OTHERS

by John Guzlowski

Today an anti-Semitic hate crime shot and killed my friend Lori Gilbert Kaye z”l while she was praying in synagogue. Lori you were a jewel of our community a true Eshet Chayil, a Woman of Valor. You were always running to do a mitzvah (good deed) and generously gave tzedaka (charity) to everyone. Your final good deed was jumping in front of Rabbi Mendel Goldstein to take the bullet and save his life. —Audrey Jacobs, Jewish Journal, April 27, 2019

They killed us on the banks of the Danube

and in the ovens of Auschwitz. 

They killed us in our homes

and they killed us in the woods.

They killed us in the heat of summer 

and the coldest cold of winter.  

They killed us pleading to God 

and they killed us 

as we lay in the mud.  

They killed us when we were children 

and they killed us when we were old 

and too exhausted to weep.  

They killed us 

and they continue to kill us.  

In America and everywhere.

John Guzlowski's writing appears in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Rattle, Ontario Review, North American Review, and other journals.  His poems and personal essays about his Polish parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany and refugees in Chicago appear in his memoir Echoes of Tattered Tongues. Echoes received the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Foundation's Montaigne Award for most thought-provoking book of the year.  He is also the author of two Hank Purcell mysteries and the war novel Road of Bones.

KROGER

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

in memory of maurice stallard and vickie jones   

                               who were shot and killed in a kroger store

what was her favorite color
was she at the meat counter
deciding sunday dinner
or vegetables for cock pot soup
did he watch monday night football
and his coffee strong with a small baptism of milk
did they both like to laugh
play cards with friends . . .
lest their names and faces fall into time’s file 13
 for a moment   today
this poem
may their memory, too, be a blessing


Sister Lou Ella Hickman 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 TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Last year she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.

LOVE & HATE ON A PORTLAND TRAIN

after the last words of Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche

by Scott C. Kaestner





hate versus love on a train
hate slashes at love, stabs
love in the heart, claims two
brave souls who defended
love in the face of hate and
as love lays dying on that train
a victim of hate, one last brave act
one last message of love, one last
ounce of love to give offering hope

"Tell them, I want everybody to know, I want everybody on the train to know, I love them."

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, a dad, Lakers fan, guacamole aficionado, and leftist dreamer. Google 'scott kaestner poetry' to peruse his musings.

EGG RACE

by Devon Balwit

Image by Melodi2 via Answer Angels.

I write hate crime, mass shooting, extremist,
target, victim, second amendment, make
my students copy and pronounce, make
them lift their heads from their phones
and listen, all of us awkward, the ones
fasting for Ramadan, the ones who may
be gay, the ones who, secretly, do not care,
Orlando a place they’ve never heard of
in a country they barely know; they want
my language, not my history, and this lesson,
they can do without, my fumbling to do
justice to horror, while balancing the fragile
egg of blame in my tiny spoon, trying to dash
to the finish without letting it fall, homophobia,
intolerance, assault rifles, class ends and
I’ve taught something; none of us sure what.

Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher living in the Pacific Northwest.  Her work has appeared in TheNewVerse.News twice before. Her recent work has appeared or will soon in The Fog Machine, The Cape Rock, The Fem, Of(f) Course, drylandlit_press, and The Prick of the Spindle.