WHEN MY GRANDSON LEARNS ABOUT JIMMY CARTER

by Jane Patten

But for a photo

Neither of you will remember

That day in front of Maranatha Baptist Church—

He, because he had held so many babies,

And you were one of many in 

Such a long and layered life. 

And you, because you were so new

That your life was in the moment.

But we others there rejoiced

How he reached out to hold you,

The aged hands against your soft ones,

His white hair in contrast to your brown,

His wide smile at your

Wide eyes.

 

You did not know then

How we traveled down the Georgia roads

Of open fields and flatter ground

Just to hear him teach 

And to shake his hand,

Or that that this elder holding you

Had made each numbered day

In a long life count—

Sage, peacemaker, 

Man of the earth,

Man of the people,

Who rolled up his sleeves

To work.

 

A little later, just a little later,

You will learn more about the man who

Showed the world how to live:

Use knowledge.

Have compassion.

Give.

Be present.

Be fair.

Have courage.

Care.

 

And with a photo we will begin:

There you are.

You’re with him.

After retiring and moving to Huntsville, Jane Patten decided to write about her adventures, including growing up in Delaware and her career as a teacher in rural Georgia. Her writings have been published in Out Loud HSV: A Year in Review anthologies, The New Verse News, and Reckon.

POEM WITH REPEATED WORD

by Renée M. Schell    

                                    for Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles

 

What if we all practiced saying no?

 

What if every street corner

had a microphone

for the practice of saying no?

 

No, I won’t keep my mouth shut

No, I won’t choose between food and rent

No, I won’t use my body as an ATM to cross a border

 

The no’s would ring out, streaming

like ribbons up and over each other

weaving an ornate shawl

a handmade rebollo

a silk sari

a second-hand skirt

a torn scarf

 

They’d hear No in Amarillo

No in the pueblos of Mexico

No in Iowa,

No in the middle of nowhere,

No in County Kerry

No in the Sahara

No in Angola

No in Afghanistan

 

The microphones would pick

up the tiniest no,

the no of infants,

the no of eight-year-olds,

the no of a mother separated

from her child

at Fort Bliss.

 

How famous

do you have

to be 

for your no

to be

heard?

 

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection Overtones is forthcoming from Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and teaches second grade in a diverse classroom in San Jose, CA. 

I CHECK THE POLLS AT 5 AM

by Katherine Smith

I rise in the dark to check the last polls,

then wait for light to shine through

 

gold-green leaves before I lace my shoes.

Courage. The sun is shining on the most beautiful

 

leaf, which is dead, and glowing with light.

Everything is metaphor this morning.

 

Even the wind, even my sanity

even the mangled carcass of a groundhog

 

I skirt on the road, whispering please

don’t let it still be there tomorrow.

 

Katherine Smith’s recent poetry publications include appearances in Boulevard, North American Review, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other journals. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press) appeared in 2014. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

THE ANTIDOTE

by Judy Kronenfeld

John R. Lewis, 1940-2020

Given poverty, he created dignity.
Given indifference, he returned passion for justice.
Given intolerance, he expanded the meaning of tolerance.
Given violence, he gave his bashed-in skull.

He made himself the instrument of that oh-so-slowly bending arc—
so slow, it is easy to lose courage, but he didn’t.
Given venomous hatred, he returned love
because hate destroys the hater, and he knew it.

Parents, sit your children on your knees,
and explain to them—not marble
nor the gilded monuments,
nor lofty towers emblazoned—
explain to them what greatness is.

Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent collections of poetry are Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Ghost Town, New Ohio Review, One (Jacar Press), Rattle, South Florida Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other journals, and in more than two dozen  anthologies. She is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing, UC Riverside, and an Associate Editor of Poemeleon.

I WANT TO BUILD A WALL

by Diana Poulos-Lutz

I want to build a wall 
that’s part of your home,
that blocks the cold
and rain while you rest.
I want to build a wall
with a window tall and wide
so you can gaze out as the
sun rises and sets and
see all the beauty in the ordinary—
a window that you can open
to hear songs of birds
and feel freedom and possibility
on your skin with each warm breeze
or cold gust of wind that visits you.
I want to build a wall
with a door that can lock out your
fears, or open wide when you’re ready
to face them.
I want to build a wall
sturdy and safe on the outside,
a blank canvas on the inside,
so you can paint the rainbow
of your spirit
or hang photographs of people
and places that make your heart dance.
I want to build a wall
that you can lean on if you need
to weep or hide in silence—
and then one day place a mirror
on that wall that shows you
what your smile looks like
when you’re in love with life or another,
or the success in your eyes
after a long day
or as you’re dressed
in courage and strength.
I want to build you that wall.

Diana Poulos-Lutz has a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Long Island University and has studied Political Theory and American Politics at the New School for Social Research. She has taught Political Science and Political Theory courses for several years at Long Island University. She currently works at a public high school. Diana is also a photographer and writes about the natural world on Long Island. She is a contributing writer and photographer for the Long Island-based website Fire Island and Beyond. The Town of North Hempstead recently hosted a photographic and literary gallery of Diana's Long Island Nature photography at the historic Clark House at Clark Botanic Garden in Albertson. Diana's poetry is inspired by her deep connection to the natural world, along with her desire to promote equality and empowerment. 

#HEATHERHEYER

by S.O.Fasrus

Detail from the Cable Street Mural, a large mural painting in the East End of London apinted by Dave Binnington Savage, Paul Butler, Ray Walker and Desmond Rochfort between 1979 and 1983 to commemorate the street battle in October 1936 against Oswald Moseley and his fascist Black Shirts’ march down Cable Street.

Why the Nazis came to Charlottesville.
And why I was wrong not to confront them.

—Siva Viadhyanathan, The New York Times, August 14, 2017

Ha!

She will not watch from side walks

she will not shrug

and shop.

Speak my language

dare to care

share

think

this crusade will not be rained upon.

Scribble through the night

we wear our placards

high

our fashion will never weary—

proud

clear

and dear

we know who we are

you know who we stand for.

We are our own headlines

our own music—

we are the song you think you heard before

we are the old song with new words

we are the tune from your cradle

This is OUR parade.

OUR parade.

Our parade

is American

It's American.

Ha!

SHE did not watch from side walks

SHE did not shrug

and shop.

S.O.Fasrus has verses at LUPO and is currently writing a YA novel.

BOY TURNED GIRL

by William Ruleman

Image source: National Geographic

You gaze from the face of the magazine at me,
And you are beautiful, I have to say,
Despite an impish male audacity
That lingers round your lips and eyes the way
A lad will do when forced into a fray.
O brave new world indeed, when we can change
Impediments in us that make us strange
To all the wonder that most suits the soul!
Some surgeries can show us who we are—
Can heal us, make us healthy, human, whole—
And whether love is near to us or far,
We know how we will meet it, play our role.
Not so when manmade tribal mutilations
Cheat the flesh of heavenly sensations!
The Lord God guard you from all hate and harm:
Self-righteous rants and priggish piety,
Lascivious longings and resentment’s storm.
May you find in saints’ society
A means to keep your heart and senses warm,
And may your offspring—if you have them—know
The gracefulness and courage you now show.

Editor's Note: Meanwhile . . . "A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this week lifted a lower court injunction that had stopped the implementation of what many legal observers and LGBTQ activists view as the worst, most dangerous legislative attack on LGBTQ people yet. . . . The law allows for businesses and government employees to decline service to LGBT people, and that includes bakers, florists, county clerks and even someone working at the department of motor vehicles, based on religious beliefs. It allows for discrimination in housing and employment against same-sex couples or any individual within a same-sex couple. Businesses and government, under the law, can regulate where transgender people go to the bathroom. The law allows mental health professionals and doctors, nurses and clinics to turn away LGBT individuals. It also allows state-funded adoption agencies to turn away LGBT couples." —Michelangelo Signorile, "Queer Voices," HuffPost, June 23, 2017

William Ruleman resides in east Tennessee. His newest books include the poetry collections From Rage to Hope (White Violet Press, 2016) and Munich Poems (Cedar Springs Books, 2016), as well as his translations of Hermann Hesse’s early poems (Cedar Springs Books, 2017) and Stefan Zweig’s unfinished novel Clarissa (Ariadne Press, 2017).

WOMAN IN MUD

by Alejandro Escudé




She is trudging
for her own life
through sodden timber
like lice in hair,
and there are others
watching her climb out
like a thin spider
from a toilet bowl,
powerless to aid her,
no hero helicopter,
no rescue roughs
in floaty, neon gear,
only these mud people
she crawls toward,
lying exhausted
on the debris-less flats,
a fallen, mucky statue
of Liberty Leading
the People, fatigued
yet still radiant
in that silt salt, barely
moving, a thing
no more, a monument,
a figure of nothing.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman





streets and alleys flood with color
a confetti of noise
explodes into the night
yet we know all too well
the violence in the shadows
all we have left is our poverty
our fiesta
this is our courage
and we must dance—
it is in our blood


Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin. Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

OUR DATE

by Maria Lisella

Skittles-covered Bicycle. Image source: Foodbeast.

My stepson spent
the afternoon in detention
for lying to a nun.

I told them my name means
pheasants in Italian,
but no one believed me.

Half white, half Puerto Rican,
Italian last name, nappy hair,
said otherwise.

At the perfect age of 10,
my stepson and I
had a date one afternoon.

Determined to teach him to fly,
forget nuns, divorced parents,
over-protective mother,

or, just ride a bike.
A two-wheeler, banana seat,
shiny, chrome, bells, streamers.

He’d run alongside it
throw one leg far and wide
in time to find the pedal

on the other side.
I clutched the back of the seat
sent him off as far as I could.

Like my father did for me,
knowing spills and harm
would follow.

Years later,
a knot in my heart,
his dusty, tear-smeared face

lips quivering, telling me
of a quick ride to Pelham Bay
where he was chased down

by taunts of "You don’t belong here."
            I tried to tell them my name
            but no one listened.

I think of all I don’t know
about courage ­– how to build it,
pass it on, when to fight, to flee,

and when to leave your bike
behind, save your life,
find your way home.


Maria Lisella's Pushcart Poetry Prize-nominated work appears in Amore on Hope Street and Two Naked Feet as well as a number of journals such as Feile Festa, LIPS, Paterson Literary Review, Skidrow Penthouse and online at DanMurano.com and First Literary Review East. Her forthcoming collection, Thieves in the Family, will be published by New York Quarterly Books in 2014. She is a charter member of the online poetry circle, Brevitas and co-curates the Italian American Writers Association literary readings at Cornelia St. Cafe and Sidewalk Cafe in NYC.