EXTENDED MAGS FOR KING GEORGE III

by Dave Day

Source: For the Sake of Arguments

Grapeshot, grapeshot

British artillery and redcoat musketmen

undone by Rhode Island farmboys

heeding the militia’s call

bearing

fully automatic AR-15s with

laser sights and aerial drone support

the colonists spray the loyalists

in the killzone

nine-millimeter sidearm

dum-dum jacketed softpoint

magnum ACP

thirty rounds for Lord North and

the madman King George

to enfilade the tyranny of

the House of Hanover

well-regulated militiamen all

comporting with the history and tradition

of SEAL Team Six, which was founded after

the Battle of Agincourt

the militia, our militia

selfless minutemen doffing

tricorne hats, brass buttons gleaming on

ballistic body armor, hurrah!

Dave Day is an attorney from Honolulu, Hawaii.  Dave has published poetry in The Ekphrastic Review and The New Verse News, and extremely nonpoetic articles in the Hawaii Bar Journal and Emory International Law Review.

MYANMAR MILITARY IN PURSUIT OF POETS

by Phyllis Klein

including two excerpts of incriminating lines

Poetry remains alive in Myanmar, where unconventional weapons are being used to fight a military that has killed more than 800 people since it staged a coup on Feb. 1 and ousted an elected government. For some democracy activists, their politics cannot be separated from their poetry. Sensing the power of carefully chosen words, the generals have imprisoned more than 30 poets since the putsch, according to the National Poets’ Union. At least four have been killed, all from the township of Monywa, which is nestled in the hot plains of central Myanmar and has emerged as a center of fierce resistance to the coup. Photo: Ko Chan Thar Swe, who had left the Buddhist monkhood to write poetry, was killed in March. —The New York Times, May 28, 2021

They shoot down hands filled with artilleries

of verse, beat up feet filing into lines

of protest. They shoot at heads

but they do not know that revolution 

lives in the heart. In darkness, in daylight,

minds and hearts bulleted, to make them 

stop. But no silence. Poetry sharpens its quills, 

aims arrows into its targets. They began to burn 

the poets when the smoke of burned books could

no longer choke the lungs heavy with dissent. 

Now their smoke is everywhere as poets are doused

and matched. And still they write. Scratch words 

into cell walls with rocks, or with metal on plastic— 

bitter-cold vinyl ballads. Or memorized signposts

of the mind, indelible. Troubadours of protest 

in waves of heat. In monsoons on horizons. 

On every street in the world. Pursued by silver-ribboned 

militias climbing up a tyrannical ladder. Nibs filled 

with poison-to-the-wicked-ink. Fingerprints cupping my

face, your face, walls of alarms clanging 

against silence, revolutions of clocks’ hands.

Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forche Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018 and again in 2020. She has a new book, The Full Moon Herald, from Grayson Books that just won honorable mention for poetry from the Eric Hoffer Book Award, 2021. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

by Michael Calvert

“The NRA at FedEx.” Cartoon by Nick Anderson, April 20, 2021.

“Even as National Rifle Association leaders are called to testify in the second week of a bankruptcy trial, the gun rights organization is launching plans to lobby Congress against gun-control measures backed by President Biden and leading Democrats.” —The Washington Post, April 22, 2021

Our founders, in their wisdom, did decree

That, to protect their sacred liberty

And keep their wives and sweethearts from all harm,

All had the right to own a firearm.

 

To own a flintlock musket, that is, so

When called, those brave and stalwart men could go

To form up a militia, march off, and

Defend their precious homes and native land.

 

However, there's been one annoying glitch,

A technicality, and it's a bitch,

In the amount of time that they allowed

To load one shot, some nut can kill a crowd.

 

So now we bleed, and more die every day

To make our land safe for the NRA.

 

Michael Calvert has worked as a teacher, writer and editor in the corporate world. His poems have appeared in Light and Writer’s Digest.

THE OLD FACE WE SAW

by Ryan Schaufler

AP Photo, 1956

Jacob Blake is not dead, yet.
The 7 bullets tried to kill him.

He’s just paralyzed from the waist down
Chained to a hospital bed.

Guns don’t kill people
People kill people.

Police are people.
Police tried to do what they do:

Kill a black man by shooting him in the back,
Where they normally kneel on a neck.

They feared for their lives.
They feared for their lives.

August 29th. 2020.
The Black Panther is dead.

The year has knocked the wind out of us.
My wife & I decided to take a walk.

We drove to Port Washington.
We had lived there happily for 9 years.

That was before T***p.
Before a 17 year old thug from Antioch

Drove to our state with an AR-15
The good ole Smith and Wesson

30-round magazine loaded & ready
Protecting businesses, right?

Protecting the right to kill two & maim one.
Just like a video game. Hands up & walk away.

“Need a bottle of water?” I know you’re thirsty!
For blood. “We appreciate you!” White supremacy.

Recorded for posterity:
The voice of police.

Armored vehicles pass by
The privilege of a white boy with a big long gun

Survives
As the crowd pleads: He shot them! He killed them!

They feared for their lives.
They feared for their lives.

We lived here before all of this.
Before the plague.

Port Washington isn’t the same now.
The country is not the same now.

None of us are now. We walked by the lake.
75 degrees. Blue sky. The moon, peeking.

A playground. Deer in the distance, peeking.
The lake breeze reveals the stillness of rage.

White People frolicking under the sun.
Away from Milwaukee or Kenosha.

A Truck pulls up behind us.
Us. A white man. With his Black wife.

Truck. filled with boys. that look like
Kyle Rittenhouse. Glassy eyed. Smiling

Crooked. They slow down
Their heads out the window.

Their faces mirror the gleeful hate
60 years ago

As white pro-segregationists
Battered the bones of Freedom Riders.

Demonic smirks directed our way
A familiar evil. Just as familiar as the beautiful park

We walked. Our eyes connect.
“Boo!” A boy shouts. His face

Cold, hardened with ignorance
Smoldering with hatred. He blows a kiss

Flipping us off. I respond, instinctually, “Boo.”
Blowing a kiss back. I do not flip him off.

My wife quickly whispers to me,
“Stop. Don’t engage.”

She instructs me to cut across the park.
Away from the truck. They fit the profile.

Internet militia gang. Radicalized. White.
Militant. Seeking blood. An uncivilized war.

“You got to listen to me. They don’t see you.
They see me. You can’t respond like you want.”

She’s right. I can’t see clearly. Their rage
Enrages me. My white privilege doesn’t work here.

White people continue to picnic and laugh
Unaware of the terror. We keep our eye on the truck

As it slowly cruises the park. Are they armed?
Will they stop? Will they canvas the area with AR-15’s?

We did not call the police.
We could not call the police.

Will they shoot us for existing? They have been incited.
Trump has released the underbelly of America.

We feared for our lives.
We feared for our lives.


Ryan Schaufler lives in Milwaukee and received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts in Acting. He is a professional actor, special education teacher, theatre teacher, playwright, director, photographer, artist, and a father. His plays and poetry have been published in such journals as Southern Indiana Review, Rise Up Review, and Clockhouse. His photography can be seen in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Elizabeth Horan’s 2019 Chapbook Fem Box, Moonchild Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Riggwelter, The Perch, and Cream City Review among others. @schauflerized

THE MINUTEMAN

by Peter Nohrnberg

HOUSTON (AP, October 27, 2018) — Militia groups and far-right activists are raising money and announcing plans to head to the Mexican border to help stop the caravan of Central Americans, echoing President Donald Trump’s attacks on the migrants making their way toward the U.S. Exactly how many militia members will turn out is unclear, and as of Friday, the caravan of about 4,000 people was still some 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) and weeks away from reaching this country. But the prospect of armed civilians at the border — and the escalating political rhetoric over immigration — have fueled fears of vigilantism at a time when tensions are already running high because of the mail bomb attacks against some of Trump’s critics. The U.S. Border Patrol this week warned local landowners in Texas that it expects “possible armed civilians” to come onto their property because of the caravan. Photo: Volunteers from the Minutemen militia say they will be positioned along the U.S.-Mexico border to help stop migrants from entering the country illegally. (Jeff Topping / Getty Images)

It’s nearly sun-down, and I’ve been walking out here
All day with my binoculars, walkie-talkie and beer.
Today I pulled in just a father and his teenage son, but
some days I’ll see a van with blacked-out windows
And notice its tires flattened on the pavement and know
I’ve hit the motherlode, with seven or eight muchachos in it.
The way I see things, I’m not just keeping watch over
Our homeland but I’m also doing them a big favor,
Though I don’t suppose they’d see it that way
Even when I find them in the late hours of the day
half mad with thirst, shoeless in the scrub grass.
In truth I feel bad for them, knowing that they’ve tossed
Their savings to some snake who says he’ll get them across
no problem, walking over rattlesnakes. But who knows
the things they might be trying to smuggle in in all those
baskets they carry on them—maybe cocaine or marijuana,
or orders from Al Qaida or rabid Chihuahuas or God knows what!
Mostly you track them by the trash they leave behind:
broken glass and plastic bottles, dirty diapers and orange rinds.
I give them a sip of agua and put them in the truck to take them back
across the border, though where that is ain’t always so easy to tell
with nothing but yucca spread out across the land. Sometimes
there’s no telling where our country starts. The fence will serve
us on that front, but I doubt it will do any better than me
and my fellow minutemen in keeping out illegals.
A two-thousand mile chicken-wire run, Ed calls it.
I suppose it makes the Congressmen in Washington think
they’re doing something, spending the taxpayers’ dollars. Shit,
they don’t know a thing about life out here in West Texas
where the fill-up stations that sell cold beer are few and far between
or the little border towns where the food is good, hot and cheap.
In Marfa the pretty brown-eyed women put wild flowers in their hair
and everything’s in Spanglish . . .  What I need’s another drink.
The jokers on the nightly news announce that one in three
sneaks by, but what I say is for each one that we catch
an American keeps his day job. Hell, I’ll likely lose mine
if I don’t remember to throw these empties out the truck.
Did I say this ain’t the first time I’ve caught those two amigos?
Damn it’s getting late. I can hardly see to take a leak.
I guess I’ll stay and watch the Texas sky fill up with stars and UFOs.

Peter Nohrnberg is a scholar, poet, and father of two children. He lives in Cambridge, MA, where he served as “Poetry Ambassador” to the city last year.

RIFLE CLASS, DAY AFTER A MASSACRE

by Jon Wesick




Robert Dear shoots up a Planned Parenthood clinic.
A militia takes over a wildlife refuge.
The only defense against a conservative with a gun
is a liberal with a gun
so I spend weeks in rain, hail,
and desert heat learning to shoot.

Here, on this day the screams
of the wounded are far away.
Instead hands practice the choreography
of magazine changes and malfunction clearing.
I like the rented AR-15. It’s accurate,
doesn’t kick much, and it’s loose spring
goes boing when it chambers the next round.

Hot wind sucks water from my body
and even slathered in sunscreen my face burns.
Ammo belts on women’s hips distract me.
“It’s too quiet,” the teacher says.
“All I hear is pistols next door.
Let’s show them what real firearms sound like!”
With others I center my ghost ring sight
on a gray silhouette and squeeze the trigger.
Rifles’ booms alert car alarms. Dust puffs
on the berm behind paper targets.
Hot brass flies from an ejection port,
falls down my shirt, and burns.

We sling loaded rifles over shoulders only once.
“Feel something different?” the teacher asks.
“That’s the feeling of freedom!”
I don’t feel freedom.
I feel a rifle
and a heavy responsibility

Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over three hundred poems in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Pearl, and Slipstream. He has also published nearly a hundred short stories. One was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest. Another had a link on the Car Talk website. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts.

PURSE POWER

by Gil Hoy

Image source: Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

                1.

“A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to
the security of a free State,
the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.”

                2.

2015,  as if
in a Dream.   No one’s
      talking guns for a militia.  The army's ready,
Already armed, to protect America from any invading
        Power.    Smoke and fire,      Feel the wool
Wig pulled over the
                         Peepers to camouflage thundering
                         Profits  for piece manufacturers and
      The political power such
                        proceeds will buy.      Go ahead, pull open Oz’s curtain,
Not a constitutional leg to stand on.


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer, writer and poet. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. His poetry has appeared most recently in The Eclectic Muse, Third Wednesday, Montucky Review, The Potomac and TheNewVerse.News.

NOW, MEN HERE

by Dana Yost

SAN ANTONIO — Militia groups along the Texas-Mexico border have grown to more than 10 active "teams" from El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley, despite warnings from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and state lawmakers. More than 30 photos obtained by the San Antonio Express-News show dozens of members carrying semi-automatic rifles and wearing masks, camouflage and tactical gear, providing a first glimpse of the militias. --San Antonio Express-News, August 1, 2014

Now, men here
Mask their faces
With bandannas,
Raise black hoods over their
Heads, and stand beside
One another in the desert,
Semiautomatic rifles
Held at 45-degree angles
Across their chests.
Sentinels, they say,

Now, men here pose
Beside convoys of civilian cars,
Chase down school buses of day campers,
And they look no different
Than the cave rats of Tora Bora,
The festering sores that preen
In little fiefs of Mogadishu,
Or the drug-gang death squads
Of Juarez and Nuevo Laredo.

Now, men here
Mask their faces,
As little girls sleep
In handed-down jeans
On the other side of a wall
In the desert, sing themselves
To sleep with American songs
Learned while hiding
Under floor boards
Or manacled to bed posts
Under rain forest heat.

The good are dying.
The men in masks
And black hoods want to keep me safe,
They say. I'd rather they'd been
In Baghdad, catching shrapnel
Before it split the face
Of my nephew's best friend,
I do not fear
Little children
Who want to sing songs
From our radios.
I do not fear
Little men
Who hide their faces
When they kill.


Dana Yost ended his 29-year career as an award-winning daily newspaper editor in 2008. Since then, he has authored four books. His poems have appeared in several literary journals, and he is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He has lived in Forest City, Iowa, since 2010.