SUNDAY MASS IN OUR ARCHIPELAGO

by Karlo Sevilla

On January 24, 1571, feast of St. John the Baptist, the Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legaspi founded the city of Manila . He earlier took possession of Maynilad, the native settlement of Rajah Matanda and Rajah Sulayman on May 19, 1571 and firmly established Spanish authority in the newly conquered and untrammeled turf. The historic day happened to be the feast of Santa Potenciana and to honor her, she was made patroness of the new territory. Armed with the Spanish sword and the Cross, Legaspi, in his role as conquistador, apportioned a parcel of land for the church of the new settlement under the patronage of La Purisima Inmaculada Concepcion. —History of Manila Cathedral

Nearly 500 years after papal decrees were used to rationalize Europe's colonial conquests, the Vatican repudiated those decrees on Thursday, saying the "Doctrine of Discovery" that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people's culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith. —NPR, March 30, 2023


Another Sunday morning
inside the cathedral;
Baroque, built centuries ago.
First reader quotes a passage
about a people’s liberation
from coerced construction work:
 
And I have promised to bring you up
out of your misery . . . into a land
flowing with milk and honey.
          —Exodus 3:17.
 
Soon, the contrite and otherwise
partake in Holy Communion.
Finally, the priest bids us,
 
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
 
We sing along to the final hymn,
then file out of the hallowed cathedral:
a proud Spanish heritage
from The Empire’s clergy,
built by dint and dirt
of our ancestors’
forced labor.

Karlo Sevilla of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the poetry collections Metro Manila Mammal (Soma Publishing, 2018) and Outsourced!... (Revolt Magazine, 2021). His poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, Protean, Poets Reading The News, Line Rider Press, Radius, Unlikely Stories Mark V, I am not a silent poet, and elsewhere. 

DAVE CHAPPELLE

by Judy Juanita

Dave Chappelle returned for his third stint as host of “Saturday Night Live,” which gave the controversial comedian a starring role in an episode dominated by the midterm elections and the fallout from Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks. —The Washington Post, November 13, 2022

you're looking 

malcolmish

dave 

if only you hadn't walked 
from fifty million dollars
empire wouldn't have known
 
if only you'd been ridiculous
you could be feted
and ignored by all
 
if malcolm had been mediocre 
and not stood up to empire
he would be almost 100 years old
 
while you buck empire over and over
making your black ass
a target 
 
empire smiles all malcolmish
giving any judas permission to kill 
ask malcolm 
 
standing in the audubon ballroom
looking malcolmish
knowing what was coming

Judy Juanita's poetry collection Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Winner of the Tartt Fiction Prize at the University of West Alabama [UWA], her short story collection The High Price of Freeways was published by Livingston Press [UWA] in 2022. Her short story, "The Black House," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022, and her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). She appears in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Season 5, Laney College.  She teaches writing at University of California, Berkeley.

DEAR WILLIAM

by Geoffrey Philp

"Relationships evolve. Friendship endures."

—Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

I hope I'm not breaking any royal protocols, 

which in my father's time would've gotten us killed, 

strung up on the gallows like Daddy Sharpe, Paul Bogle, 

George William Gordon—heroes who were martyred 

at the king's pleasure for demanding the right to rule

ourselves, a stake in the wealth your empire robbed

and vowed never to return a farthing to unwashed rebels.

And now, you've come into my yard, claiming to be a friend? 

Tell me, William, what kind of friend enslaves another friend, 

pillages and loots family heirlooms of his friend's ancestors, 

brainwashing generations of descendants with a one-sided story 

without claiming responsibility for the plight of the survivor's

welfare, and after four hundred years still can't say he's sorry

with reparations? No, William. This relationship must end.

Author’s Note: My “Dear William” letter to the Duke of Cambridge. There goes my knighthood and invitation to Buckingham Palace.

Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children's books, and two novels. His next collection of  poems, Archipelagos (Peepal Tree Press), uses Sylvia Wynter’s readings of Cesaire and Foucault along with Amitav Ghosh's paradigm to explore the connection between colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity in the Plantationocene. Twitter: @GeoffreyPhilp Instagram: @geoffreyphilp

ANOTHER YEAR

by George Held

Another year ends and a new year starts
and I have fewer—it’s just math—
to count on, but I’m glad to have
been born too young for WW 2
and too old for Korea and Nam

and too ancient for the all-volunteer
Army dispatched, like Caesar’s legions,
to any hot spot in the Empire,
though Afghanistan’s a region
a bit too far out for our ambition.

Another year, the President’s third
in office, on the horizon for him
to continue our retreats
from remote and alien climes
(poetic word for “region” and for rhymes)

or to launch new strikes, like missiles
out of the blue: it’s all up to him,
our grand commander-in-chief,
our modern chief executive officer
and main deal-maker and pussy-grabber.

Will this be another year of immunity
for executive privilege, the one man
above the law, for him who has slouched
from the bestial floor in Bethlehem
to rename the world like a neo-Adam,

whose jutting chin recalls Mussolini
and racist rants echo Hitler’s
and whose repeated lies outdo Goebbels’
but who knows how to talk the talk
that enthralls his adamantine Base.

Another year, or could it be our last
before the earth floods or a nuclear blast
solves our overpopulation problem?
The bourgeoisie now draw near the edge
over which many poor have lately plunged,

and the widespread wish of “Happy New Year”
seems frivolous if not a beard for fear.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

AMERICAN SOLSTICE

by Peleg Held

Wednesday's surprise announcement that the U.S. will quickly withdraw all its troops from Syria is the stuff of nightmares for many of the Kurds living under the protection of U.S forces and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “Everyone is upset, sad and afraid,” one SDF member from the Kurdish-dominant Syrian city of Kobane told Fox News. “It’s a historic mistake. We wanted to be part of America. We are surrounded by enemies, and ISIS isn’t even finished yet.” “Everyone is confused and scared. This will mean that Turkey will likely attack us. We are in shock because we thought the U.S. would help us achieve peace after ISIS. We didn’t think that they would help us defeat the terrorists and then leave us alone to face the horror of Turkish forces and its extreme factions,” lamented Mazloum Kurdy, a 33-year-old father and teacher from Kobane. “Now people are thinking to displace themselves from their homes here again, but nobody knows where a safe place to go is.” In his words, it is an ultimate betrayal by the United States. —Fox News, December 20, 2018. 

 . . . only when the mountains are no more, only when Ocalan’s solitary resistance no longer lights our way is the day we should say “Kurds are no more” . . .    —Hawzhin Azeez


You waver, thinning wisp of a republic,
as the smoke of betrayal is drawn into our chests.
Drift into infamy. You say you are freedom itself
and now no longer owe any promise to liberty.
In Kobane they will grip their fate in their own hands,
in Rojava they will look to the mountains as their only friends.
A great people will once again be backed to the wall
while cowards rub their heels and take
the bows for the sacrifices of others. The watchers
on the walls tonight see you turn your back. Resigned
but not surprised. The only Empire that does not betray
is the one that, clutching the stone of its own delusions
finally sinks under. When your time comes,
as it will, for the last sparks to go cold into the black
earth, no one will come to sing over your ash.
Under a red flag the last architects of Armenia
march to mark your enduring work of this day.
Waver, thinning wisp of a republic
as the smoke of betrayal is drawn into our chests.

Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.

POST-KAVANAUGH MUSINGS

by George Salamon






Let us read the Kavanaugh debacle not as
Map of the future but as a map of our history
In which most men aspired to power,
To command an empire, a city, a family,
Employing their talent to be obeyed,
Fulfilling their need to excel, and
Succeed in dividing humans into
Executioners and victims, exempting
Only madmen and wise men,
Saints and beggars from engaging
In this jostling game, played in every
Nation and tribe and their institutions.
This political instinct that dominated
The hearings for Justice Kavanaugh
Disguised the cannibalism that rules
Where humanity is taught and raised to see
Itself as leaders and their followers,
Tyrants and slaves, where human beings
Enter a pact, sacrificing their dreams
For either committing or enduring crimes,
And pretending that the tune of this
Dance is the music to the march of progress.


George Salamon watched the Kavanaugh hearings but, so far, has noticed no side effects, He lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

FOR CARRIE FISHER

by William Cullen Jr.






A princess without a royal entourage
always out there with riffraff and rebels
plotting against an empire
for a yet unnamed republic
ready to spill your blue-blood
for the stardust of all people
you shift now to another dimension
as only our memories can glimpse you
moving forward at light speed
you show us the way to freedom.

William Cullen Jr. is a veteran and works at a social services non-profit in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Canary, Gulf Stream, Right Hand Pointing, Star*Line, and Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics.

THE RED MAN WITH CLOSED EYES

by Tanmoy Das Lala

You call them rapists, murderers, criminals, mock
            The silence of a grieving mother, yet
The people in the room break into a riot of applause;
            Many more, behind the protection of a television screen
Do the same –bow their heads in silent nods, in case
            Motion spills into the roving eyes of ideological avenge.
It makes me cringe, makes me afraid, feel
Oddly defeated – at this vicious name-calling
Of the ‘un-Americans’; toxic, this culture of exclusion.

I am an immigrant of color, and gay,
            Who came to this hip of land for a better life, to pursue
A world of dreams; ousted by the jurisdiction
            Of divisive laws upheld by my home country –reinstated
To chain same-sex lovers, like myself. It is this narrative
            Of dislocation that is my common history with your forefathers,
Who did the same, who wobbled
            On the nape of cultural dichotomies, to build for you
A better life. Our uprooting, the confusion of fleet,
            Reconstructions of life’s jagged shards, is not
Your lived experience – and I would never wish it upon you,
            Having known the shame behind the name-calling,
Feeling, often, like an engorged specimen under a microscope.

Your pathological view of the illegals, the aliens, I have come to realize,
Is only a small twig of a much bigger tree,
Rooted deeply in your heart, this phobia of the other; this issue
            Of legality, a timid straw behind your slanted vision
Of a White America.

Do you forget, Red Man, how many fingers of aliens
            Have built the legs of your empire?

Do you realize, Red Man, that law is expensive and
            Entire villages of fugitives would’ve bled
Under the hack of death, had they not made the breathless escape
            To the hopeful shores of this country?

Look beyond this universe of fear you have constructed,
            And notice –that many of us are here to help, to settle
In peace, and love the pillars of a fresh vista of freedom.
            Many of us would fight and fight and fight
For a Nation that isn’t ours, because this Nation gives us hope,
            Much more than our own. If you lift the veil
Of constant suspicion, undo the latches barring our dreams, remove
            The talons biting into our collective strength, you will
See, a majority of us, united before the same flag,
Committed to the cause, not different from yours,
Of together, building an even greater Nation. I wish you would see,
            For once, this alternate reality, beyond
The hollow of your eyes, shuttered so closely tight –
            That anything in the living darkness, to you,
Is an all-consuming threat, a wrench, a narrative of greed.

Tanmoy Das Lala lives in New York City, and writes poetry whenever time permits. His works have appeared in Thought Catalog and Chelsea Station Magazine.