LIKUD LEGITIMIZATION

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

with apologies to Emily Dickinson

An Israeli military investigation that has roiled the country with allegations of sexual abuse by its own ranks was set in motion by doctors who reported injuries to a Palestinian detainee that were so severe they required surgery, medical staffers familiar with the matter said… In a heated exchange in Israel’s parliament last week, one lawmaker asked another, “To insert a stick in a person’s rectum, is that legitimate?” “Yes,” replied Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Likud. “If he is a Nukhba [member of Hamas’s elite fighting unit, which was involved in the Oct. 7 attacks] everything is legitimate to do to him. Everything.” —The Wall Street Journal, August  6, 2024

We'll maim our captured foes and show
No mercy or respect.
We'll soon be lords of all the land
With all rebellion wrecked.

We know we'll be condemned and yet
We forge ahead like kings
Triumphantly. What liberty
Unfettered vengeance brings!

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 300 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had eight previous poems in The New Verse News.

2020, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF RODNEY USHER

by Bob Bradshaw

I noticed a condemned property
posting on his door

when I rang his doorbell
but my old friend's appearance

jolted me more.
What's wrong?  I demanded.

"I can't sleep, I'm as restless
as a storm’s waves.”

He grabbed his chest.
A tightness was gripping him

like a vine's hold
on a rotten wall.

“Heart failure—
from that damn virus.”

His doctors had dismissed his worries.
There is no virus, I assured him.

It vanished in the spring.    
May even have been a hoax.  

He was manic.  He was sweating.
“It’s the coronavirus.”  His breathing

was heavy, choppy like surf.
“It’s gotten inside.”

Relax, I told him.  The plague
has vanished.  Gone.

You can leave your house now.
“Still, I can't help worrying:

at times my heart's
a wild flapping

like an osprey tangled
in fishing line.  The more I fight it,
     
the tighter my chest
becomes.”

Is your house safe?  
I noticed a crack splitting

the front wall. "This house,"
he sighed, "teeters on a sea cliff

that's crumbling.
Erosion causes the cracks."

Why don't you leave?
He shuddered. "I can't.

Outside isn’t safe.” Nonsense.
Sure, tests once showed

people were sick. But praise be
there are no more tests.

So, no more sick people!
It’s common sense.     

You’re just behind the times.
Time to go back to work, my friend.

But you should get a handyman
to fix up this house.

“No kidding,” Rodney says.
“At night the joists crack,

and my sense of balance
falters as the house leans.

I slip like a man on wet pavers,
my heart a bird thrashing

its wings against its cage." I nodded.
Clearly he couldn’t face

the “new normal,” a world
safe again.

He was hopeless.  
What could I do but go home?

I had business to attend to.
I could no more persuade him

to leave his sanctuary
than I could have convinced

a starfish to loosen its grip
on a rotten pier.

His last letters show
a man crazed, damned

by inexplicable fears,
slipping over the edge

like his mansion
which broke apart tumbling

into the Pacific—
nothing in the end

for my friend to hang onto,
even the sea washing
its hands of him.


Bob Bradshaw is a retired programmer living in California.  He is looking for the perfect hammock for his retirement.  Recent work of his can be found at Dodging the Rain, Eclectica, and Ekphrastic Review.

WARDEN, MURDER ME

by Allyson Whipple

The following is a found poem based on “Last Words of the Condemned” by Celina Fang, Manny Fernandez, Amy Padnani and Ashwin Seshagiri in The New York Times, June 29, 2013.

Photos provided to the Times by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

I.

I wish I could die more than once

            to tell you how sorry I am.

I am the sinner of all sinners.

I deserve this.

            Tell everyone

                        I said goodbye.

Let’s roll. Lord Jesus

            receive my spirit.

I love all those on Death row.

            I will always hold them

                        in my hands.

II.

No one wins tonight.

            They are killing me tonight.

No one gets closure.

            They are murdering me tonight.

No one walks away victorious.

Let’s do it, man.

            Lock and load.

                        Ain’t life a bitch.

III.

Bury me deep, lay two speakers

            at my feet,

put some headphones on my head,

            rock and roll me when I’m dead.

I walked in here

            like a man.

I am leaving

            like a man.

It’s a good day to die.

I can feel it,

taste it,

not bad.

Allyson Whipple is the director of the Austin Feminist Poetry Festival and the author of We're Smaller Than We Think We Are (Finishing Line Press). Her work has most recently appeared in the 2014 Texas Poetry Calendar.