SWASTIKAS ON MONTAUK AND EVERYWHERE ELSE

by Susan Cossette

Swastika graffiti at Naturally Good Foods in Montauk, Photo: Rabbi Josh Franklin. —Dan’s Papers, October 30, 2023

 
We spend the morning cleaning graffiti.
 
An antisemitic phrase 
scrawled on a Holocaust survivor’s home in California. 
 
A display supporting Israeli hostages,
kicked over in Minnesota. 
 
Palestinian nationalist messaging 
spray-painted on a non-profit’s building in Rhode Island.
 
There is no justification 
for raping and murdering 
ordinary citizens in front of their families, 
mutilating babies, 
decapitating people, 
using automatic weapons and grenades 
to hunt down and murder young people 
at a music festival celebrating peace, 
burning families alive, 
kidnapping and taking hostages,
parading women hostages in front of chanting crowds, 
and documenting it all on social media. 
 
Kristallnacht 2023.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.

AMERICAN HISTORY

by Deb Freedman

                                           

Dozens of synagogues across different states have been targeted by “online trolls,” which has disrupted services, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Jewish advocacy organization said a series of antisemitic “swatting” incidents and fake bomb threats have targeted at least 26 synagogues and two ADL offices in 12 states over the past month. Swatting refers to the act of making false claims to the police with the intention of provoking an aggressive response from authorities at a particular location. —The Hill, August 16, 2023

1965

A swastika

in concrete

inscribed the only path

to my elementary school.

1971

Alone,

our house

was without Christmas lights,

so someone decorated for us

with dogshit.

 1977

In Sociology class,

the captain of our high school’s football team

said Hitler was right

and should’ve killed us all.

Half my class agreed.

Our mild-mannered teacher

exploded.

Rumors spread

she was crazy.

 2005

Our synagogue hired armed security guards

for the High Holy Days

after swastikas and “Kill the Jews”

were spray-painted bloody red

on its brick walls

—an artifice of safety.

2009

A confident junior,

in his oral presentation

I assigned to my Honors English class,

explained all Jews

are rich and greedy.

Some of my class was surprised.

The presenter didn’t understand

why this was a problem;

he’d given a similar speech last year

in History

and aced it.

 2022

At our local supermarket,

the sweet-voiced lady in front of me

in the checkout line,

told the cashier she was so grateful;

her niece healed from cancer

because she prayed for her.

Fervently, she asked me

if I was a Christian.

I smiled.

told her I was Jewish

and believed in the power of prayer.

Her mouth clanked shut

as she hurried from the store.

 2023

My stomach is distended

by history

by now

ordinary.

Deb Freedman is a poet living in Pennsylvania. Her poems have been published in The New Verse News and DVP/US 1’s Worksheets 67.

EARTH LIGHTS

by Sally Zakariya

Artist's Conception of the Humanity Star from Cumbrian Sky.

Rocket Lab Just Launched a Disco Ball into Orbit—

And It Could Be the Brightest Star in the Sky 

—Newsweek, January 25, 2018

In the Big War, I’m told,
they turned off all the lights
at night to fool the bombers

But now earth lights shine
out to space, tracked day
and night by some celestial
bird circling with a camera
tracing longitude and latitude
orbit by orbit, building a map
of where we light up, where
we outshine the stars at night

Our lights spill out like dirty
wash water from a pail
across a shiny clean floor
and now someone launched
a fake star into the sky—a
disco ball that will reflect
the sun’s rays back to earth

Humanity Star the makers call
their sparkling orb, and just like
the humans it was named for
this flashing star pollutes
the heavens, graffiti in the sky

Sally Zakariya’s Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry has appeared in some 70 print and online journals and won prizes from Poetry Virginia and the Virginia Writers Club. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and Other Verses (2011), and the editor of a poetry anthology Joys of the Table (2015). A former magazine editor, Zakariya lives in Arlington with her husband and two cats.

VIKING APOCALYPSE

by Jennifer Lemming

The Gjallerhorn. Image source: Swide

I waited for the Viking apocalypse,
nursing a cup of hot chocolate,
like it was mead, thick with brewing,
reading Beowulf, looking at the moon set
in the western sky, wondering if the young boy
with the hoodie pulled up and dark circles under
his eyes, walking past my window

on this milder day, after a winter that feels
like it was eleven years long, is the wolf son
of Loki, escaped and battling for the last hundred
days. I’m thinking I could go outside and pull
bark from the tree, scratch on it some

Viking graffiti that says, “kiss me,” the scent of
alpine clover in the air,
and return into my lair, take up my mead/hot chocolate
burrow under the blankets again,
waiting for the world to fall into the sea,
waiting to dream of Valhalla, laid in state
on my bed, a proper Viking funeral.


Jennifer Lemming’s works have appeared in Tipton Poetry Review, Earth’s Daughters, Ichabod’s Sketchbook, Out Rider Press Anthologies, Foothills Press Anthology, Rufous Press, The Idiom Magazine, and The Poetry Garden. Jennifer was a Finalist in February 2011 for the “Poems for Mr. Lincoln” contest sponsored by Brick Street Poetry. In the San Francisco based poetry contest, The Dancing Poetry Festival, she won first place for her poetry in 2004 and third place in 2009. In 2012 her latest chapbook The Clever Level was published by Celestial Panther Press.