AMERICA’S TRUE FACE

by Jon Wesick

is orange. It is gallows on the Capitol Mall,

a pile of shit on Nancy Pelosi’s desk,

a hammer to her husband’s skull.

It wears a red tie hanging below its knees

and stores the nation's secrets

in Putin’s bathroom. It is one set of laws

for the rich and heads slammed 

into police car roofs for the rest of us.

To the snobs who suggest plastic surgery

or even a little concealer, we say

Hell No! We like America’s face just fine! 

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, I-70 Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Space and Time, and Unlikely Stories Mark V. His most recent books are The Shaman in the Library and The Prague Deception.

IF I HAD A HAMMER

by Akua Lezli Hope

AI image… assisted by Akua Lezli Hope

all over this land oh over this Land all over this land/ we are dissolute and

unwise we are fractured and fracturing we are falling failing falling/ into an

exegesis of convenience/ of a grasping not at straws but at unreason/ creeping

decrepitude in our body politic/ a petulant dementia/that sanctions Breaking

and entering Breaking and entering    harm/ waging one million tiny Wars

inflaming warped hearts/ causing this conflagration that burns votes and

batters husbands in their homes/ endangering everything in this too late

hour/where we teeter totter slip on blood  blood pooling  bleeding

everywhere/ the deaths of our defenders responders resisters/ our climate

screaming at us slaying us/ flooding the water-full drying the drought stricken

shaking the fractured earth burning tinder-full  forests/ all at once  all fiercely

now/ and somehow I weep for that old man alone at home/struck in the head

and falling                down

  

Author's Note: On October 28, Paul Pelosi, 82. was attacked by a man undertaking “a suicide mission” to kill his wife, speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi.  The nightly news has been assaultive, as 33 million Pakistanis face despair UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “I have seen many humanitarian disasters in the world, but I have never seen climate carnage on this scale.”  1.3 million in Nigeria are displaced by floods. Somalia, like much of the Horn of Africa, is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Following the failure of four successive rainy seasons more than 7 million of the country’s 15 million people are experiencing severe hunger. Experts warn that the next rainy season between October and December will also likely fail, pushing several parts of the country into famine before the end of the year, unless aid efforts are urgently ramped up.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA, Elgin, & Best of the Net, Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations.

THE NEW NOVEMBER

by Jan Steckel

for Garrett Murphy

 

Late October is the New November,

the nova ember, when all slates

are made new. Ladybug, ladybug,

fly away home, your statehouse is on fire.

If you can’t vote the bastards out, 

drag along your electoral hammers,

spousal skull-crushers. Surveil those 

ballot boxes through the sights 

of your AR13s, only wear masks 

when you’re Ku Klux Klanning.

Proud Boys will be bashers.

It’s the ballot-harvesting festival,

so let’s go smashing pumpkins.

MAGA MAGA make it rain, it’s

lefty-hunting season again.

Kristallnacht’s in fashie-fashion.

Jack-o-Lannister, slide down

the Capitol bannister.

Olly olly oxen free!

Open season/no more reason:

civil discourse is passé,

democracy’s so yesterday.

Grab your billyclubs, shillaleghs, 

flagpoles, sheriff’s star,

little red baseball cap.

It’s mass grave o’clock, wake up, 

smell the decomposing bodies.

Get up off your brass knuckles—

Let the midterms begin!

Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California. 

HAMMER

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Members of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) picket outside the BlackRock headquarters in New York City. Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters via New York Magazine, January 20, 2022.

Unionization efforts involving some of the most recognizable names in business have dominated headlines across the United States in recent months. Starbucks workers in Buffalo and Amazon employees in Bessemer, Ala., and on Staten Island have recently moved to unionize, as have workers at an REI store in Manhattan last week. Successful strikes at John Deere and Kellogg have drawn new attention to the state of the labor movement as well. —The New York Times, January 25, 2022

The first tool I ever bought was a hammer

at Western Auto in the Central Park Plaza,

in Buffalo, in 1974. I liked the feel of it,

not too light, not too heavy, oak handle,

a pretty grain. I liked the idea of having

a tool. I wanted to hang posters, to fix things,

a stuck window that needed a tap, a carpet runner

that curled on a stair tread. I liked how the metal head

went tink, tink, tonk as a nail sunk deeper 

into wood. It said power, power, power.

These days, the handle still fits my palm,

the wood has darkened, smooth as skin,

tough as bone, like the forearm of my grandfather,

a union man, steady and tanned, a guy

who’d drop everything to lend a hand

to anyone. When he died, I chose his scroll-saw

and drill, some chisels with steel blades that

I’ve used well and misused, too, by whacking them

instead of tapping, by going against the grain. Nothing

can fix everything, though sometimes I want to be a hammer,

to use extra force to make emphatic the connection

between mind and thing. Sometimes one hit

is not enough, I want to hear a chorus of power, power.

I want to be a chisel, too, a sharp one. A union

can be a hammer, a contract can be a nail,

collective bargaining, shared governance, chisels.

Ideas can be hammered on until they strengthen,

nailed down, or shaved and honed. Power, power.

I’m twenty years older than my Western Auto hammer.

I’m still learning what to try to fix, what tool to choose.

I know the task is the real teacher. When I look out

at this broken world, I still see my grandfather,

his steady arm, his sure aim, how right it sounds

when it all comes together, when it all works. 

Bonnie Proudfoot lives in Athens, Ohio. She has belonged to several unions in her life, most recently the Ohio Education Association. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in online and print journals, and her novel Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) was Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction in 2021.