SQUIRREL SPOTTING

by Sarah P. Blanchard

Dead Canary Art Print Designed and sold by artfulprovender

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

— T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

Squirrel spotting

A sincere apology for nothing

for doing nothing

for becoming the nothing we have become.

A heartfelt apology in advance

for whatever comes next.

squirrel

Warnings? Of course we had those.

We had our cameras out, recording everything:

grievances, outrages, lies, and the

infinite variations of a canary’s death. We

added our comments to all the

shrill unpleasant alarms

squirrel

raised by popular prophets nodding somberly

at those shrill cries of doom. But too many alarms

were smothered beneath clever ridicule

squirrel

about painted clowns and bitcoin plunges.

Yes we raised shields. But only a few

too late, too slowly, and only after

reading the manual twice. Always

mistaking shields for weapons

squirrel

we searched instead for the familiar

smiling faces of traitors who counseled

easy appeasements, comfortable conciliations

squirrel

while murderers performed overtime.

We were warned about the sky falling

squirrel

but we’re good now. We’ve got our cameras ready.

Sarah P. Blanchard is the author of the novel Drawn from Life, the story collection Playing Chess with Bulls, and a poetry chapbook titled river, horse, morning. A former instructor of English and writing at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, she writes now from her home in northeastern Connecticut.

LOOK

by Mary McCarthy

It’s no fun to go to the circus

waiting for the high wire

dancer to fall

the lion tamer

to lose his head

to a fed up angry cat

the joy is in the crazy

risk and the win

always the win

the clowns tumbling

out a pantomime

of the ridiculous

how we all want

entertainment without pain

I can’t waste time estimating

just how bad it will be

how much damage

we’ll have to witness

as all these wheels

break away from their axles

and go careening

wildly into the crowd

disaster may be the only thing

we can depend on

But remember

there is no joy in retribution

you will only bury yourself in ash

feel your heart break

as consequences spread

past anything you bargained for

Remember

even the greatest crimes

the worst offenses

even those who sowed

acres of bones

burned the libraries

broke the backs of cities

scuttled the glories

of art they had no use for

never really won

from those bare salted fields

new crops arose

shedding tears and bitterness

eager to bloom and set fruit

in a world past catastrophe

always there waiting

ready to return

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World edited by Lorette Luzajic, The Plague Papers edited by Robbi Nester, The Memory Palace, edited by Lorette Luzajic and Clare MacQueen, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, the Storyteller Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible chronicles a bipolar journey and is now available from Kelsay Books.

RED ALERT

by Lynn White

TheBrexitComic

It’s not enough to take to the streets
one million
two million
it still needs more.

It’s not enough to sign your name
three million
four million
it still needs more.

It’s not enough to cast your vote
five million
six million
it still needs more.

It’s not enough
the clowns still have more.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. Facebook: LynnWhitePoetry.

HAIR AND THE HEALTH OF THE WORLD

by Kit Zak

the doctor clips
a few strands of my hair—
the adrenal fatigue test

I think about all that stresses
my gray head
            (not so many now that my children are fledged)
it’s their turn. Still

thoughts of hair seize my brain
            (not just the mineral deficiencies the test might show)
but candidate Trump’s coif
floating over his head
like a gold hairball
            (WHO has hair like that?)
Or like his devil-

interlocutor, Megan,
her honey tresses and
the talented stylists who make hair
their calling (card) and fortune.

Oh style
and the making of a President
while really
it’s Boeing and Lockheed Martin
dictating our future

such a  three-ringer
(circus): the Hawks’ war path
and the Republican guardians for coal plants

I stress
over the rising tides in coastal cities and
the killer storms (my kids in Norfolk and Miami)

American politics: it’s just entertainment and imagine
what the Europeans must think of our clowns

I await test results
and wonder about the cure


Kit Zak lives in Lewes, DE. She’s an activist who has published in various journals and anthologies.

APOCALYPTIC LULLABY

by Richard O'Connell

After "Apocalipse" by Domingos Carvalho Da Silva*

Video: "Apocalypse Lullaby" by The Wailin' Jennys, from their 2006 album, Firecracker.

             
Because the moon is bright and the night
Is simply announcing the dawn
And because the sea is hardly the sea
And the hose doesn't weep on the lawn

And because we've fouled the water and air
In this best of all possible hells
And because the light is simply a vibration
That excites our nervous cells

And because rock music hurts our ears
And the wind plays an aeolian harp
And because the earth breeds plenty of snakes
And goldfish are only carp

And because the plane is about to depart
And the raven repeats nevermore
And because we have to sit here and smile
Before the final big encore

And  because yesterday does not exist
And the future will never come
And because we are doing a ballet
On the pin of the Hydrogen Bomb

Let's not rush to the wall and weep
And tear our hair and bewail our fate
We did as well as anyone could
Given our love and hate

And because we are pathetic clowns
Confronting the Apocalypse
Caught in the ruins of a collapsing world
Between earthquake and eclipse

Let's dance high on the hurricane deck
Before the ship slopes under our feet
Let's soak up the wealth of the sun
Before it loses its light and heat

Let's laugh at the whole wide universe
In our eyes reflected
When we close our lids it will be
As if it never existed

Let our laughter crackle across the cosmos
Where galaxies scatter and dim
Since win or lose we only leave
A trace of ash on the wind


*Domingos Carvalho Da Silva,  prominent  Brazilian modernist poet (1915-2004).


Richard O'Connell lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Collections of his poetry include RetroWorlds, Simulations, Voyages, and The Bright Tower, all published by the University of Salzburg Press (now Poetry Salzburg). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Paris Review, Trinacria, Measure, Acumen, The Formalist, etc.