DEAR JUDY

a duplex poem

by Trish Hopkinson

Today, a successful assassination

happened near where you last lived.

     In Utah, where I once lived with you

     a right-wing activist was shot dead.

In Evergreen, a school shooter was shot dead

on the same Wednesday in Colorado.

     It’s Wednesday in Utah and Colorado

     where I now live, 200 miles from the dead

no longer living: two men, shot dead,

two schoolchildren fatally wounded.

     This year, four kids dead, thirty-five wounded.

     They were not soldiers; they were students.

Murder on campus, witnessed by students,

no ear grazed: successful assassination.

Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines and journals; and her most recent book A Godless Ascends was published by Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.

EACH DEVASTATION

by Linda Conroy

“Blue Shadow” (original hand painted Acrylic painting of Blue petals in different shades) by Deepu.

 

brings blue shadow to the landscape

reminding of the weight of volatility

 

a volatility so broad that it might 

slam the farthest reach of sky.               

 

I see that the farthest reach of sky,

a place that could bring joy in its daily birth,       

 

a birth that may absolve our sins in joy,

is blurred with splashes of red dawn.          

 

A rawness of red dawn reflecting

all spilt blood, acts of a night just gone.

 

Blood this night spilled, done for now

and slunk away, not pushed by any squall.

 

No morning squall can push beyond                              

the bruised blue shadows of this day.

Linda Conroy is a retired social worker who likes to observe and comment on the human behaviors that we see around us, and on the connection between human nature and the natural world. Her work has appeared in many journals.

DUPLEX: INHERITANCE

by Danielle Lemay

Studies in roundworms by biologists at the University of Iowa suggest that a mother’s response to stress can influence her children and her grandchildren, through heritable epigenetic changes. Their research, reported in Molecular Cell, demonstrated that roundworm mothers subjected to heat stress passed—under certain conditions—the legacy of that stress exposure not only to their offspring but, if the period of stress to which the mother was exposed was long enough, even to their offspring’s children. —Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, October 14, 2021

Study Suggests Maternal Stress Inherited

like passing down green eyes or curly hair.

 

          It’s not like passing down green eyes or hair;

          the scientists conducted studies with worms.

 

Scientists studied heat stress in worms,

so what does it matter to human mothers?

 

          Does it matter to human mothers

          that they will now be blamed for stress?

 

We know the moms will now be blamed for stress;

Of course. News stories manipulate us.

 

          Of course, news stories manipulate us.

          We learn from the world, starting with mom.

 

Perhaps we should calm the world, starting with mom.

Studies suggest maternal stress is inherited.

Author’s Note: I came across this story about heritable stress at the end of the work day, while I was quite stressed, and it made me think how I’ve probably passed stress to my children and how my mom was stressed and her mother before her, a whole lineage of stressed mothers, probably for as long as there have been Homo sapiens, or even worms. With each generation sharing stress with the next, like lines from one couplet to another in a duplex, I obviously had to write a duplex.

Danielle Lemay is a scientist and poet. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 and has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, ONE ART, Limp Wrist Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.

WEIGHT

by Judith Terzi

Emmett Louis Till was kidnapped, lynched and brutally murdered at age 14 on August 28, 1955.

"Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor."—John Lewis, New York Times, July 30, 2020

Emmett Till shot dead at fourteen. Two men go free.
George Floyd suffocated at forty-six. By a brutal knee.

          George ran out of breath. Suffocated at age forty-six.
          They sank Emmett, strapped him to a cotton gin fan.

No gun to sink George. No river, no machine, no tree.
Simeon Wright saw the men point the gun at Emmett.

          Saw the men point the gun, pull his cousin from bed.
          His words weightless against the two men's. No video

then. The world saw the cop's knee press into George.
Saw three more cops. Over eight minutes of complicity.

          Four cops. Eight ears sealed shut for over eight minutes.
          Sixty-five years gone by since Emmett lost his breath.

Three months passed since George no longer breathes.
Emmett Till shot dead at fourteen. Two men go free.


Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay), as well as of five chapbooks, including Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus), Judith Terzi's poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Web and Net nominations and have been read on Radio 3 of the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English and French at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.