VOICES FROM THE PAST

by Gil Hoy

Their homes, cone-shaped poles
of wood covered with buffalo hides.
Set up to break down quickly
to move to a safer place.

She sits inside of one of them.
Adorning her dresses, her family’s shirts
with beads and quills.

Watches over her children. Skins, cuts
and cooks the buffalo meat. Pounds clothes
clean with smooth wet river rocks.

When she sees the blue cavalry
advancing, she begins to run again.
Is that what made America great,
back then?

African families working hard
on hot cotton farms. Sunrise to sunset,
six days a week. Monotony broken only
by their daily beatings. By their singing
of sad soulful songs.

Like factories in fields, dependent solely
upon the demands of cotton and cloth.

You could buy a man for a song, back then.
Is that what made America great,
once again?

There are swastikas in our streets today.
Black men being murdered. Whitelash.
While the new man at the top
tweets videos ranting of white power.
While the old man at the top
says he’ll make America great again.

They say the full moon was bigger and brighter
last year than it’s been in 73 years.
Than it’s been since Jackie Robinson
played his first big league baseball game.

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Right Hand Pointing, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and TheNewVerse.News.

RUST BELT

by Steve Deutsch

Sure, we loved the hats and hoopla
the rhythmic chants of lock her up,
but we are not a stupid people.
We know full well this patchy place
between the slag heaps
and the scrub pine--
these crumbling houses perched behind
the padlocked plant once known
for truck tires,
will never be great—
or even good.

You say rust belt
and mean the measure
of empty factories
and gutted storefronts.
The jobs bled out.
The eyesores left behind to moulder.
But the rust is mostly in us.
Too many years of children
born to little hope.
Too many years of promises
from windbags in dingy union halls
and air-conditioned buses
painted red, white, and blue.

This afternoon, I take my maul
to the wood pile
by the rusted chain link fence.
Crisp and clear,
It is a fine day to bust things up--
And the making
of that splintered shattered kindling
with a body that burns
is as near as I will ever come to joy.

Steve Deutsch, a semi-retired practitioner of the fluid mechanics of mechanical hearts, lives with his wife Karen in State College, PA.  He has published most recently in Misfit Magazine, Eclectica magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, The Drabble and TheNewVerse.News. 

INVASION OF GAZA 2012

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Image source: Occupy Wall Street

Inside the heart of the invader
There is a cave where the corpses are stored
A cave of ice that keeps the bodies
From decomposing and putrefying
So the invader needn’t suffer the stink
Deep cold freezes the last expressions of terror
On children’s faces
Freezes the arms of dead parents
Around their slaughtered infants

The frozen bodies are neatly stacked
In the lightless cavern inside the invader’s heart
To make the most efficient use of space
So there will always be room for more
Because the bodies keep coming and coming
And they must be put away somewhere
The grandfather mowed down
In his olive grove
The teen picked off trying to get home to family
The pregnant mother crushed
By her collapsing roof
The toddler burnt to a crisp
By white phosphorous

Inside the heart of the occupier
Are bleak frigid factories that turn the murdered
Into building materials
For constructing homes on stolen land
With lovely gardens and swimming pools
Inside the heart of the occupier
Are bitterly cold prisons
Of torture and indefinite detention
For those who resist
The relentless encroachments
Of the mad blind machine

Inside the heart of the nation
In a cave of black ice
The explosive voice of self-righteous hypocrisy
Booms and echoes off the walls
We are defending ourselves
We are the upright and the good
We are the chosen and
All we do is the will of God

But there are other voices as well
Inside the heart of the nation
And inside the heart of the world
The small voices of grasses in green pastures
The healing voices of warm rain and still waters
The steadfast valiant voices of those
Who refuse to cooperate with bulldozer politicians
With marauding colonists
With tormentors of the rightful inhabitants
Voices nearly impossible to hear
In the roar of war and propaganda
But necessary to hear and to heed
If true justice is to roll down like waters
And true righteousness like a mighty stream


Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective). He lives in northern California.