HARD WINTER

by Thomas R. Smith

"Stormtrumpers" cartoon by Shields

“The shadow boys are breaking all the laws.” —Tom Waits

We knew it would be so. Didn’t they

tell us themselves? Too cold on these dark streets,

we shudder at the sound of things breaking,

coming nearer. Unfortunately not too cold

for them, who are well described by the name

Ice.  We wonder if the night air will come

rushing through our own shattered windows.

The river is frozen, the snow-covered

surface a field of inaction, the birds

who need open water gone elsewhere.

Winter is a lid on a pot simmering,

sooner or later to boil over. That is

our trust as we rest, while the cold shadows

slip through the dark with their icy hammers.

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

CRUELTY

by Bonnie Naradzay

Some people say
that, having stopped 
reading the news, they 
feel better.
 
The old Chinese poets
remind me to include
today’s weather report
in each poem.
 
Dr Issam Abu Ajwa said
he was forced to sleep
on a floor covered with small, 
sharp rocks, hands and legs tied,
eyes blindfolded.
 
The weather is warm this week—
in fact, the cherry blossoms
here are projected to peak
somewhat earlier this spring.
 
Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia
was tortured for seven months 
then released without charge. 
“I was clubbed, beaten with rifle butts, 
attacked by dogs. I was beaten so badly 
I couldn’t use my legs or walk, he said.
 
Dr Ahmad Mhanna, director
of al-Awda hospital in north Gaza, 
has been in Israeli prisons 
more than a year without charge.
 
Nightfall here, and the evening
becomes a still life—
it glistens like a Chinese lantern
in a garden without strife.
 
Some people try to memorize
a meaningful poem one line
at a time as a way to neutralize 
the news.  In severe winter cold
 
seven children froze to death
in Gaza in the last 48 hours
but today’s weather elsewhere
is quite pleasant overall.

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations. 

HEAD HEART HANDS

by Howie Good

And this is how
democracy dies—

leisurely, with head
and hand making
outward gestures

while the heart
continues frozen inside.

Howie Good is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, a poetry collection forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

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.

NEW HORIZONS

by Mary K O'Melveny





Ice is red here.  Blood red.
Lava red.  Forest fire red.
Cold sears like flame.  Or so
one might think from afar.

They say it all began
in this distant cluster
of frozen rocks.  Our sun
lies four billion miles out.

We could be wrong about
everything. Gravity’s pull
is different in new orbits.
Patience is required.

Warped by turmoil, we turn
outward, searching sky signs
for cosmic engagements,
for hints of original sins.


Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

SNOW

by Mimi German

A Portland baby is dead after being found last week in freezing temperatures with his homeless mother in a bus stop along Southeast Powell Boulevard. The infant, found Jan. 9, marks the fifth death on Portland's streets during the cold weather this year. Four homeless people died of exposure in the first 10 days of 2017. A week after the baby was found, it's still unclear whether he died of exposure hours after being born outdoors or was stillborn. But the circumstances of the child's death illustrate that much of the tragedy on Portland's streets involves untreated mental illness. Photo of Portland snow on January 11, 2017 by Joe Riedl. —Nigel Jaquiss, Williamette Week, January 11, 2017

I took a shovel to the ice

before the thaw
would bring the rains
before the rains
would bring the flood
before the flood
would raise the worms
before the worms
could feed the birds
before the birds
could shit upon

frozen people
lying dead
in sleeping bags
on the sidewalks
of this City.


Mimi German is a Poet and Activist/Organizer and free radical for change in Portland, OR.

RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE

by Skaidrite Stelzer

Image source: Windsor Star

The old man smokes on the bus bench

at the Cherry Street Mission in Toledo, Ohio,

hunched over in permanent posture

while the radio blares out against him--

hate speech still allowed against anyone

who can’t make a living. 

The minimum wage shrunken over the years.

“See a coin and pick it up.” 

And the smacking of lips by observers

because he must drink.

Begging is outlawed now in most places,

though I see it discreetly hidden behind signs.

“Will work for food.”

I give her a dollar.

In the East Village, years ago,

a homeless man slept each night in the back

of our pick-up truck.

Others ran to clean our windshields

with dirty rags.

Vying for coins, jostling against each other:

the ballet of poverty.

“All that day you’ll have good luck.”

The majority rules,

making the rich even richer,

giving them more and more

as we hide the poor.

There are still neglected alleys.

Some freeze each winter but we don’t

see their names in the newspapers.

“See a coin and let it lay.”

A minimal wage for a minimal day

cannot buy a home or a room.

I see him scrounging the gutters for cigarette butts,

and when I look at him he gestures and yells.

“Out of his mind,” I have told myself.

Yet he earns his morning coffee.

He cleans the sidewalk of the Sufficient Grounds

coffee shop on Central Street.

No job, no money, but here’s his warm reward.

“What are you looking at?”

or a greeting; it varies.

Then he freezes one winter

like the rest.

Because he was somebody’s son,

there is a small obituary in The Blade.

“You’ll have bad luck all that day.”

The radio blares its message.

The rich need more money.

They must have more money.

One day they are bound to share.

“See a coin and pick it up.”

The frozen sidewalk has no eyes.

Skaidrite Stelzer is a poet and teacher living in Toledo Ohio.  A post-WWII refugee, she grew up in Michigan as a displaced person. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including the Georgetown Review, Eclipse, The Fourth River and The Baltimore Review. She teaches a variety of writing and literature courses at The University of Toledo.

WITH GENTLY STREAMING EYES

by Jerome Betts





FARMING leaders have warned that up to an estimated 10,000 ewes and lambs have died in the recent snowstorms, costing the industry hundreds of thousands of pounds and leaving farms struggling to stay afloat. --The Herald (Scotland), 10 April 2013
 

Poor lambs! No chance to play your parts
On legs that learn to leap and run
And touch so many human hearts
With games and gambols in the sun?

Your jumping joints won’t now assert
That spring’s a time to cast off cares −
Though youth and charm would not avert
Your fate as bloody butchers’ wares.


Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and has contributed verse to LightenUp OnLine, New Verse News, Per Contra, Snakeskin and Tilt-A-Whirl, as well as numerous print publications.

MARS

by Robert Wooten

This artist's rendering provided by NASA shows the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. NASA announced Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012, it plans to send another Curiosity-like rover to Mars in 2020. (AP Photo/NASA)

Mars would be the perfect place to begin
to look for water underneath the surface.
It is under something, under my skin.

After we get there, we may find it in
the rocks, when we arrive by outer space.
Mars would be the perfect place to begin.

If not in rocks, it may be frozen
under the soil or in a deeper place.
It is under something, under my skin,

that to find it we may go deeper, then,
going down farther at a faster pace.
Mars would be the perfect place to begin.

But will we become earth’s poorest citizens,
taxed by vast holdings in the Martian race?
It is under something, under my skin.

What next?  the chance of oceans deeply hidden,
drillings with the hope of finding a trace?
Mars would be the perfect place to begin.
It is under something, under my skin.


Robert Wooten's poems currently appear in Long Story Short, Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Trajectory, Convergence, and  The Fifth D . . ..