LETHAL INJECTION PROTOCOL

by Ilene Millman

An easy-to-follow recipe really, the original from 1977. Just three required ingredients,

but be sure to check you have them on hand, in case

that one you thought you had is unavailable since the manufacturer

dislikes the way you're using it.

Be sure to check your equipment: two intravenous cannulas, one a backup,

plus a line leading to an adjacent room,

saline, hypodermic needles, alcohol for sterilizing just in case

someone suddenly says the word “Stay” as happened in the case

of James Autry in 1983.

You may experiment with substituting alternative

ingredients although one is banned in some states since the botched

batch in the case

of John Marion Grant, who convulsed two dozen times and puked

although he did breathe 12 more minutes. Administer in the sequence set here:

first injection to cause unconsciousness followed by the one for paralysis and the last

cardiac arrest.

Watch for these procedural problems: needle applied in the wrong direction, drugs

injected into tissue and not vein, or inability to find a vein as in the case

this week of Tony Carruthers, or the case

two years ago, of Marcellus Williams where 

evidence is strong

that he just might have been

innocent.

Ilene Millman writes about memories, mud, music, modern times, anything her abiding and determined fascination grabs onto. Her first poetry book, Adjust Speed to Weather, was published in 2018, and A Jar of Moths, in March,2024 (Ragged Sky Press). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022 and 2024. A speech/language therapist, she published two therapy games designed to help school-aged children with language development problems.

TO PRESIDENT TRUMP WHO IS THROWING HIS WEIGHT BEHIND THE DEATH PENALTY

by CaLokie

Text of the diktus.

Why

do we kill people 

who kill people

to show 

that killing people

is wrong

and why,

if we kill people 

who kill people

to show

that killing people 

is wrong

are we four times more likely 

to kill people 

who kill white people

to show 

that killing white people

is wrong

than we are people 

who kill black people 

to show

that killing black people

is wrong

and why,

if killing people who kill people

deter people 

from killing people

do countries

who kill people who kill people

to show 

that killing people is wrong

have more 

people who kill people

than countries who imprison 

people who kill people

to show that 

killing people is wrong

and why,

if we spend six times more 

to kill people 

who kill people

than we do when we 

imprison without parole people 

who kill people

and why,

if killing people who kill people

deter people 

from killing people

do countries

who kill people who kill people

to show 

that killing is wrong

have more 

people who kill people

than countries who imprison 

people who kill people

to show that 

killing is wrong

and why,

if our country has so many 

people who believe in God

and so glories in the cross 

on which 

Jesus was tortured

and killed 

but that cross was how  

Roman people tortured

and killed people 

who they believed had done 

something wrong 

and why,

if you can’t fight fire

with fire

and two wrongs

don’t make

a right

and though 

sometimes subsequent 

evidence shows 

the people executed 

for killing people 

did not kill the people 

for which they 

had been convicted 

and since we are 

not GOD

but people,

why

do we kill people 

who kill people

to show 

that killing people

is wrong?

Author’s note: This poem is not based on an old Barbra Streisand song but from a bumper sticker asking the question, “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”

Editor’s note: The bumper sticker our poet recalls quotes a lyric from Holly Near’s 1980 song “Foolish Notion.”

 

Carl Stilwell (aka CaLokie) is a retired teacher who taught for over 30 years in the Los Angeles Unified school District and participated in UTLA’s teachers’ strikes in 1970 and 1989. He was born during the depression in Oklahoma and came to California in 1959 and has lived there ever since. His pen name was inspired by the Joads struggle for survival in The Grapes of Wrath and the songs and life of Woody Guthrie. He has poems published in Altadena Poetry Review, Blue Collar Review, Four Feather’s Press, Lummox, Pearl, Prism, Revolutionary Poets Brigade--Los Angeles, Rise Up, Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, The Sparring Artists. 

A COLLAGE OF HANGINGS

by Lisa St. John

Iran executed a second prisoner on Monday convicted over crimes committed during the nationwide protests challenging the country’s theocracy, publicly hanging him from a construction crane as a gruesome warning to others.  The execution of Majidreza Rahnavard came less than a month after he allegedly fatally stabbed two members of a paramilitary force after purportedly becoming angry about security forces killing protesters. The development underscores the speed at which Iran now carries out death sentences handed down for those detained in the demonstrations that the government hopes to put down. Activists warn that at least a dozen people already have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings. At least 488 people have been killed since the demonstrations began in mid-September, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that’s been monitoring the protests. Another 18,200 people have been detained by authorities. Iran’s Mizan news agency, which falls under the country’s judiciary, published a collage of images of Rahnavard hanging from the crane, his hands and feet bound, a black bag over his head. AP, December 13, 2022

His hands and feet bound,

a black bag over his head.

 

Majidreza Rahnavard, we won’t remember

your name. But your death will add

to the gruesome pictures of memory.

 

He had been convicted on the charge of 

“moharebeh,” of waging war against god.

 

Evidently, god can’t take care of himself,

fight his own battles, or defend his

own honor. 

 

Typically, those condemned are alive

as the crane lifts them off their feet

 

What lesson would be learned otherwise? 

Those left “on the wall” of The Handmaid’s Tale

also had their heads bagged. 

Just fiction.

 

“But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, 

was still breathing...” Night by Elie Wiesel 

Just history.

 

Just a girl who wouldn’t wear a scarf,

no pubic hanging, killed in custody

mysteriously. 

 

At least 488 people have been killed since

the demonstrations began… another 18,200

people have been detained.

 

Just news.

Lisa St. John is a writer living in upstate New York. Her chapbook Ponderings is available on her website. Her first full-length book of poetry Swallowing Stones is forthcoming from Kelsay Day Books. Lisa has published her poetry in journals such as The Poet’s Billow, Light, Entropy Magazine, The Poetry Distillery, Poets Reading the News, and Chronogram Magazine. Lisa’s nonfiction work has been published in Grief Digest and Sleet Magazine.

DECISION

by William Aarnes 

Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary via Daily Mail; Donald Trump via DonkeyHotey

                                                . . . where shall you listen
                when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?
                                                --Charles Olson, “I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You”


Tonight, hunched
over his iPad,
your son will decide
whether to devote his life
to commerce
or killing—

                   already dreading  
some corporate career  
in throwaway crap,

already fancying
the euphoria
of wielding a bullpup.

He replays the video
of a capitalist
endorsing himself
by espousing bigoted blather.

He replays the video
of a jihadist
ambling into view
after executing sunbathers.


William Aarnes had recent work in Main Street Rag, Shark Reef, Empty Sink, and The New Verse News.

POTASSIUM CHLORIDE

by David Chorlton

(CNN) -- A double murderer was executed in Florida Wednesday night, becoming the third man put to death in an American prison during a 24-hour period. All three died by lethal injection.

A gurney stands still on its wheels
beneath a square of light intense enough
to reveal a human soul.
The floor is polished so clean
it floats from wall
to unblemished wall.
There’s a pillow,
freshly cleaned, and straps
no grief could ever break
to contain the spasms
when the clock shows time
coming to an end.
A neatly-typed protocol
describes every step
from cooking the final meal
to escorting witnesses away,
but has nothing to say for an instance
of the cocktail’s failure,
as if it had been written for a firing squad
and could not describe a dead man
spitting bullets out.


David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.