IN THE PROMISED LAND OF BROKEN DREAMS ANOTHER RESTLESS NIGHT

by Dick Altman

I imagine
my grandparents,
who traded
the Old Country
for America,
asking me today,
Should we come?
Should we come,
given the chance?
 
I try clearing
the knotted throat
of my mind,
to find an answer.
Would I
want to start
life over,
tattered
and patched,
I ask myself,
in a land,
that didn’t
want me?
 
I reel from today’s
headlines,
sleepless,
as I wander
the streets
of my American
Dream,
comforting,
familiar,
welcoming
no longer.
 
But where to go,
begin anew?
America,
you’ve shaken
the globe
off its footings.
Turned yourself,
in many minds,
into a nightmare
of economic
submission.
Turned your back
on those
yearning,
deserving,
to be free.
 
I feel estranged,
increasingly
out of touch.
The periodic table
of my life—
all the elements
that spark mind/
body/spirit—
my American
Dream’s
essence,
runs riot.
 
Have I reached
the terminus,
where it’s
no longer
if you,
my country,
want me?
I plumb the dark
for harmony,
once heart
of the American
Dream.
The day’s unfurling,
a rampage
of dissonance,
ravages my sleep.

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, aming others. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 250 poems published on four continents.

UKRAINE (CONTINUED)

by David Radavich

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 601 of the invasion: Russia testing defences around Kupiansk-Lyman as its Avdiivka offensive wanes, says Ukraine; Moscow admits reliance on China for drones —The Guardian, October 17, 2023

You used to be
on our front pages.

 

Now there are
other wars,
other headlines.

 

Almost a footnote
of human suffering.

 

The bombed-out
churches and schools,
houses and hospitals,
are still rubble,

 

the dead are
still barely buried.

 

We can only stand
so much news:
we have our own issues.

 

Forgive us our 
short attention span,
our time-worn
generosity.

 

We meant well
once.

David Radavich has published a variety of poetry, drama, and essays.  His latest book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German and English Poems (Deutscher Lyrik Verlag, 2021).

STALKING ME / SKEINS OF INCANDESCENCE

by Dick Altman

British Columbia declares state of emergency amid ‘devastating’ wildfires
                                                                             —The Washington Post, August 19, 2023

Another headline, another smoke-filled

front page—the fires all seem so far away—

until they begin to feel as if they’re

pursuing you.

 

I see you, as a child, in the distance, feel you

roar down the block, run to you as if some

plaything—until your touch, in terror, turns me,

my fear, from that day on, drawing you to me.

                                 *

Your essence, swallowing Quebec’s forests,

smothers, with belches of haze blood-red,

our cabin, your breath for weeks choking

throat, mind, sleep.

                                 *

I watch you unfurl in the Jemez mountains,

across Rio Grande’s valley, to attack Los Alamos,

atom bomb’s birthplace, shaken that its labs,

caught in your maw, could blow apart earth.

                                    *

Why do you stalk me, I ask, as I wake to find you

convulsing the next range over, armies of clouds,

raging, towering above me, for months, unstoppable,

our drought-riven tinderscape dissolving in defeat.

                                       *

You come, next time, within a mile of me, no taunt,

but threat real to home and glade, lifetime of work,

bloom, joy—only your joy lies in taking it all away,

and spirits of rain, I pray, drown you to death.

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work appears in the first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry published this year by the New Mexico Museum Press. 

AT EIGHTY-SIX HE LIVES ALONE

A PANDEMIC A.M. POST
by Earl J Wilcox




When he awakens—eyes too full of macular
to see any clock—Alexa, his roommate,
tells him the hour, temperature, date, begins
their day with Adagio for Strings. It’s 6:30.
Robed, peeing done, doddering, wobbling,
he shuffles down a hall, toward his kitchen.
Morning meds taken, coffee perking, he
strolls into his sun room; late, white
azaleas wave in a Carolina breeze. Two
squirrels scamper, a red bird flies away.

The NYT headlines on his ancient Windows
screen blur. Numbers of new cases, deaths,
something about masks, T***P fibs again.
He glances at the theater section. Fun.
Performers posting happy videos. This early
Monday too young—he feels—to count as
another day just yet as the sun is still hiding
behind lush dogwoods, cherry trees. His coffee
smells better than it tastes. His macular eyes focus
slowly. Spring pollen clogs ears and throat from
clearing properly until mid-morning. Abetted
by coughing he could sound to some is if the virus
found him overnight. Until time for the women
on The View to take up their verbal cudgels exactly
where they left off yesterday, the TV is silent.

Online the local rag counts case and death numbers
on page Two. He avoids noting too closely how
many who die are near his age, though the papers seem
to equivocate or just don’t report for some reason
the causes of death among some elderly folks.
People in pictures atop obits are smiling. Why not—
he sighs—since the snaps were made thirty
years ago. His ancient computer is now fully
engaged as is he ready to surf. He avoids all accounts
of the virus. About ten pages of an EXTRA
section of the newspaper are devoted to almost
every nuance of the disease. The online news has
run the same section for several days. There is
no lack of news about COVID-19. In the
Sports section, more reports of games canceled.
Are the NFL, MLB, NBA going defunct?
He gives a mental “thumbs up” to ball-playing
millionaires helping raise funds for needy families.
Seems the NFL draft is the spring sporting event.

His puny small stocks made modest gains
yesterday, and the weather will let the azalea blossoms
hold their blaze another day. The morning
meds taste funny without food. He eats a banana.

Sinus clogging and sneezes are common. It is not
the virus season after all. A classical radio station
plays Bach and soothing, nostalgic olden goldies—
Brahms’ How Lovely Are Thy Tabernacles by Mormon
Choir. In his best dulcet tones, the radio announcer
avoids mentioning COVID-19 until the end of his
shift. It is good to have four hours of music
uninterrupted by updates on cases and deaths
and prospects for future. At his age, some of these
projections have been in his profile for a decade.

Earl Wilcox is reopening his back yard to squirrels, robins, and cotton tail rabbits. Early worms show up at their own risk.

FACING YOUR OFFICIAL END

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Tweeted by Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes.

Some men aren't content with breakage, they have to burn you to the ground.

—Kim Addonizio, "The Matter"

The moon hangs there
like everything is white
in your world.

The sun bobs and rises
from the orange sherbet horizon
as if today
will be another
beautiful day.

The headlines blinker
across sky blue screens
in hectic offices
on crowded planes, trains
in cars with distracted drivers.

All that light reveals
more darkness
in the marrow,
more dirt unearthed
from the bottomless pit
the grave, the bone cancer
of past and present
crime, amorality, lies.

By the time the moon eases
from behind the black trees
the world has darkened again.
Only the night glow
casts light
on your tomorrow.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Poetry has appeared in Fourth & Sycamore, Flatbush Review, And So Yeah, Penny Ante Feud, ink sweat and tears, r.kv.r.y quarterly literary journal, Scrittura, Fauna Quarterly, borrowed solace, TheNewVerse.News, and elsewhere. Chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016), Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017), and Final Arrangements (Prolific Press, 2019). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.

THE TROUBLE WITH YESTERDAY IS THAT IT'S NOT TODAY EVEN IF IT PLAGIARIZES YESTERDAY

by Dianna  Mackinnon Henning


Palestinian protesters near the Gaza-Israel border. YnetNews

it won’t be the same. The ironic bay window tires
revealing the picturesque—several fruit trees, aspen and
a roly-poly hillside marred with wildflowers. Shades are
more than pulled blinds. All those Palestinians shot
down. Windows break because they’re glass. Flesh is
not iron. It never will be nor does it aspire such. A young
boy’s boomerang is no weapon. They’ll kill him anyway.
Yesterday’s headlines announced hope. The trouble with
hope is that it shifts positions. Yoga doesn’t mean the body
bows like a field of wildflowers in a bilingual downpour.

Dianna Mackinnon Henning holds an MFA in Writing ’89 from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Naugatuck River Review, Lullwater Review, The Red Rock Review, The Kentucky Review, The Good Works Review, The Main Street Rag, California Quarterly, Poetry International, Fugue, 22 Wagons, South Dakota Review, Trag, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and The Seattle Review. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Henning has taught poetry through California Poets in the Schools. The William James Association’s Prison Arts Program  gave her the opportunity to teach poetry at Folsom and other CA prisons. Henning’s third poetry chapbook Cathedral of the Hand was published in 2016 byFinishing Line Press.

SO TWO GOATS WERE STUCK ON A BEAM UNDER A BRIDGE

by Jill Crainshaw

Amidst a turbulent week on Wall Street, two goats were found stranded on a bridge beam in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Goat photo source: Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission via NPR.

stormy

with a chance of thundersnow

these are the headlines we are living in

curators clamoring for credibility on facebook fake newsfeeds

talking heads trading on trending turbulence

the bald eagle has landed—on the mariners shoulder—looking for bears

hugging the life out of

fragile economies

while easter bunnies on the loose quadruple a towns investment

a teenagers hair creates a buzz breaking into the prophetic sound of her silence

as bells toll to remember the king who had a dream that one day—one day—

and a presidents goldilocks

blow in the

wind

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC.

TO:

by Sarah Stern

Roger Harvell Cartoon

Boil seven brown eggs in water
Turn off the kitchen light as the day begins
See the sparrows perched, earrings, on winter trees
Miss you—all of you—always
See the banner headlines and hope still
Know that we are here now
Forget not what makes us happy
Pee clear with no pain
Love you forever, even when I'm gone.


Sarah Stern is the author of But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock, 2014) and Another Word for Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, recently in The American Dream, The Man Who Ate His Book: The Best of Ducts.org, Epiphany, Freefall, and Verse Daily. She is a four-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts' Poetry Award. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is the Acting Director of Communications at the EastWest Institute and lives in New York City.

ENLIGHTENMENT

by B.Z. Niditch

Image source: Poets for World Peace

This spring we plant
seedlings
on grounds that flower
covering the good earth,
and write in splendor
by our night lamps
as a new season rebirths
each poet's power,

Asking winter's icy justice
be gone this season
we reach  for deadlines
over a stalking press
to stamp out
in bold headlines
every reasoned grievance,

Yet the bureaucracy
drives us crazy
making us wait
in the cold for hours
and the plutocracy
ignores our pleas
for democracy,

We learn from Byron
Picasso or Shelley
with a artist's chance
for a dove's release
under the burning sun
when frightful furies
ask for war
we yearn
to walk for peace.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.  His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Le Guepard (France);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

CNN UNIVERSE

by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Beirut car bomb kills 8
Charred buildings, smoke in air
Chaos in the streets
Photos: aftermath of the blast
Rover spots shiny objects on Mars
Meteor lights up sky in California
Taliban threaten reporters
Beheaded for refusing to be prostitute
Dad in disbelief over son's terror arrest
U.S. contractors drunk on tape
Four women shot at Florida hair salon
Parents: man mocked disabled kid
Will Cain: Room for GOP at colleges?
Court: Fort hood suspect can be shaved
Elephant crushes Australian zookeeper
Man dumped, wins $30.5M lottery
Two-time rape victim fights for justice
Justin Bieber's mom on raising the star
McJordan BBQ sauce sells for $10K
Youth coach hits ref in face
Coroner: Heroin killed son of NFL coach
Duck lives with arrow in head
Cheerleaders OK'd to cheer God


Don Kingfisher Campbell has recently been published in Crack The Spine,
Lummox, Poetic Diversity, The Sun Runner, Poetry Breakfast, Pink Litter and
the Inner Child Press’ Hot Summer Nights anthology.  He is currently working
on an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles.