HUMAN

by Darrell Petska

Photograph and sculpture by Yuichi Ikehata

I’m part American, part Czech, part
Israeli and Kenyan, part Russian, Swedish,
Palestinian, part northern hemisphere
and southern, part all things spawned
from stardust in the roiling sea of space,

so why does my body war with itself,
one eye peering left, the other right, one ear
denying what the other one hears, each leg
opposing the other’s direction while my hands
hammer and claw each other till they bleed?

One by one, I pare away my warring parts,
yet the battles rage on. Soon, of all I was,
only my two-sided heart shall remain.
Already, each side argues a different allegiance—
surely one will stop beating just to spite the other,

and there I’ll lie, at last a heap of bones some
beast shall drag into its lair as lesson to its offspring
of what transpires when a body’s many parts
fail to live in harmony. More fortunate stolid
stone and knobbly bark than unruly human flesh.

Darrell Petska, a Wisconsin poet, is one part of a large and loving family.

SALMAN: ELECTION

by Indran Amirthanayagam

“[Salman Rushdie’s wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye... He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack….The world is going through a very troubled period. I think nationalism is on the rise, a sort of fundamentalist right is on the rise… From Italy to… throughout Europe, Latin America and the US, where… half the country seems to think that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump. And they admire this man who is not only completely incompetent and a liar and a crook, but just a farce. It’s ridiculous.” —Andrew Wylie (Rushdie’s agent) in an interview with El País, October 22, 2022

 

Salman has lost

an eye, an arm

paralyzed, but

 

nobody has

stolen his mind;

he thinks freely,

 

sees, and turns

to see the rest of

what a man can,

 

gazing on the

horizon into

future time

 

on the cusp of

another election

where intolerance

 

rages at the gates

and in Congress,

and he directs

 

his other hand

to write.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

THE GRAYS

by Andrew Frisardi

In Greek mythology the Gray Sisters shared one eye and one tooth. Graphic via Pinterest.

The sisters had one tooth, one eye,
for all three: each had a day or week
to bite to eat, to see to seek.
But they got by fine, none said “mine.”

The Grays were weird, and no one’s seen them,
yet Congressmen have learned their trick.
You might say men are politic,
sharing a single testicle between them.

Originally from Boston, Andrew Frisardi is a writer, translator, editor, and independent scholar who lives in central Italy.

WHAT SEEMS TO FOLLOW US

by Carol Parris Krauss

The kitchen is disorderly.
The small camping stove, cooler,
And bottles of water whisper
Pine trees, honeysuckle, and rustic cabins
Nestled near the George Washington National Forest.
But this is no weekend excursion,
but instead
Hurricane readiness at its best.

We thought we left the lengthy gas station lines,
Empty grocery shelves, and
Sandbags sentries behind
When we moved from
Florida to Virginia.
Hurricane Flo. She said no. The old folks
Say a hurricane is a do-over, a chance at a second chance.
A clean slate.

I need to see Florence to explain that
my move after
28 years
In Florida was my do-over. Scream in the wind,
Shake my fist. Look her in the eye.
She needs
To take her squat, spin, and spit,
Her erasure.
Elsewhere.

Carol Parris Krauss is a teacher, mother, and poet who is fond of college football and cats. She lives in the Tidewater Region of Virginia. Her work can be found in Blue Collar Review, TheNewVerse.News, The Amsterdam Quarterly, Fall Lines, The South Carolina Review, Storysouth, and other online and print magazines.

THE EYE OF EARTH

by Martin Elster

Image source: NotThatKindofGirl

The eye of Earth peers, spellbound, through a chink
in melting pond ice, trying not to blink
into the blue enveloping its gaze.
It’s never seen the sun before, whose rays
scatter through the atmosphere, a link

to outer space, where constellations wink
their secrets. Billows take a healthy drink
of water vapor, amble past, amaze
    the eye of Earth.

Its habitat now teeters on the brink.
Though trees have bared their limbs, grooves black as ink
crisscross the leaf-strewn liquefying glaze,  
whose softening increases with the days.
The gravity of this, though, cannot sink
    the eye of Earth.


Martin Elster, author of There’s a Dog in the Heavens!, is also a composer and serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poems have appeared in such journals as Astropoetica, The Flea, The Martian Wave, The Rotary Dial, and in the anthologies Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 Rhysling Anthology, and New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan. Martin’s poem, “Walking With the Birds and the Bones Through Fairview Cemetery” received first prize in the Thomas Gray Anniversary Poetry Competition 2014.