LETTER TO CRAZY HORSE

by Roxanne Doty

Left: A 1934 sketch of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) made by a Mormon missionary after interviewing Crazy Horse's sister, who claimed the depiction was accurate. —Wikipedia. Right: The Native American activist Leonard Peltier—convicted in 1975 for the killings of two FBI agents—was released from federal prison on Tuesday after Joe Biden commuted his sentence at the end of his presidency in January. In a statement, Peltier said that he was “finally free!” —The Guardian, February 18, 2025

Innocence is the weakest defense
Leonard Peltier says, it has a single voice,
can only deny, while Guilt has a thousand voices
all of them lies. They said
you were resisting imprisonment
when George Crook’s military guard killed
you with his bayonet. Some call this murder
but language and land prevail.
 
The old medicine man says,
You could make a lovely mountain
into a great paperweight.
Can you make the monument to you
in the Black Hills into a wild, natural mountain again?
 
Today, I see people still longing
for justice and facing defeat,
the lust for stolen lands
still raging, white settlers still rampant.
I hear the thousand voices of guilt.
 
We all need your spirit now, Crazy Horse,
you, the last great figure of resistance
who inflicted defeat on the powerful.
And we need the patience and wisdom
of Leonard Peltier, finally free.

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by William Stafford’s “Report to Crazy Horse.” Italicized quotations by Leonard Peltier are from Prison Writings, My Life is My Sun Dance.

Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel Out Stealing Water was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30. 2022. Her first poetry collection was published by Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024. She has published stories and poems in Third Wednesday, Amethyst Review, Cloudbank, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, Cagibi, Espacio Fronterizo, Ocotillo Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, The Blue Guitar, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, The New Verse News, International Times, Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion-The Dallas Review.

INNOCENCE ISN’T ENOUGH

by Matthew King

Congresswoman Cori Bush delivered a speech on the House floor urging Missouri Governor Mike Parson to halt the execution of Marcellus Williams (above)… set to die by injection for the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle… “Taking the life of Marcellus Williams would be an unequivocal statement that when a white woman is killed, a Black man must die. And any Black man will do,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote. —KMOV, September 20, 2024

The innocent have got off far too long.
We’ll make them pay for what they haven’t done.
The stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.
Are you surprised? We’ve said it all along,
this slogan on which we have always run:
the innocent have got off far too long.
A war is on! Which side do you belong
to? If it’s ours, then shun all whom we shun:
the stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.
Or do you see yourself among the throng
that’s gathered there to shout he’s not the one?
Mistakes? It’s life and death, not right and wrong.
The swans will have to sing another song.
They say we’ve gone too far? We’ve just begun.
The innocent have got off far too long.
Above all else the law must show it’s strong
and if you’re stunned we mean to more than stun
the innocent—they’ve got off far too long.
The stakes are life and death, not right and wrong.

Author's note: Marcellus Williams, at the time of writing, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on Tuesday, September 24, for a crime of which he is now clearly not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but of which his actual guilt or innocence may be beside the point under US law. St. Louis prosecutors have been trying to get his conviction overturned. But as a lawyer for the state of Arizona argued before the US Supreme Court in 2021, in a case which may be decisive for Marcellus Williams's, "innocence isn't enough.”

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville,” where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.

FOR VAL I GIFT YOU—YOU

by Joseph Hope

For Val I gift you a country 

without a government: without a place (segregation) 

for black or white or color riot. A song as soft as the snow.

I gift you rain in the desert. A bow without an arrow, 

so you don't hunt. I gift you a heart as big as Asia. 

A smile as warm as Summer. A will as strong as Africa. 

I gift you meditation as deep as the oceans of Europe. 

For Val, I gift you the pain of childbirth. The giggling that comes afterward. 

The innocence of a thousand childhoods. The riches of the earth. 

I gift your friendship. The (im)perfect family. Cry. Laugh. Cry. Laugh. 

I gift you the reasons to go on and on 

and never quit to try again and again. 

I gift you the rain and the bow; rainbow. 

The songs of the ancient. The hope of the future. 

I gift you miracle. Goodnews. 

For Val, I gift you—you.

Joseph Hope writes from Nigeria, West Africa. He believes he's a metaphor for what can be, what is possible. His works are forthcoming or already published in Reckoning Press, Timber ghost press, Evening Street Press, Zoetic Press, The New Verse News, Praxis Magazine, Ubu, AfroPoetry, Gemini Spice Magazine, Spillwords, SprinNG, Writers Space Africa, anthologies, and more. He's a reader for reckoning press. He was a fellow in the 2021 SprinNG Writing Fellowship. He tweets @ItzJoe9 & IG: _hope_joseph

ANECDOTE TO A HEARTACHE

by Darrell Petska




My grandson
who is 4
and enamored of
all things "Frozen"

overheard mention
of a gun—
What's a gun?
he wanted to know.

Our hearts ached
as he looked
adult to adult,
awaiting a response.

Darrell Petska writes poetry and fiction within reach of his three grandchildren in southern Wisconsin.

HELLO, ALEPPO

by Siham Karami

France has announced it will ask the international criminal court to investigate possible war crimes committed in Syria's Aleppo. Rebel-held eastern Aleppo city, besieged since early September, has been the focus of an intense aerial bombardment campaign by Russian and Syrian fighter jets. For their part, anti-government fighters are trying to break the siege and connect with other rebel-held territories to the west of Aleppo, Syria's second city. "We do not agree with what Russia is doing, bombarding Aleppo. France is committed as never before to saving the population of Aleppo," Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, told France's Inter radio on Monday. —Al Jazeera, October 11, 2016. Image source: Reuters via Al Jazeera.

Aleppo wakes to brute victory nonsense,
another corpse called dawn, pale scar of incense.

This week this family had but stones to eat,
and played with rubble. For Syria? Bashar's two cents.

Put a plan in place. They'll kill food convoys.
Outlaw love. Throw feathers, tar on sense.

Dear Russia, count the children killed for one stuffed scarecrow.
What could your heart, dead now, live for or sense?

They wash up on the shores of everywhere
in waves of family—keep out!!—each pair of eyes, ignored, dissents.

Rag-tag fighters with their cobbled guns
blew the superpower's mind to lower sense.

A father plants impossible red roses, hears bombers
play Beethoven overhead: a brief soaring sense.

I shoot this arrow to the deaf-mute smoke
rising from the shattered core of innocence.

Siham Karami lives in what was the path of Hurricane Matthew, and survived. Recent work can be found in such places as Measure, The Comstock Review, Sukoon Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Rotary Dial, Right Hand Pointing, Angle Poetry, Think, and the Ghazal Page.