THE WRONG HOUSE

by Thomas R. Smith

dedicated to Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis

“Wrong House” by Tala Madani (2014)

Say it’s the city, late evening, dark.
You’ve stopped to pick up your brothers,
thought you had the right address,
but now you’re unsure, seeing the pale
man the other side of the glass door.
Something in his hand, something shiny
in his trembling hand. Raises it,
a flash, the sound of glass
breaking, you breaking.

Say you’re in the country. It’s easy
to get lost on those dirt back roads.
Your car pulls into a driveway, but
the number is wrong. Turn back out.
From a nest of darkness
in the trees, bullets spit, one
catches you where you sit. Your
friends get you to a hospital, 
too late.  You’re gone.

Say you’re a country. Thought you knew
the Address, confident in your way
around the shining city. What brought you
here to the door of this horror movie?
Who armed the frightened old man,
the violent sociopath? Why has your
heart taken so much lead? Are you
wounded but alive, or dead? Why do you
keep showing up at the wrong house?

Thomas R. Smith is a poet, essayist, and teacher living in western Wisconsin. His most recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press).

TO HUMANITY'S LEADERS AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHES

by George Salamon

You do not hear others.
You listen to voices inside yourselves,
Voices crazy with the sanity of greed,
Inspired by the magic of power.
You nurse profane dreams of
Treacheries and lies, never cringing,
Navigating toward escapes from your motives,
While neither God nor man blocks your evasions.
Your end will arrive, by accident or error,
But with it, no Peace on Earth.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

KALASHNIKOVS

by B.Z. Niditch

MIKHAIL Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47 rifle, told the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before his death that he felt guilty for those it killed. -- news.com.au

The arms trade
profits at the world's
children's expense,
who merely ask for love
or just a chance at living
now with no arms or legs
begging for food,
body parts now seen
on technicolor screens
with scars on skin
that cannot be erased
or some without remains
only the memory
of historical or geographical
error of being existentially
at the wrong place or time.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.