A SLAP IN THE FACE

by Paul Hostovsky

One man slaps another
as hard as he can in the face.
A third runs up with a microphone
and asks the slapped man
how it feels to be slapped in the face.
And it feels like a slap in the face,
which the man begins to say but then
starts weeping, and his words
trail off as the camera goes in
for a close-up of the wet glisten
in the eyes of the weeping man.
How does it feel to be weeping? 
asks the man with the microphone 
while we sit at home and watch 
and weep for the weeping man
and rage at the man who slapped him,
who is standing somewhere off-camera
waiting for his turn to be asked
why he did the slapping and how
it felt and please pass the popcorn 
because as it turns out the man 
who slapped the slapped man 
is a slapped man himself, and though
he isn’t weeping now, we can feel ourselves 
feeling for the unweeping man who slapped 
the weeping slapped man who has just
slapped the man with the microphone—
and though we really can’t blame him,
we do blame him, and we don't blame
ourselves, and we keep on chewing.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

POEM WITH REPEATED WORD

by Renée M. Schell    

                                    for Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles

 

What if we all practiced saying no?

 

What if every street corner

had a microphone

for the practice of saying no?

 

No, I won’t keep my mouth shut

No, I won’t choose between food and rent

No, I won’t use my body as an ATM to cross a border

 

The no’s would ring out, streaming

like ribbons up and over each other

weaving an ornate shawl

a handmade rebollo

a silk sari

a second-hand skirt

a torn scarf

 

They’d hear No in Amarillo

No in the pueblos of Mexico

No in Iowa,

No in the middle of nowhere,

No in County Kerry

No in the Sahara

No in Angola

No in Afghanistan

 

The microphones would pick

up the tiniest no,

the no of infants,

the no of eight-year-olds,

the no of a mother separated

from her child

at Fort Bliss.

 

How famous

do you have

to be 

for your no

to be

heard?

 

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection Overtones is forthcoming from Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and teaches second grade in a diverse classroom in San Jose, CA. 

CALLING IT

by Thomas R. Smith

Just to see and hear him on a screen

hurts the soul.  Stench of abuse.

The Abyss hijacks the microphone,

no muting the rant the psychotic

can’t switch off in his head.

The assault on truth is physical:

the viewer’s knees tremble, breath comes

up short.  Lies fly out of the mouth

in black streams.  They are his children:

father of lies, lord of the flies.

Damaged horror child exposed.

The networks call it a “debate.”

Burroughs called it “naked lunch.”

Yeats called it “rough beast.”  I call it

“rape in an abandoned  house.”

Thomas R. Smith is a poet and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin. He teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent poetry collection is The Glory (Red Dragonfly Press).