JUMP TO IT

an abecedarian

by Cecile Earle

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

A grasshopper chirping and clicking his legs
by the flower pot, sees me, sits up, rolls his eyes,
“Come on,” he says to me, “A 
dictatorship is coalescing.
Even I know—Let’s call it what it is: 
Fascism. Has a stun gun turned you into statues?
Gather your forces,” he says, “Come on
humans! All of you—Yes, you too, Cecile. Now!
In this moment! Wake up! 
Jump on it! Now! You teeter! You 
know nations can explode in a flash!
Listen! All I see you doing is waving arms,
making gestures, filing papers. And still,
nothing is coming together as this 
oligarchy solidifies like a glacier. And you?
Puzzled. Positing solutions. Talk. Talk. Stuck in glue. 
Questioning as you chatter, chatter.
Rally now.
Stop them.
Time’s up! Don’t 
use now to 
veer on the side of caution!
Wake up! Democracy! Ours! Don’t let
X and his minions rule our world!
You can do it,”  the grasshopper says, as he 
zips into the garden. Waves. “See you tomorrow.”

Cecile Earle taught English at UCB and Bay Area Colleges. She also focused on Latin American affairs and social justice as editor with the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley. She has published poetry, essays, memoir, and short fiction, and she has won awards for writing on immigration, nomadic migrations in Northern Kenya, and climate change with, among others, Soul Making Keats of the National League of American Pen Women, Bay Area Poet’s Coalition, Word Peace, and the Mendocino Writer’s Conference.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT SPOKE ON DEMOCRACY

by Indran Amirthanayagam

 

The day is coming, and nobody

is turning away. It is coming like

sun rising, like rain about to burst

 

from cloud, and no matter

where you stand on this earth

you will feel the thunder clap,

 

the roar of the volcano

blowing its top, and you will 

be amazed and chastened,

 

and you will hug love beside

you, love in dreams, love

in history. These are end 

 

times, to take stock, 

to remember, to say

thank you, to wash away

 

the fog of amnesia. Clarity.

Piercing. Truth telling, 

standing with families of 

 

the disappeared everywhere. 

These are times of forgiveness, 

of searing light despite 

 

forces of ruin, of sore 

losing, of twisting laws,

of dictatorship. These 

 

are times for the new 

civil contract, not 

guns but mind, 

 

not mockery 

but respect, not 

cult but democrat.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.