ABOVE A GRAY FIELD

by Fadel Kishko

Internet photo provided by the poet of the aftermath of the school bombing.

My dear, this is not a fictional story,
But one filled with gory.
It was the bleak November,
When death couldn’t be any nearer.
To stay away from bombing’s wrath,
We sheltered in a UNRWA school’s path.
A rocket, for us, caused damnation.
From this horror, there’s no salvation.
The sky turned into red—
From the blood of the dead.
Bodies from head to toe,
Torn, with nowhere to go.
Above a gray field, all is shattered,
And people’s faces deeply battered.
With blood mixed with dust,
They lie on the ground, unjust.
A brain on the wall is fastened,
Arms with legs on the tent dispersed.
In a prone, a little girl sat,
Prostrated is her father in her sight.
A head without a body—
That was what remained of her daddy.
With fixed, white, open eyes she’s gazing.
The true shape of humanity—fading.
From his head, blood is torrential.
“Nadal!” was bleeding from his skull.
Thrown aside, with his eye bulged,
With no one to treat him—he is another victim slaughtered.
A boy leaping to survive without a hinge,
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to dodge.
A shell hit Jihad’s belly, shredded his liver,
And no one is their savior.
 
“Oh God, my mother!” Abdullah screamed.
Among the bodies, we searched.
Amid them, my grandmother—with a shell in her knee.
I knew then there was nowhere to flee.
Holding her hand, I cried, “Thank God! Let’s run!
For here, we can’t anymore endure, or carry on.”
Faint was her voice: “I can’t. I am injured.”
“People are torn. Stand with me! Let’s flee!” Abdullah cried.
With her hands, she unveiled her garment.
Bloodied are her pants—we’re incapacitated.
On his shoulder, he held her.
A cart I found to move her.
In the middle, she was put.
With injured and martyrs, the cart is filled.
We tried to get her to the hospital’s gate,
But the tank rolled in—we couldn’t risk our fate.
The tank was approaching with a killing intent.
Its aim is to destroy wherever it went.
We withdrew, entered a house as a guest.
“A water, for you I plead,” that was my request.
Kind people they were—gave us what we need,
Touched us with their solicitude indeed.
Told us with fear, “In the school there is a succorer.”
Went to the school and stayed in the slaughter.
That night,
We slept in blood’s red light.
“Ow! Anyone! Come and rescue us!”
For they are amputated,
And on the ground devastated.
Above us, F-16s were roaring,
Quadcopters hovered, death adoring.
A tank appeared in the night’s pale glow,
An airstrike loomed below.
Jihad, from the shell, is screaming.
Nadal is bleeding and dying.
My grandmother is crippled.
Were you in my shoes—
What would you do?
 
Al-Fajr prayer we established.
“Martyr,” we wrote on Nadal’s chest.
Wrapped my grandmother’s knee,
In order to the south to flee.
To Nit-Salim we reached.
On the way, the dead are wrapped with red.
Burnt-out cars lined the street,
With blood’s scent rising from the driver’s seat.
Here are they.
Sitting over there.
He’s sitting over there—human like me.
The red blood that runs in his vein runs in mine.
Why does he have a weapon made to kill,
And my only right is to yell?
Armed with every weapon ever made,
Used against me—to fade.
Shrieking at a line of nearly a million,
To stop, and for the tank to move on.
Shouting while pouring his bullets,
Screaming, “Don’t worry!” after he kills.
Kidnapped—behind the tank, they are taken.
Shooting while jeeps inside are moving.
After I almost routed,
“All of you, move!” he shouted.
We reached “the safe zone.”
Again, the story was replicated.
This is not a story just ended,
But our daily life that is being repeated.

Author’s note: “Above a Gray Field” is a harrowing recollection of a fatal incident that forced me to flee south during this genocidal war—an experience I barely survived. I sought safety for myself and my family, only to realize that safety, like humanity, morality, and justice, can be illusions.

     The South of Gaza was labeled a “Safe Zone,” but the horrors I witnessed there—human organs scattered on the ground, relentless violence—continue to haunt me, even in sleep.

     This visceral poem rises from the ashes of the dead and bears witness to the injustice endured by Palestinian civilians. It reflects the daily reality where human life is undervalued, and death is treated as commonplace.

     More than a literary work, this poem is a cry, a memory, and a fragment of a violently torn life. It confronts the reader with urgent emotion and a desperate plea for humanity, exposing death as the cruel rhythm of an endless war—where victims are not only forgotten but neglected.

.

I am Fadel Kishko, a 22-year-old writer from Gaza.

WITNESS

by Jean Mikhail

I have witnessed little animals, 
their death throes at my doorstep,  
ones killed or maimed by my cat, 
Phoebe,  and from time to time, 
I have nearly stepped on some small dead 
something, and I’d love to catch her 
before the killing act, to turn back time, 
and gently place the baby rabbit back 
in its burrow, or set the fledgling 
robin on a branch, safely, but instead, 
I have tossed the carcass in the trash 
or pitched the body into the woods,
a safe distance away, and I have   
shifted my focus, turned my eyes  
from their bloody mouths, lifted 
my shoe to float over them, 
like  a cloud crosses the convex 
eyes of a child of Gaza, lying dead, 
and I saw him in, of all places, 
a Facebook video while scrolling 
through all the other videos of surfers 
surfing, of people giving cooking 
lessons, and the bombing of this 
building, the concrete caving into
a boy’s chest,  he will never crack 
a smile, or break into laughter, ever 
again, he was made to be a martyr, 
in his mother’s eyes, a martyr, 
his brown eyes softening into cloud 
wisps, into blue sky reflection, 
and he and other children throughout
history, the children of the Holocaust,
of Syria, and those others murdered 
for no reason, no fault of their own, 
don’t even have a doorstep 
tombstone,  or a proper burial, 
or a bell ringing like a doorbell,  
no one will answer the question 
why their deaths don’t matter, 
or how can this be happening, 
because let’s face it, 
we’d never get anything done 
if we solely focused on the world’s 
horrors, we’d never even get our 
shopping done, or have the strength
to lift our heavy brown paper sacks 
to the car because everything would feel 
so burdensome, heavy as a body, 
as concrete collapsing into the child
counted among the dead, a number, 
a child cocooned in a burial cloth, 
and the world tilts on its heavier side, 
and we are on the lighter side giving  
nothing but a thumbs up for dying children, 
and all we can do is hope for better 
endings, for a ceasefire and for peace, 
I  can no longer watch a mother grieve,
yet can’t look away from her, either, 
as she  performs the ungodly task 
of collecting her child’s blown off 
ears and fingers, wiping tears 
on her hijab because what else 
does she have but a sheer will 
to survive and head covering, 
and how else can she know 
her child’s hand from any other 
child’s hand, like my own children's 
hands, how would I recognize them,  
whose hand would I hold, whose 
fingers thrown into the air, asking 
which almighty to help them. 

Jean Mikhail lives in Athens, Ohio with her husband, who is Egyptian. Two of her children are Guatemalan adoptees. She has published in The Appalachian Review, Sheila Na Gig Online, Pudding Magazine, and other journals and anthologies. 

PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

in memory of Wadea Al-Fayoume (6 years old)

The last words of a six-year-old US Muslim boy stabbed to death in a suspected hate crime over the weekend were "Mom, I'm fine", his uncle said as hundreds gathered to lay the child to rest… Police say Wadea al-Fayoume was attacked because he was Muslim. His funeral was held as the family's landlord appeared in court charged with the boy's murder. The 71-year-old accused was allegedly upset about the Israel-Hamas war. —BBC, October 16, 3023

Six-year-old sons are supposed to live the dream of a free-range American boyhood.
Cowboys and Indians. Minecraft and mumps inoculations. Even gender-neutral pronouns. 
 
Muslim or Christian, it shouldn’t matter since we, the people, possess a constitution
once amended to address that there is no sin in being subaltern.
 
But our land is filled with weapons. Frontier remnants, perhaps. Anger makes fathers
guard their daughters with rifles. We should never ignore that faith is a live wire.
 
What about knives. A mother discovers how a landlord’s grandfatherly fondness for her son
turns to murder. He raises his blade to the boy twenty-six times, practically a lunar cycle.
 
How did a man who carpentered nails and boards to build young Wadea a house
decide to enlist in sorrow’s circle. Was it Iblis or X. OAN perhaps. Maybe Fox. 
 
Did he go mad from the whisper of his neighbor’s dog
(like Berkowitz)
who said never trust anyone who abstains from swine.
 
I believe property is a theft. Claim a land, claim a life.
Now our nation reckons with a terrible debt.
 
Who but a martyred boy can account for that.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. His latest book is Flint River (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). New and recent work appears/will appear in Mobius, Rattle, Terrain.org, Writers Resist, Topical Poetry, and Belt Magazine. He holds two passports.

ASSANGED

by Lisa Seidenberg

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has signed an order to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (above) to the United States, where he faces espionage charges, in a decision his organization said marked a "dark day for press freedom." —CNN, June 17, 2022

For publishing classified documents

Of military strikes on innocents

Hits on civilians and wartime blunders

In Iraq and Afghanistan, in shocking numbers

It was not a surprise they took him down

Debating if he is journalist

Assange was a one man wanted list

Sheltered for years in the Embassy of Equador

Until they booted him out the door

His mental state, on view, alarming

But, even so, could still be quite charming

Befriended Pamela Lee, a Hollywood alum

Then fathered two babies and married their mum

While passing the hours awaiting a decision

By London magistrates on his extradition

Why does one choose a life so perilous

When most of us risk so much less?

Or did Julian not know what fate would hold

For one who opted to be so bold

To defy the FBI 

And the CIA

To imagine they would look the other way?

In a more principled world - but not today.

Present day martyrs like Assange and Navalny

Join those in history who took a stand

And paid a high price with stern reprimand

For the crime of speaking truth to power 

And not run away—or cower

I would not do so but let us pause to admire

Those who step out of line and into the fire.

Lisa Seidenberg is a writer and filmmaker residing in Connecticut. Twitter: @Leeside33

CALENDAR GIRLS

by Julie Steiner

St. Agnes, stained-glass window in the parish church of St. George in Fritzdorf, Germany.

The head of an independent enquiry investigating church child abuse in France said Tuesday that there might have been up to 10,000 victims since 1950. Jean-Marc Sauve, head of a commission set up by the Catholic church, said that a previous estimate in June last year of 3,000 victims "is certainly an underestimate. It's possible that the figure is at least 10,000," he added at a press conference where he delivered an update on the commission's work. A hotline set up in June 2019 for victims and witnesses to report abuse received 6,500 calls in the first 17 months of operation. "The big question for us is 'how many victims came forward'? Is it 25 percent? 10 percent, 5 percent or less?," Sauve told reporters. —France24, March 2, 2021

January: Agnes—her name means “Chaste One”—
holds a lamb (a pun on the Latin agnus).
Note the flowing streams of her hair, which hid her
     twelve-year-old body,

naked, on parade to a Roman brothel.
Note the sword employed when her would-be rapists—
like the flames lit later—refused to touch her.
     Notice the palm branch,

signifying martyrdom. Note her crimson
robe, another emblem of Christian martyrs.
Patron saint of victims of rape, Saint Agnes,
     ora pro nobis.

*

February: Agatha—Greek for “Good Girl”—
bears her severed breasts on a plate, serenely.
Tortured for her chastity. Never raped, though.
     Virgin and martyr.

Spared the degradation of rape’s defilement,
though she died a sexual sadist’s plaything.
Lesson: God won’t tolerate rape’s pollution
     tainting a Good Girl.

*

Skip ahead. Miss May is Antonia Mesina.
Head and face smashed in in the nineteen-thirties.
Age sixteen when brained by a thwarted rapist.
     I was a teen, too,

when the Pope beatified her. Another
virgin-martyr patron of rape survivors.
Verified as virgo intacta—something
     ever-so-private;

something that her modesty wanted shielded;
something she had given her life defending;
something that her coroners broadcast widely.
     Waved in our faces,

alleluia. See how the Lord protects His
favored ones from genital violation?
Doctors’ probings proved that she’d kept her hymen.
     Proved she was holy.

*

Moving on: Maria Goretti, farmgirl.
Miss July. In 1902, a neighbor
stabbed her fourteen times when he failed to rape her.
     She was eleven.

How had I offended the Lord at less than
half her age—allowed to be raped, not murdered?
Even in my innocence, I was guilty.
     I was unworthy.

God withheld divine intervention, proving
I was not an Agatha, nor an Agnes.
I’d deserved what happened to me, like other
     rape-punished children.

*

Pray for us. And pray for a Church whose members
help abusers stigmatize rape’s survivors,
though Augustine’s City of God said virgins
     raped are still virgins.

Pray for us. And pray for a Church more heartless
now than when Aquinas affirmed that raped nuns—
even those impregnated—still are virgins:
     mind over matter.

Pray for us. And pray that our Church recalls that
Miss December—virgin and martyr Lucy—
claimed a second heavenly crown would honor
     those who’d been ravished.

How it would have helped me, to hear that virtue
wasn’t something stored in a telltale membrane
someone else’s lust could destroy, forever
     leaving you lesser.

How it would have helped, to have heard this message:
Virtue—male or female—cannot be graded
pass/fail, based on criminals’ choice to harm you.
     (Gruesome injustice!)

How it would have helped, to have heard Survival
isn’t proof of sinfulness. Share your burden.
Minus that, the upshot was Hold your tongue, or
     all will condemn you.

Rapists want the world to despise their victims.
Shame buys silence. Shout! Let the Church proclaim this:
Rape indeed does happen to blameless people.
     Calendar, update.

Author's references:

Stanza 13: Augustine, City of God, Book I (Chapters 16 and 18).

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120101.htm

Stanzas 14 and 15: Thomas Aquinas (with Fra Rainaldo da Piperno), Summa Theologicae, Supplement, Question 96, Article 5, Reply to Objection 4.

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5096.htm#article5

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

SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

by David Southward

"St. George" by Salvador Dalí (1971)

Four nights in a row, the motorcade
of believers rolls past my house,
ignoring the mayor’s curfew. Bullhorns
blaring, they ride on the roofs
of moving sedans, brandishing signs
to remind a republic of the dying words
of George Floyd: I can’t breathe!

I think about history’s martyrs—
those saints of the early church
swallowed by Rome’s imperial machine,
who couldn’t possibly have known
how they would be transformed
by common love and fury
into heroes and miracle-workers.

Take Saint George. Once
a nobody—a lowly foot soldier
in Rome’s legions—he died clinging
to his faith in a better world. Today
he gleams from Europe’s stained-glass
windows, resplendent in his armor
as he stands on a dragon’s hide.

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020).

TAMIR

by Diane Vogel Ferri

Every time an unarmed black man
falls to our videoed fears and white failures

I see Tamir’s face, so many times, too many times,
the face that I saw in my classroom one year.

Yes he was tall, yes he liked attention,
neither are reasons to be given two seconds

to respond to an adult, neither are reasons
to be on a list of martyrs to America’s shame,

neither are reasons for his twelve year-old
face to be frozen in time on tv, the news,

on the never-ending list of lost black men,
not a reason to be famous or dead.


Author’s Note: Tamir Rice was my student in 2012.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Cleveland Christmas Memories, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications include Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). A former special education teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland.

WHEN JESUS TOOK A KNEE

by Alejandro Escudé

When Jesus took a knee
beside the palm tree
and the Romans there
paused, gulped the air,
no one could believe
Pontius Pilate’s decree
that all those who
did the same, who
took a knee as Jesus
did, those dividing us,
meaning the Romans,
should be treated as
traitors to the empire
and be set on fire
or hung upon a cross
which is cut of cypress.

A vision was bestowed
to those alive, glowed
a white H upon a field,
with a ball, oval-shaped,
alighting over the center
emitted by a gladiator
below, a ball or a skull,
one couldn’t really tell
but watched it soar high
as a crowd sprang nigh
to cheer the spectacle,
the human-like tentacle,
a wingspan to the bars
and then the long limbs,
finally the head, eyes
like blackened starlight,
the man hanging there
for all to witness, bare
save for a shoulder pad
nimble and heavy, a hood
red-gold, an eagle spread,
a man who cried, bled.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

FLEEING MOSUL

by Seree Zohar

Between 700 and 1,000 people arrive daily from the embattled city of Mosul to the stretch of UN-run refugee camps just 20 kilometers east of the city's outskirts. —CNN, December 18, 2016. Photo: Iraqi IDPs (internally displaced people ) from fighting in the village of Shora, south of Mosul, reach an Iraqi army checkpoint on the northern outskirts of Qayyarah, which was liberated from ISIS but is still engulfed in thick black smoke from oil wells set ablaze by the retreating militants. IDP’s who reach Qayyarah are then taken to the Ja’dah IDP camp, October 2016. Ivor Prickett—UNHCR via Time.

Homing pigeon launched through dawn, your rhythm alights on me,
fingers, gloats, dehisces: prayer, your cadence chooses me.

White flag?  We hadn't time to buy one.  And nothing here stays white.
Brethren!  We are light!  Scourges thunder news to me.

Amorphous tented Mama,  my weary footsteps echo yours.
Did I once beg for makeup?  To age so young no more amuses me.

On red-moist stone the thrashing dove’s heart seeks its startled head
as the moon shatters her mirror.  A hone-edged screeching nooses me.

In gasps accursed by memory, sounds palpitate, untongued.
Sheared of speech, my youngster throat: its grunted coo accuses me.

They thrill to this: to snatch and strip, recast their prophet’s land
where, slim as a rising blade, a martyr grooms, then bruises, me.

Mama, snatch up your hem and run, for torpor now diffuses me.
My spilling psyche frays.  My throwaway martyr loses me.


Seree Zohar has work published or forthcoming in various print and online venues.

JIHADI JOHN

by Eric Lochridge

Painting by Luigi Poggi of the stoning of Stephen. (Acts 6, 58): "And cast him out of the city, and stoned him..."..  In the background: Paul (Saul of Tarsus) stands on the left, witnessing the stoning. (Acts 7, 58): "and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul.” At that time Paul prosecuted Christians, but on his journey to Damascus he switched sides and became a converted missionary (Acts 9, 3-4): "And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?". —Beit-Jamal Monastery

You remind me of Paul before he was Paul.
Saul made martyrs like you do.

On a road in the desert
the Morning Star, Light of Life

struck him blind, not pitch black
but bright glare that swallowed him whole.

Something like scales are falling
from the eyes of the man in the orange jumpsuit.

He can see heaven
from where he’s kneeling in the sand.

Someone once said
love your enemies.

The flash of your blade blinds us both
to the good God is bringing into the world.


Eric Lochridge is the author of Born-Again Death Wish (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Real Boy Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and Father’s Curse (FootHills Publishing, 2007), and the editor of After Long Busyness: Interviews with Eight Heartland Poets (Smashwords, 2012). His poems have appeared in journals such as Free Lunch, Slipstream, Diagram and Paddlefish and in anthologies such as Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press, 2009), Liberty’s Vigil: The Occupy Anthology (FootHills Publishing, 2012), and The XY Files: Poems on the Male Experience (Sherman Asher Publishing, 1997). He lives in Bellingham, Washington.

MY BROTHER

by Kelly Jadon

A Palestinian laborer in Israel. Image source: Jerusalem Post

he works with his hands

digging, building, construction

labor

tunneling mountains

putting up walls of steel

one week and three hours

away from home

as many men

to feed families in the north

each Sabbath, driving highway

with cash, eggs, vegetables

a smile, a hug, treats for five children

dinner kept warm

chicken with sumac,¹ roasted batata²

fattoush³

yet, my brother is late today

we wait

his wife, Nagla, calls his cell

it rings, no answer

two hours

she phones again

and again, no answer

time moves slowly in the East

with God—in His time

finally, the call comes

not my brother—another

his voice, dry as crackers

raspy, hoarse

Nagla screams

unsure, I take the phone

“allo?”

…”your brother, ahhok,⁴

he was found, hung,

from the 4^th story…”

recoiling in shock

my mind recalls

John—who died on Patmos⁵

Stephen—outside the gate

with stones⁶

and Peter—who like

my brother,

was taken where he

did not wish to go⁷

“a nightmare” cries Nagla

our mother tongue

a cousin

my brother’s faith

the world cannot comprehend

for kosmos⁸ thinks as the Cretans⁹

fleshy,

and is natural

without Spirit

full of sin

autopsy, three days, Nazareth

we buried him today

within our crypt—

all others pushed aside

making room for his box

the city present—though media

stayed away—left unreported

yet 30,000 saw the truth

of one of the least of these

who came to bid him goodbye

kiss his coffin

scream, cry

this one, my blood, our blood

he is—one of us

the body

his blood, like Abel’s,

cries from the ground beneath

our crypt

covered over with the Blood

of al Messiah¹⁰

awaiting the Great White Throne

when bodies rejoin spirit and soul

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

Who sees all, knows all

--even, the evil intentions of men

whose wrong thoughts toward murder

led them to believe that

no one is watching

_________________________________________________________________

1. sumac—an edible Middle Eastern ground spice

2. batata—Arabic for potato

3. fattoush—a Middle Eastern salad which includes squares of dried or fried pita

4. ahhok—Arabic for brother

5. Patmos—a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, meaning  “my killing”

6. Acts 7:56-60, Bible

7. John 21:18-19, Bible

8.  kosmos—Koine Greek for “the world”

9. Cretans—Koine Greek for those from the Greek island of Crete, meaning “fleshy”

10. al Messiah—Arabic for “the Messiah”

Author' note on the poem: A story that has gone unreported, but just happened a few days ago--to an in-law, in Tel Aviv.

Kelly Jadon is a graduate of Spring Arbor University and holds a degree in English with a concentration on poetry.  She is a teacher, poet, and writer.  Her poem "To Taste The Oil" was recently featured at the University of Colorado "Eye Contact" event as an audible poem.  Her poetry has been published both online and in print in several literary journals. Her poetry book To Taste the Oil: The Flavor of Life in the Middle East was published in June 2014 by Into The Deep Books.

CRUEL APRIL

by Judy Kronenfeld





                          after the Boston Marathon, and after seeing
                                the documentary, “Syria behind the Lines”


Crystalline cool days—bougainvillea
spills from our walls like rivulets
outdoing one another, like lavish
manes of brilliant, curly scarlet
tossed flirtatiously by the wind—
and in our yard, exploding galaxies
of snow-in-summer; popped up orange liqueur
poppy cups; torches of white iris…

Exploding fire, and the red ochre of blood

spattered over Boylston Street, as if a dark perversion

of Holi came frenzied through—no playful

faces splashed marigold, indigo,

saffron praising spring—leaving behind shreds

of clothes, glass, flesh…

And in Syria, somewhere, again
and again, convulsed young faces
buried in the chests of older men,
whose hands pull the faces in to blot out
what they’re seeing and their screaming,
so the fighting can go on.

Still in Syria somewhere—opulence
of nets of oranges and grapefruits
hanging above the fruit-juice stands piled
with lemons, carrots, melons? Is there hope
for cool sweetness in the throat—intensities
of blended watermelon, strawberry,
banana, milk, honey, mint—families strolling
in the cooling midnight streets, old men
playing chess on 2 A.M. sidewalks…?
             
On a talk show two broadcasters

argue almost raucously over

whether a newspaper was right

to cut off at the knees a photo

of a man’s legs blasted off below

the knees, in Boston…

And, somewhere, in Syria, again,
and again, a dreamy, peaceful
sweetness sweeps over the bearded face
of a very young man, many times wounded,
many times returned to the rebel lines—
who has already or will join al-Nusra—as he speaks
of his hope to become a martyr.

Here, at home, in California,
where the bougainvillea bursts
in a frenzy of bloom, two friends—a relative,
a poet—dead in the ordinary old way,
of early cancer, of old age.


Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent collections of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of  Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, winner of The Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize for 2007 (Antrim House, 2012). Recent anthology appearances include Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012) and Love over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals such as Calyx, Cimarron Review, The American Poetry Journal, Fox Chase Review,  Foundling Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Natural Bridge, New Verse News, The Pedestal, Poetry International,  Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and The Women’s Review of Books.