BLOOD MOON BIRTHDAY WISH

by Marjorie Tesser

On the seventh of September, the earth 

will impose itself between moon and sun

and the eclipsed moon will blush red, 

color of love and rage. It’s the anniversary 

of my long-ago birth. Of late I’m less 

than sanguine about aging. Ghosted 

by family and friends—deaths, drugs, 

dementia, dogma—my circle has waned 

to a thinner crescent. I’m not immune, 

myself at summer’s end not yet red, 

but no longer vibrant green; wan, faded. 

Back in spring my sap loved to rise, roots 

to branch-tips aspiring. Now I lay low. 

Keep mum. Abide, 

 

though our home-space tumbles 

toward burn, wreck and ruin bought 

with others’ blood. Words like “liberty”

mean something different. it’s almost 

enough to shock one silent, numb one 

to the beauties we still, for now, 

number our blessings. Blood Moon 

is said to augur transformation, 

a flushing away to make room for change. 

In this red tide, may we stay afloat, unmute, 

sow songs of praise and rage, words vivid 

as rubies. May our hues distill, deepen—

cerise to crimson, vermilion to claret,

cabernet, rufous, russet—articulate

full spectrum against falling.

Marjorie Tesser’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Whale Road Review, Cutleaf, SWWIM, The New Verse News, and others. She is the author of poetry chapbooks The Important Thing Is, (Firewheel Chapbook Award Winner), and The Magic Feather (FLP). Her poem “April” won the 2019 John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has co-edited three anthologies and is editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review. 

ALLAHU AKBAR, GOD IS GREAT

by Zeina Azzam

A group that said it was affiliated with Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks on the two mosques in San’a, where suicide bombers detonated explosives just after noon as people gathered for midday prayers, local security officials said. When survivors fled, a second pair of bombs exploded outside the mosques, killing more people. By evening, the official death toll had risen to 135. —WSJ, March 20, 2015



They've made it so there is no room for me,

she said defeatedly, like an old building
about to be torn down.



The spectrum of Greatness is now a narrow alleyway
in ancient San'a or Kabul. Few may pass.

Guns the price.



They've elbowed out the ones
whose crescent shines on the courts and libraries,

schools and shelters.



How do we make room in this crazy world.
How do we make the world believe that this is not

what we believe.


Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian-American educator and writer. She works as executive director of The Jerusalem Fund in Washington, DC.