MIRRORING OUR TIMES

by Lylanne Musselman

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist. Her poetry has appeared in Pank, The Indianapolis Review, The New Verse News, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among many other literary journals and anthologies. A seven-time Pushcart nominee, she is the author of eight poetry collections and is currently working on another.

BLOOD MOON BIRTHDAY WISH

by Marjorie Tesser

On the seventh of September, the earth 

will impose itself between moon and sun

and the eclipsed moon will blush red, 

color of love and rage. It’s the anniversary 

of my long-ago birth. Of late I’m less 

than sanguine about aging. Ghosted 

by family and friends—deaths, drugs, 

dementia, dogma—my circle has waned 

to a thinner crescent. I’m not immune, 

myself at summer’s end not yet red, 

but no longer vibrant green; wan, faded. 

Back in spring my sap loved to rise, roots 

to branch-tips aspiring. Now I lay low. 

Keep mum. Abide, 

 

though our home-space tumbles 

toward burn, wreck and ruin bought 

with others’ blood. Words like “liberty”

mean something different. it’s almost 

enough to shock one silent, numb one 

to the beauties we still, for now, 

number our blessings. Blood Moon 

is said to augur transformation, 

a flushing away to make room for change. 

In this red tide, may we stay afloat, unmute, 

sow songs of praise and rage, words vivid 

as rubies. May our hues distill, deepen—

cerise to crimson, vermilion to claret,

cabernet, rufous, russet—articulate

full spectrum against falling.

Marjorie Tesser’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Whale Road Review, Cutleaf, SWWIM, The New Verse News, and others. She is the author of poetry chapbooks The Important Thing Is, (Firewheel Chapbook Award Winner), and The Magic Feather (FLP). Her poem “April” won the 2019 John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has co-edited three anthologies and is editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review. 

THIS TOO WILL BE OUR HISTORY

by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut

Let’s crawl out from between cracks

in Mrs. Malloy’s Social Studies class

look America square in the…  

Trail of Tears, Chinese Exclusion, Compromise

of 1877, red carpet for the KKK in troops

 withdrawal, 911, Homeland Security, ICE.

Military facing off with us — terror.

We love this country — swampy and lush; dry

and sharp; wide, wild, waking.

Echoes of past, Liberty or Death,

beg the question, Is the acrid smoke gulped 

after hollers of Freedom now

easier than silence? 

Don’t you want to fix her pockets, tuck

them in; pull her 

Fortnite shirt down over

her exposed sand-colored belly; embrace 

her and, while reaching behind, 

let loose the cuffs, like you might untie

a ribbon to free your girl’s hair?

Kristin Kowalski Ferragut is author of the poetry collection Escape Velocity (Kelsay Books, 2021) and children's book Becoming the Enchantress (Loving Healing Press, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in Beltway Quarterly, Bourgeon, Fledgling Rag, Little Patuxent Review, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others.

SONNET FOR E. JEAN

by Diane Elayne Dees

E. Jean Carroll arrives at Manhattan federal court, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024, in New York. Less than a year after convincing a jury that former President Donald Trump sexually abused her decades ago, writer E. Jean Carroll took  the stand again to describe how his verbal attacks affected her after she came forward. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

E. Jean Carroll spoke for many women—
the victims of each silent, vile assault—
their grandmothers, who lunched in hats and linen,
and convinced themselves that it was all their fault—
their mothers, who knew no one would believe them,
so they blocked it out, convinced they could forget—
their daughters, who can easily deceive them,
and numb their feelings with the Internet.
The first-time date, the boss, the husband’s friend,
the English teacher, long-time neighbor, pastor,
have inflicted wounds that sometimes never mend
on a girl or woman in your life—just ask her.
In speaking, E. Jean found her liberty;
And in doing so, she also spoke for me.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

TITLE 42: HOPE AND LIBERTY FLY THE COOP

by Tricia L. Somers

By desert deaths and a river,

tractor trailer sarcophagus coffins.

Again and again.

we are greatly diminished.

Show us their faces.

Let them out if you’ve caged them.

Let us know their names then

let them live without fear .

Let them pay it forward.

For without that exchange

Liberty will not be sustained .

You won’t find her hanging around.

She will go pick up her girl Hope

and they will both skip town.

Like endangered species

only fleetingly glimpsed.

You may never see

Hope or Liberty again.

Trish is out of Los Angeles Ca where she lives with her Significant Other and their crazy cats. Her essays and poetry can be found in the last several issues of The American Dissident (print journal). Online at Rat’s Ass Review, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She is also included in the forthcoming Poetry Marathon Anthology 2022 at Amazon or your favorite bookstore.

A LOADED GUN

by Ann E. Wallace

after Emily Dickinson

by C.B.

Had my life but stood 

a loaded gun, I might have 

roamed these sovereign states

with ease and in the open.

 

But though this woman’s body

may live longer than its lover,

or its foe, it receives no such 

constitutional protections.

 

We grant inalienable safeguards 

to our guns, as to the men who

cock and press the sacred trigger

with force and as they please.

 

If I were indeed that loaded gun, 

my liberty to choose, to carry 

or to abort, would be a right 

that is secured in perpetuity.

Ann E. Wallace is a poet and essayist from Jersey City, New Jersey. Follow her on Twitter @annwlace409 or on Instagram @annwallace409.

VILLANELLE FOR A POST ROE WORLD

 by Mary K O’Melveny

Cyndi Lauper and Laura Dern

Women have no rights required to be respected

say five jurists whose words hurl us back to ancient time.

What actions are required to see this travesty corrected?

 

This outcome—undesired by most—was not unexpected.

Women have been told for centuries that men’s role is prime,

that women have no rights required to be respected.

 

Some say our decisions must be made by men, elected

but clueless, whose laws transform our choices into crime.

What actions shall we take to see such travesty corrected?  

 

Once a woman’s bodily autonomy has been rejected

by folks who’ve no idea the mountains we must climb,

how can we ensure that anyone’s liberty will be respected?

 

Diminishments of human rights are always quite connected.

Misogyny, like slavery, depends on whose lives we define

as worth the actions needed to see such travesties corrected. 

 

Look in the mirror—do you see the person you expected?

No matter age or circumstance, the time has come for rage sublime.

If women have no rights required to be respected,

revolution is what we need to see this travesty corrected.

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 most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. 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.

THE FIFTH OF JULY

by Michael L. Ruffin

The Fifth of July, 1776.

Mr. Jefferson, contemplating.

Thinking about what they have started.

Pondering the struggle that lies ahead.

Wondering how long it will take to secure

the independence they have declared.

The Fifth of July, 2021.

I, contemplating.

Thinking about how far we've come.

Pondering the struggle that still lies ahead.

Wondering how long it will take to secure

real liberty and true freedom for all of us--

for every last one of us.

And it occurs to me:

it is always the Fifth of July

in the United States of America--

and it always will be.

Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, 3 Moon Magazine, and U-Rights Magazine.

RE-ACQUITTED

by Imogen Arate

Dying stars burn the brightest

Europe's birth rate is falling

Italian towns offer abandoned 

homes on the cheap

Even in a COVID year

nearly 1-0-0-0 

wo/men and children

died on the Mediterranean

in pursuit of safety

The Sonoran took its biggest gulp

in 10 years

as desiccated remains are picked

from between its gritty teeth

to stage a caravan

One in five American households

speaks a language other than English

but my people can’t get in a

Best-Pic nominee

without the label “foreign”

Be grateful that you are now 

presented with a choice between 

Black and    White

Prostrate melaniferous bodies 

weave into a shroud

covering the distance between 

George Floyd and today

Be grateful for crumbs that drop

from the high table

as we scramble

and gladiate in spectacle

for droppings

Half a million seemed like 

an impossible number

Last year   Valentine’s Day

was still lonely 

but in person

Be grateful

Why aren’t we grateful

Why are we so ungrateful

We are given a choice now

Isn’t it enough

A cloth cover is the real

hindrance to liberty

The 2020 “I voted” sticker

a high-priced memorabilia

for the lives risked

to those other than minorities

forced hyphenation 

worn as a crown

trudge past other saintly feasts

lay bare the sacrifice

Be grateful for the little things

The big ones are for the rarified

the falling birth rate

the fear of extinction

I guess they always knew

Dying stars burn the brightest

Rage

rage against the dying of the light

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of the weekly poetry podcast Poets and Muses. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her work was most recently featured in the Global Poemic, Rigorous and The Hong Kong Review.

DIME ON THE SIDEWALK

by William Aarnes

Paying with cards 

            or phones, people  

now carry fewer  

 

and fewer coins  

yet here someone’s  

dropped a dime 

 

on the sidewalk. 

FDR’s profile  

recalls the time 

 

“THE UNITED STATES 

OF AMERICA” 

had dime stores 

 

(not dollar stores),              [ 

            a time when one 

of the luckless 

 

might beg, “Buddy,      

can you spare 

                        a dime.”            

 

Though the coin 

            contains no silver, 

                        it’s shiny enough 

 

to catch the eye 

            and still worth 

“One Dime.”  

 

And it’s embossed 

with the mottos 

“LIBERTY,”  

 

“IN GOD WE TRUST,”  

“E PLURIBUS  

             

UNUM.”          

 

Your choice: 

pick the dime up 

            or just let it lie. 

William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

T***P TAKES ON THE FOUR SEASONS

 by Anita S. Pulier

Editor's Note: @TotalSeasons is a parody account on Twitter.

The world hears him

banging on the courthouse door

filing comical briefs,

blustering nonsense 

against Fall,

against colors turning,

against leaves falling,

against gearing up for Winter.

And in liberty’s fading light 

he waves his flabby arms, 

proclaims Winter will never arrive

he simply will not allow it, 

screams plot, fraud, fake.

Eyebrows raised, we

take a deep breath,

await Winter's chill.

In this pandemic year of challenges Anita S. Pulier can share some good news: her second full-length poetry book Toast will be out from Finishing Line Press in February! In a past life, she was an attorney. Now she writes poetry (published in many journals and anthologies) and hangs with poets.

STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY DURING A PANDEMIC

by Joan Mazza

They gather unmasked in cheerful mobs

to celebrate their freedom, demonstrate

they’re unafraid of a tiny organism—

a Coronavirus that dare not swat them down

and leap from mouth to mouth. They

won’t renounce crowds, compelled to hold

signs that argue with reality, exempt from

precautions that doctors swear will reduce

their risk. Transplant specialists warn

of dangers from organs harvested

in motorcycle deaths. Look for evidence

of Toxoplasmosis! The infected rarely

know they carry parasites that make some

reckless, impervious to fear or danger.

Infected rodents seek out open spaces, 

display a fatal feline attraction.

Carefree, careless, feckless, watch us

humans do our thing. Hail liberty! We claim

to have free will. What bug drives me

to rise at three to write poetry? Like you,

my body’s filled with organisms, some not

yet identified, making neurotransmitters.

Ninety percent of me isn’t me. What

lives inside and really runs the show?

Author's note: I’m reading the book This is Your Brain on Parasites: How tiny creatures manipulate our behavior by Kathleen McAuliffe. Terrific! It makes me want to go back to school.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and has taught workshops nationally with a focus on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry appears in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner (forthcoming), The MacGuffin, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes a daily poem.

AFTER THE FUNERAL

by Crystal Snoddon

“If police can execute an innocent man on video, none of us are safe.” 

—Buck Sexton, The Hill, December 11, 2017

Sweet Security, that phantasmal beauty, lies buried 6 feet under.

I saw the body-cam footage, how her sister,

Paranoia, shot her dead—

don’t watch

spiders scrawl warnings on flesh, listen:

Paranoia laughs, freed from cuffs

of assumed innocence.

Witness her lie on the motel bed, her bare,

thin lips exposed in a cavernous grin,

her adamantine teeth.

She bites hard, man.

Cops claim she’d hidden the rifle under the bed, but

no one dared lift the sham,

confirm the threat.

Paranoia, hungry cougar, prowls. Growls feed me.

Her cousin, Injustice, that crack whore,

trolls the subway,

steals candy from fatherless kid’s pockets,

feeds the family sugar power-drops,

lollipops on dirty sticks,

prefers home-baked shortbreads dipped

in ghetto chocolate, rich and dark.

They all sit on Daddy’s knee,

cuz Mama Liberty

drowned in the harbor, fascist bling chains round her neck,

her tablet cracked, her gown stained black

by pigeon shit.

Everyone runs blind.

Crystal Snoddon is a Canadian writer, whose forthcoming and previous poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and can be found in Figroot Press, Rat's Ass Review, Anti-Heroin Chick, among others.