyboard, text, phone, load up
the information highway with a message
echoing these immortal words—
Yes We Can.

Marc Swan has poems forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, The Nashwaak Review, Channel Magazine, Floyd County Moonshine, among others. His latest collection today can take your breath away was published by Sheila-na-gig Editions in 2018. He lives in coastal Maine with his wife Dd, an artist, clothing designer and maker.

FOR THE OLD WHITE POETS

by Joan Colby

     “But I’m also torn between my pleasure at seeing part of American culture take significant strides toward equality and my sorrow due to the diminishment of interest in my work.” —Bob Hicok (above left), "The Promise of American Poetry,” Utne Reader, Summer 2019.

     “Why did a white poet see the success of writers of color as a signal of his own demise?” —Timothy Yu, “The Case of the ‘Disappearing’ Poet,” The New Republic, August 7, 2019

Dedicated to Bob Hicok

So now you know how those sonneteers
Must have felt, quietly posting along the
Bridle path with their rhyming dictionaries
And penchant for inversions, when you came along
Riding your free verse helter-skelter, breaking
Lines without regard like a mounted militia
In full rebellion. With your red wheelbarrow
And petals in the metro. White men of privilege,
You’re passe as the people of color race by on motorbikes
Down the crowded lanes where you used to
Summon a rickshaw. Plus ça change. And women
Shouting hands-off! Poems by non-binary
People who use the pronoun they
And where are you now with your forlorn
Confessions that cannot be absolved. This
Is penance contributor: the immigrants
Crossing the river on innertubes
Taking the risk you took once
Writing the word fuck flat out as a racehorse
Hitting the wire and snorting blood.

Joan Colby’s Selected  Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage was awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Her recent books include Carnival  from FutureCycle Press, The Seven Heavenly Virtues from Kelsay Books and Her Heartsongs from Presa Press. Her latest book is Joyriding to Nightfall from FutureCycle Press.

REVISION

by Alan Walowitz

'Palestinian Volunteer Medic Killed, Dozens Wounded' in Latest Protests on Israel-Gaza Border —Haaretz, June 1, 2018. Photo: Palestinian protesters flee from incoming tear gas canisters during clashes following a demonstration along the border with Israel east of Khan Yunis, Gaza, June 1, 2018. Credit: SAID KHATIB/AFP via Haaretz.

You must change your life, Rilke said.
But what did he know about moving toward a fence
in such ragged order, armed with rocks and kites,
where live arms will greet you,
their 19-year-old bearers trained in this same theater
and are in receipt of their rules of engagement
and memorized the battle plan
like lines in a drama where the outcome is certain,
which will only make the ending more rich, more real?
Yet, how can you tell what these supernumeraries will feel
once the curtain comes down, and the dead are not mannequins
and are moved instead to the theater of the ground?

Much like this nation where I’m told,
—even if I’m the son unable to ask—
I can return any time I’d like,
I’ve been on this earth the allotted three score and ten.
I assure you, from vast experience,
to change a life requires more than one’s full portion.
But to revise, to see yourself again,
that can be an everyday miracle, if only we’d try.
Some of our fathers tell us we’re not quite chosen,
but just to be certain, we had better be better
and a light unto the nations.
This is hard work, the toughest there is,
but, didn’t I hear God say, in some unrecorded verse,
Hey, pal, isn’t this what you signed up for?


Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. He teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in Queens. Alan’s poetry chapbook Exactly Like Love is in its second printing available from Osedax Press.

WILL: THE

by Gil Hoy

At Freddie Gray's funeral. Image source: CNN



Raw naked truth of
Cell phone videos,

Funeral, funeral,
Police brutality: The
Police murders: The
Play of unjust death,

Rioting in the streets: The
Wrath of young black thugs
Raining down, in reckless disregard,
For authority: The

RapidRingingRagingGunfire: The


Collapsing broken
     Bodies: The
News ritual: The
Speed of the internet: The

Red of blood,

  Pain cries
      At:  The resiliency
         Of Prejudice,

  CHANGE: The

Way things are: The
Way things have always been: The
Way things might otherwise be?


Gil Hoy is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.  He is a Boston trial lawyer and studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction a year ago.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in Third Wednesday, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Potomac and The Zodiac Review.