WE LIKE OUR FREEDOM

by Ginny Lowe Connors

And our steaks—we like them rare.

Our vengeance bloody and loud. Lightning bolts

aimed at the heart. That thrill. That satisfaction

when our rage explodes.

 

Ask the six-year-olds of Sandy Hook.

Ask their parents. Or anyone from Ulvalde.

Ask the stuffed bunny left behind

on the bed, one ear bent and frayed.

 

Tissue paper parachutes

drifting over the wastelands of our freedom—

that’s what the prayers became

of those in the Pittsburgh synagogue

and in the Fort Worth Baptist Church.

 

Nobody asks about the anonymous workers

who come in afterward to clean up the blood.

In the schools, the churches, the nightclubs.

The homes, the offices. Grocery stores.

That sludge, that slurry of hatred, cold sweat, malice—

how long must the smell of it linger?

 

I myself cannot eat steak. I cannot free myself

from the vision of a little boy racing a school bus. 

Something is happening to the field of wildflowers

I used to carry in my chest, asters and daisies, bees.

Summer sunlight. I’m full of holes.

The hummingbirds are escaping.

 

 

Ginny Lowe Connors taught English in a public secondary school for many years. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections, including her latest poetry book Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake (Turning Point, 2021). Her chapbook Under the Porch won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and she has earned numerous awards for individual poems. She is co-editor of Connecticut River Review and runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books.

THANKSGIVING

by Jennifer Freed

Source: MIT Medical

For our kitchen,

for the sourdough starter we learned to make

when the stores were still out of yeast,

for my husband,

who tends and feeds the starter for days, who kneads

the dough, shapes two round loaves, waits.

For the neat white bags of flour in our cabinet,

for the grocery store, its night-cleaners, their night hours

spraying disinfectant sprays.

For the cashiers in their comfortable shoes

and the blue-haired woman bagging our food,

her purple gloves, her back brace,

the peace signs on the mask across her face.

For the long-distance truck drivers driving

past closed restaurants, closed restrooms.

For the farm, the farmer, the wheat.

For the soil, its dark depths

of invisible lives,

and the sky, answering its thirst, charming it

with sun and moon and stars.

For that same sky rounding my own yard, lighting

my window, and my daughters at the table

doing their schoolwork on-line. For their breath.

For the air

scented with bread.

For the butter, the knife, the four plates rimmed in green.

And the two round loaves, now cooled, now     

on the cutting board, now ready

for our tongues,

our bodies,

our praise.

Jennifer Freed lives  in Massachusetts. Her poetry appears/is forthcoming in various journals, including Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Worcester Review, and Zone 3. Her chapbook These Hands Still Holding (Finishing Line Press) was a finalist in the 2013 New Women’s Voices contest. She was awarded the 2020 Samuel Washington Allen Prize from the New England Poetry Club.