WHAT A CHILD NEEDS IN A WAR ZONE

by Jerrice J Baptiste

The impact of armed conflicts on children around the world reached devastating and likely record levels in 2024, according to an assessment by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). —UN News, December 27, 2024

Child searches for sweet embrace
of mother, father or next of kin.
Child finds limbs
along the way, a blueish face once  
known, red eyes that stare 
into bleak unknown.

You, soak dry mushrooms this season. 
Serve warm broth to this child
from a dead zone 
while agile mind can still imagine
a world of peace and freedom. 

You, gather essence of the earth to feed
desolate orphan, fruits, nuts, seeds
moonbeams for dreams.
Child will need your lap to curl on when
the sounds of night 
frighten even ghosts who have seen, 
who have heard explosions of hearts.

Jerrice J Baptiste is a poet, educator and facilitator of poetry for healing and self-expression. Her new book of prose poems is titled Coral in the Diaspora published by Abode Press (August 2024).  Her writing has been published and is forthcoming in The New Verse News, Artemis Journal, Urthona Buddhism and Art Magazine, The Dewdrop, Shambhala Times, The Yale Review, Wax Poetry & Art, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Mantis, Penumbra Literary & Art Journal, The Banyan Review, Kosmos Journal, Silver Birch Press, and many others. Her collaborative songwriting and poetry are featured on the Grammy-nominated album Many Hands Family Music for Haïti. 

A PRAYER FOR THE LIVING, FOR OUR COUNTRY: AFTER THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, AUGUST 2024

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

 

in response to Deborah Digges’s “The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart”

 

Let the wind break through

the walls of our chests

draw out curdled breath  anger

from past reckonings.

 

Let the wind race through the chambers 

of our hearts   cleanse the pathways  

erase the stench of hatred 

strip away the detritus of ridicule.

 

Let the wind eddy through us 

through small openings  

dissolve the particles of despair

that clog the beating heart.

 

Sweep them away, sweep

away passivity   turgid like

the air after a tropical storm.

Pointless static gone from our brains.

 

Clear out the darkness in  

our house of gall  darkness hardened like dried

blood   until we are again open-hearted

joyous   vessels of infinite worth.

 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many journals including Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review. Her poetry volumes include We Speak in Tongues; She had this memory (the Edwin Mellen Press), Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press), and Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows, co-written with Tana Miller (Kelsay Press).  Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize.

WHEN WE CELEBRATE IN THE DIASPORA

by Jerrice J. Baptiste

PORT-AU-PRINCE, 13 August 2024 – At least 131 children, including babies, have been reported killed or injured in Haiti during violent attacks against their neighbourhoods or clashes between armed groups and the police so far in 2024, Save the Children said. According to an analysis of UN verified data, an average of five children a week in the first six months of 2024, have been killed or injured by armed violence in Haiti. However, the true number of child casualties is likely to be much higher.  —Save the Children

Our hearts flood in joy like turtles
in shells in the sea. We're flying high
but then, your real story flashes.

No fireflies in belly of your darkness.
We're scared. Your sacred beauty will
remain hidden in mountain peaks

our feet will never climb. Our tears
are quite predictable, they swell
like your turquoise sea. Salt on 

cheeks. We mourn each day we can't 
bask in your rising sun, sit in shade
of your palm trees. Stroll like lovers.

We don't have answers to questions.
"What's going on in your country?"
"What will it take to change Ayiti?"

Sleepless, on the eve of speaking about you.
I looked in a mirror, brushed my coarse gray hair.
Raised my chin. Smiled with full red lips for hope.

Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet born in Haiti, the author of eight books including her new book of poetry Coral in The Diaspora (Abode Press, August 2024).  Her poetry has been published and forthcoming in The New Verse News, Impspired, Urthona: Buddhism & Art, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & The Arts, Artemis Journal, The Yale Review, Mantis, The Dewdrop. Poetica Review, The Banyan Review, Kosmos Journal, The Caribbean Writer, West Trestle Review among others. Jerrice was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2024 by Jerry Jazz Musician and as Best of the Net for 2022 by Blue Stem. She facilitates poetry workshops in New York where she lives.

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.

I’M CARRYING A TORCH (ON VALENTINE’S DAY)

by Lynda Gene Rymond

I’m carrying a torch—
not on a candy heart,
not on a Hallmark card,
not on a clusterfuck of balloons.
 
It’s a real torch, spitting sparks,
heading straight for fourth grade
or whenever this monstrosity
took hold on my little life.
 
Shoeboxes lavishly decorated
with construction paper hearts
in the compulsory pinks and reds,
lavenders and purples.
 
Our names in paint or glitter
above a gingerly cut slit,
mailboxes for all the valentines
posted in time for the party.
 
Room mothers brought cupcakes,
soda punch, boxes of crunchy hearts—
I’m yours, too sweet, oooh la la!
(these flame out nicely in candy colors.)
 
Now the tally. Who got the most? 
Who got the least, again? Who needs to go
to the restroom to flush the crumbs
of a nine-year-old’s self-esteem?
 
Be your own crush! I’ll shout as
I swagger in with my torch ablaze
(Have you ever watched crepe paper burn?)
Forget this shitshow! (New vocabulary word, 
 
shitshow!) No more Valentines! 
No more walking around
with your beating hopeful heart
clenched in your fist.
 
I’m carrying a torch for you, kid,
until you can carry it for yourself.

Lynda Gene Rymond is an author and poet residing in Applebachsville, Pa, where she tends goats, chickens, honeybees and a massive food garden.

A RUMOR OF GHOSTS

by Howie Good

Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse on Saturday, April 18, 2020, calling for state officials to lift restrictions now, including this car with an anti-Semitic sign. (Laura Hancock / cleveland.com)

They seized you at your home
and dragged you away,
and though we searched for you in the after years,
we found no trail or trace.
It was as if you had never really existed
but were always only a false memory,
a rumored ghost.

I also am as nothing,
and whether I shamble along the street
or stumble up the staircase,
whether I pray to God for preservation
or curse him for the inventiveness of his cruelties,
the same ancestral nightmares repeat –
swastikas smeared on synagogues,
bearded Jews harried through the streets,
hearts shoveled like coal into the fire.


Editor's Note: Today, April 21, 2020 is Holocaust Remembrance Day—Yom Hashoah—in the United States. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.


Howie Good is the author of What It Is and How to Use It (2019) from Grey Book Press, among other poetry collections.

17 HEARTS FOR VALENTINE'S DAY

by Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan


Mourners hug during a prayer vigil Thursday for victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting at Parkridge Church in Coral Springs, Florida. Rhona Wise / AFP - Getty Images via NBC News.

b                e a           t
            red balloons
        b             e     a            t
            red cards
b    e        a                t
            red roses

           b                         e                 a                 t

17 hearts for Valentine’s day           

red                        red                     red               red

b                e a           t
           red hall floors

        b             e     a            t
            red on walls

b    e        a                t
            red of youthful flesh

           b                         e                 a                 t           

         2/14                    celebration of love                
        
2/14/18    life seeps         a                        way                         
children weep

b                e a           t

        b             e     a            t

b    e        a                t

           b                         e                 a                 t

be                          at                peace

Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, named 2017 Long Island (NY) Poet of the Year by the Walt Whitman Birthplace, was the 2010-2011 Suffolk County Poet Laureate. She is the Founder/President of The North Sea Poetry Scene, Inc., President of The Poetry Place, and the editor of the poetry anthology series Long Island Sounds. She is the author of five poetry collections including Let Me Tell You Something, For Michael, and Life’s a Beach.

I DON'T NEED ANY MORE FACTS

by Ann Bracken




Time unfurls like a faded banner
and drops me into a world of flim-flam
reasoning where ancient politicians
offer the same centuries-old fleecing techniques
to justify war.

I no longer labor to understand
Vietnam
with its random horrors, permanent scars
on people, on land, on psyches.

Images fuse to my heart
as I watch a few hours of Ken Burns’
latest epic.

An American soldier sits on a river-bank
his feet planted in the deep, black water.
He stares blankly, ignoring the upturned
face of a questioning toddler
who places a small hand on his knee.

And somewhere else in time
a young soldier flicks his Zippo
lighter and sets flame to a hut—
the family cowering on the ground,
covers their eyes and cries for mercy.

Time cleaves open an old lexicon—where
bodies count towards victory
and pacification destroys both hearts and minds.
Shame and powerlessness
burn my soul like napalm.

Ann Bracken is the author of two collections of poetry: The Altar of Innocence and No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom. She serves as the deputy editor of Little Patuxent Review and offers writing workshops in schools, community centers, and prisons.

HOW TO REMOVE CONFEDERATE STATUES

by Patty Mosco Holloway





Locate them in Baltimore.
Give no advance notice, little fanfare.
Do it quickly; do it quietly
under cover of darkness
in the wee hours of the morning.
Allow flashing red lights and backup beeps
on heavy equipment.
Hire crews in T-shirts and hardhats.
Use crowbars, cranes, and cargo straps.
Hoist statues whole, bronze tons,
onto flatbed trucks.
Procure police cars to escort statues
out of town at sunrise.
Let the new day's rays
illuminate empty pedestals.

Next?

Find cranes strong enough
to hoist hatred from hearts.

Patty Mosco Holloway is a writing teacher.  She lives in Denver, Colorado. She often "hears" the starts of poems in conversations.  Advice:  Don't talk to her.

SARIN WORK

by Alejandro Escudé

Volunteers wear protective gear during a class of how to respond to a chemical attack, in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on September 15, 2013.JM LOPEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Wired.

The mood is sarin and the light is sarin
there are sarin children dancing in the air
convulsing skyward, there are sarin trees
and sarin ships firing sarin missiles
at sarin airports where sarin helicopters
sit ready to traverse sarin lands, over sarin
rooftops, blanketing a country of sarin,
a language of sarin, the sarin of resorts
where the leaders of sarin meet to discuss
treaties over sarin and ice cream. But one
needs two chemicals to form sarin, and sarin
lasts a short time, sarin is short as life itself,
meaningless really, unless it is packaged
just right; still, a world without sarin is a world
flooded in sarin, with sarin dreams like those
of the sarin children who felt it rain down
on them and saw their fingers turn to roads,
their lungs become mountains, their hearts
pumping sarin into their sarin souls.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

LEAVING ALEPPO

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

An older man was evacuated from a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, December 15, 2016

single line they walk
besieged eyes merely looking forward
forward one step in front of another
tired beyond tired
fatigued beyond fatigued
weary beyond weary
their sorrow faceless like themselves
their burden a city of ruins
they will carry forward
in their eyes their hearts
forward one step in front of another

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem to be published in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin.  Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

PARIS/BEIRUT

by Leslie Prosterman

A relative of Samer Huhu, who was killed in a twin bombing attack that rocked a busy shopping street in the area of Burj al-Barajneh, waves his portrait as she mourns during his funeral in the southern suburb of the capital Beirut on November 13, 2015. Lebanon mourned 44 people killed in south Beirut in a twin bombing claimed by the Islamic State group, the bloodiest such attack in years, the Red Cross also said at least 239 people were also wounded, several in critical condition. —JOSEPH EID/GETTY IMAGES via TheWorldPost, Nov. 16, 2015

all afternoon I defined massacre shambles abbatoir
then resorted to the binary
the   they did we did       the done to will do
the right the wrong    the dark the light    the lash the gun the bomb
contracted to one straight line:  
fear to rage to hate to kill to make a them that isn't me.

but by the night I was reminded
of the spaciousness
of the unclosed curve
of the infinite horizon

May we live with uncovered hearts
May that which binds our hearts be dissolved

into the widest possible compass of us


Author’s note: Thanks to John Travis for the lovingkindness meditation.


Leslie Prosterman, author of the book Snapshots and Dances (Garden District Press, 2011) and other poems in various journals and collections, recently collaborated with composer Charley Gerard to set her poem FluteBone Song to music, now out on CD (Songs of Love and Passion).  A former academic, she is also a sometime student of trapeze.

PONT DES ARTS, 2015

by Scot Ehrhardt

Photograph: Remy de la Mauviniere/AP via The Guardian

The city had warned us
about the weight of promises:
the civil engineers, our parents,
one parapet of the Pont des Arts
predicted this would happen.
Five ounces for two lives
padlocked to padlocks
an exponential mass
on an iron grill,

and when forever
proved temporary, no one
returned for the divorce.
No one dredged the Seine,
a bed of discarded keys,
for the one they jettisoned
the summer their lives
brimmed with youth.

Let us dismantle this
monument of hope,
scatter and melt the
seven hundred thousand
moments we dismissed
the weight of a symbol,
when we thought
that steel could represent        

the fickle carbon of our hearts.


Scot Ehrhardt is a teacher and writer from Baltimore, MD. He has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Tidal Basin Review, and Infinity's Kitchen. His first book of poetry One Of Us Is Real is currently looking for a home.