BURNING CAR

by Kip Knott

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we 
silence people or squash dissent. But…”
          —President Biden addressing protests
              over the war in Gaza

Whether it rises 
from melting tires 
or devotional candles
or one child’s body 
or a million children’s bodies, 

smoke burns 
everyone’s eyes to tears
before it gathers 
as the clouds 
one faction uses

to construct 
their idea of Heaven
and another faction uses
to construct 
their idea of Hell.

Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Ohio. His most recent book of poetry, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press.

SHE THINKS OF MOLTEN THINGS

by Dana Yost

I breathe

But nothing goes in

Or out. But this

Is not true.

I open my eyes

But they see nothing.

A darkness, early-morning

Darkness. Into infinity.

Is this dying?

My ears hear the

Mad-man screams

Of killers. Then the

wails of those

About to die.

A woman thinks

Of molten things:

Eyebrow melting,

Walls to a home

Curling in flames,

Dead bodies in the

Desert, not charred

But dark with bullet

Holes, torn fabric,

Hearts burnt in mid-beat.

Tracers orange, skyward

Flares red. In a room

An evacuee is given

Tea but says no, her

Mother dragged off

Like fire down a hill,

Lurching, shrieking, 

So hot an image

She curls on a cot

And thinks of molten things.

Dana Yost says of this poem: It is allegorical, about the war in Israel. It troubles me deeply and I feel the need to say something about it, but rather than write a direct, reportorial piece about it I wanted to get at the pain of it. I hope this works.

ICE CREAM ACTIVISM

by Alisha Goldblatt

after “The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images via The New York Times.

Lick the sins of countries past,

the thrown stone, and gather your pints

in unbleached paperboard, crisp waffle cones.

Sell hazelnut play on words that

signal virtue and decadence, and

slick the tongue divine, smooth on spoon.

Let slingshots rile the bull market.

The only flavor is a flavor of fear.

In the modern white freezer, vats 

blister thumbs from the plastic scoop

whose spring-back lever neatly cleaves the ice.

The Green state, the Holstein cows, the fourteenth star.

Shirtsleeves cuffed, tough and chocolate stained

to show how cold we are, and numb.

Let the melting be violent and swift. 

The only flavor is the flavor of fear. 

Alisha Goldblatt is an English teacher and writer living in Portland, Maine with her two wonderful children and one lovely husband. She has published poems in the Common Ground Review, Literary Mama, and Burningword Literary Journal, among several others. Alisha writes whenever she can and gets published when she’s lucky. 

METHANE CLATHRATE

by Peleg Held

“The news last week that summer ice covering the Arctic Ocean was tied for the second-lowest extent on record is a sobering reminder that the planet is swiftly heading toward a largely ice-free Arctic in the warmer months, possibly as early as 2020.” —Peter Wadhams, environment360, September 26, 2016. Photo: Arctic Ocean sea ice melt as seen from the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Cutter Healy via environment360.

Gather last words
basket them drowned
under freighted skies
on a dead sea.

Bring them to pestle and powder
the shell of the old into the blood
of the new. Shout gloryhole
when you crawl in
and when you crawl out.
Say nightshade when
you blow the wick black,
on our lips
is no home.

We whistled the fire up
and up it came, like Jacob
on a lattice, burning
to leave no angel alive.


Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.

SNOW BEFORE THANKSGIVING

by Laura Rodley

Is the snow that hovers in these low slung clouds
particles of glaciers evaporated, waiting
to fall, mirrors of penguins and polar bears,
sluggish fish, even the midnight sky
that beam upon the mirror, blue on blue white ice
where the edges creak, broken sky,
broken mirrors of the ocean’s depths,
whales in fact that breach
searching for air, ready to go home.

If so, glaciers melting, ready to fall,
arrest drivers surging home for Thanksgiving,
how thousands of years of solidness
is now a lake, one too cold to swim in
but close to our hearts, this affinity
for holding on, for letting go, for forgiveness.
Will the glaciers forgive warmer waters?
Will the glaciers forgive their melting?
They have no hands to cover themselves,
to swim somewhere else; their solidity,
calm steadiness is what we seek,
and tomorrow it will snow, glaciers
letting go, freeing themselves as crystals fall
heavy on the grounds, seeking saviors.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.