TOO LATE FOR ROSES

by Gifford Savage

If Sinéad was here she would call out the fakery, 
false flattery, fickle bleeding-heart eulogies.
See straight through the fawning hypocrisy.
Where were we all when she needed us to stand 
with her, for her, beside her?
When Sinatra and the old guard condemned her,
and the self-styled Madonna spurned her?
What did you say when Dylan fans booed her in ’92, 

did you speak out then?
Dylan fans, though, have a history 
of resisting the winds of change.
Perhaps the hopes and dreams of a generation
died along with JFK—
or were buried at the Lorraine Hotel
in Memphis Tennessee?
Maybe this slight figure with the voice of an angel
was an unwelcome reminder,
that they’d sold out to ‘The Man’ in the end?
But those Dylan fans are no different from all the rest.
A crowd, of course, is untameable, unpredictable.
Hailing heroes one moment,
only to crucify them the next
then declare their undying love for the dead.
She would have hated the herd mentality,
for she walked the narrow road
through stones that never broke her bones,
but surely pierced her hurting heart.
So we assuage our guilt or jump the bandwagon
with our social-media posts of googled facts,
our YouTube shares
our limpid lamentations.
We didn’t deserve her—any of us.
But we mourn and miss her
this fragile lioness of truth.
Too late now to tell her she is loved,
to leave futile bouquets of flowers.
She can no longer hear us.
But we need more than ever, to listen to her.

Gifford Savage is from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals including The Storms, The Bangor Literary Journal, Agape Review, and previously in The New Verse News. He won the Aspects Festival Poetry Slam 2022.

LONG LIVE THE LAST KING

by Mickey J. Corrigan

People are saying it’s the biggest

the greatest, the best crowd

this shithole has ever seen

sleek limos slide through, his face

at the bulletproof window 

mouth open, golf cap tight

on his oversize head

People are saying

the crowd's as big as Lincoln's

and everyone wept, even Jesus

the fans wild with joy

racecar thrilled to see him

to be seen by him

the man who would be king

People are not saying

he took an appalling strut

across the world stage

that ended in folly, farce

reflecting internal unrest

bubbling anger, belligerence

and distrust of everyone else

People aren't saying

he was a mad genius

skilled at detecting weakness

in a narrow human range

of emotions others feel

absent in his lurking bulk

under the ruby crown

the bloated expression

of abject fear

People aren't asking

why the devout followers

of this crazy cult

still willing to sicken 

maskless in the face

of scientific evidence, millions

of facts like corpses piling up

vowing to win at all costs

or die trying

 

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

YES, THEY SOW GUNS INTO THE BELLY OF THIS WORLD

by Ariana D. Den Bleyker





You cannot sow leaves back to a tree,
unpluck the plume of an eagle.
When words begin to rot the tongue,
those words cannot be swallowed back.

There is a dish to hold the sea,
a brassiere to hold the sun,
a compass for the galaxy,
a voice to wake the dead.

But this is the silence between us.
And this is why there will be no nest.
Because this is a relationship
between a bird & a gun.

Shots burst out into a crowd;
and, we saw the red-hot glint,
watching & crying & asking
that question over again.

Talons fall from the sky,
settle, & turn to rust. I hate you,
I think, as you shoot me
to death with a rifle in my face:

Born to pull the trigger.
Born to light the match.
Born to see the blood.
Born to steal the hope.

You feel rage & there are bodies
on the floor, me, dying,
almost dead, knees stuck
together with feathers & blood.

One gun to hold the bullets;
one finger to pull the trigger.
Truth wears everyday clothes.
Tufts crimson as sunset pass us by.


Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches(Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Even the Statue Weeps (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2019), and Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Between Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.

3 EXCUSES FOR NOT MARCHING AND THEN A POEM

by Melissa Fite Johnson

A woman wears a Statue of Liberty crown and holds a torch at the Women’s March in New York on Saturday. Credit Sara Hylton/The New York Times via Alaska Dispatch News, January 22, 2017



1. Dry throat I must coat with water or I’ll cough. 
2. Dog-sitting for a friend so she can march. 
3. The angry parent who checked Facebook 
to confirm I’m a liberal teacher.  

He might find this poem.
It makes me squirm, the thought he could take 
my thoughts from my head. My old professor 
always says, It’s easier not to write. 
Today, it was easier not to lurch 
open the garage, turn the key, thrust myself 
into history, into the brave crowd 
filling their lungs with songs instead of doubt. 
My body won’t speck a grainy photograph. 

August 28, 1963, a young girl rested 
her arm on a rail, her head on her arm. The video 
unspools her at “sweltering with the heat of 
oppression.” Every phrase was 
a lighted match. Each flame passed through her. 

January 21, 2017, what words, what fire
I could have carried home like a torch.


Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book.  Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere.  Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.