POUNDING

by Tasneem Khan

It’s such a menial act. Mundane really. 
With a pestle nestled between my fingers, 
I fling a handful of peppercorns into a mortar.
They have no time to settle, no space to jostle; no air to breathe. 
Who cares? I proceed. 
To bash their heads in. 
Unceasingly. As I hear no sounds, other than the satisfying thwack of wood on stone. 
I pound pound pound 
till their insides are squeezed out of their skins.
And what is left is a fraction of what once was.

I think about them—the peppercorns, the pestle, and the powdery remains
as I glance at the newspaper. 
‘Gaza pounded,’ it says. 
Sometimes, journalists do get it right. 

Tasneem Khan is an elementary teacher and lives in Bengaluru, India.

KEEP

by Janet Shainheit

We keep our eyes peeled, our chins up, our fingers crossed. Feet
planted firmly on the ground.  We keep our heads.  Keep noses
to their respective grindstones.

We earn our keep.  Keep it safe.  Keep body and soul together.
Keep busy.  Keep up the pace.  Try to keep ourselves and those we
love from harm.  We keep at it.  Keep going.
Keep our upper lips stiff.
Keep on truckin’.

We keep secrets, memories, friends.  We keep in touch.
Keep watch on the world, up with the news.  Keep tabs on
what’s what and who’s who.
Keep score.

We keep our word.  We keep strong in troubled seas.
We struggle to keep the flame of truth
on an altar of honor.


Janet Shainheit lives and writes in Worcester, MA. She is a happily retired school librarian, and the grateful friend of poetry and poets.

EASTER

by Howard Winn

Easter Island is critically vulnerable to rising ocean levels. . . . Many of the moai statues and nearly all of the ahu, the platforms that in many cases also serve as tombs for the dead, ring the island. With some climate models predicting that sea levels will rise by five to six feet by 2100, residents and scientists fear that storms and waves now pose a threat like never before. “You feel an impotency in this, to not be able to protect the bones of your own ancestors,” said Camilo Rapu, the head of Ma’u Henua, the indigenous organization that controls Rapa Nui National Park, which covers most of the island, and its archaeological sites. “It hurts immensely.” —Nicholas, Casey, The New York Times, March 15, 2018

Discovered by the western world
on that religious holiday
although the residents of
the island knew it was there
at the end of long canoe trips
some thought the huge heads
could only be the work of beings
from other planets not of this
world until inquisitive explorers
found the remnants of unfinished
heads and now as the seas rise
despite the anti-science deniers
and the islands sink beaches
disappear and vacations to
swim with warm sand under
foot are no longer what the
adventurous wealthy can
indulge in as trees vanish
and Pacific waters wash over
farm lands and orchards of
tropical fruit while history
and inexplicable stone heads
vanish into the southern seas
to remain only for a time in
memory or in history books
the fate of things in a world
of times past and legend
takes the place of scientific fact

Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.