BLOODBATH

 by Ron Riekki

 

                                               “If you expect nothing

from somebody

                                                you are never disappointed.”

                                                            —Sylvia Plath

 

If I don’t get elected,

it’s going to be a bloodbath…

 

It’s going to be a bloodbath

for the country.

 

Bloodbath—coined in 1867.

1867—the transatlantic slave trade

 

“ends.” Blood red state said,

“The candidate is candid,” but did

 

you realize he’s inciting another

insurrection, an opposite of Resurrection

 

with Easter coming up, playing possum,

a country in toxic immobility, a wrath,

 

a hoodwink, a flood path we walked,

knee-deep, after the storm, the sewage,

 

age 18, me and a friend, Boston, cars

drowned. “It already is a bloodbath,”

 

she says. Adds, “And we’ve already lost.”

There’s a birdbath outside my window,

 

Dearborn, no birds, no deer, no births,

a friend having a miscarriage. There’s

 

a smell outside like hell outside, the factories

in the not-so-distant distance greying the sky

 

violently, no insight, no sun in sight, buried

by clouds, or smoke, or both. “It’s going to be

 

a bloodbath,” my ex- says, choked on the words,

mocks. The clock ticks in the other room, or

 

is that water dripping in the shower? A madness.

Blathering on and on on the TV. We listen. Scared.

 

“He looks like a Star Wars villain.” “Children

are watching this.” “I hope not.” “He has cash

 

in his blood.” Bloodbath dumbass scumbags

aftermath sociopath car-crash collapse. “I always

 

imagine him with a Hitler mustache.” Fat naps.

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”—Plath.

 

Gasps. Gaps. I read a story about Roman Polanski

walking onto the set of Macbeth that he was directing.

 

the set designer supposed to be filling the room with blood, but

Polanski looked, said, “It’s not enough.” They added more.

 

“It’s not enough.” They added more blood. He said it wasn’t

enough. He said he was there, had seen it; it wasn’t enough

 

blood. Manson murderers targeted Polanski’s home. He’d seen.

“More blood,” he said, “It’s not enough.” My ex-: “How is he

 

even running again? How is this happening?” It’s a repetition.

I was in Macbeth once. We’d say the name of the play, didn’t

 

care about the curse. The boy who played The Boy in the play

killed himself, the week of previews. Macduff’s son. The egg.

 

He jumped off a bluff. Landed in a field. Not found for a week.

I was Macduff. I was bad. I was young. I was not ready for

 

the role. I feel like that now. The bad reviews, of me, at least.

My family, slaughtered. The Boy, a friend of mine. The fall.

 

At the end, the decapitated head. The death. The wooden stage.

The poor attendance. The bad politics, even back then. Poverty

 

in my mining hometown. My boyhood. How I stood on stage

after it was done, the place empty, and from the back of our

 

theater, I saw The Boy, my friend, emerge from the shadows,

and I swear to God, how he appeared, dead, but still there, stepping

 

out, of the silence, the madness of that role, the method acting

I tried to do, failed, succeeded, both, a good attempt, a good

 

failure, and then him, here, there, in front of me, in the dark-

light, this friend, ended, how he stood there, looking at me,

 

and I froze, flecks of blood on his face—no, his face only

blood, and his mouth opened, and he stepped back, and he

 

was gone. And my ex- leaves the room. And I turn off

the volume on the television. And the Presidential candid-

 

ate stood there, stands there, his teeth like ghosts, ghost-like teeth,

his hat like hate, his arterial cap, the horror of this country,

 

the terror of this moment, the repetition of it all, how I’ve

seen this same snippet, comment, from him, already thirteen

 

times today, and the room is silent, and I turn my head and

look to the right, a room that we didn’t know until we’d

 

already paid the rent, signed the lease, but we’d found on-

line that someone had killed himself in this apartment, our

 

apartment, where we lived; of course, it happens, they don’t tell you,

you move in, find out, stumble on it. And I looked into the room.

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

THREE YEARS SINCE JANUARY 6TH

by David Feela

Traitor Trump is a drawing by Mike Scott which was uploaded to Fine Art America on December 8th, 2022.

the rhetoric simmers
the threats rise like steam
the traitor still leading the charge
the office in florida a command post
the golf course his bunker
the tower branded by his babel 
the lies
the three years burning like acid reflux in democracy’s gut
the smell of pepper spray in everything he says
the mass deportation of his conscience  
the rumor he doesn’t have one
the constitutional disdain he swears to protect
the lies
the charisma he carries like a infected boil
the rule of law that doesn’t apply to him
the courtroom where he sits and glares
the indictments and mug shot 
the lies
the money he grifts 
the pussy he’s entitled to grab
the election he never won
the lies
the reelection he continues to rig 
the bible raised as a prop
the lies
the comb over that covers his heart

David Feela writes monthly columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his latest chapbook Little Acres.

SHISHI-ODOSHI IN THE CONSTITUTION GARDEN

by Richard L. Matta 

A bamboo pipe

sun-bleached to parchment paper white

trickles water like truth

makes deliveries to a receiver pipe,  

and when it’s had enough, it doesn’t lie still 

but sounds an alert. 

Big red dragonflies 

alight on the pipe, as if to refute the value

of the water, and all the while 

little blue dashers 

zigzag for attention. The lower rocker pipe 

fills and pivots and spills 

and smacks a rock and

who should stay in place 

but the big red dragonflies. 

The device is like a gavel for everyone to hear

but despite the crack 

it’s become background static.

Not even a deer or boar

would hesitate to spy and steal 

and disrupt the plentiful garden 

where a shishi-odoshi 

is just an artful design. 

Richard L. Matta grew up in New York and now lives in San Diego. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Gyroscope, and many international haiku journals. 

TO PICK UP AGAIN

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

When thousands of far-right supporters of Brazil's ex-leader, Jair Bolsonaro ransacked Brazil's government buildings on Sunday, political leaders condemned the grave attack on the country's democratic fabric. The buildings also held a rich collection of art, some of which suffered irreparable damage. The government has mourned the loss of key parts of the artistic collection, which it said represents an important chapter in its national history… As mulatas, a painting by Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, was found punctured in seven places. The government said it was worth at least 8 million reais (£1.2; $1.5m). Photo: Damage to the Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting is inspected. —BBC via Yahoo! News, January 10, 2023

Urine and shit provide biological

clues to riot investigators, combing 

executive palace, congress, supreme 

court in Brasilia as condemnations 

spread the day after, the passing 

of blame, words of support and 

sympathy, and revisions of what 

could have been done to hold 

 

the line. The line did not hold, 

the damage done, but the body is alive 

still and ready for restoration surgery, 

new heart, liver, kidney, and craftsmen 

hired to work on the great painting 

punctured in seven parts.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

ON CASSIDY’S COATTAILS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

You have affirmed my faith Cassidy Hutchinson
in telling the truth, in speaking it openly before
the camera, in real time, before Congress, before
history and its judgments, before the criminal
watching from his Mar a Lago mansion, before
my children, before all people interested
in seeing the line that cannot and will not
be crossed no matter how many tantrums,
and lunges for the clavicle, and requests
to overturn an election fairly won come down
from the boss, the besotted and dangerous fool
who took control of the powers of state and sought
to make them serve himself first, his acolytes second,
and damn the people, his charge. Damn even
the deranged, armed with rifles, handguns,
spears and flagpoles and bear spray who marched
to stop certification of the US election. Amazing

that we saw this defacement, as Cassidy said,
of our Capitol. Amazing that we got through
that plunder, and are still living and loving
and moving about our United States. We were
driven to the brink. And the violation of 
women’s rights called Dobbs, and the approval
to carry guns in public, and I don’t know what
else, will come out of that radicalized building
on 1^st Street NE, but let me speak for the not
silent majority. No more. We will not allow
Januuary 6^th to happen again. Not in one day.

Not incrementally with elimination of
our human rights. There is a new day
in America charged, recharged, driven
by ethics, faith in the republic, in
undeniable rights. Morning again
I call it, for the mother and father
of all marches, in America. Not
on the Capitol, but in the conscience
of all our people. for truth, for justice,
for liberty. for the American way
not the highway, not the forked
road, not the Kool aid served
by the deluded prophet in a MAGA hat.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

THERE'S A WORD FOR IT

by Leonore Hildebrandt

All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people. APPLAUSE. (January 6, 2021 at a rally on the Ellipse near the White House.)

The royal we

is willing to usurp us,

but there’s more—

this we promising 

a glory-to-be-shared

is needy. It’s endemic—

the we who owns land 

is vying for water and sky,

it wants more time supreme, 

the we who pulls strings

absolutely needs 

more applause 

from us—which is 

the happiest you,

the you that we now needs 

to storm our building

and more—to holler 

and ram it all through.

And then it’s us 

who’s put to shame.

Pleonexia—more

than greed. 

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of Where You Happen to Be, The Next Unknown, and The Work at Hand. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Harpur Palate, Rhino, and the Sugar House Review among other journals. Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine. 

THE SADDEST DAY OF MY LIFE: JANUARY 6, 2021

by Nan Ottenritter

on the eve of the January 6 hearings

Television crews and technicians prepare for Thursday night's hearing by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, on June 7. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP via The Washington Post)

I want to say my saddest moment of my life

was when my first love left me, my father died, or

when we pulled the plug on my terminally ill brother.

 

I want to say the saddest day of my life

was a missed job opportunity, a miscarriage,

a failed novel.

 

But truth be told, it was seeing

our stormed Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The cracked glass, ransacked desks.

 

Hearing screams of trapped Capitol Police,

chants of hanging Mike Pence,

the hubris of those unquestioning, disrespectful

 

of all I have come to regard as second only to god,

sacred as only sacred in a secular sense can be.

How can you not appreciate our American democracy?

 

This democracy is the only life I know.

Please don’t take it away from me, from us.

Let me talk to you of miracles,

 

moments of shame and victory,

moments shared and shattered,

moments that are, like it or not, our collective lives.

 

I want to remain with you.

And you?

Nan Ottenritter lives and writes in Richmond, VA. Her first chapbook Eleanor, Speak is available from Finishing Line Press.

ELECTION DAY

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

“Costa Rica’s Boring Elections Are a Model for the World.” —Foreign Policy, February 4, 2022

The two leading candidates to emerge from a large field reflect voters’ concerns about economic malaise and corruption, but there’s little sign of the upheaval seen in other regional elections. Costa Rica’s president will be decided in a runoff  [on April 3] after none of the record twenty-five candidates managed to secure enough votes to win during the February 6 election. —Council on Foreign Relations, February 10, 2022

Distant car horns

blare in three-beat compass,

announcing that voting  

is fully in swing,

like a Sunday party

in Democracy Plaza,

in San José, in all Costa Rica.

 

Bananas still leave here in ships

to the North and Europe.

Still a banana republic,

that pejorative qualifier

which, from northern heights

of civilization, disdained

Central America.

 

But here nobody is rushing

the Congress building

or maiming its guards.

No military parades,

no goosesteps, no gallows,

no guns firing in the air.

It’s a party out there

 

for 25 candidates

who know it’s not certainty

but a prayer

that the people will

let them lead.

Even in pandemic,

it’s a festival out there

 

on a Sunday,

no alcohol allowed,

but lots of flags, a spree

of blue, yellow, red, green

balloons,  

horn-blowing,

sun. 

Pilar Saavedra-Vela has lived in Costa Rica for almost 34 years. Born in Colombia, she grew up in the DC area, to where she returns almost every year. She is a translator and hotel owner who writes poetry since 2006. One of her poems was published in Passager in 2020. 

JANUARY COUP

by Mark Danowsky

J.D. Crowe | jdcrowe@al.com

Vulgar 45, self-chosen wunder-king Insists he can take a life with a 45 Fifth Ave, broad daylight No one stops him Ha, as if he would stop himself Hang any henchmen Who defy a single wicked whim He begs you call him a joker A clown, a magician He calls himself master Of misdirection, of monopoly A game, he jests That one about life Behemoth of rage & spite Batter truth with lies Until truth cowers in a corner Smirk of feckless beast Mirror, mirror, what of this hair Send a few minions Storm the Capitol Torch the word of fair Suit of Big Mac & Diet Coke Asks only the McPoem be gilded 45 laughs & laughs Knowing a loss will be refused As only a loser can lose False god of the not unforsaken majority False demon elite who preys on the powerless He who claims to love what he loathes He who cannot sanitize what he is He who lets disease run rampant To disenfranchise those already wronged He who barks orders at the grotesque To carry out the obscene He who breaks the back of a thousand innocents To grease his palms in 18 holes Let us hope, yes, let us hope Some few brainwashed undrink the Kool-Aid There is no time like the present to accept Our past is full of atrocity And yes we can choose a new path Back towards democracy

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Senior Editor for Schuylkill Valley Journal, Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine, and a Regular Contributor for Versification. He is author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press) and JAWN forthcoming from Moonstone Press.

GUY FAWKES IN AMERICA

David Feela writes monthly columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in 2019.

THE FISH ROTS

by Bruce Bennett

“Since when do Republicans care more about criminals in jail than the cops who put them there? Since when do they coddle domestic terrorists? Since Donald T***p. A new report in The Daily Beast shows how the fish rots from the big orange head.” —Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, July 31, 2021

How many hurt? How many dead? 

How many at that rotten core? 

The fish rots from the big orange head. 

 

How many let themselves be led 

by what they rightly should abhor? 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

 

What was it that he did and said? 

What is it that they now ignore? 

The fish rots from the big orange head. 

 

Who should have been in jail instead 

of causing riots most deplore? 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

 

How long are we to suffer dread 

as he pursues his sick, sick war? 

The fish rots from the big orange head 

 

Whose stink continues still to spread 

through regions none can now restore. 

How many hurt? How many dead? 

The fish rots from the big orange head! 

Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty poetry chapbooks. His most recent full-length book is Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems New and Selected, 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017). He was a co-founder and served as an editor of the literary journals Field and Ploughshares. From 1973 until his retirement in 2014, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at Wells College, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize.

GASLIGHTS

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Above: In a scene from Gaslight (1944), Brian (Joseph Cotton) demonstrates to Paula (Ingrid Bergman) that her husband has been lying to her in an attempt to drive her crazy. It is the title of this drama that gives us the word that describes the Big Trumplican Lies. 

We need mo’ body armor, Mo

We need the Man on the line, Jim

Andrew, the Shaman says he used Carlson

Wagonlit to book his trip which is proof that

 

It was a tourist visit.

 

Kevin says, Elise, you take it

610,000 examples and it’s up to you

to suggest each one’s fakin’ it

 

We’re setting up an audit

and they’re all gonna turn up

in the same valley of dry bones

where Ezekiel hid the ballots  

Tucker and Laura gonna move the jam

while Sean will provide cover 

urging our supporters to get

 

The jab.  

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears/is appearing in As It Ought To Be, Unlikely Stories, Bluepepper, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Sledgehammer Lit, The Pangolin Review, Every Day Fiction, Ginosko Review, Dissident Voice, 365 Tomorrows, and New Reader Magazine. His full length collection Fat Dogs and Amorous Insects is being published by Alien Buddha Press this fall. 

A LESSON IN PASSIVE VOICE

by Lauren Haynes

The Capitol was breached while I  

taught preteens the art of  

language, to bend and  

provoke, to  

evade and  

slice.  

The order of a sentence and its  

implications. The difference between  

“The letter was mailed to me by my grandparents.” and  

“My grandparents mailed the letter to me.”  

Inconsequential until remote learning tabs to  

the real world.  

Miss, they say,  

the offices of high-ranking members  

of Congress were entered.  

Miss, they say,  

the American flag was removed and replaced:  

MAKE AMERICA                              AGAIN.  

A bomb was planted.  

A coup was staged.  

Where is the subject?  

Miss, they say,  

Who is doing the action?  

Lauren Haynes holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Kentucky University and has been an English teacher for years.

SELECT COMMITTEE

by Claude Clayton Smith

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announces her appointments to a new select committee to investigate the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 1, 2021. From left are Rep. Elaine Luria, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, Rep. Pete Aguilar, Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Bennie Thompson. Rep. Liz Cheney also accepted Pelosi's invitation to join the committee. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP via abc news.

A singularity occurs but once in time

and space: the Big Bang, for instance;

 

or at a point of infinite mass density

where gravity distorts such time and space

into the final state of matter as it’s

black hole bound;

.

or when the derivative of a given function

of a complex variable does not exist, but

every neighborhood of which contains points

for which the variable does exist.

 

And now comes a new singularity:

a select committee to investigate

whether a house divided against itself

can stand, or if the point at which all

concepts that give life meaning

become irrelevant.

 

Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Northern University, Claude Clayton Smith is the author of eight books and co-editor/translator of four others. His own books have been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese.

ATMOSPHERIC RIVER

by Cathleen Calbert

Source: University of Wisconsin

or narrow corridor 

a filament of concentrated moisture

            (like a fire faerie’s little vag)

 

like Lilith, with so many titles:

tropical connection, tropical plume, moisture plume,

(which I believe was indeed a feminine protection 

            product from the 1970’s),

 

water vapor surge—I can feel that for sure,

cloud band (the most lightweight heavy metal)

            river in the sky and moody to boot apparently.

 

whatever. words are fun

until they’re not anymore

            (insurgents stormed the capitol

            and my heart froze over—how’s that

            for wording).

 

now the country is supposed to forget

what we heard, what we saw. 

we’re onto weather:

 

unusually huge plops of snow 

fall on poor Chicago

while back at home

the Pacific Coast Highway fell

down the mountainside

 

as if the dreams of a little MG,

a bottle of wine, rock and rolling 

through the turns in Big Sur

meant nothing. You should know:

 

when the atmospheric river makes landfall

it releases and transforms

into something we can

touch and call

another name

if we want to.

Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92ndStreet Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Sheila Motton Book Prize, and the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College.

SKUNK HOUR

by Martin H. Levinson

 

His lawyers inept,

meandering, defending

the indefensible dimly

and dully, doing everything

they can but talk about the

constitutional question of

whether an out of office

president can be tried for

inciting insurrection, as the

Senators sitting in judgment

suffer their ambling, rambling

arguments made in response

to the House Managers logical,

precedent-based contentions

that a carny US Chief-of-State

can be punished for stirring up

mob violence and an invasion

of the Capitol that a video

montage has detailed in all

its nauseating horror.

Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN America; the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics, and a contributing editor to The Satirist. He has published nine books and numerous articles and poems.

JANUARY SIXTH

by Diane Vogel Ferri

The Jan. 6 rally of Trump supporters before the assault on the Capitol.Credit: Nina Berman/NOOR/Redux via The New York Times.

Let us not forget 

how we heard the crack of the breach

in every state, the unholy war

with bloated flags waving

dishonorably, whipping

in the felonious wind

Let us not forget

the terrorism of groupthink

the righteous pounding and shattering

the victims in their glory

holding blue-line banners

while violating blue lives

Let us not forget 

what we saw in real-time

the slurs we heard

the trashing of Jesus

of our tax dollars

our house a crime scene

Let us not forget

the present disremembering

of the big lie

how it is in the past now

consequences suffered only

by the dead

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel) and her newest novel No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling.