A LESSON IN PASSIVE VOICE

by Lauren Haynes

The Capitol was breached while I  

taught preteens the art of  

language, to bend and  

provoke, to  

evade and  

slice.  

The order of a sentence and its  

implications. The difference between  

“The letter was mailed to me by my grandparents.” and  

“My grandparents mailed the letter to me.”  

Inconsequential until remote learning tabs to  

the real world.  

Miss, they say,  

the offices of high-ranking members  

of Congress were entered.  

Miss, they say,  

the American flag was removed and replaced:  

MAKE AMERICA                              AGAIN.  

A bomb was planted.  

A coup was staged.  

Where is the subject?  

Miss, they say,  

Who is doing the action?  

Lauren Haynes holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Kentucky University and has been an English teacher for years.

IF I COULD BLOCK YOUR ANTI-BLM TWEETS, BY GOD, I WOULD

by K Roberts

“All lives matter,” you sniffed,
and I marvel at how glibly
a cry for help
is transformed into a grammar lesson.

We are dying, they said to you,
and within your bleached brain
you donned a miniaturizing monocle.
You placed a mirror over your ears, like a hearing aid.

If a man is drowning
will apostrophes keep him afloat?
If a house is burning
will conjugating “veni, vidi, vici” dowse the flames?

America, the stones in your foundation are on fire.
Put down the textbook. Pick up a bucket.
The colorless gas
of cowardice and silence
is poisoning us all.


K Roberts is a professional non-fiction writer.

PANDEMIC: A DICTIONARY GUIDE

by Pauletta Hansel

John Tenniel illustration for "Jabberwocky"

In poetry talk we call it “word-play,” 

tricking nouns up adverbial,  and verbing the adjectives  

till they gyre and gimble in the wabe,

but there’s no play at play here.

Example of PANDEMIC in a sentence:

In the middle months of 2020, the use of the former adjective as noun

was pandemic.

Facebook posts about the COVID-19 disease, AKA coronavirus

were pandemic.

Grief over the untimely death of (fill in the blank) was … 

You get the point.  Let’s move on.

There’s no place to go. 

Time Travel for PANDEMIC: 

The first known use was as an adjective in 1666.

See more words from the same year:

            Irresoluble

            Uninstructive

            Grotesquerie

            Auld lang syne

Take your choice of neighbors: PANDEMONIUM or PANDER.

Example of PANDER in a sentence:

A few Republican governors chose to stop pandering 

to their country’s demagogue (the frumious Bandersnatch) 

and serve the people instead.

A Dictionary Guide to Coronavirus Related Words: Deciphering the Terminology You Are Likely to Hear:

            Social Distancing

            Superspreader

            Contact Tracing

            Fomite “Rhymes with ‘toe blight.’” (Yes, the dictionary really says that.)

            Martial law (The martial part of which 

            comes from Mars, the god of war, whereas the pan

            in pandemic is unrelated to the goat-headed god 

                        The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

            of the wild.)

History and Etymology for PANDEMIC

            From the Greek:

            pan      +          demos 

                        =

            all        +          people

            More at DEMAGOGUE

(Told you: No place to go.)      

Author's Notes: Obviously, the italicized lines are from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”  The dictionary used for this poem was https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pandemic.  While there are a number of news sources for the demagoguery in our nation, here’s a recent one about a Republican governor continuing to take a reasonable stance: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/05/06/coronavirus-ohio-dr-amy-acton-house-limit-power/5175125002/. I also find it interesting that the dictionary chose “toe blight” as its rhyme example before the news appearance of COVID toes: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/05/06/850707907/from-loss-of-smell-to-covid-toes-what-experts-are-learning-about-symptoms

Pauletta Hansel’s seven poetry collections include Coal Town Photograph and Palindrome, winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award. Her writing has been featured in Rattle and Still: The Journal, and on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate (2016- 2018). In Poetry Month 2020 she worked with the current Poet Laureate to curate Cincinnati’s Postcards from the Pandemic Project. 

WORDS, GRAMMAR, EVERYTHING

by Jen Schneider

CARTOON:  David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star, 2017

If for some reason you haven’t been clear about what President Trump thinks about traditional public schools, consider what he said about them in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. There was this: “For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.” What’s a “government school” to Trump? A public school in a traditional public school district. —The Washington Post, February 5, 2020

Some speak of failing
government schools. The cement-block
halls and crowded rooms I call home.
Rooms lined with pet turtles, donated books,
and color-blocked rugs. Often too hot.
Sometimes too cold. Usually just right.
Some speak of failing
government schools. Staffed
by hard-working folks—with tenures
of ten, fifteen, and twenty years and passions
for literature, mathematics, Us—I call family.
Some speak of failing
government schools. The 7 AM through 4 PM
world where I find breakfast, lunch,
and meaning. And where I learned the power
of Words. Of Grammar. Of Punctuation.
Of love. Mrs. P. Ms. T. Mr. B.
I miss them—All.
Some speak of failing
government schools. I, rather, speak
of schools that have been failed.
Mr. B taught me well. We have not failed.
We have been failed. Where failing is a verb,
not an adjective. With funding
denied, teachers declared
no longer hired, and students
deemed unworthy
of care. Of Love. Some speak
of failing government schools.
All I see, from the windows
of the school I Love,
is a failing government.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

45

by Gil Hoy

Members of a family reunite through the border wall between Mexico and United States, during the "Keep our dream alive" event, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico on December 10, 2017. Families separated by the border were reunited for three minutes through the fence that separates Ciudad Juarez Park in Mexico and Sunland in New Mexico, United States, during an event called "Keep our dream alive", organized by the Border Network for Human Rights on the International Human Rights Day. HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Texas Public Radio

In this poem, proper sentence 

structure will be followed.

For example, sentences will start

with a capital letter and end

with a proper punctuation mark.

Sentences will be grammatically correct.

Some may say that this will likely detract 

from the poem’s poetic quality,

but I’m not sure I can agree.

I’m also not sure real poems require words. 

I italicize for emphasis.

For example, is an image held 

in the mind of crying children—

of thousands of immigrant families

separated at the border—never

to be reunited, poetic?

Is the image symbolic and evokes

strong emotions? Is it repetitive 

and sick at heart?

Are the precise words of one’s 

internal dialogue describing the image 

what make it poetic or not?

Can a number be a poem, or at least poetic?

Such as the title of this poem?

I will never think of “45” in the same way again.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, I am not a silent poet, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, the penmen review and elsewhere.

HE SAID, HE SAID

by Edmund Conti

Image source: Shapeways

Did I say would, well I meant wouldn’t.
Did I say could, well I meant couldn’t.
Did I say should, you know I shouldn’t.
You heard right, but I meant left.
You heard daft, but I meant deft.
Did I say NATO was a joke.
Of course you know that I misspoke.
Did I just praise the sickle and hammer.
No I didn’t.  Just bad grammar.
Did I just give away Alaska.
You heard wrong, it was Nebraska.
I’m sorry for the things I said.
Perhaps  I should have stood in bed.


Edmund Conti's poetry may be meaningless, but he means what he says.