A JEWISH WEDDING

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

Wild lilac orchids frame

a garden curled in jade

rainforest, where two ask,

How are we so lucky when the sons 

of Abraham are fighting?

The state built on ash 

in the desert kills to survive. 

A heel smashes a glass.

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Topical Poetry, Consequence, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Sparks of Calliope.

A FABLE

by Kevin Carey

Shutterstock A-I generated image

A long, long time ago a very bad wolf,

probably the worst wolf ever,

did some very bad things to some lambs,

some of the worst things ever done to

lambs anywhere. As a matter of fact, this

very bad wolf had wanted to eliminate all the lambs.

The lambs who were saved from elimination

made a pact with some very big bears

(who helped save them from the wolf)

 and together they decided to push  

some rabbits from their nests so the lambs could have a land

to call their own. It’s worth noting that these rabbits

had nothing to do with the very bad deeds of the very bad wolf.

.

So the lambs took a mile,

but then they wanted two, then three and so on and so on.

The rabbits who were being pushed from their nests fought

back and were called very bad rabbits.

The lambs who wanted even more land

made even more big bear friends

and this gave them even more power,

which they used to keep pushing more rabbits from their nests.

The rabbits had no bear friends

so they fought back again,

and they were called very very bad rabbits.

And so the story goes. But this story

has no end. The lambs are still pushing the rabbits

from their nests and soon they will

have eliminated all the rabbits

and when that happens

the lambs will have done  

what the very bad wolf had wanted to do to them.

The moral of the story: a rabbit with no big bear friends is easy to push from a nest.

Kevin Carey is Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University. Books include: The Beach People, The One Fifteen to Penn Station, Jesus Was a Homeboy, Set in Stone, Murder in the Marsh, and a new novel Junior Miles and the Junkman (September 2023 from Regal House / Fitzroy Books) and a new co-written poetry collection Olympus Heights (October 2023 – Lily Poetry Review). He is the co-founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag.

WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

by Bunkong Tuon

Lightning lit up the night sky

Thunder crashing the world.

My bedroom walls shook.

Windows felt like they were about to explode.

And my foundation crumbled.

I was again back in the jungles.

The fighting happened mostly at night.

The moon hid behind the smoke and branches.

Trees stood still. Everything was quiet but the sounds

Of rifles and rocket launchers and the screaming 

Streaming out of the mouths of children and parents.

There are no winners and losers in war.

There are only civilians who didn’t ask for any of it.

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of three poetry collections and a chapbook. His prose and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Lowell Review, Massachusetts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, carte blanche, among others. He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.

TO GUINEA, WITH LOVE

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Amid Ukraine Exodus, Reports Emerge of Bias Against Africans —VOA, March 2, 2022

The tradesman from Guinea has lived in Odessa for fourteen years. He is

afraid. In one day all of Ukraine's airports shut down. In one night heavy

bombs fell just ouside of town. They are falling now. Russian soldiers

landed on the beach and are marching towards Kyiv. The horror. The sadness.

It is happening. Shock and awe. Awful. Wrath. Madness. Chernobyl, symbol

of nuclear death has been captured. No reports yet on the state of the concrete.

Where are we going? I listen to the trembling voice of my friend from Guinea.

He says he will watch and wait for another day or two, huddle at home

by his television in the apartment block. If fighting comes to his neighborhood

then he will call Guinea. Ask to be flown out. How many diplomats has

Guinea posted in Ukraine? How many cars and planes? Airports are shut.

But the sea flows by Odessa. He has lived in Odessa for fourteen years.

He knows people with boats. He has sold them housewares. He will

ask them to take him away. Past the battleships. To Guinea.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). 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.

FRAGILE

by Edward A. Dougherty

A civil defence member carries an injured girl after an airstrike in the rebel-controlled city of Idlib, Syria. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah, September 17, 2016.

The ceasefire grows more fragile.

Nights now of shelling
after years of street fighting.

How can the resistance still resist?
Where do supplies come from?

Who cooks the rice, the lentils?
It’s not the ceasefire that’s fragile.

Who has lentils? Whose stove works?


Edward A. Dougherty teaches a Corning Community College, and is the author of Grace Street (Cayuga Lake Books, 2016), Everyday Objects (Plain View, 2015) and other collections of poetry.

LILY PAD LOVER

by C.L. Quigley

Image source: Pauses&Clicks

I fall in love with photographs,
mustachioed Union soldiers,
baby faced and hopeful hippies,
or late-Romantic composers.
I wake to find my lovers dead,
better off dead or immortalized.
Everywhere I look — graves,
if I see a mound, a ditch
or a pile of dirt, a cairn.
I breathe radiation,
my cilia singed, the sun
a merciless master.
All I see are graves,
another casualty, a number,
an obituary (or not)
blowing in the wind
or waiting for a Google search.
I’m advised to wait —
for my Marine with one leg,
control issues, or
a weekly therapy appointment.
He’ll be fighting evil
from a Lily Pad.
Who would disagree with that?


An artist and naturalist, C.L. Quigley grew up in the capital of Nevada, where she began writing in the sagebrush from a young age. She now rides her bicycle through tiny Northern California towns, abides near Lassen Volcanic National Park, and she's working towards her educational goals.

DONETSK IN EASTERN UKRAINE

by Phyllis Wax

Ukraine's rebel movement was plunged into crisis on Thursday, when pro-Russian fighters backed by armoured personnel carriers seized the movement's headquarters in Donetsk and destroyed the barricades protecting it. The surprise move by a group called the Vostok Battalion, a heavily armed rebel unit that has been involved in fighting against the Ukrainian army, sparked speculation about an internal coup within the fractious rebel movement. There was also speculation that the move could have been an attempt by the leadership to purge undesirable elements with the Donetsk Peoples' Republic. Key rebel leaders, who were not in the building when the fighters arrived, insisted they were still in control and that they had even ordered the operation. "This is a police action directed against looters," a rebel source close to Alexander Borodai, the prime minister of the self-declared republic, said on Thursday afternoon. "There is no coup. Everything is under control." --Roland Oliphant in Donetsk, The Telegraph, May 29 2014

Not a tractor on this farm field
but a turreted tank,
a lumpy blue blanket and
close by a khaki tarp
sprouting a clenched hand
at one end.  All around
a new spring crop
is pushing through.


Phyllis Wax muses on the news and politics from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI.  She's been widely published, recently in The Widows' Handbook:  Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival from Kent State University Press.  When she's not writing you might find her escorting at a local women's clinic.