TORN

by Thomas R. Smith

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Though our little lives go on, we’re aware
of a massive tearing—a fabric
we’d thought sturdy is being ripped by
unseen hands, cruel, immensely powerful.
This was not supposed to happen in our
country. The rent is pulling apart
the graves of those who died for a proud
ideal. My high school Memorial Days
in the band playing trombone at the cemetery
are torn down the middle, every
school morning that began with the Pledge
of Allegiance in shreds, and the history
book pages of our defeat of fascism
fallen to the ground like shotgunned birds.
Sit with it a moment and you’ll hear it
loud and close, a chainsaw biting into
our soul. Where are our old Scout masters,
our civics teachers who elevated
the virtues of our form of government? 
Where are the leaders we were taught to respect?
Where are the generals sworn to uphold
the Constitution while the demented
king wages war on his own people? Where
is Betsy Ross with her needle to drive
into the hole in our nation’s heart
and stitch back together this wounded cloth?

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

DAY AFTER

by Rikki Santer

for Sandy Scheuer (August 11, 1949 - May 4, 1970)

Before high school homeroom
as I slide the black arm band
over my bicep I remember
slices of what I knew of you:

in the cafeteria a half-eaten
grilled cheese with your army
of half moons claiming its
triangle of bread—

in civics class the waving
of your palm for the clean
target you made of each question—

in the hallway showcase
the beam of your grin
pronouncing where you were
destined for a first year of college.

This morning you are a distant
schoolmate, one-year ahead
but now a ghost
wish—if you
hadn't walked to class, stepped
into M1 crossfire, stained ground
with your jugular’s flow
became another memorial
for sacrifice biblical & bought.

Author’s Note: After half-a-century, the horror and sorrow of the May 4th massacre that occurred on the Kent State University campus still resonates close to home for me. I light a Yarhzeit candle each year for my classmate. This year, at the fifty-year marker, I wrote this poem for her.

Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications both nationally and abroad.  Her work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, was published by NightBallet Press in the spring.