SENDING PRAYERS

by Lynn White

Source: Religion Dispatches

They hang like towels.
Towels hung out
to dry in the wind
line upon line of them
blowing in the wind,
prayer flags
sending thoughts
sending blessings
wind dried leftovers 
from days gone by
when laundry was line-dried
and peace and goodwill were sent
as thoughts and prayers 
on the wind
not in the ether.

But in the end
it was never enough.

In the end
it made no difference 
how.

In the end

they’re still hung out to dry.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. Find Lynn at https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

I GREW UP IN HIGHLAND PARK

by Tricia Knoll

Highland Park IL Fourth of July parade, circa 1965.

Twenty-nine spaces in the US carry this name.

When the news broke, I wondered if it was my home town.

It was. The place I lived for the first twenty years of my life. 

My home town as much as any other. Where I was born

 

more than seventy years ago. I hadn’t wondered how much

or what had changed. Videos brought it home. The store

that was once Chandlers where every year I went 

with my mother to get new pencils, pens, and notebooks

 to go back to school. The shoe store with the Xray

machine. The laundry owned by Chinese Americans 

where the windows always dripped with water. 

Mr. Leeds' jewelry store. Across the street

I bought my prom dress to dance with my first love. 

My first bank account on the corner of Central. 

Learning to drive in town across the railroad tracks.

Our library. Smelling the alewives on Ravinia Beach 

where I learned to swim and loved a sun tan.  

Hearing Louis Armstrong sing "Hello Dolly" 

at the festival. My father’s service

on the school board. The flooded

field where I learned to ice skate. The miles

of roads where I careened around on a bike. 

The day a migrating whooping crane stopped

in our flooded back yard. Long ago. Green

skies over oaks before tornados. 

 

My feet once knew every inch of that parade route.

You never really leave those old home towns. 

The red flags didn’t wave true here. The young man

got his assault rifle in a state and town known

for its tougher-than-most gun laws.

I supposed I wouldn’t know anyone who was there

after all these decades. That wasn’t true.

I knew two people who fled the explosions, one

a man I went to school with who fled with his

grandchildren and one a woman who lived next door

to me as a child. Everyone says it can happen

anywhere. I know that now. 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. When media people describe Highland Park's 30,000 residents as a small town, she's aware that in Vermont Highland Park would be Vermont's second largest city. She worried about possible violence in June for friends in Portland, Oregon going to the Pride Parade. Her next collection of poetry One Bent Twig is coming out from Future Cycle Press in early 2023—poems reflecting her love and concern for trees facing climate change. She has written about the red oaks of Highland Park.

AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EPISTEMOLOGY

by Matthew Ford

It must have been a Tuesday when
the grey-haired white farmer emerged from his large, expensive home
far north of Herndon
but after a quick glance at the damage
he turned around
and went back
straight to the laundry room
where his Guatemalan maid leaves the dirty laundry
he grabbed an old towel and went back out
to his big white Ford F-250
to wipe the ash off the windshield
that had accumulated from the nearby fire then
he jumped in, switched on Rush Limbaugh
and drove to the gas station coffee shop
where he and his friends gather to
talk politics, condemn “illegal aliens,” and the liberal swine
in Sacramento that shut off their water supply.
they all agree
the drought is fake news
and the border wall was necessary . . . yesterday
high taxes in California are correlated to the
mass of illegals that eat up the social services
but do not pay taxes
they all sing in unison until
the one in the white F-250 stands up to take a call
from his labor contractor—“pay-droh”
who tells him the van is arriving out to the melons in Mendota
so he salutes his gang
and heads to the westside to deliver paychecks
to the workers with fake social security numbers
who worked 70 hours last week without overtime pay
and in Spanish, discussed the tax deductions
at the bottom of their pay stubs
on his way out
he stopped at the next field over
to switch on the valve—flooding it.

Matthew Ford is a PhD student studying Latin American History at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York. He is originally from California's central valley.

RINSE AND REPEAT

by Ben Rasnic

Image source: Viewoftheworld

Tossed my whites
into the washing machine,
a few t-shirts and cotton socks,
then mixed in our K-mart bed sheets

for good measure;
hot water setting and a dash of vinegar
with a few splashes of bleach.

Cycling forward to the rinse,
the spin segment kicked in,
rocking with a violent crash of waves
banging incessantly against the porcelain tub.

Lifting the lid
I discovered the water had turned
red as the blood from a thousand wars.

I reached inside, pulling
& tugging at the knotted mass
until the crimson waves
whirl pooled into a downward spiral

& there, tucked between the sheets
I found a Donald Trump cap
my friend had given me as a joke.


Ben Rasnic has authored four volumes of poetry: Artifacts and Legends, Puppet, Synchronicity, and The Eleventh Month. He currently resides in Bowie, MD.

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

Editor's Note: We are pleased to repost this poem, originally published in TheNewVerse.News on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. It is one of our 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees.


THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE
by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently. 

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently.