THE INHERITANCE

by Jim Bellanca

Gainesville, Georgia, 2020 (Shutterstock)

Jim Crow’s obituary read,

“After a lengthy illness, Jim has passed away,

His Crow name now just history.” 

I thought “maybe not, maybe so.”

(You cannot trust the news these days.)

 

I knew Jim’s sister Jane had moved to Toronto

with her DACA son Juan

a surprise, a ten-year caboose

behind three sisters college gone,

had joined the family late.

Juan Crow was the most interesting one,

a son who’d volunteered for war, 

three tours in Afghanistan’s battle fields,

a Silver Cross and long times spent from love.

Back home, a hero named, he learned again, 

(most definitely not his first experience),

the curse of Jim Crow’s name, 

with his life separated by skin

in school,

        —at water fountains

        —on school bus ride

        —in restaurants

        —in restrooms

        —in voting booths

        —in marriage beds

the profile depicting all brown men

as one no matter where or who or when

ICE labeled shady caricatures,  

        —“beaner”

        —“wetback”

        —“gringo”​

        —“spic”

who tequila too much, siesta too long, 

just “don’t belong” on our turf;

accused of job stealing, rape, and more, 

tattooed as M-13,

by Presidential decree,

      —“the worst of hombres”

      —“the most detestable of human beings”

      —“the lowest despicable animal beast”

      —“a greaser druggy poisoning our lands”

any excuse the man can name

while hooded fiends from ICE 

day-quota-sized kidnapping any brown man

      —in church or school  

      —in hospital bed

      —in shopping mall

      —in strawberry fields 

      —in pizza huts

all blared and shared in local tv news, 

dread images bent with bowed shaved heads, 

arms tattoed with criminal marks

slow marched to caged jail cells,

(no one knows where)

—to scare the most innocent

—to leave their family love 

—to end their journey to freedom’s land

—to prove the power of the President

            by breaking what laws, he wished.

 

Juan Crow’s red blood

once given to save the land, the nation he loved,

no longer flows free. Juan sits in Alcatraz,

in his separate unequal cell

all son and martyr and hero dream

of Jim Crow newborn, a cosmic transfer,

a heritage inherited without recourse

Jim’s curse transferred to Juan, 

a lifetime injustice to bare, 

all ball and chain and prison wrack, 

all Sisyphus rock on his back.

Jim Bellanca, former English teacher, publisher and gadfly, now a late blooming poet, favors paining memory images about nature, family, peace, social justice and wry comments about senior life. He fervently assumes a “No Prufrock I” position when he writes about social injustice. More than two dozen poetry journals including Witcraft, Write City zine, Aerial Journey. Down In the Dirt, Sparks of Caliope, Westwood Quarterly, The Lyric, and East on Central have published his poems.

MY PRAYERS FOR HOSTAGES DIDN'T END WHEN MY PRAYERS FOR PEACE BEGAN

by Laurie Rosen

With college campuses seized by conflict over the war, is there anywhere for students who don’t want to choose a side to turn? Image by Yoav Einhar. —Forward, December 6, 2023

For every child kidnapped, 
burned, bombed 

I believe there is someone 
on both sides grieving 

the pain of the other, 
hearing cries from the other,

growing wary 
of taking sides. 

For every yes, but someone is saying 
this is true and so is this,

Elu v’elu divrei Elohim chayim: 
these and these.   

For every life displaced,
beaten, brutalized 

I believe in the hope 
of two hands holding

multiple truths,
two hands plowing a path 

for compassion and peace. 

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in Peregrine, Gyroscope Review, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater: a journal of The New School, One Art, and elsewhere. Laurie won first place in poetry at the 2023 Marblehead, MA Festival of the Arts.

HOW NORMAL LIFE IS IN KHERSON!

by Bonnie Naradzay

Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, according to the culture ministry in Kyiv. Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert “intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson”, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page. The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra, of which Kerpatenko was the principal conductor, but he “categorically refused to cooperate with the occupants”, the statement said. —The Guardian, October 16, 2022

How normal life is in Kherson, 

ruled by Russian invaders since April!

A life of repression, kidnapping,

and mass detainment of its citizens.

How normal life is in Kherson!

with Russian invaders planning

a concert for the first of October

to show how normal life is in Kherson 

while deporting everyone to unknown 

locations from Kherson because

this is how normal life is in Kherson.  

The conductor for the concert, 

that the Russian invaders insisted on,

to show how normal and calm it was,

Yurii Kerpatenko, declined to take part .

So in true Soviet tradition the invaders

went to his home and murdered him, 

to prove how normal life is in Kherson.

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems are scheduled for publication in Crab Creek Review, Dappled Things, and The Birmingham Poetry Review, and appear in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart Nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review online, Tampa Review, Florida Review online, EPOCH, Pinch (Pushcart Nomination), American Journal of Poetry, Potomac Review, The Poetry Miscellany, and other places, and her essay on friendship was published recently in the anthology Deep Beauty. She leads weekly poetry sessions in day shelters for the homeless and at a retirement center.

FINAL RESTING PLACE

by Kashiana Singh

An American dream turned nightmare: Four members of a Sikh family in California kidnapped and killed. —CNN, 6 October 2022

Merced County, California

harvested ground, haze of vijay dashmi

            lingering, skull smashing night

            of rakshasa's ten heads, family

            of four, found. tossed. taken. 

sweet daughter of god, Aroohi nestled

asleep, an orchard of almonds

her bed, maggots swimming 

in a baby’s gourmand breath

a nip in California air, draped them

            as complicit as a shroud of

velvet cases on edible nuts

            a blush ash on their eyelids

at home, a bowl of blessed parshad

            is untouched, effigies of the

            demon king ablaze, shrouds

            of starlings depart, crowning

at the feet of a mother, wailing fists

            on breast, a lamenting hum

rises, a rasp from her throat

a paddock of grief ruptured

erasing the monsters of distant love

            father, eyes jittery like locusts

hands peeling the skins of five

blanched almonds, organic raw 

california grown, new day breaks into

            night, a kite across an ocean of

            fairytales, heavy footed he steps

            forward, to bring cadavers back

Kashiana Singh strives to embody the essence of her TEDx talk—Work as Worship into her everyday. Her newest full-length collection Woman by the Door was released in 2022 with Apprentice House Press. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills with Yavanika Press is a loco descriptive journey through 10 cities. Kashiana lives in North Carolina and carries her various geopolitical homes within her poetry.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2021:A LIST POEM

by Mary K O’Melveny

I.  Jalalabad, Afghanistan

 

Mursal Waheedi

Saadia Sadat

Shahnaz Raufi

 

Buried in fresh graves

along with their hopes

Journalists without portfolio

 

Peace flags at half staff tonight

 

II.  Mandalay, Myanmar

 

Ma Kyal Sin

a/k/a “Angel”

Age 18

 

At the protest front lines

Garbed in bright red lipstick

her black t-shirt emblazoned

 

“Everything will be all right.”

 

III.  Bangalore, India

 

Disha Ravi

Climate advocate

Age 22

 

Helping farmers on Fridays

turns seditious

toolkits tied to treason

 

Democracy’s promise reviled

 

IV.  Rochester NY

 

Unnamed girl

“Person in crisis”

Age 9

Pepper spray

even in handcuffs

antidote for “family troubles”

 

Cops say “You’re acting like a child”

 

V.  Rochester NY

 

Unnamed woman

with unnamed toddler

Age 3

 

Allegations of shoplifting

More pepper spray

New policy questions

 

‘I didn’t steal nothing” she said tearfully

 

VI. Pentagon, Arlington VA

 

Unnamed women

Service members

Ages varied

 

Sexual assaults

reported – more than 7,800

unreported – 20,000

 

“You’re more likely to be raped by

someone in your uniform as shot by the enemy”

 

VII.  Washington DC

 

Unnamed women

formerly working

Ages varied

 

2.3 million departed

from the workplace in just one year

140,000 in December alone

 

70 cents per male dollar --“Motherhood penalty”

 

VIII.  Yambio, South Sudan

 

Margaret Raman

Single mother of five

Age 38

 

Beans and ground nuts

for sale at Masiya Market

now rotting in noonday sun

 

business stifled by COVID’s legacy

 

IX.  Maiduguri, Nigeria

 

Hundreds of schoolgirls

kidnapped by gunmen

Ages 12-18

 

Bandits in uniforms

barefoot children

education turns life-threatening

 

“Abduction is a growth industry”

 

X.  Indiana, Montana, South Carolina, Kansas, Wyoming, Tennessee

 

Anxious women

seeking autonomy

Ages unknown

 

Bills passed or pending

legislators emboldened by extreme

agendas and judicial appointments

 

Choices determined by geography

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

LUXURIOUS FEAR

by Rebecca Leet

Source: We Do Geek

My head sinks into the pillow

and fear floats forward

like a ghoul set to stalk my dreams

 

so easy to keep ghosts

tautly moored when sun shines,

before night ingests hope.

 

I worry past the present pandemic

past the wild, sad souls ensnared

by visions of prurient perfidies

 

to a time closer than we dare declare

when swelling seas, infernos of forests,

acres of arid, fallow farmlands

 

push civilization to survival of the fittest

and my newborn grandchild, one day,

must claw over others or succumb.

 

Then morning comes and as I sip tea

news reports speak of children suffocating

from poison gas in Syria        girls kidnapped

 

by Boko Haram in Nigeria      a boy killed

in a random shooting five miles away.

And I realize my fear, today, is a luxury.

 

Rebecca Leet lives a stone's throw from Washington, DC.  Her collection Living with the Doors Wide Open was published in 2018.

A MESSAGE FROM HOMELAND SECURITY TO ALL NEIGHBORHOOD HOMEOWNERS

by Randy Mazie

We’re breaking into your homes though inconvenient it might be.
We’re going to make sure that you’re as “safe as safe can be.”

We’ve reports of violent protests around your neighborhood.
Yet as far as we can see, your family is good.

If you’ve any family members who could act out violently.
We may cart them off in unmarked cars. guilty prima facie.

This would be for their protection, again “safety is the key.”
And if no one knows where they’re taken, they’re as “safe as safe can be.”

Please do not tell anyone, because our operation you’d jeopardize.
We strongly urge you to keep quiet—talking would not be wise!

Again, we do this for your safety. We’re sure you understand
that the actions that we’re taking secure all Der Homeland.

Randy Mazie wanders the North Georgia Mountains after living in South Florida and growing up in New York City. He’s had the best of all color-filled worlds: the Big Apple, the Balmy Orange and now the Beautiful Blue Ridge. He has Master's Degrees in Social Work from Columbia University and Business Administration from Barry University. His non-fiction has been published in professional journals, fiction in Defenestration, and poetry in numerous media including Light, The MacGuffin, DASH, and the Anthology of Transcendent Poetry, Cosmographia Books, 2019.

FINAL JEOPARDY

by Darrell Petska

Zellyart

The formerly democratic
North American republic
despoiled by an authoritarian regime
that ruled through extrajudicial measures
typified by deploying masked,
heavily armed federal agents
to suppress violently
civil protest and political expression,
consequently instilling a sense of fear

as in the bureaucratic authoritarianism
of Pinochet’s Chile
where federally dispatched agents
violently swept citizens away
to unknown locations
for intimidation, humiliation,
interrogation, and abuse—
acts later adjudged to be
crimes against humanity.

What was America?


Darrell Petska is a Middleton, Wisconsin writer.

ASYLUM

by Thomas R. Smith

   Why does my country so often stand
   On the side of the mean and the cruel?
           —Ed Sanders, "Nicaragua"


Sometimes I think these recurring dreams
of insecure wandering aren't personal
at all, but the world dreaming through me.

Again last night, I had no bed, searched
a strange town with darkness falling.
Our country has strayed so far from that

young and fearless prophet it professes
to worship.  Kidnapping children from their
parents at the border, making criminals

of asylum-seekers.  A Honduran man
separated from his wife and child by ICE
kills himself in a cell described as a "kennel."

Does the man who calls himself President
and the cowards and bullies who enable
him really believe they can have power

without responsibility?  The five
percent feeding on forty percent of
the planet arms itself to keep the starving

away from the table.  So we drift toward
our destruction, uncaring, cruel, refusing
to enter into a human future.

In dreams we are relentlessly pursued,
can find no place to lay our heads in this land
of the Ego, the Dollar, and the Holy Gun.

In time our bad faith will make our nation
a prison, in which we serve our sentence
not for having killed, but for having killed

not for survival but for luxury.

A Honduran girl cries as her mother is search and detained near the U.S. Mexico border on Tuesday in McAllen, Texas. Credit John Moore/Getty Images via Slate, June 14, 2018

Thomas R. Smith is a poet and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin. He teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent poetry collection is The Glory (Red Dragonfly Press).