THE PEOPLE IN GAZA KEEP DYING

by Richard Jeffrey Newman

Crowds of displaced Palestinians at a UNRWA-affiliated school in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on December 19th, 2023. Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via AP at Jewish Currents.

“You don’t need overt bloodshed to cause significant violence that ends people’s lives. Many people will die unnecessary deaths due to deprivation.” —Yara Asi quoted by Maya Rosen in “The Epidemiological War on Gaza,” Jewish Currents, January 5, 2024

 

This morning on my daily walk

I met a long-haired shepherd

with ambiguous eyes.

I slowed my pace,

watched the dog’s walker

rein the animal’s curiosity in,

winding tightly around her hand

the tether we tell ourselves

protects people like me,

who believe all others

will of course welcome the friendship

we assume they assume we intend,

and in that moment, the rage

I thought I’d put behind me

at the words of the poet

whose book I was asked to review

sent its own tether out,

and I heard myself again

reading his lines aloud

as I sat some months ago

alone among my books,

confirming I’d not misread

his refusal of history,

the willful pleasure he took

in a hatred I disowned long ago,

no differently, I have no doubt,

than that dog, under

the right circumstances,

would disown its leash,

and perhaps its master as well.

I don’t remember much

about my own opportunity,

except that I was standing

in my sophomore dorm hallway

while a man from a country

I knew nothing about,

except that I knew nothing,

looked at me with disbelief.

“You really believe those mothers

love their sons so little

that they bring them into the world

just to make them martyrs?”

I had not said exactly that,

but it was my meaning,

as its hatred was,

in poem after poem,

the lie that poet embraced.

I started to ask if the dog was friendly,

but the woman spit out, “Come!”

and pulled him hard into the gutter.

I let my question sink back into silence,

which I thought at first

was how I should respond

to that poet’s betrayal

of this art that saved my life,

but then I wrote the review.

It’s in the world. I want to know

what difference it has made.

Richard Jeffrey Newman has published three books of his own poetry, T’shuvah (Fernwood Press 2023), Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017), and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006), as well as three books of translation from classical Persian poetry, Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan, Selections from Saadi’s Bustan (Global Scholarly Publications 2004 & 2006), and The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press 2011). He curates the First Tuesdays reading series, is the Executive Director of Newtown Literary, and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College.

WE DIDN’T ASK FOR ONLY

by B. Fulton Jennes

We don’t ask the flowers to all be daisies,

or dogs to be only dachshunds.

 

We wouldn’t want all flags to be red, white, and blue,

(although some people would, and that’s a sad truth).

 

Valentine’s Day would disappoint

if those heart-shaped boxes

contained nothing but nougat,

and we’d suffer if orchestras

were nothing but bassoons.

 

Think what we’d miss

if all songs were sung in D minor,

all rooms painted Chantilly blue.

 

The nights would be darker

if heaven held only blue dwarfs.

A forest planted with nothing but maples

would be stark in winter.

 

If all roads led south,

wouldn’t we miss east and west?

 

Imagine…

 

A childhood of puzzles and no other toys,

schools of sturgeon filling the freshwaters

and exclusively stingrays at sea,

libraries with shelves stacked solely with sci-fi,

rom-com the only choice in new film fare,

all eggs, runny, sunny-side-up,

all coffee, decaf, black,

all shoes, brown leather, size 7,

all towels green, all sheets unfitted,

blue ink only in non-retractable pens,

no choice but Times New Roman

to write an essay, eulogy, or epistle…

 

We didn’t ask for only.

We don’t want only.

 

We weren’t born only.

 

We were born blonde, brunette, jet-haired, red,

oval-faced, round, square and pear,

thick-thighed and thin, tall and petite,

in a rainbow of skin colors,

a hodgepodge of histories,

a symphony of sexualities,

a jumble of genders,

with loves gifted by God, not governments.

 

So don’t ask a rainbow to be only red.

 

We will not be only.

B. Fulton Jennes is Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, CT, where she serves as poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Night Heron Barks, Limp Wrist, Tar River Poetry, SWIMM, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pareidolia Literary, Extreme Sonnets II, and many other journals and anthologies. Her collection Mammoth Spring was a finalist for the 2021 Two Sylvias Wilder Prize and the Small Harbor Press Laureate Prize. Her chapbook Blinded Birds (Finishing Line Press), released in April of 2022, was named Winner of the 2022 International Book Awards in the Poetry: Chapbook category. 

A BILLION TONS

by Pepper Trail

A highway leading to downtown Los Angeles, California, is empty last month during the coronavirus pandemic. The view of downtown is clearer than usual as the city and the world sharply cut daily carbon dioxide emissions. But a new scientific study says the long-term effects of months-long reduction will be quite small. —AP, May 19, 2020 Photo:Mark J. Terrill/AP

Outside the window, a billion tons of CO2 are not there
I take the billion tons, wrap my arms around them
Muscle them down, get them into a shape I can handle
Fold them, fold them again, and smaller again,
Press them at last into what else but a diamond
Put it in a box for my daughter, for her wedding
If I would have a daughter, if she would have a wedding

Outside the window, 375,000 people are not there
One sang “Angel from Montgomery”—you can hear the echo
One thought the disease was a joke, until it wasn’t
One gave me the key to all the plants, and I have it still
They are beating against my window softly as moths
Against all the windows, and we look through them
When we look out, which is what we are always doing

Outside the window, my father and mother are not there
They left in good time, and were spared this particular nothing
My father is free to walk the Carolina forest, forever looking
Quietly content with bird or frog, bloodroot or lady-slipper
My mother can sing in her choir, too short to be seen
Behind the ranks of Easter lilies and the tall candles
But I know she is there, and I know where he has gone

Outside the window, my life is not there
The flight to Australia, the places never to be seen
The meal in the restaurant where we would have quarreled
Or where I would have said you were right, all along
The baseball games, your art show, the old too and fro
They say if you add it all up, it makes a billion tons
And also that, in the end, it makes no difference at all


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

ANY FUNCTIONING ADULT 2020

by Marc Swan




On a lawn down a side street off a main drag
in Portland Maine, it catches my eye—
simple phrase in red, white and blue
with a big bang center stage
to that intact region our current leader
can’t claim—a brain that thinks, acts,
feels with compassion, caring, humanity.
A sign in a yard can’t change the world
but it can open thinking beyond
media thrum and whimper—
insult, injury, uncertainty, and help us feel
we can make a difference
as clichéd as that may be. Grab your pen,
paper, keyboard, text, phone, load up
the information highway with a message
echoing these immortal words—
Yes We Can.

Marc Swan has poems forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, The Nashwaak Review, Channel Magazine, Floyd County Moonshine, among others. His latest collection today can take your breath away was published by Sheila-na-gig Editions in 2018. He lives in coastal Maine with his wife Dd, an artist, clothing designer and maker.

IT SEEMS

by Kristina England

The pride flag flies at half-staff over the MB Lounge in Worcester during a vigil for the victims of the attack in Orlando Sunday. T&G Staff/Rick Cinclair. —Worcester Telegram & Gazette, June 20, 2016

there remains a bit of cockamamie in the kettle,
no matter how much we try to reshape its bitter ends.
Here, in Worcester, Mass, we lower a rainbow flag,
while, in Alabama, there is apparently a right time
and a wrong to mourn. It seems we are reading
from a very different dictionary or theirs is upside
down. Other countries look at us funny. Who could
blame them?  I drink coffee with my breakfast, enjoy
dark roast, yet I own more flavors, even a tea kettle,
to welcome visitors of any kind, because who can tell
you what beans or leaves to like?  Which one will get
you to the ultimate high?  We all have an acquired taste
and if you refuse to accept someone else's company
by way of their choice, break your kettle in angst,
perhaps I should buy two more, bright porcelain ones,
hand-made with doves, encase them in glass, dedicate
them to anyone that leaves a state that will never give
one sip of dignity a try.  Look around. See what all us
wide-eyed wakers see. There in the distance, so many
mugs that once gleamed beautifully, clinked in the early
morn, now shards of glass under a closed and brutal fist.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in several magazines, including Gargoyle, Muddy River Poetry Journal, and Pure Slush. She can be followed on Facebook.

TWO ROADS

by Judith Terzi

“You don’t have to read Robert Frost to know. You have to live life to know that the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference for the future of my country, the security of the Middle East and the peace of the world, the peace, we all desire.” --Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United States Congress, March 3, 2015

after Robert Frost

Two roads diverged on a snowy morning
on Congress' floor. The travelers could not
journey together along each path, one trodden
with storm of angst & warrior remains.
The other looked about the same, but hope
was sprinkled along the edges of the trail,
& sunlight could be seen streaming through
the fabric of oak & pine & fir. The travelers
listened to the vibes of each path, cupped
seasoned hands to ears to hear the trials
of trees, the brag of wind, the bend of earth.
Now some preferred the leitmotif that emerged
from one––a lighter tune they heard, say
a Mozart flute. They chose that road, skipped
stones into a mountain lake, while Spanish
broom stretched yellow necks toward
rain-swept sky. And two hummingbirds
tangoed overhead as if to say: "You've taken
this road, & it will make all the difference."


Judith Terzi is a poet and educator living in Southern California. She is the author of Sharing Tabouli, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, and most recently, If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus). Her poems appear widely in online and print journals and are included in anthologies such as Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's (Barefoot Muse), Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes), and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque).