THE ROCKS HAVE MEMORIES

by Celeste DeSario
 

Chief Wallace, from the Unkechaug Indian Nation,
We came to your talk, enthusiastic,
Ready to roll up sleeves,
leave our cashmere sweaters home,
Ready to hike through the brambles
To learn about the Sacred Stones.
 
We arrived early to grab front- row seats,
Sipping coffee and sampling cookies,
Ready to learn
About a history we are finally ready to hear.
 
We hope you notice we are here,
Ready to help you.
Sorry for the past, we whisper,
But it was not our fault.
 
We pull out our notecards heavy with questions,
Pens ready to jot down names and places—
Where we can send our checks.
 
The Chief appears in front of us,
No magic there.
His voice soft.
People stand and demand he use the mic;
He pauses.
Looks over the crowd and begins.
“Your homes are built over my grandmother’s bones.
 
We shift in our seats, uncomfortable.
 
He says the stones are not relics.
Not artifacts, waiting to be harvested
Or displayed in a museum.
They are a bloodline.
A heritage.
They are his grandfathers, his grandmothers—
They are living, breathing entities,
Alive, present, watching, waiting.
Braiding our pasts and present.
 
The rocks have memories,
They know.
They have absorbed all the prayers,
Accepted a single stone added to the mound—
An acknowledgement of all those who walked this path before.
 
This is more like it.
This is why we are here.
Pens fly jotting down details.
People smile, showing Chief Wallace
We are happy to be here.
We are not our pasts.
 
He tells us the stones’ portals, align perfectly with the rising sun
Of the spring and autumn equinox,
On those two days— only those days—
The stones ask ancestral visitors for reflection:
The ones who whisper names to the morning wind,
The ones who pause for a moment of thanks,
Palms turned to catch the emerging warmth.
The recognition of a new season unfolding.
 
His people use the stones as calendars—
Telling them when to plant the corn,
When the Bluefish are running,
When the summer Fluke and Winter Flounder
Can be found in the muddy bottoms of bays,
When the Porgy will flood the shallow estuaries every spring.
 
We smile, encouraging him.
See? We are listening.
We are ready to help.
Can you see us sitting here?
 
He looks over his audience, then he looks right at us
“But I am not going to tell you where to find them.”
 
We are outsiders.
Undeserving.
 
 “You bulldoze our prayer sites,
building six bedrooms houses with three car garages.
The kids from those six-bedroom homes
tag the stones with offensive slurs, vulgarities
use Sharpie markers to scrawl “T + M” ‘26”,
Spray paint neon- green skulls and crossbones,
 
“My grandfather’s bones
Are embedded in these rocks—
His spirit
Still alive, still breathing, still present for me.”
 
Boys bent on destruction.
Sacred spaces made unholy by ignorant hands.
Boys who would become the men
who control the land that was not theirs—
the waters, the air.
 
“These stone structures are our churches.
Imagine— just imagine—if we pulled down your altars.
Ripped the cross from the ceiling.”
 
He has lost the thread.
He is losing his audience.
He has lost so much.
 
Now we are the ones who are angry.
Uncomfortable.
Put down that mirror.
That is not my face reflecting back to me.
 
The stones are not meant for those who carry hammers,
The stones are not meant for those who carry hatred,
The stones.
His stones.
 Are sacred.
His heritage.
His.
 
It’s not the talk we anticipated.
It’s not the talk we wanted.
We sit stunned into silence.
 
What now?
How do we move forward?
Are we too late?
 
Chief Wallace stands alone
the audience puts checkbooks back into pockets,
shuffling back to their pools, tennis courts, mahjong tables,
whispering that he has closed the door—
refusing to play by our rules.
Again.
 
Because, we cannot change.
And they cannot trust.
And neither can pretend
The past never happened.
 
 
Celeste DeSario writes poetry to process life’s events, and to try to make sense of them. Sometimes that actually happens.  Celeste’s poetry appears in The New Verse News, The SportsScribe Literary Magazine, The Changing Times, The Ekphrastic Review and The Dissident Voice. Celeste does not own any cashmere sweaters.

SECTION 106: A PLEA FROM A POET ARCHEOLOGIST

by Kim Malinowski

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) on Friday a voted to advance a notice of proposed rulemaking that would defang Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), one of the few laws that requires the federal government to consult with Tribal Nations before approving federally funded or permitted projects. New rules proposed by the ACHP would make Tribal consultation and public participation largely optional, and would drastically limit the law’s scope to historic properties that are geographically compact, excluding rivers, mountains and other Traditional Cultural Landscapes that are core to the history and identity of many Indigenous people. The proposed changes require further review and a 30-day public comment period before becoming final. —Earthjustice, July 27, 2026

Beat the drums of war.

They stole history at sunset,

went against their rules,

against their own Federal law,

voted against protecting

cultural heritage—fancy way of saying

knowledge of our past.

 

Beat the drums of war, even those who do not understand

Section 106. Because loves, 

not many of us study this law into our marrow. 

I might be one of the last.

It didn’t stand in the way of progress. It protected it.

Sacred sites were gone around, archeology was done before 

the neighbor’s pool was dug in the historic district.

The dead were found before they were uncovered.

 

Beat the drums of war for me.

For the tribal leaders that can write a public note

but not be consulted sovereign nation to sovereign nation.

Cemeteries and homesteads,

historical buildings and archeological sites endangered,

all for “progress” that could still progress

just with careful documentation.

All those places George Washington stayed at aren’t safe.

A strip mall might be more useful than a mansion.

 

But that’s what Section 106 was for. 

It wasn't perfect, but we sought

collaboration, review,

public comments, outreach, 

that now forbidden knowledge.

 

Beat the drums of war my friends.

Not just for the archeologists and historians, 

but for your history. 

Bloody and messy truth.

I don’t want massacres paved over in books or in soil.

 

My trowel begins at sunrise. 

My pen at midnight. 

Beat the drums of war.

Today, we fight for our history.

Kim Malinowski is a lover of history and words. She is the author of six poetry collections and is currently earning her Master's Degree in Cultural Heritage Resource Management (Archeology).

THE BROAD SIDE OF BARNS

by DJ Benhaim

Grey represents 10,000 city-owned vacant lots in Chicago. Graphic from ChiBlockBuilder.

There are over 40,000 vacant lots throughout Chicago. The majority of these lots are found in predominantly Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides, largely due to long-term discrimination and disinvestment from public and private entities. Neighborhoods without investment struggle to maintain housing demand, which can lead to population loss, property demolition and deterioration, and eventually, abundant vacant land. A large concentration of vacant land can have negative effects on the mental and physical health of residents. Vacant land can also depress nearby property values and correlate to increased crime, leading to further disinvestment. —Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, April 24, 2025

no one builds barns any more—
only scaffolding, condos,
liquor stores with bulletproof windows
& a prayer room in the back.
wasps had nested up in the rafters
& some uncle worked
where the Walmart stands now.
the soil reddened like scraped knuckles
his father broke with a mule
named Gospel—
worked the rows in prayer
before the yield was taxed out.

|| past is a ledger
but the ink runs. ||

broad side of what?
a body? a billboard?
surfaces now are for selling
what's already been taken.

"used to be Black people out here,"
man in line says,
hocking lone squares for a buck
like that's still a thing.

|| names are dropped
like pins on surveys,
& nobody charts the grief. ||

nana's house = "distressed property"
family land = "redevelopment zone"
heirloom = "liability"
"urban blight" = Black bodies by water

map calls it 'Cal City' now—
we just called it home.
the pecan tree still falls like it used to,
even if they paved around it.

we still claim it's ours
but it's up for sale online—
w/ renderings,
w/ dog parks,
w/ Whole Foods
where the funeral home used to be.
the old deeds hand-written,
passed trembling hand to hand
like hymnals.
now: PDFs, escrow, and computer renderings
of what was.

the city annexed the story.
sold it by the bulk.
a block is 400K now
if you squint
& act like you don't see the runoff,
old promises like mildew
thickening the air.

hands once set in earth
now glide against colored screens—
waiting for Lyft pings,
standing where squash used to grow.

"heritage district" they say—
but only the picket fence remains.
(we had none. never.)

child asks
“wasn’t there a porch here?”
nodding to the concrete slab
where the rocking chair used to squeak.
back when, auntie shell'd peas
in metal bowls on Sunday—
called bingo numbers
like prophecy.

corner now has a mural—
Black woman with afro + fist + sunflowers.
financed by real estate.
our image used
as seasoning.

|| tell me again
who gets pride? ||

story signs on phone poles.
deeds lost to taxes.
a cousin got arrested
and was late for the signing.
a brother was sold low,
"figured they'd take it anyway."

a shoebox full of pictures, water-stained—
someone's arm thrown over a mule,
a baby born of loss
grasping okra
like gold.

we once built fences—
not to keep people out,
but to mark what we meant.

|| crevice in the cement
sweetgrass still grows through. ||

the barn saw baptisms in washtubs,
hog butchering,
first kisses behind feed sacks—
it never forgot the names
whispered in its beams.

barns don't scream
they sag.
they rust like facts—
slow, uncaring
until someone calls it aesthetic
& puts up string lights
for the engagement shoot.

tagged as "roots"
but never allowed to root.

&
here
the wind knows
whose sweat made this space possible—
even if the deeds don't.

DJ Benhaim is an emerging poet from Chicago, IL whose obsession with poetry began at the age of eleven. Additional works can be seen in African Writer Magazine. Connect with him on Facebook @ DJ Benhaim.

INCIDENT ON SALISBURY PLAIN

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

 

An orange mist; the towering rocks cried, wept 
liquid marmalade down their ancient faces.
Such desecration. For more than three-and-a-half thousand years, 
the henge has stood strong, an important place 
in the past, and for many, today. 
 
Grey pitted sarsen stones, silent above 
modern protestors, who spray orange dye
across this British site. Who are you,
puny people to destroy our heritage?

 
Susan J. Wurtzburg received 1st place in the Land of Enchantment Award, 2024, the Save Our Earth Award, 2024, and the Elizabeth M. Campbell Poetry Award, 2022, and was a semi-finalist in the Crab Creek Review Poetry Competition 2022, and in the Naugatuck River Review's 14th Narrative Poetry Contest, 2022. She was a Community Poet in the Spring 2023 Poetry Workshop, Westminster College, Salt Lake City. Wurtzburg is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024. Her poetry book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas will appear in spring, 2025.

SUNDAY MASS IN OUR ARCHIPELAGO

by Karlo Sevilla

On January 24, 1571, feast of St. John the Baptist, the Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legaspi founded the city of Manila . He earlier took possession of Maynilad, the native settlement of Rajah Matanda and Rajah Sulayman on May 19, 1571 and firmly established Spanish authority in the newly conquered and untrammeled turf. The historic day happened to be the feast of Santa Potenciana and to honor her, she was made patroness of the new territory. Armed with the Spanish sword and the Cross, Legaspi, in his role as conquistador, apportioned a parcel of land for the church of the new settlement under the patronage of La Purisima Inmaculada Concepcion. —History of Manila Cathedral

Nearly 500 years after papal decrees were used to rationalize Europe's colonial conquests, the Vatican repudiated those decrees on Thursday, saying the "Doctrine of Discovery" that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people's culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith. —NPR, March 30, 2023


Another Sunday morning
inside the cathedral;
Baroque, built centuries ago.
First reader quotes a passage
about a people’s liberation
from coerced construction work:
 
And I have promised to bring you up
out of your misery . . . into a land
flowing with milk and honey.
          —Exodus 3:17.
 
Soon, the contrite and otherwise
partake in Holy Communion.
Finally, the priest bids us,
 
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
 
We sing along to the final hymn,
then file out of the hallowed cathedral:
a proud Spanish heritage
from The Empire’s clergy,
built by dint and dirt
of our ancestors’
forced labor.

Karlo Sevilla of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the poetry collections Metro Manila Mammal (Soma Publishing, 2018) and Outsourced!... (Revolt Magazine, 2021). His poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, Protean, Poets Reading The News, Line Rider Press, Radius, Unlikely Stories Mark V, I am not a silent poet, and elsewhere. 

I IMAGINE THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING OVER MICHELANGELO'S DAVID

by Cecil Morris

A Florida charter school principal said she was forced to resign this week after some parents complained about their sixth-grade students being shown images of Michelangelo’s “David” statue in class, with one parent believing the art lesson on the Renaissance masterpiece amounted to pornographic material. —The Washington Post, March 24, 2023

A mob of sixth grade students complained

that David defied the school dress code

and came completely naked to school

where he stood, hugely white and naked,

aloof and silent and all judge-y,

with his extra-large, not-even-erect thing

and his hanging sack on display. 

The boys said: he made us feel uncomfortable

and maybe even a little guilty

because, because, and we don’t want to say this,

but we will because we have to stand up

to bullies like him. We have to speak up,

that’s what our parents and teachers tell us,

so here goes, David made us feel bad

because we are white

but not nearly as white as him

and our things are not as big.

It’s like he’s judging our heritage

and putting us down. And those sculpted abs

and pecs and biceps and muscled thighs

and his tremendous height, it's just not right.

And some girls added their complaints

about double standards and sexist favoritism.

They said: you know David was naked

and we can’t even wear spaghetti straps

or off-the-shoulder tops or crop tops

that show a strip of skin and belly buttons.

How is that right or fair?

The boys and girls together said: we want him

removed and the teacher who invited him

and the principal and maybe you, too.

State law says you can’t teach stuff

that makes us feel bad. We saw that on the news

so we want David gone, and no more Cs

or Ds or Fs cause they make us feel bad, too.

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

MASSASOIT’S DAUGHTER, MIONEAIME

by Suzette Bishop

Massasoit Sachem or Ousamequin (c. 1581 – 1661) was the sachem or leader of the Pokanoket sachemship. Massasoit means Great Sachem. It was he who allied his people with the Plymouth colonists. Massasoit had five children, among them daughter Mioneaime later called Amie. Above: Statue of Chief Massasoit by Cyrus Edwin Dallin, 1861-1944 Bronze (posthumous casting) Gift of the James F. Dicke Family, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio

On your deathbed

You tell me and my sister and brothers

To make friends with the white man.

We look at each other,

Unease in our eyes,

But nod.

Why would we do this?

Nothing is the same since

They floated into the horizon,

My gathering of mussels

Not the same,

Brief season of warm sand I loved.

So few of us after the sickness,

Flurries, wind, saltwater,

But I knew who I was,

I knew where I belonged.

Even the ones who saved your life once

Are not friends,

Will not own us if we marry among them,

Have children,

I won’t recognize their children’s children, either,

Not the one writing this poem

Not in our language.

You drift away,

                                And I see us as driftwood carved by wind,

                                                                    Remnants of how we lived.

Enemies to the North

Like the heavy storms descending

And the sickness gave you no choice

But to offer peace, welcome, alliance, land,

 

Our seed,

And blue-black shells

Discarded, unused,

Their beauty unseen,

 What I see in the future with our friends.

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks, including her most recent chapbook, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She lives with her husband and two cats.

HOW TO ERASE

by Ron Riekki

Sacheen Littlefeather

“Indigenous identity is complicated. 

What I do know is that the impact that Sacheen had on myself was very real” 

—Devery Jacobs 

  

—“The Sacheen Littlefeather controversy highlights a 

debate over what it means to be Native American,” CNN, November 5, 2022

 

“I like you the way you are” 

—Avril Lavigne, 

“Complicated” 

Sacheen Littlefeather’s sister says that Sacheen 

talked about being native in order to get fame. Yet 

her sister is having no trouble denying being native 

in order to get fame. Why wait until someone is dead 

to have the conversation about their identity?… I know 

someone who’s native. Her brother denies being 

native. & in his denial, it furthers his belief that 

 

he’s not native. Whereas, his sister—who is native— 

goes to native events, is deep friends with native 

people, & so she learns more & more about her

native heritage, but when she tries to explain 

those connections to her brother, he has no 

interest… If Sacheen Littlefeather’s sister 

wanted to understand her sister, then she 

 

would have needed to talk to her sister 

to find out what her sister knew, knows, 

will know. Native is narrative. It is 

the stories we unearth, how we grow 

by unravelling what is unknown. 

A CBS News article I read on 

Sacheen Littlefeather said it 

 

reveals the reality of her her- 

itage, but it misspelled her 

name twice in the article, 

listing her as: Sacheen 

Littlefather & Sacheen 

Littlefield (since 

corrected), but it 

 

made me think 

how the cloud 

outside my 

window 

right 

now 

is a 

 

dog, 

no, 

it’s 

a 

c 

a 

t 

. 

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).