UNLOCKING THE LOVE LOCKS

by Tricia Knoll





When is it time to unlock the love locks?

When the love of the gleam of chrome was for glory
rather than health, longevity, strength and beauty?

When wild animals under lock and key
find the sanctuary of space and fresh air?

When the unfair imprisoned reach for the bar
and ask for a hand hold?

When the bridge of love falls under its weight
of promises?

When the artist says I’ll find a way for you to show
the world what you love, how you love, and when,
how to keep love locks from becoming dread locks.


Tricia Knoll's chapbook Urban Wild is now available from Finishing Line Press.

THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

by Kim Baker

“On the 18th of April 2014, when making his speech, Mr. Mugabe talked less harshly about corruption by his Zanu PF and government officials. Whilst he was talking about corruption in the country he looked sleepy and exhausted. Gosh the man woke up when he started talking about homosexuality. He knows how to fool Zimbabweans always and anytime. Homosexuality is his ace card. You can fool some people some time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time, though Zimbabwes’ president has fooled us for too long.”  -- Zanda Shumba, The Zimbabwe Mail, April 20, 2014

I am Mugabe.
A heart for sin.
A head for exploitation.
Every man must obey me.
Every woman must die for me.
Their screams feed my greed.
I sell Chrome to China.
My empire’s richest resource
laughs at your rusting girders.
Our steel is stainless.
Your soul is stained with apathy.
Our Chrome creates plastic
that you toss away by the mile
and makes the knives
that cut your gluttony.
Who can stop me?
Fear is a mighty assimilator.
And oceans are my moats.
I took back what was ours
from the colonial.
The Roman Catholic bastards
raised me to think right.
I am merely multiplying the fear
in the righteous order of Christ.
What do those childhood taunters
think of Mugabe now?
I can talk law.  I have no need for games.
Allow gays?  I will cut out your tongue.
They are the reason for all
our poverty hunger garbage.
Women-ministers in Zimbabwe?
Don’t make me laugh
at such an ill-fated oxymoron.
Democracy?
Peace?
I will build bunkers against them.
I fear no one!
I fear no one!
Hitler had his underground bunker.
I will build mine between the rivers.
What have I to fear?
I say, what have I to fear?!?


When she isn’t teaching the abundant virtues of the comma and writing poetry about big hair and Elvis, Kim Baker works to end violence against women and end hunger.  A poet, playwright, photographer, and NPR essayist, Kim publishes and edits Word Soup, an online poetry journal that donates 100% of submission fees to food banks.  Kim’s chapbook of poetry, Under the Influence:  Musings about Poems and Paintings, is now available from Finishing Line Press.  Kim can be reached at bighairedpoet(at)gmail.com .

CIVILIZED DENTISTRY

by Caru Cadoc

We pay dentists to shave down our canines

nice and flush with the others

to help us dress up

and play humanists.

It's vain but honest.

They're such savage looking teeth.

And who needs canines anyway

when we have blow guns of chrome

Powered by powder more forcful than our little jaws

To project shards of metal designed to tear far deeper

Than our quaint little teeth.

Caru Cadoc is the lyricist for the Pseudosufis.  His work has appeared in Dead Flowers,The Boiler, MAKE, Jersey Devil Press, Word Catalyst and Storyglossia.