THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE THAT MATTERS

by L. Lois

the chill in the air

means the glacier ravines

running down the peaks

jutting above the treeline

to the north

are vertical cuts of white

this bench sits low

comfortably leaning back

with the lake at my feet

the surface broken

by the gentle rippling

of the wind

 

a lone eagle circles

on early spring's

thermal winds

and the cherry blossoms

I passed on my way

are holding fast

in the lingering crispness

distant blue skies are lighter

overhead

coloring is calm

painted solid for peacefulness

rounded white clouds

perch as if to tell

the mountains where they should be

ducks scatter

when the Canadian geese

come in for a noisy

landing

two herons fly by

to the west 

and their rookery's young

New York and Washington on fire

Trump's on criminal trial

Netanyahu plays chess with Hamas and Iran

Putin threatens Ukraine’s future

while Congress dithers on the eve of chaos

everything here

ignores our foolishness

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.

AMERICAN CREOLE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

An old man chats in creole

on a bench by Prospect Park.

Along Empire Boulevard

a group of teens high-five

kouman ou ye, sak pase;

a writer, deep in a book,

puts it aside and stares

into space, mouths

a silent cry, Ayiti,

in and about the

park on an early May

afternoon, the air 

warm, every language 

out for a stroll but all 

in a handmaiden's role 

to the tongue sung 

loudest in exile. 

in 2023, that country 

in the Caribbean Sea

boiling and burning 

and sending its children 

and women, men 

and old men and 

old women, all

who can find a way

out via the new deals

of sponsorship

or the old murderous

tricks of climbing

aboard rickety boats

to live or die

in the sea

beyond the Keys.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

ANGUISHED SOUL

by Jerrice J. Baptiste and Roodly Laurore

Dèyè mòn, gen mòn. (Beyond every mountain, there's another mountain.)

—Haitian Proverb

A woman walks past local authorities removing the bodies of men that were set on fire by a mob in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, April 25, 2023, a day after a mob pulled the 13 suspected gang members from police custody at a traffic stop and beat and burned them to death with gasoline-soaked tires. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph) April 25, 2023

Sadness in his chest, 
his spirit weakens,
enemy of our race.
 
I’m still a young girl grinning, watching him smile. 
Now, his smile vanishes quick, unlike gun 
powder floating in air, we both know the scent well.  
 
“Free my heart,” he says.
His mango tree awaits, bandits pluck his luck.    
Our island is still awake, sleepless 
1,460 nights, and centuries of anguish. 
 
You snooze, you lose your life.
 
No banana leaves to fold his skin. 
Wrap, wrap his chest to become 
a bullet vest, impenetrable.
 
No difference from his friends’ ashes 
at noon or during the early moon.    
 
“My soul courts pain and grief,” he sighs.
I fall deeper in disbelief. 
Nothing to catch either one of us. 
No net large enough from any fishermen. 
 
When will the rays of hope appear?
Sunshine after anxious nights. 
 
Loss of kinetic energy. Craves the little joy of
scooping young coconuts like we used to  
in the countryside. Flamingos on a distant beach.
 
Now, my uncle wishes 
one day to enjoy 
the pink side of life. 

 

Roodly Laurore was born and raised in Haiti. He is an engineer and poet. His poems are published in Kosmos Journal, Autism Parenting Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician, and others.  Roodly lives in Haiti with his wife and two sons. He collaborated with his neice Jerrice on this poem.

 

Jerrice J. Baptiste is an author of eight books and a poet in residence at the Prattsville Art Center & Residency in NY.  She is extensively published in journals and magazines such as Artemis Journal, The Yale Review, Mantis, Eco Theo Review, The Caribbean Writer, and many others. Jerrice has been nominated as Best of The Net by Blue Stem. She has been facilitating poetry workshops for eighteen years.

INMATES IN CHARGE OF THE ASYLUM

by Howard Richard Debs

Win McNamee/Getty Images accompanying “The Big Picture: Danger ahead,” NPR, January 7, 2022

I stayed up until the wee hours

wakeful and fearful, riveted by

the proceedings of the U.S. House

of Representatives, 435 voting

members officially; as if votes matter—

which they do indeed since sold

on the auction block of avarice

and greed for power for the sake

of it, for with power comes privilege,

aggrandizement, garnering the purse

of a play plot based on chaos theory

its final act to be the end of a democracy.

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications. His photography is featured in select publications, including in Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing) is the recipient of a 2017 Best Book Award and 2018 Book Excellence Award. His latest work Political (Cyberwit Press) is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust forthcoming from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of Anne Frank's diary. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.

AS EMPATHY FAILED

by Imogen Arate

Cartoon by Nate Beeler (Cagle Cartoons) via Tulsa World.

Let them face the insecurity of not knowing 

if home will remain haven 

in the hours separating dawn and dusk

Let them taste the bitter metal of cruelty

that tosses life into uncertainty

while hiding behind secured gates

Let them be exposed without retreat

to ready canines famished for sinking

into the bleeding of abused flesh

As empathy could not sway

the concrete heart

let them be cast into the weight

of lead shoes drowning 

without fail in the muck 

below the azure of waterlines

Let the stirring chaos made

by unsympathetic hands

swallow their owners 

into the whirlwind they 

conjured with others in mind

Let this ouroboros birthed

in ill intent latch onto

its diseased umbilical tail 

and ensnare those who

envisioned its callous trap

in its tightening coil

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She proudly hails from an immigrant family whose previous undocumented status and associated economic burdens nearly robbed her the opportunity to pursue higher education.  She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published on the Global Vaccine Poem Project and Documented Experiences and in The Opiate. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

DEEP WINTER CLEANING

by Mary K O'Melveny 

Painting by Chris Austin via My Modern Met.

Our house always looks neat enough.

If you don’t stare into cupboards

or study drawers too closely. Our stuff

seems mostly under control, buffered

by simple messages, pristine lines.

Desires to peer to closely are aborted

by earnest visions, surfaces that shine.

 

Every now and then, something untidy

slips into view despite best plans,

forcing us to mop, sweep what might be

dust mites or cobwebs from doorjambs,

haul away plastic bags of trash

filled with threadbare linens, brown-edged

papers, dead tennis balls, a rash

of too small jackets, too high heels wedged

 

in closet corners. The birds benefit

from stale biscuits and limp popcorn.

A container of frozen food—whatever it

was now unknown—will not be mourned,

along with moldy bread and avocados.

We haul debris out to the bins.

A period of satisfaction follows

but prophylaxis never begins.

 

Eventually, our grimy shadows emerge,

widen once more. They lurk under chairs,

deep in cabinets, still a scourge

like monsters hidden beneath the stairs

to the basement.  A pandemic excused

us briefly from deep cleaning fits

as time marched forward and dust renewed,

but our shambolic state persists.

 

Now we are facing winter storms,

still surrounded by unexamined chaos.

Until we undertake sweeping reforms,

mops and brooms will be superfluous.

We need to unearth all our buried

secrets, those sordid truths we never found

time to tell, the hopes repeatedly miscarried.

Lay them bare on our snow-layered ground.

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.

GOODBYE, CHARON

 by David Spicer

Charon, no converted souls await you on this side 

of the river. Guided by your two ugly thugs,

Klaus the Klansman and Hector the Hell’s Angel,

you frighten the depressed night with amber hair,

its illicit brilliance shining for your devoted

minions with the dull transience of a caution light.

Charon, no new naive souls clamor for you on this

river side. Your boat collects water every time you                      

row down its waves, long ago bereft of their blue,

now shadowed by our despair. We hear your entreaties,

Charon, but your words are empty as our dead skies.

We see your eyes shine with the chaos of conflict,

but we tire of them: no more limber sycamores

bloom in the daytime. We know when the darkness

appears that you are here, your loud presence deaf

to our ears at this late date. Each of us dies, Charon,

but, if we see our end near, we want a fresh ferryman     

to steer us to our side of the stormy river that rises:

Your speeches are lies, you have cheated the taxman,

we do not need your worthless coins to hide our eyes.

Soon morning will wake and we shall demand you

depart our banks, leave with your henchmen, and veer

near the poison side of this river, where your fate awaits:

your reckoning, your trials that you have forever evaded.

David Spicer has published poems in The American Poetry Review, CircleStreet, Gargoyle, Moria, Oyster River Pages, Ploughshares, Remington Review, Santa Clara Review, The Sheepshead Review, Steam Ticket, Synaeresis, Third Wednesday, The New Verse News, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections, the latest two being American Maniac (Hekate Publishing) and Confessional (Cyberwit.net). His fifth, Mad Sestina King, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

THE LAST ELECTION

by George Held

“The worst case,” [Barton] Gellman writes [in The Atlantic], “is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him.” Merely by refusing to concede, Trump could keep the electoral result in doubt through the 79-day period between Election Day and the day the next president is to be inaugurated. Gellman's reporting shows that Republicans are already discussing plans to bypass the popular vote and directly appoint electors to the Electoral College. This could lead the country to a precipice: Two men could show up to be sworn in on Inauguration Day. “One of them,” Gellman writes, “would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor, The Atlantic in today’s email to subscribers releasing the magazine’s November cover story.

 ...the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote... 

—Twelfth Amendment, U.S. Constitution

 

The sound of horse-drawn tumbrils

Echoes in DuPont Circle 

Punctuated by the chop of the guillotine 

As the heads of the opposition fall—

the chairs of the most strategic committees,

ranking members of others,

obstreperous heads of key organizations... 

 

The death of the most influential liberal

Justice and her replacement

By another grim rightist ideologue 

Have opened the sluice gates

Of reprisal and crimson revenge. 

 

The Orange Duce is often smiling

As good fortune shines upon him,

Death having opened a decisive seat

On the Supreme Court—never more supreme

Than when handing down death—and then

As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment,

He receives another term in what will be

The last election, election for life.

 

So, set in motion by his hippo

Of a compliant attorney general,

Who gets the Orange Man’s code— 

No translator needed—his bizarre fantasy

Of a return to the terror of the sans culottes

Haunts official Washington and the entire country,

 

Like a corporeal rendition of the Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse,

Every night at 5 on Fox TV, kicked off

By a pep rally and boastful remarks

By the Orange Man in Chief,

The tumbrils roll and the glistening blade falls

While, in the continuing pandemic,

The maskless base howls in visceral support.

 

 

A longtime contributor to The New Verse News, George Held plans to vote in 2020.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

by Dawn Corrigan

At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.—The New York Times, September 8, 2020. Photo: A Somali woman carried wood to make a shelter in a camp for internally displaced people in December 2018. Credit: Mohamed Abdiwahab/Agence France-Presse —Getty Images via The New York Times.

   Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation
   can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely
   under the influence of a great fear.
   —Bertrand Russell


Never forget, they say, as if we have a choice.
Never forget, as though we have minds
eager to comply with orders, willing recruits
dropping to give us twenty, standing guard duty,
lifting the mask to suck in gas and mutter
our rank and SSN. But the minds we have
are AWOL at least half the time, poor soldiers
dropping their guns in battle, abandoning plans,
neglecting the mission in favor of a story
about us and that high school crush,
or us and a pile of money,
or us and a bottle as big as the world.
We remember, but not because they say to.
We remember because our minds like chaos
even more than peace. They urge us to remember,
a wish they share with that other they, the they
who made Father close his blinds forever,
Mother shiver at the sight of every plane.

Dawn Corrigan is still waiting for the Age of Anxiety to end.

SEEKING ORDER

by Jim Gustafson

the dead are closer sometimes than others.
Now very near all around. Pushing
the thoughts away is not possible now.

It seems we need to keep score,
for reasons I do not understand
Yesterday, I worked my ass off

moving paving stones, lining them up
trying to get them straight and level.
I wanted them to look like I knew

something I do not really know.
I wanted to bring order
to the chaos all around me.

Today, too, will be the same.
I will seek order, make lists,
check things off, as if, it makes

a difference.  I know better, yet pretend.
The alternatives are limited. They float
in the air. I am ducking their swats.

I cover my face to hide my nose
from its odor, which is invisible too.
These days will go on

These days will become nameless
The sabbath shall melt away
my prayers now only words of fear.

Jim Gustafson is the author of three books of poetry: Friar Fred’s Diary (Big Table 2018), Unassisted Living (Big Table 2017), Driving Home (Aldrich Press 2013). His poems have appeared in Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Tishman Review, The New Guard, Prick of the Spindle, and other journals. Jim and his wife Connie live in Fort Myers, Florida where he reads, writes, pulls weeds, and lines up paving stones.

CLEANING THE WHITE HOUSE

by Cathleen Calbert

Chaos presidency, sighed MSNBC.
I thought of bombs blasting, black holes, and tornadoes,
how no kid wants a home that’s unsafe and crazy
with a mom screaming and a dad who ups and goes.
My husband and I don’t have children, just trauma
from fucked up childhoods, I suppose, along with doubt
about those who thrive on narcissistic drama
as does the USA’s own proud tangerine lout,
so we rail along with our small screens, piss and moan
our way to a messy sleep, and don’t even kiss
on the lips as often as lovers ought but drone
on and on about this political abyss.
It’s hard to believe we’re the adults in the room.
But we are, dear. Time’s up, timed out, time for a broom.


Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92nd Street Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Sheila Motton Book Prize.

WE NEED A CENTRIST

by Mickey J. Corrigan

"Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said Thursday that he would be willing to abandon his presidential ambitions midstream if Democrats nominate a centrist who makes it too difficult for him to win as an independent candidate." Washington Post, February 14, 2019

To work in a coffee shop
and brush off strangers'
busy hands
that reach for us
while we're on our cells.

We need a moderate
to walk the tray line
in hospital cafeterias
where people on crutches
await unpayable bills
for ambulance rides
to out-of-network ERs.

We need a centrist
to reinvigorate the liberal
DEMOCRACY
fading as ire mounts
against every slight,
WORDS
as offense,
opinions
as unacceptable
while the worlds' greatest living
CLOWNS
dictators and their apprentices
take advantage of our distraction
our infighting
our hash tagging
our whining and sad-sacking,
the opportunists
trolling debates
creating troll debates
taking and taking away.

It all looks so REAL
the show is addictive
in daily doses
Oxy and medical marijuana
we couch-sit and close-watch
the streaming BS
from the White House
the ideal agents of CHAOS
rivet our eyes
to the screen

their hands on our asses 
their hands in our wallets.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. 

THE UNTHINKABLE

by Tricia Knoll

Firefighters from Brea, Calif., inspect and cut fireline on Aug. 1, 2018, as the Ranch Fire burns near Upper Lake, Calif. A day earlier, it and the River Fire totaled more than 74,000 acres. (Stuart W. Palley/For The Washington Post)

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century. . . . But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.  —The Washington Post, September 28, 2018

You suspect you had a brainstorm.
Lightning on the horizon,
a seizure of holy illumination.

You picture a future
of invisible footprints walking
the boundaries of ignorant blizzards.

For me, fear’s fire crackles
everything green to charcoal. 
I forget to breathe.

                    We dream in the same bed.

Two parents mourn over
the white casket of a kindergartner.
The shooter hears a tardy bell clang.

                    They pushed the panic bar on the same door.

Everyone talks.
No one listens.
Storms scream.

Chaos unbalances prediction.
Imagination wobbles
on an uneasy axis.

We try to anticipate
the never-know
consequences

of what we have done.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who wonders how many voices it will take to make everyone demand we address the climate crisis. Records of wind, rain, flood, fire, typhoons . . . The unthinkable is happening every day. All around us. She was a responder to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Her most recent collection of poetry is How I Learned To Be White.

POST-TRUTH VILLANELLE

by Ned Balbo

‘President Trump . . . can usually be counted on to blame “both sides.” Be the topic race relations, international affairs or the “civility” debates, Trump often refuses to point a finger.’ —Eugene Scott,  Washington Post,  July16, 2018

“We’re not so innocent—I blame both sides,”

the President declares. The sound bite fades,

and one more false equivalence provides

fuel for our growing fears . . . What purpose guides

the morning tweetstorms that alarm his aides?

He says he’s innocent but plays both sides—

victim, aggressor . . . Taking aim, he chides

“fake news” or deep state Dems for his misdeeds,

reporters stonewalled when his staff provides

truth-challenged briefings . . . Shrugging, he abides

the torch-lit violence of Alt-Right brigades,

or followers gone rogue—“I blame both sides,”

he tells us—but when bribe or blackmail leads

him to berate our allies, order raids, 

or mock due process that the law provides

for refugees, he bellows forth, divides

us,  stands with tyrants proudly, adds, “Besides, 

what’s done is done. There’s no point taking sides”—

Who profits from the chaos he provides? 

Ned Balbo’s books include Upcycling Paumanok (Measure Press, 2016) and The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line), awarded the Poets’ Prize and Donald Justice Prize. 3 Nights of the Perseids (University of Evansville Press, forthcoming) was selected by Erica Dawson for the 2018 Richard Wilbur Award. He recently concluded three years as a visiting faculty member in Iowa State University's MFA program in creative writing and environment. He is married to poet-essayist Jane Satterfield.

A GIRL MUST BE BRAVER THAN WE EVER ASK OURSELVES TO BE

by Michael Brockley

by Cardow, Ottawa Citizen

I wasn’t surprised, just scared. Chaos hides wild cards in its holster. An heirloom is twice as valuable when broken. My hair covers my eyes as I lean into the reporter’s mic. Those saxophone solos I listened to, those mad songs with titles I no longer remember. C’est la vie. I always expected it would happen here. I can no longer tell where you begin and I drop out. I fled past the echo of gunshots. Past the corpse of my first boy friend. Before a detective outlined his body with chalk.  I used to write poems with line breaks but now I write broken poems. The time we wasted on love songs. Thoughts and prayers. Chaos slipped a joker into my purse as I smiled the way one does when monsters hold five aces. When I found the jester entangled in my last kleenex, I read on the card the vow Chaos always honors: “Let me introduce you to your bogeyman.” 

Michael Brockley is a semi-retired school psychologist who works in rural northeast Indiana. His poems have appeared in Flying Island, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle, Atticus Review and TheNewVerse.News. 

SCARAMUCCI RHAPSODY RISING

by John Dooley

“But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away.” —Freddie Mercury


I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramucci, Scaramucci, well, he got the Trump: fire-go.
Thunderbolt and lightning,
Very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo, what a mouth.
Magnifico-o-o-o-o.

“I'm just a rich boy, nobody loves me.”
“He's just a rich boy from a poor family,”
“Spare him his life from this monstrosity.”

Easy come, easy go, will you make me go?

Oh, Papa Donald Papa Donald Papa Donald Let me go!
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, Donnie, can't do this to me, baby,
“Just gotta get out, just gotta get right the !@#$%^& outta here.”

(Ooooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah)

Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters,
Nothing really matters to me.

Any way the wind blows.

John Dooley lives in the national forest near Prescott, Arizona, teaches in the Masters in Counseling Psychology program at Prescott College, and advocates for peace.

LONDON FLASH

by Linda Stryker

Image source: Belfast Telegraph

I forfeit my untroubled life
flashed in Parliament’s windows
he yells in a rose-red voice
when noise is the only turn
hang my body on the news

who-the-devil on the bridge
vile car shoots forward
runs down the oblivious
revs onward to double the dead
screams of agony and loss

a flashed knife toward an innocent
a yell      get the crazed runner
stopped sound of many breaths
a chaotic quiet in the aftermath
tourists on their pleasant strolls


Linda Stryker writes from Phoenix, Arizona, and is a volunteer radio reader and musician. Her work has been published in Highlights for Children, Ekphrastic, Chiron Review, and New Millennium Writings, among several others. Terrorists, like a pack of hungry coyotes, tear at the flanks of of civilization.

THE SHIP OF FOOLS

by Darrell Petska

In Plato's Republic a ship of fools sailed—
can you see one now, just rounding the bend?
Already the ship lists heavily, its new captain
unskilled and lacking in sailorly knowledge.

Will the ship capsize? Chaos sweeps the deck,
its sailors bumbling their jobs as the ship veers
first toward one shore, then the other. From on high
descends a flurry of orders to right the vessel,
but their predicament grows worse by the moment.

Each sailor, believing to have the answer to their peril,
snitches and backstabs, crying foul of the rest.
Blood and curses fly, their captain at the helm inept,
or disinterested. Erratically onward they sail,
mutinous words like life jackets tossed about.

Someone barks an order—another sailor
no more skilled, rising up to wrest command,
but little does it matter: onto its side rolls the ship,
its unruly crew leaping overboard—
the captain fleeing in a lifeboat lugging gold.

Once tall and stately, the ship takes on water,
some fortunate ballast preventing its quick demise.
Will a wiser captain and crew come to the rescue?
Or will this ship, and its storied past, be remembered
for those who so miserably sailed it last?

Darrell Petska's writing appears in The Missing Slate, Whirlwind, Verse-Virtual, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, previously in TheNewVerse.News, and numerous other publications. Darrell cut short his career as a university editor to be the arbiter of his own words. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

ODE TO AN OPTIMISTIC FRIEND

by William Aarnes

Image source: The Never-Ending Nightmare That is This Election by Tom Tomorrow

“nasty, brutish, and short” —Hobbes

You tell me to stop
being so pessimistic

so I’m going to start the morning
by ignoring the news

and focus on something random
like cutting my toenails

in hopes that early in the day
someone will see my toes

sticking out of my sandals
and admire my feet,

such lovely, lovely feet,
a compliment so charming

I might stop worrying
about how, despite years

of seeming stability,
it’s conceivable, that—boom!—

by the end of the week
the country’s domestic tranquility

will have collapsed into clashes
in the streets, at times the fighting

among swiftly mustered militias
so intense that the corners

of houses fall in rubble,
nobody bothering to care

who’s caught in the crossfire,
most of us come to grief,
                                                                                             
and I’ll be cowering
(with my lovely toes)

in the plaster-dusted tub
without much hope

of your trying to cheer me up
till—pray we’re among the living—

some well-armed force
imposes peace.


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.  His latest collection is Do in Dour (Aldrich Press).

THE FIGURE IN THE TOAST BURNT FOIL

by Alejandro Escudé





The shooter was hiding in the gleam
of a trashcan lid—he held the gun close
to his chest and sped from lid to lid
across international terminals.

They dropped their bags and ran
looking back for the coil of a black flag,
Arabic scroll, a figure in the toast burnt foil
as night broke among the neon columns.

The human mind is a spider slipping
off wet shower curtains, the heart,
a hundred hounds howling, the feet
like eighteen feet, the neck hacked
by Jihadi John in the military dawn.

No all clear on the horizon, more shots
heard from the coin-din of the airport
where the forest of propeller blades meet
the lost baggage mountains, a river rippling
where a tiger stalks the naked prisoner.

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.