WANDERING INTO A DREAM WORLD

by Susan Cornelis

Art by the poet.

. . .and I’ve wandered into 
a dream world I no longer recognize,
teeming with shapes,
twisted
gone
out of bounds
dangerous,
like a cell phone
mistaken for a gun.

So many ways
to get it wrong,
to step where a trap is set.

Too much for this little guy
who sees a featureless white shape,
which seems to be slumbering, 
like Fox, who is warm around his neck,
but where is the thing’s head
where is the mouth
where the teeth?

Too much for this little guy
who knows not yet
the art of hiding.

Too much for me
and for you too,
even as we stand here
learning the shape of fear,
trying not to turn away.

Susan Cornelis is an Olympia, WA mixed media artist, workshop teacher and art blogger. Her ekphrastic  poetry is an exploration of the emotional content of her paintings. She refers to these as Conversations with the Muse, which are regularly posted on her blog by that name at http://susancornelis.wordpress.com/

CAN YOU LET THE CICADA BE BEAUTIFUL?

by Morrow Dowdle

When one, newly broken from its honeyed shell

tests flight’s imperative,

   whirs, strikes your skin,

will you turn to see who’s there?  Don’t look up.

Don’t think you deserve only what’s lofted.

This holy spirit lies on asphalt on its back.

 

Reconsider where it comes from, this fear

of what that can’t harm us. 

        Why do we hate it?

Turn it over if you are brave enough to touch it. 

Braver still if you will lift it.  Make your fingers

delicate as chopsticks on a robin’s egg.

Don’t pitch it in the grass.  Let it cling

to your wrist,

           its legs’ gentle sharpness.  You are just

another kind of tree, flesh-barked.  It crawls

your arm, and that’s when you see its eyes of red,

such a red we could never manifest—

not the richest lips, not the sex in its engorged

glory.  And its wings,

           its wings when they unstick,

intricate as any dragonfly, yet you’ll never find them

enshrined in silver, glass, or amethyst.

Are you brave enough, now, to allow it

to approach your head?  You have no xylem, no sap

for it to taste.  Nothing

                                     to dread.  But would you kiss it?

Could you name it the most modest of angels,

if much disgraced?  An angel must have wings,

but surely, it can wear any face.

 

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.  They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. A former physician assistant, they now work as a creative writing instructor for current and former prison inmates. They live in Hillsborough, NC.

DECLAIM

by Mark Svendsen

for the children

PBS, March 8, 2024

Standing at the crossroads, black with traffic

Waiting for the little green man to tell me I could go

When a child, quick as a nightmare, broke from its mother’s hand

Ran beside me, looking back at her, shrieking, into the road.

Without thought I dived, catching at the child

Bringing it to me and to its mother,

Just as you in my place would have done.

Sometimes, my people, your child becomes my child

Your love becomes my love

Your blood is mine.

But now! What are we thinking now, my people?

For years the children have played, been pushed

Into the middle of the road

And we have turned our face away.

But now, when we are forced to see them

When we are forced to see

We turn our face again?

What are we thinking my people?

Let tears wound our cheeks

For what we’ve done.

Let fear wound our minds

That we think so.

Tell me you love them my people, or I am lost.

Show me you love them my people, 

Or all we are together is gone.

Mark Svendsen prefers concrete to other more porous materials with which to pave his mind but, even then, cracks eventually appear and poems, like weeds of the mind, take root and must be dealt with summarily. He lives in Zilzie, Australia with his partner. There, she writes music, and he writes things – in an attempt to maintain homeostasis.

CLEARVIEW AI

by Alan Walowitz

So the way it works is that you upload someone's face—a photo of someone—to the Clearview AI app, and then it will return to you all the places on the internet where that person's face has appeared, along with links to those photos. —Kashmir Hill, author, Your Face Belongs to Us, on Fresh Air, September 28, 2023

 

The haze stalls long enough

to allow us to continue our work:

to make ourselves seem here, and not here,

in equal measure—to assure anonymity

yet convince the world, and us, we’re real.

Our wish to be seen, but not a target,

of the law or of derision.

Though it might be wise to wear bright colors

when we walk among the trees.

 

The sun in our eyes or an unsteady hand

might account for any low resolution,

what the app might call, Failure to recognize. 

Still, we might someday desire

to see the face from our dreams,

who’s bound to be found, among the billions

of images kept in the cloud

for moments when we’re lonely.

 

No one owns our face, we claim,

not the sun, or the trees, or the gently bleeding sky

where our image has been scraped from the assorted

public places we’ve foolishly lent ourselves.

This the price for being bound to this planet?

Though, in the end, perhaps a Court will claim,

we had no inherent interest being here. 

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. Now available for free download is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

THE MALL THIS TIME

by Anna Evans

Allen Premium Outlets, Texas, May 6, 2023

He strolls the mall as if he owns the place,
his open carry rifle in plain sight
but there is something missing from his face,
 
the eyes a little wild, the grin off-base.
In matte black body armor strapped on tight,
he strolls the mall as if he owns the place,
 
as if it is a job, a joint to case,
as if it is a calling—no, a right—
but there is something missing from his face.
 
He starts to shoot. It seems like time and space
stand petrified, before the bullets bite.
He strafes the mall as if he owns the place
 
till death by cop with no crossfire, no chase,
his body dropping in blood sticky bright,
that ugly smile at least wiped off his face.
 
And spokesmen’s thoughts and prayers clang through the night.
Guns don’t kill people, they insist, despite
the broken bodies scattered every place,
the murdered young girl with a missing face.

Anna M. Evans gained her MFA from Bennington College and has received Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her collection Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic is available from Able Muse Press, and her sonnet collection Sisters & Courtesans is available from White Violet Press.

A WOMAN’S FACE

by Ana Doina

Tweet by Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad 9/16/22

Dark clouds covered the sky 

for months before the year 

Troy fell prey to a wooden horse.

 

Scientists now tell 

nothing had been growing 

for years before chieftains  

took their tribes

in search of better pastures,

warring one another for the right 

to greener valleys.

 

Homer decries 

the face of a beautiful woman

for the first war,

but tree stumps 

tell of darkness, drought;

the bowels of the earth tell

of roaming hordes 

drifting, losing their roots.

The underworld 

brings back abandoned hearths, 

jars still full of honey, tools, 

cradles, toys,

weapons

buried where a fighter fell.

 

The scientists can’t yet tell

what covered the sun, what 

drove the peaceful herdsman 

to take up arms and leave 

the simple habits 

of his pasture, 

but back there, where ancient empires

used to thrive, five thousand years on 

and, still, a woman’s face, 

even when veiled, 

is blamed. Is doomed.

Ana Doina, Romanian-born American writer living in New Jersey, left Romania during the Ceausescu regime. Her poems appeared in numerous print and online magazines, anthologies, and textbooks. She won Honorable Mention in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience contest in 2007, and three of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2002, 2003, and 2004. 

PORTRAIT OF WARPAINT

Pencil on paper with typed spoken word by Deidra Suwanee Dees

Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees is Director/Tribal Archivist at Poarch Band of Creek Indians. She teaches Native American Studies at the University of South Alabama, initiated by the Tribe. She earned her doctorate at Harvard. She is the author of a chapbook, Vision Lines: Native American Decolonizing Literature. Heleswv heres, mvto.

LONG LIVE THE LAST KING

by Mickey J. Corrigan

People are saying it’s the biggest

the greatest, the best crowd

this shithole has ever seen

sleek limos slide through, his face

at the bulletproof window 

mouth open, golf cap tight

on his oversize head

People are saying

the crowd's as big as Lincoln's

and everyone wept, even Jesus

the fans wild with joy

racecar thrilled to see him

to be seen by him

the man who would be king

People are not saying

he took an appalling strut

across the world stage

that ended in folly, farce

reflecting internal unrest

bubbling anger, belligerence

and distrust of everyone else

People aren't saying

he was a mad genius

skilled at detecting weakness

in a narrow human range

of emotions others feel

absent in his lurking bulk

under the ruby crown

the bloated expression

of abject fear

People aren't asking

why the devout followers

of this crazy cult

still willing to sicken 

maskless in the face

of scientific evidence, millions

of facts like corpses piling up

vowing to win at all costs

or die trying

 

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish the poetry chapbook Florida Man later this year. 

TEAR GAS AND WOAD

by Peleg Held

A nude protester—dubbed later “Naked Athena"—faces off against law enforcement officers during a protest against racial inequality in Portland, Ore., on July 18. Credit Nathan Howard/Reuters via The New York Times.

Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem. —Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars


She fingers the blue on slowly, feralled in its wake;
she counts the steps from inside out the fenced-in fields of grace.

A vitrumned likeness wavers, a cats-lick from the rim,
in the tea cup in the circle of the saucer's closing ring.

Let the tongue tip shape the watchword in the shallows of its bow;
let sentry sleep and serpent sing beneath the shuddered vow.

Here is where their end is born; there is nothing at the gate
but ink and skin, the sylph herself: the cunt-directed state.

Caesar may misread you in the peripherals of his glass
or more likely overlook you, a needle in the grass

but as you plunge into his heel he will see the face
of what gives womb its dark and what gives blood its taste.


Peleg Held lives in Hiram, Maine with his partner and 21 chickens led by the world's tiniest rooster, Gavroche-That-Lives.

TAMIR

by Diane Vogel Ferri

Every time an unarmed black man
falls to our videoed fears and white failures

I see Tamir’s face, so many times, too many times,
the face that I saw in my classroom one year.

Yes he was tall, yes he liked attention,
neither are reasons to be given two seconds

to respond to an adult, neither are reasons
to be on a list of martyrs to America’s shame,

neither are reasons for his twelve year-old
face to be frozen in time on tv, the news,

on the never-ending list of lost black men,
not a reason to be famous or dead.


Author’s Note: Tamir Rice was my student in 2012.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Cleveland Christmas Memories, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications include Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). A former special education teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland.

WITH A FACE LIKE MINE

by Rachel Mallalieu

I don’t want this to be 
about me, but of course it’s
always about me

With a face like mine,
a thousand ships were launched,
so needful were men of my rescue

With a face like mine,
a few words were said and
a fourteen-year-old boy was
beaten, shot and tossed
into the Tallahatchie River

With a face like mine, feel free
to burst into a black man’s home
while he’s eating ice cream
and demand that he shows you
his hands, and when he does not,
you can shoot him
when his blood stains the floor and
you realize your mistake,
stand in the hallway
and text instead of performing CPR

With a face like mine, the jury will
cry because you clearly didn’t mean
to do it, and (despite the racist texts)
you seem guileless, even
penitent (especially when you say
you wish you had died instead)
yes they find you guilty, but the bailiff
will smooth your hair and the
judge will give you her Bible
you will receive a light sentence
and still be young enough to bear children
once you’ve served your time

With a face like mine,
when the anguished brother
of the man you murdered embraces you
and offers forgiveness,
many will see your blonde hair next to
his black skin and consider
the sordid case closed

With a face like mine,
tears are weapons
so really, you should be careful
with a face like mine

Rachel Mallalieu is an Emergency Physician and mother of five. She writes poetry in her spare time. Her work has been featured in Blood and Thunder and is upcoming in Haunted Waters Press.

THE BEARS KNOW

by Linda Lerner

what the politicians & others don’t who

haven’t heard them scratching at their doors,

                         screamed when they looked out and

kept screaming after the bears, who’ve

come to warn them, are gone. 

And  isn’t it pretty to think so?

The bears don’t mean us harm when they come

into our backyards, dig in trash cans,

peer into open car windows looking for food,

the bears aren’t thinking about us at all;

If they  could create emojis we’d see

the sun filtered through dust particles,

small fires  starting up,  teary eyed

bewilderment at the browning grass, lack of berries,

and bugs, a hotter, dryer climate

We’d see a human face through a bear’s,

now one, then the other

Source: EarthJustice

Linda Lerner's A Dance Around the Cauldron, Lummox Press, 2017 is her most recent collection. She is the author of Yes, the Ducks Were Real and Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (NYQ Books) and a chapbook of poems inspired by nursery rhymes, Ding Dong the Bell Pussy in the Well. She previously published thirteen collections of poetry and twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her next collection, tentatively called, Taking the F Train, will be published by NYQ books in late 2018 or early 2019.

THERE WAS A FACE

by j.lewis

Image source: ACLU Capital Punishment Project

Former Eagle Scout set to be executed for Alabama killing

—Fox News, December 7, 2016

two and twenty years ago
one life went out
with details that are
of course, on record

the extinguisher
one score and two years later
after all appeals have failed
sits on the infamous row
while a state plays
mother may i with scotus
anxious to finally do
unto him what he did
unto another

i am not from alabama
cannot even tell you
where i was that day
when one life and some
unimportant sum of money
were taken in huntsville
video rolling, rolling

today i saw his face
where else but on facebook
an absolutely ordinary face
and when i asked google
for details, for explanation
there was the face again
over a caption from fox
that called him
a former eagle scout

and i wondered
how does one become
a former eagle scout
is there a ceremony
a court of dishonor
that strips away
all merit, all honor
as if to say
we never knew you

and would that hurt
any less than dying
or would the former scout
even care at this point
knowing how determined
a certain state can be
when they want to be sure
you remain forever unable
to reclaim that eagle

Editor’s Postscript: Ronald Smith was executed on December 8, 2016. See “Alabama's cruel and unusual execution of Ronald Smith” —Scott Martelle, Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2016

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poems have appeared online and in print in numerous journals from California to Nigeria to the UK. a clear day in october, his first collection of poetry and photography was published in June 2016. A chapbook is forthcoming from Praxis Magazine in early 2017.

CIRCLES

by Jenna Le

Image source: CP4

Once, I was so young

that, like a raw onion,

my concentric circles reluctant

to relax their grip on

one another’s whiteness,

a whiff of me could make you cry.

I had so much power,

but all I wanted

was to see people smile

when I walked into a room.

So I kept mum about

my real opinions

so that people would like me.

And it worked. I began to

feel smug about my popularity.

When I saw a rabble-rouser

hoisted on the gallows,

I sneered,

thinking he would not

be hanging there

if, like me, he knew

the secret to being liked.

When I saw a man

with six circular gunshots

in his face and chest

sprawled on crimson cement,

I did not say, “There but for the grace…”

I did not believe

in favors. I believed

I had carved my own niche

in the world using

my smarts, my likability.

I had a vivid memory

of myself with a penknife

in my hand, carving,

never thinking to ask

how that bloody knife

ended up in my hand,

or whose blood it was.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), which was a Small Press Poetry Bestseller. Her poems have appeared in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review.

HAVE YOU SEEN HER?

by Elizabeth Johnston

"Man is the only animal which devours its own kind." --Abraham Lincoln

The public panics; fevered hunt begins--
headlines howling, posters plastered,
masses come in drives, map out the grid, throw light
to dark corners, comb tall grasses, dredge
the waters, at night join hopeful hands, hold vigil
clutching to their chests her picture.

    Have you seen her face?

The experts speculate, sniff and salivate,
imagine the psycho-surgeon's fridge:
    one wholesome beauty sliced and bagged
    bowlful of noses, cheese drawer of eyelids,
    dimples like cherries stuffed in a jar


Elizabeth Johnston's poetry appears in a variety of print and online publications, most recently in The New Verse News, Rose Red Review, The Luminary, Mom Egg Review, and NonBinary Review. Forthcoming is work in Cahoodaloodaling, Carbon Copy, and Veils, Halos, and Shackles. She lives in Western NY with her husband and daughters, and teaches writing at Monroe Community College and the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.

REMNANTS OF THE CRASH

by Kristina England

            Headline: "Actor Paul Walker dies in car crash,"
            the blaze making his beautiful face unidentifiable.


All I can think is "I hope he died on impact"
because that wasn't the case for you -
no seatbelt, ejected at high speeds,
thrown under your own wheels,
those once vibrant eyes dulling
under the red and white flash of disaster,
your son, stuck in the backseat,
begging for "momma" to soothe
his temporary and long-term boo-boos
as you shuddered out the last breaths
of mother, wife, friend on your graveled grave.

Maybe the driving laws were never meant for the driver.
Maybe they are there for the ones left behind
with the gut-wrenching task of identifying
a once beautiful face.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Extract(s), Gargoyle, The Story Shack, Tipton Poetry Journal.