GOOGLE EARTH GAZA

by Robinson Terry

Before:
Bright white roofs greet the camera.
Square irises shaped like a city,
orderly rows of houses, 
neat columns of streets, and 
thin shadows that hug the edges of so many homes. 
Green trees scattered about
in no particular pattern—
though there are parks
just as surely as there are people—
even if the picture can’t catch or corroborate their existence,
they exist. 
 
After: 
leveled earth 
devoid of shape and structure
every building reduced to a basement
every basement staring up
at a sky that will never reach down far enough 
to grant them light 
fat shadows like a smattering of so much blood 
no design to the destruction
label it hazardous and call it a target
to justify wiping it from the surface:
a target has no depth 
a target is always flat 
a target only exists on a screen
no—human beings were not the targets—
a target can only be a building
not who built the building
they are not on the screen
they are not seen—
never were 

Robinson Terry is an English teacher living in Syracuse, NY. He has previously been published in Better Than Starbucks and The Broadkill Review. 

PROSTHETICS AND AESTHETICS

by Janet Chalmers

“It’s a tremendous amount to put your body through, and it’s not like we’re going to get our breasts back,” said Rebecca Pine, 40, who decided against reconstruction surgery after a mastectomy. Credit Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.

after “‘Going Flat’ After Breast Cancer,” by Roni Caryn Rabin 

in The New York Times, October 31 1, 2016.

Even before it was removed she knew she’d
have the tender cicatrix tattooed, would search

the gallery’s designs of ivy, snakes and dragons
intertwined until she found the single rose with

dagger thorns to shield her naked archer’s chest,
would use her grandmother’s antique crystal

serving bowl to display with warrior’s disdain

the powdered pink prothesis she would refuse.

J. Gerard Chalmers (Janet Chalmers) is a New York writer with an MFA from Columbia University. She has published poems, reviews and social commentary in many literary publications such as Bellevue Literary Review, Barrow Street, New Millennium Writings, Fogged Clarity, The Naugatuck River Review, Inkwell and the Kenyon Review (online). She was nominated for the 2014 anthology, Best New Poets and was a semi-finalist in the 2015 U. of Wisconsin Brittingham Prize and Felix Pollak Prize poetry series. She is currently writing a book of poetry called Scorpion Love about Picasso's mistress, the artist Dora Maar.