FROM THE FIELDS OF MINNESOTA

by Mike Bayles

 

an old watercolor believed to be of Grand Marais, Minnesota

 

 

Each winter fields rested

and in spring they found

new life. My uncle raised

cattle and crops with pride.

 

News played on television

during simpler times

while families sat together

and talked at the dinner table.

 

We had our dreams

of going to the moon

and in quiet times

we looked into clear skies.

 

Buildings in downtown

Minneapolis glistened

our pride, a mecca for most

 

while in St. Paul

cattle displayed at the State Fair

won ribbons while young boys

learned to farm.

 

My cousin and I walked

through pastures and we said

our uncles would never die.

 

We talked of wars,

as soldiers fought

on the other side of the world.

Little did we know that they

would be fought on our streets

 

Back then a man dressed in a cape

could leap over the tallest building

with a single bound. I long

to hold onto that dream.

 

The farm where my cousin once lived

was torn up for a highway

and we’ve fallen out of touch.

Our fathers have died.

 

Now I cry for them

and innocence lost

when the news says

we are killing each other

on the streets I once loved.

Mike Bayles, a lifelong Midwest resident, is the author of seven books of poetry and fiction. His most recent book is The Siouxland and Other Dreams, with poems about Northwest and surrounding areas, and mythology of the land. His writing is informed by his travels when he worked as a flagger/traffic control for construction and utility crews. He is expecting to publish his next collection of poetry this spring.

I WANT TO LOVE WAKING UP

by Lynne Schilling

after “I Want to Love the World” by Christine Potter

I want to love waking up again, but for months

I’ve been waking up to thoughts of being a day 

closer to death, to images of the bony ribcages 

 

of starving children, to the blankness of hope. 

I want to be light as birdsong at dawn, but instead, 

I am the heavy keening of families of deportees. 

 

I want to love waking up, but joy evades my grip,

drips off my fingers and evaporates, like drops 

of water on a hot pan. I want to wake up happy, 

but doom is leaning on her horn under my window, 

making thoughts of anything else impossible. I force

myself to get up, and only then, when I feel my feet 

 

on the floor, do I remember poetry—a few lines

I want to revise, a poem I want to reread & that 

is enough to get me down the stairs to my coffee.

While Lynne Schilling has been writing poetry on and off for forty years, she began writing it seriously four years ago at age 75. Her day job was as an academic in an entirely different field. She has published poems in Quartet, The Alchemy Spoon, Rue Scribe, The New Verse News and others. She has poems forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson and MacQueen’s Quinterly.

WISHING YOU ALL A GOOD DEATH

by Catherine Gonick

Art by Clay Bennett, July 1, 2025

Millions of low-income Americans could experience staggering financial losses under the domestic policy package that Republicans advanced through the Senate on Tuesday, which reserves its greatest benefits for the rich while threatening to strip health insurance, food stamps and other aid from the poor. —The New York Times, July 1, 2025

as the deviants' suicide hotline 

goes dead, the bad vaccines

and free food disappear

along with the women

and children, leaving

only one gender 

on the sickly green earth,

and you already too ill

to fill out new forms

are free to drop, already dust

beneath the rug of our law,

as the best deaths are dealt

out casually as cards

by we who can afford

the deep cuts

and consequent

deaths that ensure

 "they'll get over it"

before you can know it

you'll all be bleeding

too fast to know what's coming

for your common-good bodies

already installed in pre-paid

unremarked graves,

wishing you all a good night

and good death

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, and Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her first full-length collection, Split Daughter of Eve, is forthcoming in June from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works in a company that slows  the rate of global warming.

THIS TOO WILL BE OUR HISTORY

by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut

Let’s crawl out from between cracks

in Mrs. Malloy’s Social Studies class

look America square in the…  

Trail of Tears, Chinese Exclusion, Compromise

of 1877, red carpet for the KKK in troops

 withdrawal, 911, Homeland Security, ICE.

Military facing off with us — terror.

We love this country — swampy and lush; dry

and sharp; wide, wild, waking.

Echoes of past, Liberty or Death,

beg the question, Is the acrid smoke gulped 

after hollers of Freedom now

easier than silence? 

Don’t you want to fix her pockets, tuck

them in; pull her 

Fortnite shirt down over

her exposed sand-colored belly; embrace 

her and, while reaching behind, 

let loose the cuffs, like you might untie

a ribbon to free your girl’s hair?

Kristin Kowalski Ferragut is author of the poetry collection Escape Velocity (Kelsay Books, 2021) and children's book Becoming the Enchantress (Loving Healing Press, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in Beltway Quarterly, Bourgeon, Fledgling Rag, Little Patuxent Review, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others.

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Story at NPR, May 31, 2025

“For heaven’s sake…”
it’s true, we are all going to die.
But how and why, under what circumstances?
Accidental death has its own brand of horror
for those left behind in the aftermath.
Diseases can ravage, destroy in torturous chronologies
of lifetimes, or swoop in all teeth and talons at birth,
suffering without boundaries or lines of defense.

We say, For heaven’s sake, let’s help! 
Let’s not walk among the dead and say
we’ve all got it coming. Let’s renounce cruelty,
callous equations by riffraff imposters
who spew bilious indifference toward the sick,
whose stone hearts will someday be erased
on the site of an unmarked grave in the canon of history.

   
 
Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing and the importance of shared stories.

CECCO’S ECHOES

S’ i’ fosse foco, arderei ’l mondo—Sonnet 86 

by Cecco Angiolieri (Siena, c.1260–c.1312)

translated by Julie Steiner

Source: IranCartoon

Trump Tries to Make Sure States Don’t Fight Climate Change, Either: The Trump administration wants to block states from trying to limit the “astounding” costs and impacts of climate change. “This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. —Rolling Stone, May 24, 2025

If I were fire, I’d scorch the world all over.
If I were wind, I’d blast its storm-wracked ground.
If I were water, I’d make sure it drowned.
If I were God, I’d give it Hell forever.

If I were Pope, I’d gleefully endeavor
to prank all Christians, just to mess around.
If I were Emperor—what then? You’ve found
the answer: I’d behead all sorts, whoever.

If I were death, I’d give my dad a visit.
If I were life, I’d turn from him and scram.
And how I’d treat my mom’s no different, is it?

If I were Cecco—as I’ve been, and am—
I’d take the younger women, the exquisite,
and leave for other men each vile old ma’am.

Italian Original:

S’ i’ fosse foco, ardere’ il mondo ;
s’ i’ fosse vento, lo tempesterei ;
s’ i’ fosse acqua, io l’ anegherei ;
s’ i’ fosse dio, mandereil en profondo ;

s’ i’ fosse papa, sare’ alor giocondo,
chè tutt’ i cristïani imbrigherei ;
s’ i’ fosse ’mperator, sa’ che farei ?
a tutti mozarei lo capo a tondo.

S’ i’ fosse morte, andarei da mio padre ;
s’ i’ fosse vita, fugirei da lui ;
similmente faría di mi’ madre.

S’ i’ fosse Cecco com’ i’ sono e fui,
torrei le donne giovani e legiadre :
e vecchie e laide lasserei altrui.

Francesco ("Cecco") Angiolieri corresponded with Dante Alighieri, and addressed one of his 120 extant sonnets to him. Most of his work is humorous.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Her most recent verse translations from Classical Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian can be found in (or are forthcoming from) Literary Matters, The Classical Outlook, The Ekphrastic Review, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

MEDEA ALSO KILLED HER CHILDREN

by Kathy Gilbert

Medea on her golden chariot, by Germán Hernández Amores

I need to write a poem
But
413 people who were alive
Yesterday are dead
 
I need to write a poem…
Bombed without warning
In the night
167 children killed
 
I need to write a poem?
What happened
To the ceasefire?
 
The poem I thought I’d write
Was how yesterday
I saw ravens collecting
Stout twigs and branches
To build and fortify their nests
Home for their future children
 
The poem I thought I’d write
Was about spring and new life
But
It’s winter all over the world
 
I need to write a poem
 
Only love can save us
Love of action. Gathering twigs
To protect new life
Of spring/ offspring
Those babies in Gaza are
our children we have murdered.

 
Kathy Gilbert resides in the Bay Area and received her MFA from SFSU. She is retired, has written two books and practices tai chi.

SPRING

by Katy Z. Allen

Paolo De Matteis "Cain and Abel" c. 1690 oil on canvas

With thoughts of Esther 9:16 and Genesis 4:10

They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes. 
Skunk cabbage flowers are popping up in wooded wetlands.

In 2023, 2300 people in the US were killed by extreme heat climate events.
Salamanders and frogs are beginning their springtime migration on warm, rainy nights.

As of March, 48,500 men, women, and children are dead in Gaza.
Sap is rising in the sugar maples on warm sunny days.

During the 14-year-long Syrian civil war, 620,000 people were slaughtered.
Golden catkin tassels are blooming on hazelnut trees.

No one is counting how many are murdered around the world by climate change.
Crocuses are bringing color to sheltered spots of urban yards.

Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.
Red-wing blackbirds are trilling springtime songs from leafless treetops.

Spring and death are here.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, rabbi of an outdoor congregation, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, eco-chaplain, and has been writing since the age of eight, including her poetic book A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text from Strong Voices Publishing.

DOES IT UPSET YOU?

by Mariam Saidan

After Audre Lorde’s “A Woman Speaks”

 

I have been woman

for a long time

youth was fragile

scary at times

most of the times

nonadjustable to 

the shape I was becoming.

Misunderstood I was.

Out of mind, troubled

when I didn’t quite like 

the safety of home, 

control or harassment. 

I died many deaths  

each time returning

with a new survivor in me.

Fear no longer suited me. 

I’ve grown into a 

thousand-year-old tree.

They cut a branch,

take a leaf,

it grows back.

It always grows back.

Try and take the sun out

of day. 

There are birds living in me,

one always sings,

and a fox curled up on the shed

just a stone’s throw away in 

my garden, looks at me.

Under my living room where 

I keep vases in different shapes 

and colours, painted and 

filled with wildflowers, 

there’s a cellar

and below that,

an ocean,

pounding.

With every tide 

I become water.

Offending waves.

Dramatic drops.

Vast freedom.

Bewildering imagination.

There’s no end to this thirst.

I’m not scared of pain,

it makes things interesting.

My eyes sometimes

look into yours,

but no, not asking to be

touched.

I’m here

to live this life

like no one but

the woman I have

become. 

I’m not ashamed to

drown in this sea.

Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham University (LLM) and Creative Writing at Kent University. She is Iranian, based in London, and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old while living through the Iran-Iraq war.

CRUELTY

by Bonnie Naradzay

Some people say
that, having stopped 
reading the news, they 
feel better.
 
The old Chinese poets
remind me to include
today’s weather report
in each poem.
 
Dr Issam Abu Ajwa said
he was forced to sleep
on a floor covered with small, 
sharp rocks, hands and legs tied,
eyes blindfolded.
 
The weather is warm this week—
in fact, the cherry blossoms
here are projected to peak
somewhat earlier this spring.
 
Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia
was tortured for seven months 
then released without charge. 
“I was clubbed, beaten with rifle butts, 
attacked by dogs. I was beaten so badly 
I couldn’t use my legs or walk, he said.
 
Dr Ahmad Mhanna, director
of al-Awda hospital in north Gaza, 
has been in Israeli prisons 
more than a year without charge.
 
Nightfall here, and the evening
becomes a still life—
it glistens like a Chinese lantern
in a garden without strife.
 
Some people try to memorize
a meaningful poem one line
at a time as a way to neutralize 
the news.  In severe winter cold
 
seven children froze to death
in Gaza in the last 48 hours
but today’s weather elsewhere
is quite pleasant overall.

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations.