SALMAN

by Indran Amirthanayagam

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.

POEM FOR A RUSSIAN SOLDIER

by Jesse Dukes

Written on the Eve of the Invasion of Kyiv

A dead Russian soldier in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Credit: Tyler Hicks, The New York Times.

I believe you know right from wrong. Go back.

You polish your boots, oil your gun.

Watch dispatches from your blue-eyed master.

Brew tea with thyme in your uncle’s samovar.

Brought back from Afghanistan, in dead of winter.

Better drink it now, while it’s still warm.

 

It is cold in Donetsk. In your uncle’s house, it’s warm.

Do you think marching west will bring glory back?

Renew a once terrible empire, melt Russian winter?

Will you do something useful with that gun?

Nikita knew to stay close to the samovar

Who is more clever, master or Man?

 

You are a man who needs no master.

Your uncle’s house is already warm .

You have tea, lemon, an ancient samovar.

You have Tolstoy, Checkov, Lermontov. Back

Home, you have a madman.  On your mantle, he’s placed a gun.

He’s sent you to Ukraine in winter

But you are the French at Borodino, fighting the winter.

You are the Germans in Stalingrad, sent by their master.

Too far from home never firing their guns.

Dying forgetting the comfort of warmth.

Ukraine is no enemy. You can still go back

Find your uncle, fire the stove, fill his samovar.

 

You know the story, Vasily leaves the Samovar.

Plunges back into the very teeth of winter.

And when he realizes his danger, it’s too late to turn back.

And what kind of master would leave a man

Stranded in the cold, without a way to stay warm?

Do you mean to kill winter with a gun?

 

You still have a choice. The gun

May yet stay on the mantle. The samovar

May yet fill the house with steam and warmth.

You and your fellow soldiers cannot defeat winter.

But you can defeat your master, just a man.

You still have a choice. Go Back

 

Stay warm despite the winter.

Heat the samovar, heed no master

Take your gun and go back.

Author’s Note: I wrote this over dinner last night, thinking about Tolstoy's Master and Man, and "Checkov's Gun". I love Russian culture, Russian history, and the Russian people I've met, and I hope they'll find their way to the right path. 

Jesse Dukes is a Senior Producer of Podcasts at WBEZ, Chicago Public Media. Twitter: @CuriousDukes

OH, MALCONTENT CHANGING CLIMATE

by Earl J. Wilcox

All the great ones say something about it.

Poets speak of climate because it’s nearby

While they write or sleep or laugh, weep.

Snow, rain, sunshine, hail—even blustery

Tornadoes may flourish in dramatic lines.

In thrall of climate change—like poems—

our weather evolves not just by seasons

but by an hour or day, from lovely, cum

placid, toward splendid feverish havoc.

Myopic romantic writers—like climate

Naysayers-- still focus on sunshine

And blue skies, cloudless balmy days,

Like times we cherish in spring or summer.

It seems fair and realistic to believe

our climate hunches, predictions, history,

great climate-driven works of art and literature

will forever evolve as human cycles change

perhaps subdue even poets, the last and most

Changeless chroniclers of life on this planet

Await nature’s next course, whither we go.

Earl Wilcox awaits nature's next course in South Carolina. 

A FIRE IN WINTER

by Mark Tarren

Now that it is winter,
the snow hides the past
once again.

The white crested forests
of pine, spruce, larch and cedar,

arch back through the shoulder
of time.

The cold is cloaked
in the warmth of fur coats

and the rivers are now
walked upon as roads

with mist from the words of

these men.

Pasternak. Pushkin. Tolstoy.

Gloved hands that quilled
the papers of

samizdat. The shared secret parchment.

There is blood in the snow.
Red
in the whites of eyes
that see

the dying embers of truth.

Shall we burn down the dachas
in Peredelkino?

What has become of the past?
Are our human limbs for kindling?

Across the ocean
the firewood of history burns

these men.

Twain. Hemingway. Whitman.
Take down the collected volumes
from the shelves of memory

in the library of our grief.
For now is the time for forgetting.

From Saint Petersburg to the Mississippi
the forests are being cleared.

For the snow is now melting
and the past is passing away.

For no good is found here
and there are no words left.

Mark Tarren is a poet and writer based in Queensland, Australia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including TheNewVerse.News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press and Tuck Magazine.

TOO MUCH OF NOTHING

by John Azrak

On this day in literary history

Bob Dylan did not show to pick up

his Nobel prize in literature 

Maybe the laureate’s in the kitchen
with the Tombstone Blues
High Water everywhere
or he’s found TS Eliot and Ezra Pound
at Odds and Ends on Desolation Row;
maybe meeting his pal Sam Shepard
in East Texas to sing Brownsville Girl
or dancing with Shakespeare in the alley
in his pointed shoes and bells
Stuck Inside of Mobile
with the Memphis Blues Again
waiting to find out what price
he has to pay to get out of going
through all these things twice:
the degree from Princeton University
honorary but the Song of the Locusts
off stage left him pining to be free

Or he’s busy looking for his Lo and Behold
no longer wed to Isis, the mythical child,
who breaks Just Like a Woman
among the missing Absolutely Sweet Marie,
the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,
Sally, Sara, Little Sadie, Saro, Ramona too
in a Series of Dreams, Saint Augustine;
if nothing else, these Visions of Johanna
have kept him up past the dawn
dog-tired A Million Miles from the ever
(it’s now or never more than ever)
he's forever chasing, Just Like Tom Thumb
too wasted for the Million Dollar Bash
drinking One More Cup of Coffee
for Too Much of Nothing:
he's got a million people at his feet
singing Under the Red Sky
What   Good   Am   I?
and all he sees are Dark Eyes

Maybe he’s visiting with Baby Blue
who’s changed his last name too
where he’ll strike a match and start anew
with Queen Jane whose mother
has sent back all of her invitations
until Nothing Was Delivered;
or off to see Judas Priest and Frankie Lee
who won’t go mistaking Paradise
for that home across the road;
he could be Watching the River Flow
Spirit on the Water, Heart in the Highlands
listening to Johnny Cash, reading James Joyce;
or he Went to See the Gypsy
searching for a New Blue Moon
the sun rising in that little Minnesota town
where the Foot of Pride leaves no prints
Love Minus Zero has no limit
and My Back Pages reveals:
I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Forever Young at seventy-five
Dylan Ain’t Talkin’ just walkin’
through this weary world of woe
passing on his Nobel speech this day
but put some bleachers out in the sun
and maybe he'll deliver it on Highway 61
where a thousand telephones don’t ring
and Dignity can’t be photographed;
Ring Them Bells but not for him unless
they’re Chimes of Freedom flashing
for Stockholm, Sweden holds no key
to truths outside the Gates of Eden,
and if the committee has been left
Standing in the Doorway, crying
with blues wrapped around its head,
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
(Sooner or Later) One of Us Must Know
that he really did try to get close to you:
hey, If Dogs Run Free, why not he
or we all One Too Many Mornings
and a thousand miles behind
Tryin’ to Get to Heaven
before they close the door.

John Azrak, a native New Yorker, has published widely in literary journals. He thought Dylan's excuse, "pre-existing commitments," for not attending the awards ceremony was pretty funny and more like "conditions," uninsurable and the inspiration for this poem. Azrak highly recommends Todd Haynes's aptly titled Dylan movie I'm Not There.

IMPOLITE AND ARROGANT

by Joan Mazza

the Swedish Academy for the Nobel
says of Bob Dylan, who hasn’t acknowledged
his prize for literature or the invitation
to the event. He can be difficult, they say,

as if this is insightful news of his psychology,
as if he’d care what anyone thought about
his need to be alone, hide out. They say
his behavior is unprecedented, forgetting

Jean-Paul Sartre refused the prize, and that
Doris Lessing, returned from shopping
and approached by a reporter with the news,
responded, Oh, Christ! Not delight or prayer.

Were I indiscreet, I’d tell you where he’s
holed up. You sure wouldn’t believe that he’s
here, underground in my basement, playing
cassettes on the stereo so loud my floors

vibrate. He's smoking,  stinking up my entire
house. My cats like him, as does my old dog,
but he doesn’t always come upstairs for meals
I’ve fixed, only shrugs when I ask him

if he wants shrimp or crab. Don’t answer
the phone, he told me as soon as he arrived.
It hardly ever rings, I said, astonished
at his demand, when I recognized him

on my porch and let him in. He parked his
car out back, but there’s no one here to see.
I’m deep in the woods, far from the road.
Today I hear him singing, strumming

his guitar. He says prizes don’t mean a thing.
I ask if I can take a photo before he leaves.
(When is he leaving?) He sticks out
his pouty lip, says, It ain’t me, babe.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Slipstream, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

MY WHITE FRAGILITY

by James Brock

The New Yorker Daily Cartoon, Feb. 23, 2016

                     

“I have a great relationship with the blacks.”—Donald J. Trump

Rather, I will reboot this poem about the blacks
with a quote from Virginia Woolf:
For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks,
between her parents who stood by the lake,
holding her life in her arms which, as she neared
them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until
it became a whole life, a complete life,
which she put down by them and said, "This
is what I have made of it! This!"
And what had she made of it? What, indeed?

And thinking of the blacks, their mattering
lives, I look at my whole white life, my bookshelf.
See?  There’s Audre Lorde and Harriett Jacobs
and Kevin Young and Yusef Komunyakaa and Richard
Wright and Ralph Ellison, all their February words!
And I look at my white, complete life, and say,
“I have done nothing wrong.”

In Florida, the best hanging tree is the live oak,
with its big low-limbed girth.  At the Lee County
Courthouse a live oak has been made into a chainsaw
sculpture of an American bald eagle in flight.  On my commute
to school, with my black president and my black
boss man, I go along Michigan Avenue,
right through the black heart of Dunbar.  My neighbor
is anxious.  Someone has given the Asian food
delivery guy the building’s passcode.  He’s
probably on probation.  Our Sheriff shaves
his head, wears his green uniform, says how
we are not willing to face our problems.
He says I should have a registered gun in my glove
compartment.  I should keep a gun in my desk
drawer, packing heat in my classroom.  The evangelist
at my university shouts through his bullhorn
how my students are going to hell, all of them
texting their next booty call.  I think how language
is dripping in the blackness.  It’s like that tar baby.
Elvis’s hips, Beyoncè’s X, are they not black, too?

When I think black I think cinder black.  Or my
one black kiss—Jesus, she was a cheerleader at Idaho
State, straight out of Pocatello—which was for me
for being sweet. I am a nice guy. I like
Kendrick Lamar.  I like his pyrotechnics. When I think black
I think the earth cindered, all that burning,
my life cindered, desiccated, to the whitest, white ash.


James Brock has published four books of poetry, and he is currently writing plays for Ghostbird Theatre Company in Fort Myers, Florida.  He also teaches writing and literature at Florida Gulf Coast University.