THE TURNING TIDE

by Mary Janicke

 
a great tsunami washed ashore
            destroying all in its path
books tossed off library shelves
            young people left to drown
in a sea of bigotry
 
then the storm abated
            the tide receded
the public surveyed the damage
            and saw the harm done to the community
                        by the bigots and blowhards
and voted the transgressors off the island
 
civility returned
            respect for one another returned
and most importantly
            books were returned to library shelves
so that knowledge 
            could again be shared

Mary Janicke is a gardener, poet, and writer living in Texas. Her work has appeared in numerous journals.

Editor’s note: The tide turned in Texas, but the wave of book bannings continues elsewhere. Sign EveryLibrary’s petition against book bans here: https://action.everylibrary.org/bannedbooks?utm_campaign=govdislikes_1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=votelibraries

JULY OF ELECTION YEAR 2024

by Tarn Wilson

This year, if I keep my pace, 

I’ll read over 100 books.

I don’t know if this is a victory 

or a sad state of affairs.

I don’t know if I am in love 

with the world or addicted 

to distraction. Preachers and 

politicians used to call novels 

filthy and frivolous, wanted

us to read only stripped facts 

and sermons on virtue. Now, 

we’re pleased if children read

at all. Everywhere you look

screens hold miniature stories, 

trapdoors and tunnels toward 

truth and illusion. Last week, 

I asked a 24-year-old which 

candidate will win the youth 

vote for president. Biden is 

ridiculous, she explains: all

those gaffes-turned-memes.

Trump, she decides. He’s funnier.

 Funny? I ask. He has wittier 

insults. He says what we all wish 

we could say. Democrats are 

schoolmarms, then? I ask. 

Mothers who make you feel 

ashamed? What about the danger 

to our democracy? Low wages /

high rents. It’s all the same to us. 

We need more facts and tracts 

on virtues. We need novels, too,

about civil wars and WWII, 

about loss and love and grief 

and trees, anything to help us 

feel, in our bones, what it is 

we have to lose. Actually, she says, 

face lighting, RFK is trending 

on TikTok. His policies are crazy,

I say. He’s doing pull ups, she says. 

He looks strong. People like that.

Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and the craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write. Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet, and The Sun. 

ACCEPTABLE LEVELS OF CRUELTY, STEADILY RISING

by Gordon Gilbert

In the not-so-distant past,
genocidal acts, a holocaust,
distant from our shores,
rumoured only, but for most unseen,
finally revealed in retrospect
indelibly to soldiers’ eyes,
brought home in photographs,
not to be denied.
 
Ah, we said, if only… If only…
But we did not know
at the time, only later,
and alas, too late to do
what we surely would have done
had we only known…
 
But now this genocide comes to us live,
like a fog slowly lifting, revealing
the landscapes of barbarity:
bombs falling; the destruction of
homes & neighborhoods,
schools & hospitals,
mosques & churches;
the death of civilians—
babies,  children,  women,  men;
the cries and wails of those
(for now) still alive.
 
Survivors,
searching in the rubble for those they lost.
We know this time. 
We cannot say we do not know. 

Editor's note: The title of this poem is a line from “To the Days” by Adrienne Rich.


Gordon Gilbert is a writer living in NYC's west village.  During the pandemic, he often found solace and an inner sense of peace by taking walks along the nearby Hudson River; now he does so as unwilling witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

POPE PIUS XII KNEW

December 1, 1942

by Susan Cossette

Letter between Pope Pius XII, who served as Pope during World War II, and a German Jesuit reveals Pius knew of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust —James Gordon,  Dailymail.com and Wires, September 18, 2023

You knew and what did you do?

 

The Jesuit priest wrote to you.

The SS was running death factories,

6,000 Poles and Jews killed every day.

 

You knew about Auschwitz and Dachau.

 

Did you pray on your lapis lazuli rosary 

for the teenaged girl who saw her parents murdered?

Face down on her wooden bunk, 

after the tan suits shaved her head and pubic hair.

 

Your supplicants say you worked

behind the scenes to help Jews 

and stayed mute to prevent worsening 

the situation for Catholics in Nazi-occupied Europe. 

 

Your detractors say you lacked courage,

despite pleas from Allied powers fighting Germany.

 

Pius, Pius you knew, you knew.

The yellowed typewritten letter says it all.

 

Pius what did you fail to do?

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.

NO ONE TOLD OLGA CARMONA HER FATHER DIED BEFORE THE WORLD CUP FINAL

by Carla Schwartz

And without knowing it I had my Star before the game started. I know you have given me the strength to achieve something unique. I know you've been watching me tonight and that you're proud of me. Rest in peace, papa

Olga Carmona scored the only goal in Spain's win over England in the Women's World Cup final... For each World Cup title, a star is added above the crest on a national team's jersey. —NPR, August 21, 2023

I had my star

I had my goal

 

I played my star

I am the goal

 

Olga, you won the game

but lost your pa

 

What

if you had known?

 

I had my star

the night before

 

the final day

of the final course

 

for my design degree

that 2 a.m. my sister called

 

to let me know

our mother    gone

 

That morning the teacher asked

why I even came to class

 

I had my star

I had my goal

 

I told myself

my mother would have

would have wanted me to

 

but my mother who was dead

wanted nothing   I won that goal

my focus soaked in grief

 

Olga will never know

Spain will never know

 

would she have achieved her goal

were she suffused with grief?

Prize-winning poet Carla Schwartz’s poems have been widely published, including in her collections Signs of Marriage, Mother, One More Thing, and Intimacy with the Wind. Learn more at  carlapoet.com, or wakewiththesun.blogspot.com or find her at (https://twitter.com/cb99videos), (https://youtube.com/cb99videos), or (https://instagram.com/cb99videos).

SNAKE OIL

by Julie Steiner

Cartoon by Necessary 2021 GoComics.com

“At least seven radio hosts and high-profile anti-mask and anti-vaccine advocates have died from COVID-19 in recent weeks. The men are radio hosts Dick Farrel, Phil Valentine, Bob Enyart, and Marc Bernier, as well as former CIA officer Robert David Steele, anti-masker Caleb Wallace, and conservative leader Pressley Stutts. Misinformation around the virus and vaccines remains widespread as cases continue to rise.” —Business Insider, September 19, 2021

“You shall not—surely!—die. Fake news!”

he scolds. “Don’t do as you are told!

(Except right now, of course.) Refuse

to be so easily controlled!”

“You shall not—surely!—die,” he sneers.

“The risk of death’s been overstated.

Powers That Be keep fanning fears

so Man can be manipulated.”

“You shall not—surely!—die,” he hisses,

half disdainful, half disgusted.

“Keeping you from knowledge? This is

why Authority can’t be trusted.”

“You shall not—surely!—die,” he scoffs,

then bites the dust. But that’s not closure:

Eve’s now fevered. Adam coughs,

aware at last of their exposure.

Author's Note: Genesis 3:4-7

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

DEATH OF A CRITIC

by Mark Danowsky

Harold Bloom 1930-2019

No one is left now
who will swing his arms wide-----
claim knowledge of the entirety
of The Western Canon

The man who wrote the book
on who the wise among us
ought to remember
has left the stage

Who now can swoop in
to tell us how it is?

Gone are the Great Claim-Makers

More than ever now
we need help knowing
where to look
for what is true & valuable

None of us can claim
to have read everything

Some of us can raise a hand
& solemnly swear
we are up to no good

Many of us can remember
a time when we used to feel
we knew more

Knowledge begets holes
in our theories about this world

The Critic has left us
his anxiety of influence

The Critic has left us
a list of what once signified
our greatest gifts


Mark Danowsky is a poet / writer from Philadelphia and author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press, 2018). He’s Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

WHAT ELIE WIESEL KNEW

by John Guzlowski

Death is the air we breathe.
The bread we chew.
The brother and sister
who stand by us always.

Elie Wiesel knew this
And taught us this
Everyday.

Don't be afraid.

John Guzlowski's writing has appeared in Rattle, North American Review, Ontario Review, Nimrod, Salon.com, and many other journals and reviews.  Garrison Keillor read his poem "What My Father Believed" on The Writers Almanac. Guzlowski's 5th book of poems Echoes of Tattered Tongues was a highlighted book in this year's Publishers Weekly Poetry Month issue. 

FORENSICS

by Tony Brown

Milky Way Clock by Henrik Amberla. Image source: I New Idea Homepage

We have exhausted all leads

as the clock runs out.

People died. Who and what

we should blame is not clear.

If there’s a connecting thread

or line to explain what led to…this,

it remains unseen. It’s not a conspiracy thing;

shit’s just complicated.  Maybe some of it

is about malice, but mostly

it’s about acceptance

of unintended consequences

and ignorance of how to stop

thinking we are so damn omniscient.

We’re not, of course; that’s obvious.

We’re blind little beggars or huge deaf kings.
No one is paying attention,

or paying for us to pay attention.

We’re broke and we’re out of time.

If we want to know who did what,

if we are ever to learn that,

we are going to have to start time again.

Build a world differently — more windows and doors,

fewer walls.  And most of all

we’re going to have to build a better clock.

Something with longer hours, days, years.

Something based on the Mayan model, perhaps,

with lots

of resets.


Tony Brown,  a three time Pushcart Prize nominee,  lives in Worcester, MA, and is one half of the poetry and music duo The Duende Project.