A HOUSE IN GAZA

by Christopher Woods

Shutterstock file photo

In her mind is the locket

She thinks about so much.

Inside it, wrapped in blue ribbon,

A single strand of black hair.

Her firstborn.

She can’t stop thinking about it,

That hair, how it would be

To see it again, how she might hold it,

Go back to the house

That disappeared

When the bombing began.

If she could know this hair again

Her memory might rest.

 

But she won’t open the locket.

She can’t.

Maybe it’s been too long,

The hair might dissolve in the air.

Maybe birds would carry it away.

 

No matter how much she wants to

She will not open the locket.

She keeps it hidden,

Safe in a drawer, in a room,

Inside a house on a small road,

In a dusty village that no longer exists.

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show Twelve from Texas was performed in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. His monologues have also been performed at The Invisible Theatre in Tucson and the Pro English Theatre in Kiev, Ukraine. He has received residencies from The Edward Albee Foundation and The Ucross Foundation.

TAKING BACK MALA ROHAN

by Sarah Russell

 

The snow came silent, pure,

a quilt of feathered white

to cover wreckage of the war.

Few saw the snow’s allure—

just ordinary men who stayed to fight.

The snow came silent, pure.

This ragtag, patriot corps

were confident they’d stall Goliath’s might

despite the wreckage of this war.

Russian bodies dead, left unsecured.

Tanks smoldering, explosions in the night.

The snow came silent, pure.

Families, hid in cellars, reassured,

emerged again with trembling to the light

and saw the wreckage of the war.

Old Praskovia clutched her apron. She’d endured 

two wars, was broken by the sight.

The snow came silent, pure

to cover wreckage of the war.

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Kentucky Review, Misfit Magazine, Rusty Truck, Third Wednesday, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons.

THE EXECUTIONER'S FACE

by Matt Witt

Dozens still missing in Oregon. Jackson County District 5 firefighter Captain Aaron Bustard works on a smoldering fire in a burned neighborhood in Talent, Ore., Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, as destructive wildfires devastate the region. (AP Photo/Paula Bronstein via OregonLive)

We load the car—
two sets of clothes and
a lifetime of memories—
as skyscraper flames are destroying
hundreds of homes of
friends and neighbors
a mile away.
Did they get out in time?
And then what?

We hit the back roads,
searching for safety,
with Bob Dylan howling through car speakers:
"The soles of my feet,
I swear they're burning."

Decades of reports said
this was coming
without climate action.
"Hotter temperatures."
"Disappearing snowpack."
"More frequent and more intense fires."
"Urgent transition needed to solar."
"Rapid investment in energy efficiency."

We can already picture
the photos the media will feed us
of some scraggly guy with stringy hair
who may have dropped a match—
with headlines: “What caused the fire?”

There will be no photos of
corporate lobbyists
whose puppets for years said
let's double down on what got us here
or who gave us half measures
and asked for applause.

We drive through the smoke,
community destroyed,
and now Dylan’s voice is sounding more desperate:
"The executioner's face,” he wails,
“is always well hidden."




Matt Witt is a writer and photographer from Talent, Oregon. His website is MattWittPhotography.com.

OUR RUIN

by Amy Holman

Today, all the old houses
have hidden harrowed humans,
and the midden of their captors,
their own enduring bodies--

or so it seems when the flask
from the inside jacket pocket offers
us our ruin: society on the news.
Even the laureate of Fresno

turns a stick-up into stature,
lines of brutal fighting in his corner
market. As usual the armed forces
are a locked room in a foreclosed

house with a girl pounding
on a dirty window. We wonder
who she is, but not ourselves,
frowning on the doorstep.


Amy Holman is the author of Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, published in 2010 with Somondoco Press. The news is one of her favorite sources for topics, and poems have previously appeared in New Verse News. Recent poetry and prose is in The Same, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, and Zocolo Public Square. She teaches poetry at The Hudson Valley Writers Center, and is a literary consultant in Brooklyn, NY.