ASKING

by Tricia Knoll

I can’t always keep track of the advice and 

questions that blur the fog of war. 

Even from this distance. 

Who said to be out of the cemetery before moonrise? 

Is it colder to sleep in the basement

            of a parking garage or a subway station? 

What do underground train stations have in common

            besides big clocks?

How did vodka come from the Russian word for little water?

What makes one leader heroic and another

            a steely-eyed fish? 

How many preachers are retelling the story

            of David and Goliath? 

How many cities in the world 

            have air raid sirens ready to go? 

For the dogs of war loosed from their homes, 

            who stockpiles the kibble?  

Who said to put your old rubles in bottom drawers

            for use later as bookmarks?  

Who uses more gasoline, the reporters

            driving from east to west or south to north

or neighbors making Molotov cocktails?

What becomes of a blown-out tank? After. 

And trenches? 

What would I pack in one suitcase? 

Has anyone ever counted how many cities

            end up as rubble?

Why have I thought for the first time in my life

            I could pick up a rifle? Armed gramma? 

When so much crumbles, how can it possibly

            be rebuilt?

When will the women and children come home? 

How did people come to love their land so much?

What will wee children remember 

            to tell their children? And grandchildren. 

Is this how hate spawns in history’s flow? 

Tricia Knoll sits in the woods in Vermont, avidly following the news out of Ukraine. She recently has had two chapbooks published: Checkered Mates in 2021 and Let's Hear It for the Horses in 2022.

A MAN BURNED ALIVE IS REINCARNATED AS A FIREFIGHTER

by Jay Sizemore

Ocean of Fire by Gate to Nowhere at DeviantArt

Kinship with ash,
he once wept smoking a cigarette.
Why do my tears smell like gasoline?

Nightmares in orange,
he’s sweat enough to saturate cities.
Sometimes, he dreams he is Joan of Arc.

Skin charred like paper,
blood still escapes
through the cracks, a dark syrup.

His armor gets heavy,
breath shallow in the smoke,
searching for survivors,

he loses his voice,
feels his ashen jaw come unhinged,
remembers the prayer he muttered

before first touching the flame:
Let me live again
as an ocean avenging an effigy.


Jay Sizemore brought the high-five out of retirement. He did not graduate from college, and is personal foot masseuse to his lovely wife. He knows the words to almost every Ryan Adams song. You can find his work in places online and in print. He lives in Nashville, TN, where music goes to die. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

MPG

by Dawn Corrigan





For 6 years I didn’t own a car.
Then I bought a Jeep Cherokee.

It got 11 miles to the gallon.
As my friend Cameron said

when he took the job
at the missile factory

“I’m part of the problem now!”
Yet how quickly I settled

into driving again,
humming along

to Gnarls Barkley
on the 44-mile commute.

How the oil refineries
of North Salt Lake

glowed like enchanted castles
on the way home at night.

How snow packs formed
on the undercarriages

of the cars, then fell off
in blackened chunks

that dotted the highway
like sleeping birds.

How I imagined those birds
waking up, shaking the snow

from their feathers,
taking off for someplace else.


Dawn Corrigan's poetry and prose have appeared in a number of print and online journals, most recently at DIALOGIST, So to Speak, and Digital Americana.