SHE THINKS OF MOLTEN THINGS

by Dana Yost

I breathe

But nothing goes in

Or out. But this

Is not true.

I open my eyes

But they see nothing.

A darkness, early-morning

Darkness. Into infinity.

Is this dying?

My ears hear the

Mad-man screams

Of killers. Then the

wails of those

About to die.

A woman thinks

Of molten things:

Eyebrow melting,

Walls to a home

Curling in flames,

Dead bodies in the

Desert, not charred

But dark with bullet

Holes, torn fabric,

Hearts burnt in mid-beat.

Tracers orange, skyward

Flares red. In a room

An evacuee is given

Tea but says no, her

Mother dragged off

Like fire down a hill,

Lurching, shrieking, 

So hot an image

She curls on a cot

And thinks of molten things.

Dana Yost says of this poem: It is allegorical, about the war in Israel. It troubles me deeply and I feel the need to say something about it, but rather than write a direct, reportorial piece about it I wanted to get at the pain of it. I hope this works.

SHOOTER

by Stan Pisle

@Walt_Handelsman

Shooter 

Reported in Florida…

Forget how many times. 

An involuntary pulse throbbing 

in the dark, in the light,

Our schools, our arenas, our malls, courts, playgrounds, homes. 

 

A shooter took the life four cops in Oakland, 

five in Dallas, 

two in New York, 

26 people at a Sutherland Springs Church 

Nine in Charleston

58 in Las Vegas

—with 851 shot. 

Eight hundred and fifty-one people shot by one man. 

The numbers grow too much for a poem.

Stop 

Telling us life stories of the dead.

Window dressing over crackles of bullets.

Building fences between shooters and the shot.

NPRing, obits of people murdered for mercantile. 

Attempting animal warmth on cold dead bodies piled up.

Dividing and parsing the pile, determining which shot member counts. 

 

Show

Bullet riddled heads.

Emmette Till open coffin the funerals.

Zoom in where the casing entered under the nose, ejecting the soul.

Fuck that, assault rifle hollow points facture on contact.

Nothing’s left, only pulverized.

Narrate the blood cone spurting across theaters, schools, country music festivals.

Interview the bump stocked woman baren from five shells raping her womb. 

Collect the pools of bone and hamburger from the 100,000 shot each year.

Let gravity channel it to the twits and fat bros of Fox.

To the manufacturer of the hollow points 

Let them wipe up the fragments flowing in a bath the rest of us are forced to take.  

Stan Pisle is a Berkeley California poet. His work as appeared in the Arroyo Magazine, on KQED San Francisco, The Ravens Perch, and The New Verse News. 

CORONAVISION

by Judith Terzi




There they are—intimate backgrounds
for the news these COVID-19 days.
It's as if we were voyeurs into the lives
of those we watch & listen to. There they

are, right in their own living spaces. Fireplace
here, lampshade there. Bookshelves filled
with oeuvres that surely don't include any
of my poetry books. I see titles like I Am

That or Night Draws Near. I see games
like Yahtzee & Big Boggle. A stuffed lion
waits on one shelf. On another, a clay
hippopotamus. Dull brown pillows thrown

on a chair in a home for effect in one
interview. Or maybe it's an Airbnb rented
in haste for isolation. Probably so. The lamps
seem pretty Motel 6-like. Madame Nancy

stands in front of an abstract art piece. I love
the pastels, & her eye makeup this evening
is subtler than at her last interview. Different
lighting, perhaps. I've heard that a naked

man in a shower was accidentally on camera
thanks to a mirror not removed in time.
Someone has wedding photos hanging
in perfect alignment. She looks happier

in the black & white glossies. A former
Intelligence maven has six books on a table––
three lying down, three upright, but
upside down. Another hasty setup no doubt.

And a different maven has two copies
of Leon Panetta on a little table along with
Six Days of War. Grim, detailed reading,
for sure. Oprah has such a cool living room.

I love her comfy sofa, her unlit fireplace.
There is a low-fired turquoise pitcher
on someone else's shelf. Pottery—still no
poetry that I can spot. The avocado walls

of yet another background are rich,
as is the cranberry wall of the former
Ebola tsar. Gee, I'm dying to see the rest
of Madame Nancy's house. Aren't you?

Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay), as well as of five chapbooks, including Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus), Judith Terzi's poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Web and Net nominations and have been read on Radio 3 of the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English and French at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.