MISSIVE FROM THE SISTERS FOR THE RECENTLY TRANSITIONED

by Morrow Dowdle

The Advocate, August 1, 2024

And we’ll be so happy to welcome you, dudes—

that is, ladies. See, we’ll all have something to get used to.  

It won’t be easy. That’s why we’ll be here waiting 

with warm towels, massages, restorative yoga. We get it—

I mean, we’ve been women forever.  

 

Try not to get right on Tinder. You’ve just lost a penis,

and that’s a big adjustment. But can you believe it—

you could have a baby—and it would be your choice only.

Legislation’s gonna change by a landslide

any minute, so strap on your helmets.

 

The right industries will boom—Planned Parenthood, 

subsidized childcare, gun restriction.  More lesbian bars 

will thrive across the nation. Policewomen will run 

at least half the stations, military will get right-sized 

by command of female generals. 

 

Lean on us, your human instruction manual. Some of you 

will arrive on your period. We’ve got goody bags full 

of organic, eco-friendly maxi pads. Cramps?  

Our medicine cabinet’s full of Motrin. Hot flashes?  

We’ve got a closet of portable fans. We won’t mind

 

if you obsess over your new breasts for a hot minute, 

but maybe do it in private. Don’t stare at the women

breastfeeding all over public. Who knows, maybe 

next summer, we can all go topless. Imagine 

all the softball leagues we’re going to create, 

 

the roller derby teams spinning in rented arenas. 

Consciousness-raising circles will ripple out, endless.

You’ll find a goddess beneath each revival tent. 

Oh, the tenderness you’re going to inherit, 

the spaces you’re going to inhabit.  

 

Don’t cry if the men leftover question you.  

Or cry, if you need to. You have no obligation 

to respond, but if you do, tell them 

that you did it for The People.  

Tell them you took one for the team.

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. They live in Durham, NC.

THE SILENCED MAJORITY

by Katherine West

Graphic by Katherine West.

The silenced majority

that some day

will decide

which small piece of the sky

belongs to them

—Rigoberta Menchú quoted in Poetry Like Bread.

70% of Americans don’t trust politicians to make abortion policy. —19thNews

                                                                        

Today it is cloudy

I can’t see the sky at all

I have to imagine it

the way it was

when I was young

when life was a blue door

opening

on an even bluer

even bigger sky

Some days

the sky was so blue

it was almost purple

and I could see

all the way

to Mexico

The birds seemed to fly higher

farther

taking me with them

to new lands

where all the women

grew wings

wrote books

started businesses

ran for office

got married, or not

bore children, or not 

became stronger as they aged 

It was a blueberry sky

with something infinite about it, 

an exuberant potential

I gobbled this up

when I was young—

it became my marrow

and a good thing too

since the clouds

seem to be here to stay

I carry infinity

inside me

a multitude of blue doors

that I open

one by one

day by day

And there are others

doing the same

all over the world

The sky is falling

and we

we are patching it

putting it back up

wiping it clean

of clouds

We are passing out binoculars

to those

with faulty vision

We are leaving

blue footprints behind

everywhere we go

We know

there are those who erase

our footprints

who tell everyone

they meet

that we were never here

But we are here

We aren’t going anywhere—

and there are a lot of us

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

THE BEES RESPOND TO BEING TOLD THE QUEEN IS DEAD

by Pepper Trail

John Chapple, the beekeeper at Buckingham Palace, reportedly informed Queen Elizabeth II’s bees of her death. Credit Dan Kitwood/Getty Images via The New York Times, September 15, 2022

The rituals must be respected

But we do not pause the work

Choice is not a word we know

 

These corridors are splendid

Glowing, aromatic, and endless

Leading to the golden treasuries

 

It is our life to keep them filled

We will do what we were born to do

But it will no longer be sweet, for a King

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

WAR, ENDLESS

by Lisa Seidenberg

Tanks in fearsome formation

Slide up her southern flanks 

As troops assemble 

On her outlying appendages

While handheld missile launchers

take precisioned aim

At her twin ovaries

A soft but critical target

The containers of fragile munitions 

When was a woman’s body not a battleground?

Balancing fertility 

With freedom

Since time began

She withstands the exterior onslaught

To her interior 

Again and again

Territories taken and retaken

A war that never ends

Lisa Seidenberg is a filmmaker and writer whose documentary and experimental film work are shown in intern film festivals and arts venues.

THE LEAK, THE CHILL, AND FOAMCORE

by Tricia Knoll

5am. This fleece robe does not ward off April chill

that goes to my bones knowing what leaked. 

Someone could not stay silent. Someone was right. 

Fifty years and my hand knows a rage. I grab a marker

to make my sign. Simple words, I insist, simple words:

I remember

 

                        that girl who hired a man to drive her

to Mexico. They did not drink Margaritas. She returned

with a raging infection. She lost one possible future

as a mother. She was eighteen. Jobless. Alone. 

She rocked herself holding a teddy bear

and smoked menthol cigarettes. She did not tell

her Catholic family.  I could hear her rocking

 in the room next door. Her teddy bear wore

 a scarlet ribbon. 

 

Rachel Maddow said all her life women had this one right. 

How strange to have become this old: I remember.

The Janes remember. The jobless remember. Those raped

remember. Those with hard decisions remember. 

And now it’s possible to get legal abortions in Mexico. 

Yes, I remember. My sign smells of broad-stroke marker. 

Tricia Knoll does remember the days before Roe v. Wade. This draft court opinion terrifies her. As people in Ukraine have expressed, it is no gift to experience deja vu. Her poetry appears widely in anthologies, journals, and five collections of poetry. She is a contributing editor to Verse Virtual. 

POEM FOR A RUSSIAN SOLDIER

by Jesse Dukes

Written on the Eve of the Invasion of Kyiv

A dead Russian soldier in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Credit: Tyler Hicks, The New York Times.

I believe you know right from wrong. Go back.

You polish your boots, oil your gun.

Watch dispatches from your blue-eyed master.

Brew tea with thyme in your uncle’s samovar.

Brought back from Afghanistan, in dead of winter.

Better drink it now, while it’s still warm.

 

It is cold in Donetsk. In your uncle’s house, it’s warm.

Do you think marching west will bring glory back?

Renew a once terrible empire, melt Russian winter?

Will you do something useful with that gun?

Nikita knew to stay close to the samovar

Who is more clever, master or Man?

 

You are a man who needs no master.

Your uncle’s house is already warm .

You have tea, lemon, an ancient samovar.

You have Tolstoy, Checkov, Lermontov. Back

Home, you have a madman.  On your mantle, he’s placed a gun.

He’s sent you to Ukraine in winter

But you are the French at Borodino, fighting the winter.

You are the Germans in Stalingrad, sent by their master.

Too far from home never firing their guns.

Dying forgetting the comfort of warmth.

Ukraine is no enemy. You can still go back

Find your uncle, fire the stove, fill his samovar.

 

You know the story, Vasily leaves the Samovar.

Plunges back into the very teeth of winter.

And when he realizes his danger, it’s too late to turn back.

And what kind of master would leave a man

Stranded in the cold, without a way to stay warm?

Do you mean to kill winter with a gun?

 

You still have a choice. The gun

May yet stay on the mantle. The samovar

May yet fill the house with steam and warmth.

You and your fellow soldiers cannot defeat winter.

But you can defeat your master, just a man.

You still have a choice. Go Back

 

Stay warm despite the winter.

Heat the samovar, heed no master

Take your gun and go back.

Author’s Note: I wrote this over dinner last night, thinking about Tolstoy's Master and Man, and "Checkov's Gun". I love Russian culture, Russian history, and the Russian people I've met, and I hope they'll find their way to the right path. 

Jesse Dukes is a Senior Producer of Podcasts at WBEZ, Chicago Public Media. Twitter: @CuriousDukes

BEFORE ROE V. WADE

by Marsha Owens

i knew that girl

who rode my bus,

raped by her uncle

who told us dirty jokes.

neighbor women whispered...

only twelve, gone to the home.

 

i knew the home

out of town

on the highway, for girls

who got themselves pregnant

like they caught a cold

for not wearing a jacket.

 

i didn’t know

the girl i passed downtown,

defiant chin lifted to catch

cooling air in the wrinkles

of her shiny black neck,

like road tar melting

on a hot july day, baby

in her 14-year-old belly.

 

i knew my whiter-than-white

neighborhood looked away

as i hung my white blouse 

in the closet,

coat hangers jangling

impatience like little girls

who just want to go outside

and play.

 

 

Author's Note: I came of age in the 1960s, and suddenly the world was upended... Vietnam, birth control, and in the 70s, RvW. The 1950s seemed like ancient history in many ways. I grew up in the South in a white neighborhood, but we didn’t use the word ‘segregated.’ Black people lived ‘downtown’ or ‘in the country.’ Now I feel like I’m living in a time warp as Roe v. Wade is, apparently, about to be overturned, and African Americans are once again, being lynched. 

Marsha Owens is a retired teacher who lives and writes in Richmond, VA, and at times, along the banks of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay. Her essays and poetry have appeared in both print and online publications including The Sun, The Dead Mule, Huffington Post, Wild Word Anthology, Rat’s Ass Review, Rise Up Review, PoetsReadingtheNews, and The New Verse News. She is a co-editor of the poetry anthology Lingering in the Margins, and her chapbook She Watered Her Flowers in the Morning is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

MY BODY

by Claire Sapan

In bed each night I am grateful for the body that is mine: 

Skin that protects me, allows me to feel 

Tongue that gives me taste 

Heart that allows me to feel 

But somewhere along the way you decided my body

Was yours

You disassemble me 

Like a Barbie

Bending me in your direction 

At your discretion

Breaking off what you don’t like 

And today you took my choice 

You took autonomy away from me, 

From my body 

So tonight in bed I will mourn 

But tomorrow I will fight 

For at the end of the day, 

This body is mine

Claire Sapan is an avid writer and feminist, hoping and fighting for a better world. 

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2021:A LIST POEM

by Mary K O’Melveny

I.  Jalalabad, Afghanistan

 

Mursal Waheedi

Saadia Sadat

Shahnaz Raufi

 

Buried in fresh graves

along with their hopes

Journalists without portfolio

 

Peace flags at half staff tonight

 

II.  Mandalay, Myanmar

 

Ma Kyal Sin

a/k/a “Angel”

Age 18

 

At the protest front lines

Garbed in bright red lipstick

her black t-shirt emblazoned

 

“Everything will be all right.”

 

III.  Bangalore, India

 

Disha Ravi

Climate advocate

Age 22

 

Helping farmers on Fridays

turns seditious

toolkits tied to treason

 

Democracy’s promise reviled

 

IV.  Rochester NY

 

Unnamed girl

“Person in crisis”

Age 9

Pepper spray

even in handcuffs

antidote for “family troubles”

 

Cops say “You’re acting like a child”

 

V.  Rochester NY

 

Unnamed woman

with unnamed toddler

Age 3

 

Allegations of shoplifting

More pepper spray

New policy questions

 

‘I didn’t steal nothing” she said tearfully

 

VI. Pentagon, Arlington VA

 

Unnamed women

Service members

Ages varied

 

Sexual assaults

reported – more than 7,800

unreported – 20,000

 

“You’re more likely to be raped by

someone in your uniform as shot by the enemy”

 

VII.  Washington DC

 

Unnamed women

formerly working

Ages varied

 

2.3 million departed

from the workplace in just one year

140,000 in December alone

 

70 cents per male dollar --“Motherhood penalty”

 

VIII.  Yambio, South Sudan

 

Margaret Raman

Single mother of five

Age 38

 

Beans and ground nuts

for sale at Masiya Market

now rotting in noonday sun

 

business stifled by COVID’s legacy

 

IX.  Maiduguri, Nigeria

 

Hundreds of schoolgirls

kidnapped by gunmen

Ages 12-18

 

Bandits in uniforms

barefoot children

education turns life-threatening

 

“Abduction is a growth industry”

 

X.  Indiana, Montana, South Carolina, Kansas, Wyoming, Tennessee

 

Anxious women

seeking autonomy

Ages unknown

 

Bills passed or pending

legislators emboldened by extreme

agendas and judicial appointments

 

Choices determined by geography

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.

DIME ON THE SIDEWALK

by William Aarnes

Paying with cards 

            or phones, people  

now carry fewer  

 

and fewer coins  

yet here someone’s  

dropped a dime 

 

on the sidewalk. 

FDR’s profile  

recalls the time 

 

“THE UNITED STATES 

OF AMERICA” 

had dime stores 

 

(not dollar stores),              [ 

            a time when one 

of the luckless 

 

might beg, “Buddy,      

can you spare 

                        a dime.”            

 

Though the coin 

            contains no silver, 

                        it’s shiny enough 

 

to catch the eye 

            and still worth 

“One Dime.”  

 

And it’s embossed 

with the mottos 

“LIBERTY,”  

 

“IN GOD WE TRUST,”  

“E PLURIBUS  

             

UNUM.”          

 

Your choice: 

pick the dime up 

            or just let it lie. 

William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

IT’S PERSONAL

by Martha Deed

for Ruth Bader Ginsburg

It's spring 1973 and the trees are budding
on 111th Street along the south edge of Columbia
and I, ripening also, am walking home
from the obstetrician's office at St Luke's
The walk is weekly now
Ready
Pass by a smiling female undergraduate
She waves and says
"Next time you will have a choice."
Yes
She does not know
This time I did have a choice
though others haven't
and while pregnant
I met with women at the clinic
(We negotiated my obvious condition delicately)
as I sent them to Puerto Rico or elsewhere
our male director having said
Psychotherapy is not the answer
for women who've been raped
or secretly abused
and so we linked with doctors*
who had licenses and safe offices

Five women
We looked at each other
We saw each other
We understood that what is good for one
could be catastrophic for the other
We understood that freedom does not include
dictating what should happen to someone else's body

but only what should happen to our own 

*Our clinic utilized Clergy Consultation Service.

Martha Deed, PhD has published two poetry collections (Under the Rock, 2019 and Climate Change, 2014, both with FootHills Publishing) 5 other full-length books, a half dozen chapbooks since her retirement as a Psychologist, dozens of poetry publications.  Her work is frequently anthologized. She received a Pushcart Nomination from The New Verse News in 2011. Lives on the Erie Canal in WNY.

A RECIPE FOR MORE ABORTIONS

by Gemma Peters

A record number of women—mostly Democrats, many of them galvanized by the threat the Trump administration poses to reproductive freedom—were swept into Congress during in the 2018 midterm elections. The results were still being tabulated on Wednesday when Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services quietly finalized two rules empowering employers, universities and nonprofits to refuse birth control coverage to women. A third rule, also announced Wednesday, would require insurers on the Affordable Care Act marketplace to charge women a separate monthly bill for abortion coverage—a change that advocates say would be so prohibitively expensive it could force insurers to stop offering the procedure altogether. —Rolling Stone, November 8, 2018. Photo: Supporters of birth control coverage rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on March 23, 2016. AFP/Getty Images via Vox.

Let prim employers only pay the bills
for men’s, not women’s, sex-related pills.
To interfere with impotence is fine,
but contraception counters God’s design.

Tell alpha males who spew their DNA
unchastely, “That’s not good, but that’s okay.”
Defend those men too strong for self-control.
Let boys be boys. Virility’s their role.

Be sure to slut-shame women who decide
to not end unplanned pregnancies. Deride
those harlots. Praise the girls you think are pure.
Imply it’s best they seek a secret cure
in trouble, since they won’t have your support.
Keep up your “pro-life” pressure to abort.


Gemma Peters writes in Rancho Peñasquitos, California.

MOTHER-DAUGHTER

by Mary McEwen

My mother was successful.
She grew up in a small valley town
In Evergreen Colorado,
Born to an Italian father and Scottish mother
Who immigrated to New York just before
She was born. She went to a local college
And majored in English. Then she got a job
working in communications.
She was only one of three women working
For the company.
She worked there for over twenty years.
After year thirteen she married my father
And they decided to start a family. I would
Come along a bit later.
My mom used to tell me this story over and over:
An example of how much she loved me.

My mom was proud of her career.
She worked hard.
She was one of the first people to have a cellular
Phone installed in her car.
At the end of every year,
Her boss would make every employee in the office
A performance list, a list of goods and bads,
What employees were doing well, how they improved…
But that year my mother got her performance letter
From her boss and her heart sank.
It was not a complimentary letter like usual.
It had a few things on the “good” list,
Like she was always “punctual” and “organized”,
But nothing really notable.
And then there was the “bad” list.
Only one word.
My name.

The choice to have a child was selfish, unthinkable.
If a woman wanted to have a career then
She couldn’t possibly be a mother and housewife as well.
It was inconvenient timing, he said, it would affect her job performance.
She would have to take time off. She would be distracted.
I wasn’t even born yet. I was a little speck in her womb.
And she stood up for me.
My mother defended me.

Maybe because she and my dad were trying to start a family,
Or maybe because she refused to be threatened,
Or because she didn’t consider it a valid reason to leave her career,
But my mom continued to work there.
And after I was born, she took a few weeks off
For maternity leave. And then she went right back
To work, and took her with me.
I had a little corner in her office with a crib and toys.
I would sit in silence in board meetings,
Wide-eyed and attentive, seated across from her boss
At the other end of the table.
I wasn’t a bullet point on a list anymore.

I was a person.

Mary McEwen lives in Colorado Springs, CO and is a English and Poetry major at Colorado College. She published her first book of poetry in 2014.

FUNERALS FOR FETUSES

by Eliza Mimski

This poster was created by Shepard Fairey who eight years ago made the iconic Obama poster that captured a period of HOPE in America. Today we are in a very different moment, one that requires new images that reject the hate, fear, and open racism that were normalized during the 2016 presidential campaign. So on Inauguration Day, We the People will flood Washington, DC with NEW symbols of hope. You can download the set of posters for free at: http://bit.ly/wtpdownloads. You can choose to support this We the People art project via Kickstarter.

1969. Nineteen years old and pregnant.
I couldn't afford to keep the baby.
In those days, before Roe vs Wade,
you had to prove to two psychiatrists
that you were mentally unable to go through
with the pregnancy.
They wrote letters to the medical board of the
hospital performing the abortion.
Insurance didn't cover the psychiatric visits.

The first psychiatrist asked if I would kill myself
if I didn't have the abortion.
I said yes, I would take my life,
even though this wasn't true.
He jotted some notes on a yellow legal pad.
He asked me little else.
The second psychiatrist asked if the sight of a penis
frightened me. I said yes. I lied that the sight of a penis frightened me.
He wrote that down.

My fate was in their hands.
They determined
my future . . .

The state of Texas now requires women
who have abortions or miscarriages
in hospitals,
in abortion clinics
or in other health facilities
to bury or cremate the fetal remains.

In Indiana, Mike Pence signed legislation
to force women to have fetal funerals
for abortions or miscarriages.
This can be carried out by the facility.
A name for the fetus during
transport to the burial ground
is not required.

Eliza Mimski is a retired high school English teacher living in San Francisco. She is still coping with the election and the news by writing poetry. Her work has appeared in Quiet Lightning's Sparkle and Blink, Fiction 365, Poets Reading the News, and is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic.

MOTHER BONES

by Caroll Sun Yang

What if your mother, who is your fire
picks for a leader, a villainous brute
who like your mother, claims rights to life,
except in the case, of nature’s sick error.

What if your mother, who is your fire
glowered your way, hissing abort
sinful jade loner, pregnant with seed,
who born now stands, man six-feet.

What if your mother, who is your fire
spat at your choice, because of some lover,
who sired the bloom, chose to fly solo
and what was then left, she deemed debris.

What if your mother, who was your fire
fails to amend, her mendacities,
pregnant with seeds from this philistine,
who born now stands, head of this land.

And flocks of sobbing girls are heard,
chorus fetal, hands on pubis begging sleep.
And it sounds like a blazing, witchy cackle
of all sick mother's bones on fire.

Caroll Sun Yang holds her BFA in Fine Art from Art Center College of Design, an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and is a certified Psychosocial Rehabilitation Specialist. Her work appears in The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, Columbia Journal and Juked. She spends hours hunched over her unborn debut collection while writeressin' and matriarchin' in Eagle Rock, Ca. She can never have enough personality-disordered friends/ lo-fi anything/ human touch/ sarcasm/ cell photo filters/ art films featuring teens/ Latrinalia/ frosting flowers/ bio changes. She spews forth as Caroll Sun Yang on Facebook.

SABLE CLOUDS

by Gil Hoy

A candle is seen at the steps of the US Supreme Court February 13, 2016 in Washington, DC, following the announcement of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia, a fiery conservative who helped shape American legal thought, was first appointed to the highest court in the land in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, making him the first Italian-American to serve there. Scalia was 79. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images via The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 13, 2016

Even the darkest
rain silver
when

religions
are freer
elections
are fairer

different fellows
making different
sounds

sleep more soundly

sickrooms are
open

women’s bodies are
their own

men and women
love who they
love


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer who is currently studying poetry at Boston University, through its Evergreen program, where he previously received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy started writing poetry two years ago. Since then, his work has appeared in Third Wednesday, The Write Room, The Eclectic Muse, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News , Harbinger Asylum, Soul Fountain, The Story Teller Magazine, Eye on Life Magazine, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Penmen Review, To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology, The Zodiac Review, Earl of Plaid Literary Journal, The Potomac, Antarctica Journal, The Montucky Review and elsewhere.

OHIO BILL WOULD BAN ABORTION IF DOWN SYNDROME IS REASON

by Mary Leonard

CLEVELAND — Opening a new front in the abortion wars, abortion opponents are pushing Ohio to make it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion if a woman is terminating her pregnancy to avoid having a baby with Down syndrome. The legislature is expected to approve the measure this fall because lawmakers endorsed by the National Right to Life Committee, which supports the bill, make up more than two-thirds of both houses. Photo: Protesters outside Preterm, an abortion clinic in Cleveland. Credit Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times —NY Times, August 22, 2015

Yesterday in yoga class, a handsome man arrived
            with his child. He placed her mat in front of mine.
 She was small, 13, 18?  with brown hair pulled back

 in a pony tail.  It wasn't until she turned
            and I saw her eyes, I knew
 she was a Down Syndrome child. As we stretched

 to the right, to the left, she was 30 seconds
            behind but kept up, didn't seem distressed,
 soldiered on, even when she couldn't do what the teacher said.

 When we did pranayama, followed by sighs
            hers were late and loud. The teacher said,
"That was very good sigh," smiled.

 The rest of us did not pay attention to the girl
             but to our own struggles with the asanas.
I looked up to see the child bend in half,

 fold over from her hips all the way down
            to her toes while the rest of us  stretched
 forward a few inches, our hands clutching our mats.

I thought about the handsome man, the father, I assumed,
              saw his athletic moves and his face
lined with worry. Where was the mother?

 Did the parents have a choice when they heard
            the fetus was Down's syndrome?

When the girl touched her toes,
             when she tried to follow,
I thought this child is a gift.

 But what did I know
            about this life: hers, his, theirs.
  I could only hope  that no law demanded,

"This fetus is a person and must be born."

Maybe difficult to think abortion with a child in front of me
            but not  difficult when a law could deny choice, making parents
 feel ashamed and dictate what life is and could be for all.


Mary Leonard has published chapbooks at 2River, Pudding House, Antrim House Press and RedOchreLit. Her poetry has appeared in The Naugatuck Review, Hubbub, Cloudbank. She lives in an old school house over looking the Rondout Creek.  Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches workshops for all ages through Bard College.

SOCHI'S CHOICE

by George Held

            "That old black [widow] has me in its spell . . . "

            “‘You carry enough stuff in your pocket to blow yourself  and everything within sixty yards of you to pieces.’”          —Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907)


Those young Moslem women terror-bent
from Dagestan and Chechnya now are sent
to Sochi with bombs embracing their bodies
like the arms of their dedicated husbands,
already blown to bits by suicide bombs
to earn their tickets to Paradise.

The young ladies now arm themselves
like Conrad’s Professor, “hand closed round”
the detonator in his pocket,
an armed flask bomb sitting
in another pocket like a sleeping
black Angel of Death.

Call these young women “black widows,”
conjure our primal fear of black spiders
with red hourglass shape on their abdomen,
who devour their mates for giving the gift
of fertilization. The old misogynist myth
is summoned again to feed nightmares

for the well-heeled with tickets to Sochi,
the Winter Olympics Paradise,
with palm trees, by the Black Sea,
while at its back, in the snow-clad Caucasus,
Moslem revolutionaries fight
for independence and send (black) widows

to detonate the fun and games.
Which is your choice: the curious
tourists who require armed security
to bolster Vladimir Putin’s coffers
or the widows dedicated to avenge
their husbands and help to liberate

their ancient/nascent nations
from Putin’s pitiless grip?
Let the games begin.

An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com

HIDDEN

by Beth McKim

The double-story mansion on a tree-lined boulevard still holds our secret:  I drove you, that sunny autumn afternoon, to its fortressed walls, then hid on the floorboard of the '67 Mustang floorboard to pretend you had come alone.

Don't talk, just drive, you said, returning, before your soft moans turned to shrieks, and you leaked bright red, bled for days. Your boyfriend Joe would not answer calls.

When we meet these days, forty years later, we fondly chat---the old days, college drama classes, dancing, beaches, family, friends--but never mention the scary white house, the pseudo doctor inside, who for five hundred dollars, butchered your body, your soul, and any future chance for children you would have loved.


Beth McKim is a freelance writer and actress living in Houston, Texas.  Her eclectic poems, essays, and short stories appear in anthologies and diverse publications.

HISTORY LESSON

by Pamela Emigh-Murphy

Naruto Minato Namikaze Chopsticks
Photo source: Entertainment Earth

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --George Santayana

 

She fingers the chopsticks
she tucked in the side of her pants
when they left the banquet hall. A souvenir
to remember the donation
her lover made
                                    to “Restore America’s decency laws”
                                    to “Wake up America before it’s too late”
                                    to “Return to the values of our American Fathers.”

During the car ride home, they jab
the under part of her ribs.
She shifts her shoulders
to dislodge them
from her flesh.
                                    “When did they stop teaching American history?”
                                    the candidate driveled.

She barely makes it to the porch without
one of them sliding down her leg. He kisses her
goodnight, waiting for the invitation
that doesn’t come.
                                    “Don’t tread on me,” tolled the man at the podium.

She kisses him back, one hand
on the small of his neck, the other
on the door behind her.

She navigates her dark
entryway, taking small measured steps.
                                    “This is my country and I'm not surrendering it.”
 
Blood splashes
the white floor of her tidy bathroom.
                                    “They took history out of our schools!”

Lest she would’ve known
to use
a coat hanger.


Pamela Emigh-Murphy is a professor of English at Monroe Community College where she teaches women’s literature, American literature, and courses that explore the intersections of science and the humanities.  She is a founding member of Straw Mat, a women’s writing group in Rochester, NY and facilitates writing workshops for breast cancer survivors at the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester. As a ghost-writer, she has authored two articles published in The Alpenhorn, a national magazine publication for the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America and recipient of the prestigious Maxwell Medallion Award from the Dog Writers Association of America. She is a teacher, sister, wife, and proud mother of two sons who love and value the women in their life.