NOTHING

by Lynn White

ABC (Australia), August 27, 2024

In those streets

of men and boys,

in that country 

for men and boys,

she feels like a person with no face,

her face space covered,

her identity occupied

by a swirling mist of confusion

like nothingness being born.

Sometimes 

she wishes for a blank space

that she could fill herself

with a Magritte apple

or even a woman

even herself

un-blanked

and visible.

Now, in those streets

of men and boys,

in that country 

for men and boys,

she feels like a person with no voice,

Magritte’s apple is choking her,

muting her

so even in her home she whispers

her songs and curses.

Only in her head does she shout

that something will come of nothing,

that something must come of nothing.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

DISPLACED PERSONS

by George Salamon

“Israel-Hamas war said to have… displaced 70% of [Gaza’s] population in a month.” —CBS News, November 7, 2023

The DPs fleeing Gaza remind me of those I saw in the hall of a Swiss railroad station after the end of World War Two—Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, slave laborers from German war industries, resistance fighters from occupied countries… all had been waiting in DP camps in Germany, rounded up for "their own good," still not free men and women, still "inmates," still not possessing any rights, legal or human until the Red Cross and other aid organizations could open doors for "repatriation" to their old homelands or transportation to their new ones—their bodies pressed against each other, the faces of the men pale and gaunt, their eyes staring into a middle distance, the women clutching babies, their hair flapping around their heads, the hall reeking of hunger, sickness and yearning. When their eyes met they shuddered, stood there, unable to embrace each other. It is more than bodies that are displaced.

George Salamon did not know he was a refugee or "displaced person" when he, three years old, and his parents escaped one night in the fall of 1938 from Austria to Switzerland. He now lives in St.Louis, MO.

A NEW WINSTON CHURCHILL STATUE

by Tom Bauer

‘Self-indulgent’: Churchill statue plans stir public controversy, perplexity over motivation. Statue will be installed at Calgary’s McDougall Centre in 2023. —Livewire Calgary, August 27, 2022

Like deadly white mold, signs keep surfacing.

The skin of life develops pustules and blisters;

past echos of a fierce disease of dominance

resurfacing to blight the natural landscape.

Looking at faces I see hope and care.

I see landscapes of spontaneous growth

moving as one towards some shared outcome

each of us unconsciously wants to see.

Statues do not see, and will not see us through

their purpose, ownership of all we seem.

Their stone presence blocks our human landscape.

The greatest monument might come to be

feeling connected when we come together

and see the real enemy: the harms we cause.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

THOSE WE'VE LOST

by George Salamon

Those We’ve Lost include (clockwise from top left): Terrence McNally, Hailey Herrera, Alan Finder, Dave Edwards, Lorena Borjas, Joseph Migliucci, Jenny Polanco, Dez-Ann Romain. The New York Times

The coronavirus pandemic has taken an incalculable death toll. This series is designed to put names and faces to the numbers. —"Those We've Lost," The New York Times, updated on July 29, 2020


What do we see when
We stare at the faces,
A few culled from many?
When we turn away, does
The moment linger, while
We seek light to banish
Darkness, even as the
Dying proceeds, each
Death meant to diminish
Us, to confront pain we
Deny, plunging us back
Into moral ignorance in
Which we are born?
Days later, when  we see the
Photo of a girl who survived,
Standing by her grandparents'
House amid fields of corn, do
We glance upward, above the
Girl, to the barely visible layers
Of Blue, hiding the sky, the sky
No longer giving us answers we
Don't know how to hear.


George Salamon has recently contributed to Dissident Voice, The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.

FIERCE FRAGILE SEASONS

a poem in four parts
by Jill Crainshaw

I

mama cardinal studies me as i stand
in rain-wet morning sunlight

i see fire flash in her feathers
when she flits and flashes

from fencepost to flaming forsythia
nesting in preparation for whatever

springtime color waits to touch the earth

II

sepia-soaked scrapbooks ensconce
human fragilities exposed

i study faces retreating from
fiery colors of aliveness buried

in catacombs where mortal coils
were torn away too soon from butterflies

waiting even now to meet the sunrise

III

night settles down into streets emptied
of laughing children and lingering lovers

spinning cocoons to hide fragile dreams
while the world shuts out a sinister stalker

a brave pinion pushes open a window
slips a lonely song into the silence and hope

throbs in voices that swell together on the breeze

IV

backyard cardinals carry
springtime rhythms in their beaks

wrens domicile in the abandoned eaves
of the church belfry next door

and we humans study yet again how to
weave into our nests fiery threads of hope

longing to color unsettled nights with song


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.