JANUARY SIXTH

by Diane Vogel Ferri

The Jan. 6 rally of Trump supporters before the assault on the Capitol.Credit: Nina Berman/NOOR/Redux via The New York Times.

Let us not forget 

how we heard the crack of the breach

in every state, the unholy war

with bloated flags waving

dishonorably, whipping

in the felonious wind

Let us not forget

the terrorism of groupthink

the righteous pounding and shattering

the victims in their glory

holding blue-line banners

while violating blue lives

Let us not forget 

what we saw in real-time

the slurs we heard

the trashing of Jesus

of our tax dollars

our house a crime scene

Let us not forget

the present disremembering

of the big lie

how it is in the past now

consequences suffered only

by the dead

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel) and her newest novel No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling.

THE UNTHINKABLE

by Tricia Knoll

Firefighters from Brea, Calif., inspect and cut fireline on Aug. 1, 2018, as the Ranch Fire burns near Upper Lake, Calif. A day earlier, it and the River Fire totaled more than 74,000 acres. (Stuart W. Palley/For The Washington Post)

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century. . . . But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.  —The Washington Post, September 28, 2018

You suspect you had a brainstorm.
Lightning on the horizon,
a seizure of holy illumination.

You picture a future
of invisible footprints walking
the boundaries of ignorant blizzards.

For me, fear’s fire crackles
everything green to charcoal. 
I forget to breathe.

                    We dream in the same bed.

Two parents mourn over
the white casket of a kindergartner.
The shooter hears a tardy bell clang.

                    They pushed the panic bar on the same door.

Everyone talks.
No one listens.
Storms scream.

Chaos unbalances prediction.
Imagination wobbles
on an uneasy axis.

We try to anticipate
the never-know
consequences

of what we have done.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who wonders how many voices it will take to make everyone demand we address the climate crisis. Records of wind, rain, flood, fire, typhoons . . . The unthinkable is happening every day. All around us. She was a responder to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Her most recent collection of poetry is How I Learned To Be White.

SELECTIVE MEMORY AS FUTURE TOPIC FOR AN ELEGY

by Lyndi Bell O'Laughlin


The “good old days” induce a thin,
waxy coating on the outermost cells
of the lining of the throat,
carry a subliminal aftertaste
of Let's pretend that didn’t happen,
our capacity for denial so dignified
it should wear a chimney pot hat,
its name unmentionable, like Yahweh,
multiplied by seven billion.

The pain of contradiction and repetition
destined to repeat the curly climb
of Pacific Salmon full of eggs,
ignoring the promise in each other's eyes,
there is just the blinkless
death spiral of instinct to extinct,
this being the only way
some are able to rise each morning,
are able to shove a foot down a pant leg
before brushing their teeth with the frightful paradox
I am not to blame, but the blame is mine,

and the sunrise spreads its royalty over
bombed-out ruins and refugees,
exiles, gut piles, and Goldman Sachs;
water and air grow confused,
don’t know where to go

Image source: Smith & Wesson

to escape the uncle's hand,
dry earth shrivels and shrinks,
tries to swallow.

The poets conjure sublime descriptions
of the beauty of a spruce bough in winter;
poems that sing rhythmic sunrise colored
sleights-of-hand that make me yearn for the day
my sister and I snuck into our parents' closet,
hoping to catch the loose corner
of a shiny-bowed Christmas present;
and for a moment we did,
then remembering hard enough,
the glittering gift of my imagination disappears,
and there is only the stack of dog-eared Playboys,
the empty vodka bottles,
the battered 20-gauge shotgun
leaning cockeyed in the corner.

Lyndi Bell O’Laughlin is a poet from Wyoming, USA. Lyndi’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press, 2016), TheNewVerse.News, Gyroscope Review, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere.