FIRE THIS TIME

by Gary Lark

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

This time 
this time
like any other time
like no other time
our time.

Now I understand,
we’re disposable.
After a long life,
tasting the wind 
from all directions
I get it.

Fires in Europe,
Canadian forests ablaze,
drought and floods,
we reach into the night
asking consciousness to save us.
The great beast of us
wheels and turns
desire in every hand.

Exploit and plunder marches on.
We could have,
we should have done something yesterday.
I know, I know
it will be different this time.

If I were a giant, I might pick up Congress
and shake it until the rats fall out
but I wouldn’t mess 
with the janitors and secretaries.

I go to the river in the evening
to watch it flow through town.
I don’t want to drink it
but I do.

Gary Lark’s most recent collections are “Coming Down the Mountain,” “Easter Creek,” and “Daybreak on the Water,” His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, and Rattle. Gary and his wife Dorothy live in Oregon's Rogue Valley.

CONSTRUCTS

by Mickey J. Corrigan

“God is a construct. Cute girls are real.” —Deepak Chopra in a 2017 email to Jeffrey Epstein

When a man makes them
from fantasy and baby powder
beach sand and blonde hair
all free for the handling
others will leave all
their morals behind
a long trail of wisdom
words that touch the world
like a sprinkling of fairy dust
while nothing beats something
young, innocent, nubile 
like flesh in man's hands.

“Only sinners are invited”
worshipers bend the knee 
to robes, collars, words
of the wise, the spiritual
who anoint and advise
to lead the best lives
while off-screen they take
what they believe they deserve
while you bow and prostrate
to the higher ideal
a cardboard cutout
hiding the breadcrumb path
to your cute kids.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan hides out in the lush ruins of South Florida. Salt Publishing in the UK released Project XX, a satirical novel about a school shooting. Bloodhound Books UK published What I Did For Love, a spoof of the classic Lolita. Poetry has been published in literary journals, chapbooks, and collections.

AI

by Katy Scrogin

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

let it do our loving for us
take it finally from our hands,
this vital stock of small gestures,
all these living little impositions
and bear them in our place

anything

anything

to keep us from those efforts
that made us who we were

Katy Scrogin is a Chicago-based writer and editor who also hosts the Plain Reading podcast. A Best of the Net nominee, her most recent work is featured at Divot, Variety Pack, and The Fictional Café. She can also be found at zwieblein.bearblog.dev and katyscrogin.wordpress.com.

DEER

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

These words will name the one 
dragged out of the woods by two men 

to the dirt road I walk on, how the day 
before I had startled one in our field, 

& all I saw was the white flag of its leaving, 
& today I see a long, limp tongue hanging out 

from the quiet mouth as the men lift it
into the back of a truck, the sagging 

body, four hooves held by their hands. 
Hands. Hooves. How a bullet leaves a body 

still & stained, & now every day I will look on the edge 
of the road for signs of blood & write 

this poem over & over. In every death
sloughed skin to become again. 

That settling of death right next to you,

how you move over, make room for it.


Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera(2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO.

CONVERSELY…

by Regina YC Garcia

Bracha Lavee Art Studio

All land is holy/land was holy 
until it is not/until it was not

Land that has been 
planted/has been penned
by hearts beating contrite/or 
hearts lying unrepentant 
with feet that have walked/ or 
feet that have occupied 
and minds with thoughts of peace/ or 
minds with thoughts of plot

The land-now restructured 
The laws-now revised
The people-once free/the people-now contained
live inflamed/ live in flames

We wonder of war
We wail of death
All of it waged by hands
some clean/ some unclean

The terrain, at least large enough,
seems to be not enough and
struggles to be/desires to be reframed/ to be reclaimed
     by new ghosts/by ghosts of old.


Regina YC Garcia is a DAR American Heritage Literary Award Winner and a Pushcart Nominated Poet, Language Artist, and English Professor from Greenville, NC. She has been published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Amistad, Black Joy Unbond, and numerous others. She has also contributed to a variety of podcasts, documentaries, and musical and literary arrangements including the Sacred 9 Project (Tulane University) and an Emmy award winning episode of the PBS art show Muse. Her debut chapbook The Firetalker's Daughter was released in March 2023 by Finishing Line Press.

RUBIALES KISS

by Paul Hostovsky

They call it football because
you can only use your feet.

Though sometimes you can also use 
your head, your chest, your legs.

But you can’t use your hands.
And you can’t use your arms. 

Those are the rules.

They call it a kiss on the mouth because
it’s a kiss on the mouth.

You can only kiss the mouth of someone 
with whom you are intimate. 

A lover. A spouse. 
Sometimes also family.

Use your head. 

That’s the rule. 
In all countries and in all languages. 

True, it is an unwritten rule,
but that’s no excuse for breaking it.

And now that you’ve broken it, Luis,
now that you’re flaunting it 

and famously showing your contempt for it, 

you can be sure the rule 
will get written down after this.

And though you probably won’t end up
in jail, you just may end up 

giving your name to this kind of unwanted kiss. 
Even without your consent. 

Because that’s the rule with eponyms.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS

by Ann E. Wallace

The swift punishment brought down on Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker in Montana, began over words that others in American politics have used without hesitation or consequence: saying opponents have “blood” on their hands. The governor of Texas. A GOP congressman in Florida. A city councilwoman in Denver. Just in the past few years, they are among the elected officials who have chastised colleagues in government with the same pointed rhetoric almost word for word — accusing them of bearing responsibility for deaths — over everything from immigration policy to gun laws. None faced blowback, let alone retribution. But not Zephyr, who on Thursday began legislative exile after Montana Republicans barred her from the state House floor a week after saying those who voted to support a ban on gender-affirming care would have blood on their hands. —AP, April 27, 2023

This was her warning,

the cost of the ban 

on affirming healthcare 

for trans kids.

 

They would have blood

on their hands,

she said.

 

The words, or her body, labeled 

a breach of decorum,

they removed her,

silenced her voice

with a majority, 68 to 32. 

She may watch,

voiceless, may cast

her singular vote 

out of sight and from afar.

 

Hers is a body they do not want 

to see. And they do not want 

to hear about their own hand 

in doing harm, about the toll 

of bloody-handed legislation 

on kids, or on the adults 

like her who once were kids 

in need of votes and affirmation.

 

They removed her from their sight.

They will wash their hands 

with blood.

And her voice, 

it will grow stronger.

Ann E. Wallace is the Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. Follow her on Twitter @annwlace409 or on Instagram @annwallace409.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

by Michelle DeRose

A woman who asked not to be identified out of privacy concerns told The Daily Beast that after she and Walker conceived a child while they were dating in 2009 he urged her to get an abortion. The woman said she had the procedure and that Walker reimbursed her for it. She supported these claims with a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, a “get well” card from Walker, and a bank deposit receipt that included an image of a signed $700 personal check from Walker… According to the $575 receipt, the abortion took place on Sept. 12, 2009.  —Daily Beast, October 4, 2022

Dear Herschel,

I slide the dusty box

from its closet shelf

every September,

how I recover

yet. Inside the card,

proof you once prayed

for me, knew

I felt something–

the card grainy

between my fingers,

your hands dry

against my lower back.

All my Septembers

captured in the loops

of your signature H:

the tail of the g

in my feeling

contracted in the narrow belly

of your upper loop,

while the lower pools

wide, like a puddle of blood.

Author’s Note: The election returns that sent Walker and Warnock to a run-off in Georgia leave me still wondering about the woman behind this story, what compelled her to save that card all these years, and note with sadness that it seems all involved in telling or receiving this story see her not as a human at all but as a pawn, a part of someone else's bigger story. So I imagined what she might have written before state and national politics entered her story.

Michelle DeRose teaches creative writing and African American, Irish, and world literature at Aquinas College, where she also coordinates the Irish Studies minor. Her most recent poetry has appeared in Peninsula Poets, The Healing Muse, Mezzo Cammin, Midwest Quarterly, and Journal of Poetry Therapy.

BUCHA MASSACRE

by Cathy Hailey

Photo from the streets of Bucha tweeted by Kira Rudik, Member of Ukrainian Parliament, Leader of Political party Golos.

Dead woman 

Perfectly manicured nail

Rises from dirt.

Dead woman

Hands tied behind back

Civilian white tag.

Dead woman

Pulled by rope from road 

Avoiding mines planted within.

Cathy Hailey teaches as an adjunct in Johns Hopkins University’s online MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing in Prince William County. She is Northern Region Vice President of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a biennial reading of poets laureate held in PWC. Her writing has been published in The New Verse News, Poetry Virginia, The Journal of the Virginia Writing Project, Written in Arlington, and Stay Salty: Life in the Garden State (Vol. 2), NoVA Bards, Confetti, and others. Her chapbook I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth is forthcoming in 2023.

ON ANOTHER AVERAGE EVENING

by Ethan McGuire

Top: Art by Molly Crabapple, special to ProPublica, April 24, 2020. Bottom: Graphic from National Nurses United.

She lies sprawled across a battered couch,

green scrubs still covering her body,

a cheap wine glass dangling from outstretched fingers.

He swings through the splintering apartment door,

blue, button-up uniform unbuttoned,

stained undershirt beneath it. “I’m home.”

“I had an awful day at work,” she sighs

as she picks up a bottle of Woodbridge merlot.

Pouring a glass, her eyes search the hall for him.

“Yeah?” he grunts, opening the fridge.

“Been having trouble with the charge nurse again,

and my plantar fasciitis is back.”

“Oh, no,” he says, pausing in the hallway.

“Administration, man, they’re coming down on us!

‘Course they won’t lower censuses for a damn thing... 

Maybe just another freaking pizza party... 

They’ll call us heroes but won’t give us a chance.”

“That sucks,” he says, as he limps through the hall

and as he sinks into the couch beside her.

“I hate being a floor nurse, hate it like hell.

I’ve gotta do something else.”

“I’m sorry.”

 

They sit still

in the cold and the quite then.

They only stare absently into

a noiseless, motionless TV, until

their hands touch. A certain love connects them.

She scoots over closer to his body,

and he slides his soiled, calloused hands under hers.

Ethan McGuire works by day as a healthcare information technology professional and by night as a writer, whose poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Better than Starbucks, The Dark Sire, Emerald Coast Review, and The Poetry Pea, among others. Ethan McGuire grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, but he, his wife who also works in healthcare as a nurse, and their new daughter currently live in the Florida Panhandle near the Gulf of Mexico. Twitter: @AHeavyMetalPen

COUNTING BONES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

Eddie Canales, director of South Texas Human Rights Center. Photograph: Gabriela Campos via The Guardian.

for john meza and eduardo canales

how many graves received them 

that is 

what was left of their bodies… 

for two days 

you will sift the soil 

with your hands and small trowels  

letting the earth 

fall away 

from the whiteness of bone 

i cannot fathom how you . . . 

(my heart aches with this almost thought) 

how will you touch the small remnants of lives 

and still breathe… 

how…

only by kneeling 

                                     

Author’s Note: John Meza is one of the volunteers working with Eddie Conales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center. With members of the Texas State University Forensic Pathology Department, they exhume bodies in graves in San Ygnacio, Texas to help identify missing migrants.

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” 

AVERSION TRAINING

by Robin S. Axworthy

Photo credit: Bette Ferber via The New York Times.

I have grown used to the moisture of my own breath 

on night walks, the mask, the sound of my own breathing 

pushed up past my ears.  Used to my own company at home, 

with only husband and sometimes daughter.  Used to any other

contacts as just the glass and scratch of microphone, letters 

appearing and sorting into sense on a screen. Used to touch

as poison to be scraped clean with alcohol and friction.

Accustomed now to nearness an electric buzz of warning

away from flesh, ears so used to staccato whine they have forgotten 

rippling waterfall of open mouth, mouth forgotten how breath 

feels naked and dry, thin in the bare air, my hands so used to solitude 

they’ve forgotten how to find their way to warmth.  

Robin S. Axworthy has been published in various anthologies including, most recently, Dark Ink: An Anthology Inspired by Horror (Moon Tide Press) and Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Women Over Forty Write on Aging (Beautiful Cadaver Project). Her chapbook Crabgrass World was published in March 2020 by Moon Tide Press. 

ICE CREAM TRUCK

by Jacqueline Jules

At the park this summer
Jacob misses the big blue truck
full of treats.

I am relieved.

How could I let him
run to the window for a fudge bar?
Risk one hand touching another?

It’s enough of a gamble to ride bikes
on the circular path, reminding Jacob
every few minutes to keep his mask on,
stay away from Joseph over there
on the swings.

How will Jacob remember this summer?
The only one without the ice cream truck?
Or when he was taught to keep his distance,
to fear the air others exhale?

School on a screen begins in three days.

Will he ever learn to hold hands again?

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum, Stronger Than Cleopatra, and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, The Rising Phoenix Review, What Rough Beast, Public Pool, Rise Up Review, and Gargoyle. She lives in Arlington, Virginia.

COVID-19 LIPOGRAM

by Martin Elster

Kay Scanlon / Los Angeles Times; Getty Images

Masking my physiognomy
may blight my glorious bond with you.
Your shroud, part of your armory,
brings to mind this bugaboo

bugging all of us. So now
as you and I chat through our masks,
although your orbs and striking brow
may knit or grin, a ticklish task

awaits us: To concoct a way
to talk with hands, with nods, and know
that you and I can simply say,
“I want you!” though our lips won’t show.


Author's Note: This is a  poem without the letter “e."

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His career in music has influenced his fondness for writing metrical verse, which has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. A full-length collection Celestial Euphony was published by Plum White Press in 2019.

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT LIFE BEFORE THE VIRUS

by Lesléa Newman

I.
I remember shaking hands:
damp, sweaty hands and dry, scratchy hands,
bone-crushing handshakes and dead-fish handshakes,
two-handed handshakes, my hand sandwiched
between a pair of big beefy palms.
I remember hairy hands and freckled hands,
young smooth hands and old wrinkled hands,
red polished fingernails and bitten jagged fingernails,
stained hands of hairdressers who had spent all day dying,
dirty hands of gardeners who dug down deep into the good earth.

II.
Thousands of years ago, a man stuck out his right hand
to show a stranger he had no weapon.
The stranger took his hand and shook it
to make sure he had nothing up his sleeve.
And that is how it began.

III
I remember sharing a bucket
of greasy popcorn with a boy
at the movies
(though I no longer remember
the boy or the movie)
the thrill of our hands
accidently on purpose
brushing each other in the dark.

IV
I remember my best girlfriend
and I facing each other to shriek,
“Miss Mary . . . Mack! Mack! Mack!”
and the loud satisfying smack!
as our four palms slapped.

V.
I remember high fives
and how we’d laugh when we missed
and then do a do-over.

 VI.
I remember the elegant turn
of shiny brass doorknobs
cool to the touch.

VII.
I remember my mother’s hands
tied to the railings of her hospital bed
and how I untied them
when the nurse wasn’t looking
and held them in my lap.

VIII.
I remember holding my father’s hand
how the big college ring he wore
rubbed against my birthstone ring
irritating my fourth finger
but I never pulled away.

IX.
I remember the joy of offering
my index finger to a new baby
who wrapped it in her fist
as we gazed at each other in wonder.

X.
I remember tapping a stranger
on the shoulder and saying,
“Your tag is showing.
Do you mind if I tuck it in?”
She didn’t mind. I tucked it in.

XI.
I remember salad bars and hot bars.
I remember saying, “Want a bite?”
and offering a forkful
of food from my plate.
I remember, asking, “Can I have a sip?”
and placing my lips
on the edge of your cold frosty glass.

XII.
I remember passing around the Kiddush cup,
each of us taking a small sip of wine.
I remember passing around the challah,
each of us ripping off a big yeasty hunk.
I remember picking up a serving spoon
someone had just put down
without giving it a second thought.

XIII.
I remember sitting with a mourner
at a funeral, not saying a word,
simply taking her hand.

Lesléa Newman is the author of 75 books for readers of all ages including the poetry collections I Carry My Mother and October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard. Her newest poetry collection I Wish My Father is forthcoming in  January 2021 from Headmistress Press.

THE BROKEN CLOCK

by Bill Meissner

Though the black hour and minute hands
are stuck, motionless,
the second hand keeps circling and circling
the clock on our wall.

It reminds me of the older couple I saw once—
the man standing outside in the flowerbed,
the woman inside—placing their hands on
opposite sides of a large picture window.
I marveled at the way their arms moved together
in a graceful circling.

The second hand chases and
chases itself, as if it believes it
could catch up with itself.

I believed that couple was
slowly waving to each other, or
doing some kind of playful, synchronized
dance of love.  Until I realized their hands held stained cloths;
they were merely cleaning the streaked glass.

In fall, we lose an hour, like a key
slid behind a dresser, then,
six months later, like a missing sock found under the bed, we
gain one.  Each season we feel ourselves
become younger, then
older, then younger again.
And we can’t help but wonder:  how long can the foggy cells inside our body
keep cleaning their tiny windows?

This spring, after resetting our new clock,
you and I lift our hands toward each other,
gently press our palms together,
circle them around and
around, around and
around, keeping the dance going
as we polish the space between us.

Writer/teacher Bill Meissner is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry, including a recent poetry collection, The Mapmaker’s Dream (Finishing Line Press). His novel Spirits in the Grass (University of Notre Dame Press) won the Midwest Book Award.  He lives with his wife Christine in Minnesota where he resets his clocks two (or more) times per year.

THE WOMAN CARD

by Skaidrite Stelzer

Too hard to say the exact words,
the exacting words.
How a hand can be placed on a shoulder;
the sudden shudder of his breath in my hair.
Because I don’t know him really,
a stranger,
and I don’t like men creeping up behind me.
Because they can’t see my face,
they may feel they are gentlemen,
they may think me too sensitive,
easy to melt,
quietly.
Easy to melt with my mouth closed,
tongue removed,
unless his in my ear.
Such close whispering meant
only to reassure me
and the chorus arising,
overpowering.
What is the risk?
I remember the man
who followed me home one night
from the laundromat
and I did not mind it.
But another night
he came in accidentally.
My accident, not locking the door.
There is often something more
to the story.
If you want to touch me,
at least look me straight
in the face.

Skaidrite Stelzer lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio.  Growing up as a post-war refugee and displaced person, she feels connected to the world and other stray planets.  Her poetry has been published in Fourth River, Eclipse, Glass, Baltimore Review, and many other literary journals as well as TheNewVerse.News.

MADNESS

by T R Poulson

Nevada looked like its NCAA tournament was going to come to end Sunday in the second round. But after trailing by 22 points in the second half, the Wolf Pack rallied to beat the Cincinnati 75-73 and advance to the Sweet 16. Nevada’s stirring comeback – the second-largest in tournament history – came just two days after the No. 7 seed rallied from 14 points down in the second half to beat Texas for its first NCAA victory since 2007. “Nothing feels better than this,” Nevada coach Eric Musselman said. “Nothing. Sweet 16!” —USA Today, March 18, 2018

A snow hiker finds fifty-four hands: frozen hands, unfettered hands,
gnarled hands, grisly hands, bloodstained hands, dissevered hands.

So many cats:  cougars, bearcats, panthers, tigers, wildcats
pounce on blue jays, bulls, highlanders with their weathered hands.

A thundering herd evades the cowboys’ ropes, pursued by shockers,
those pesky prods pressed to haunches by men’s leathered hands.

The quakers fight, their weapon, inner light, as those jayhawks
swoop and fly, yellow beaks like iron, wings like feathered hands.

Even friars shake in fright, as lawless aggies bare their whips
and guns, no honor to men bound to God with forevered hands.

From myths, the titans from old kingdoms rise to snuff out fires
of boilermakers, crush the torches, hammers of endeavored hands.

Will the gods send hurricanes to spin and drench and swirl,
to tame all claws, talons, hooves, with wind’s untethered hands?

But wait.  Imagine the wagging retriever, prancing, dancing.
He takes the bone from cavaliers’ unwilling, levered hands.

We’re in the madness.  We back our pack of wolves who dodge
the long, curved horns.  The bearcats loom.  We lift together-hands.

T R Poulson, a Nevada Alum (yep, I proudly sign my ghazal with support for my Wolf Pack. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Alehouse, Trajectory, Wildcat Review, The Meadow, Verdad, The Raintown Review, J Journal, and Tuck Magazine), currently lives in San Carlos, California.  

THE DOG RUNS ON

by Laura McHale Holland

Alejandro Nieto was killed by police in the neighbourhood where he spent his whole life. Did he die because a few white newcomers saw him as a menacing outsider? —The Guardian, March 21, 2016. Image source: Justice for Alex Nieto.

the dog runs on
and my daughter’s friend
is gone

Alex carries a burrito
up Bernal Hill
a neighborhood jewel
his lifelong home

a husky, off leash, lunges, yips, growls
in pursuit of Alex’s food
the dog’s owner doesn’t notice, doesn’t care
he’s looking at a female jogger’s ass

Alex leaps onto a park bench
the dog lunges, yips, growls
Alex stands, fends off the fangs
the dog’s owner doesn’t notice, doesn’t care
he’s looking at a young jogger’s ass
the dog lunges, yips, growls
Alex pulls out a taser, points it at the beast
the owner notices, reins in his dog,
sees he’s facing a taser, not a gun

he trots off with his dog, calls a friend
says he wishes California were like Florida
he could stand his ground against
a brown-skinned, no good gangbanger
who dares to threaten his lovely dog
he could stand his ground against
a Latino dressed in red 49ers jacket
black 49ers cap, black pants, sunglasses
he could dispense with Alex
who is unnerved by a dog lunging
for a burrito on Bernal Hill
a neighborhood jewel
Alex’s lifelong home

Alex sits down, bites into his burrito
some passersby see a normal guy, a familiar face
others see a menace with gun tucked at his waist
one calls 911, police drive up the hill
Alex finishes his meal, stands up
a security guard with licensed taser tucked away
Alex, ready for work, ambles a familiar route
police move in
Alex ambles a familiar route, police move in
he does not know his new neighbors
ensconced in remodeled homes
believe he’s a threat, police move in
Alex does not know his neighbors, ensconced
see him as a threat, police move in

What happens next?
officers involved say they told Alex to stop
but he crouched, weapon in hand
they feared for their lives
he crouched, weapon in hand

people who loved Alex say
he would never do that
he was a role model, a youth advocate
a community volunteer
he studied criminal justice
he knew better than most
how to respond to police

an eyewitness says Alex did not
crouch, did not pull out his taser
an eyewitness says Alex did not
pull out his taser, did not crouch
an eyewitness says Alex’s hands
were in his pockets

my daughter says Alex, her friend
from Horace Mann middle school,
was a sweetheart, a peacemaker, always
a connector, a sweetheart always
in all ways

bullets blast and soar
through Alex’s lifetime home
knock the young man down
shatter his jaw and teeth
rip through leg bones
blast and shatter his lifetime
bullets pound the young man
already down without motion
bullets mangle his brain
his blood colors the ground
and the bullets stop at last
his blood pools on the ground

Alex, Buddhist, peace activist,
junior college graduate
aspiring probation officer
Alex, campaign volunteer
community event organizer
Alex deeply loved and loving deeply
breathes his last on Bernal Hill, his home
Alex, a neighborhood jewel
loving deeply and deeply loved
breathes his last on Bernal Hill
and the bullets stop at last

When San Francisco’s finest enter the home
where Alex dreamed the dreams of childhood
where he grew from beloved boy to beloved man
they do not tell his parents their son is dead
they interrogate, look for gang affiliations
they do not tell his parents their son is dead
they interrogate, look for drug connections
proof that Alex was unstable, unreliable, violent
San Francisco’s finest fail to mention that Alex is dead
until his parents demand answers
with no warrant, San Francisco’s finest steal Alex’s car
they find no drug connections, no gang affiliations
they smear Alex’s memory, look for drug connections
gang affiliations, look for dirt and find none

police brass, city brass exonerate the officers
the grieving parents seek justice, restitution in a civil trial
the dog’s owner testifies, jokes about the jogger’s ass
Alex’s grieving parents look on
the officers laugh in the hallway
the grieving parents look on
a jury clears the laughing officers
the grieving parents look on
the dog’s owner doesn’t notice, doesn’t care

the dog runs on and on
my daughter’s friend
is gone

Author’s Note: This poem is related to several police shootings being protested in San Francisco. It is specifically about Alex Nieto, who was gunned down in 2014. On May 9, people in the Justice for Alex Nieto group were among the protesters seeking the resignation of police chief Greg Suhr. Last week, after another in a spate of officer-involved killings, Suhr was asked to resign, and he did.

Author, editor and storyteller Laura McHale Holland has published the anthology Sisters Born, Sisters Found: A Diversity of Voices on Sisterhood; The Ice Cream Vendor's Song, a flash fiction collection; and Reversible Skirt, a memoir. You can sign up at her site to receive an excerpt from Resilient Ruin, her new memoir in progress.

HOW WE ARGUE NOW

by  Michael Mark

When my wife does something I don’t like
I tell her I'm building a wall
from the dining room through the kitchen,
splitting our bed—
that it’s going to be the best wall ever
and she's going to pay for it.
She tells me she's going to throw me out in the cold
without a coat.
When she asks how was my day at work,
I say I told my boss I want to punch her right in the face,
and you?
She says her boss was mean to her
and he looked like he was bleeding from his eyes,
bleeding from everywhere.
When we compare paychecks she calls me a total loser.
I say I have more friends than her on Facebook
and that’s like a poll proving I am a better person.
She tells me I’m sloppy and by picking up after me
she is making our disgusting awful home great again.
When I see our credit card bill—how much
she spends on heat and water, I say she is stupid
and makes terrible, stupid, horrible, the worst deals.
When the grass needs mowing, she says
I’m the lawn establishment and I get nothing done.
I say I haven’t seen our marriage certificate -
I don’t believe we are married and I’m sending her
back to her parents.
She says that my hands are small.
I say for saying I have small hands I will shoot her
with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
She says she could shoot me dead in our driveway
and our friends and family would still love her
and vote her world’s greatest, friend, mom,
daughter, even daughter-in-law.
I sulk about the small hands comment.
She slides over to my side of the bed.
We broker a deal because we are flexible.


Michael Mark’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Gargoyle Magazine, The New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Prelude Magazine, Poet Lore, Rattle, Spillway, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net.