HANUKKAH

by Anita S. Pulier

Sure, we know the story.

Desecration of a temple,

hopelessness, sorrow.

Short on sanctified oil

the fire and light on hand

turn out to be good enough,

darkness is defeated.

And isn’t that the point?

Things are never perfect,

never, and “good enough”

is the miracle.

As each of our children

comes into their own,

defying myth and dogma,

they create for us, the

generation of overseers,

a unique spectrum in which

to pause, inhale the holiday,

embrace imperfection

redefine terms, witness

history in the making.

Anita's latest book is Leaving Brooklyn (Kelsay Books). Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily. 

IN RESPONSE TO RFK’S STATEMENTS ABOUT AUTISM

by CL Bledsoe

My child was born pyrokinetic, 
daughter then son, something in between
that’s the best of both. They can make
fire with words, fire with eyes. My child
burns brighter than the sun being reborn. 
Their potential is immeasurable, more 
than the cups and spoons of normality
can pinch off. Their eyes smell of smoke,
of bright chaff burning. The cracklep
on the wind. Yazoo City never heard
as much applause. Hard as diamond,
the stress of the world holds its place
in their side-eye. A miracle in combatp
boots. The sun in black. The world 
hates unicorns. That’s why you see
so few. 

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels If You Love Me, You’ll Kill Eric Pelkey and The Devil and Ricky Dan. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his teenager.

FOR VAL I GIFT YOU—YOU

by Joseph Hope

For Val I gift you a country 

without a government: without a place (segregation) 

for black or white or color riot. A song as soft as the snow.

I gift you rain in the desert. A bow without an arrow, 

so you don't hunt. I gift you a heart as big as Asia. 

A smile as warm as Summer. A will as strong as Africa. 

I gift you meditation as deep as the oceans of Europe. 

For Val, I gift you the pain of childbirth. The giggling that comes afterward. 

The innocence of a thousand childhoods. The riches of the earth. 

I gift your friendship. The (im)perfect family. Cry. Laugh. Cry. Laugh. 

I gift you the reasons to go on and on 

and never quit to try again and again. 

I gift you the rain and the bow; rainbow. 

The songs of the ancient. The hope of the future. 

I gift you miracle. Goodnews. 

For Val, I gift you—you.

Joseph Hope writes from Nigeria, West Africa. He believes he's a metaphor for what can be, what is possible. His works are forthcoming or already published in Reckoning Press, Timber ghost press, Evening Street Press, Zoetic Press, The New Verse News, Praxis Magazine, Ubu, AfroPoetry, Gemini Spice Magazine, Spillwords, SprinNG, Writers Space Africa, anthologies, and more. He's a reader for reckoning press. He was a fellow in the 2021 SprinNG Writing Fellowship. He tweets @ItzJoe9 & IG: _hope_joseph

MINDFULNESS

by Mary K O'Melveny

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, was one of the world’s most famous peace advocates, philosophers and poets. He developed the concept of “engaged Buddhism” and worked actively to bring an end to the tragic American war against Vietnam and bring aid to its victims, without taking sides in the conflict. He lived in exile in France for many years and returned to Vietnam in 2005. He wrote more than 100 novels, books of poetry, short stories, essays and religious philosophy treatises, including Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, and The Miracle of Mindfulness. He died on January 22 at the age of 95 at a Buddhist temple in Hue. Kham/Reuters photo accompanying January 23, 2022 “Thich Nhat Hanh obituary” at The Guardian: Thich Nhat Hanh at the Non Nuoc pagoda, north of Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2007.

is the light that shines through

each thought, each act, each breath,

each miracle that makes our world

alive    present   comprehensible

 

each breath forms a bridge

between our body and our mind 

heart and touch   sight and vision

knowledge and understanding

 

if we sit  as Buddha might sit

inhale   exhale   inhale    exhale

we learn from each leaf  each egret

each flowing river  each drop of rain

 

if we walk as if our feet

seeded flowers  our earth transforms

each day is the only day given

to make our peaceful pathway

 

each part of us  is part of all

each idea   each action    bears our name

hope will make each day bearable 

then we can begin to save each other

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

LINES

by Diane Vogel Ferri

People lined up in their cars at a food distribution site in San Antonio, Tex., in April 2020.Credit...Credit: William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News, via Associated Press and The New York Times.

My wall calendar helps me to visualize

my life, the plans I hold dear, the people

I must see so they also see me

At first the lines were through the

scribbling on my calendar,  an oddity,

disappointing at most—a temporary month

Sometimes there were two lines,

an X-ing out, a permanent loss

I catalogued the failures in my journal

Then the lines were of standing humans

waiting to vote, car-lines of hungry children

waiting for the food school had denied them

lines circling the parking lots for tests,

lines at the border, lines at the shelters,

lines at the unemployment office,

lines in the streets to confront the wizard 

behind the curtain, asking when we will be normal? 

But he was a fraud, a canceler of science, of truth

Freedom was not taken by a government

freedom was not taken at all, only

innocent lives, their coffins in orderly lines

The lines are now for a miracle,

for we who are left, whose lives have not

been crossed out, who are free to live.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her newest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Raven’s Perch, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Wend Poetry, Her Words, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel).

THANKSGIVING 2020

by Catherine Gonick

If we are lucky this year, it reminds us of our people.

Of the things we can’t forget. Of things that others

never let us forget, like the year I read Julia Child

and made my sister peel fifty chestnuts with a paring knife

to go with the brussel sprouts. The year a boy

cousin and I each ate an entire drumstick

by ourselves, so much food we couldn’t get up

from the table after dessert. The year the gigantic

turkey, fresh from the oven, was left to rest  

on a side-table, and when everyone showed up

to eat, was almost gone, a carcass, with only

a little meat left on its bones. We thought

it had been devoured by another animal,

possibly a cat, a huge one that must have got in

through the open window,  a beast no one had seen

enter or leave but was known to exist

in the neighborhood.  Was that one of the years

where people got stoned? Like the time I lit up

with the straightest women I knew, my mother

and her favorite niece, who wore cashmere

and brought her own grass? I have forgotten,

but not my mother’s stuffing, the best

and most basic. Pieces torn from bread,

a lot of butter, just enough sage, celery

and onion. Giblets if you can get them.

Cooked inside the bird, without thermometer.

Serve and say prayers for the dead.

Raise a drumstick like a talking stick

and ask for blessings on your table

and our nation. Pass the potatoes

and give thanks for a democracy that, like

our turkey the year of the cat, was nearly

shredded, yet, by some miracle, still left

with enough meat to feed us.

 

Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly,  Lightwood, Forge, Sukoon, and PoetsArtists, and in anthologies including in plein air and Grabbed. She was awarded the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the National Ten-Minute Play Contest with the Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is part of a company that fights the effects of climate change.

SCHADENFREUDE

by Kate Bernadette Benedict

Think of it as the finest of desserts,

a cake of red velvet or German chocolate,

the delectable finale to a wretched meal, 

one bitter course after another,

vinegar in our flutes instead of wine.

How the sweetness makes everything right!

How it neutralizes that slosh of acids

a supper of suffering inflicted.

Relish it slowly, bite by exquisite bite.

Lick the icing from your fingers.

It's a miracle of a confection, it's never done,

the cakes just keep coming.

There's more for everyone.

Kate Bernadette Benedict of New York City is the author of Earthly Use: New and Selected Poems.

WORST CASE

by Gilbert Allen




"Corpses piled / tenderly along the curbs"
—Dorianne Laux (“Lord of the Flies,” 2020)

"I do not pity the dead, I pity the dying."
—James Wright (“At the Executed Murderer's Grave,” 1958)


Nobody dares give a damn about the dead,                                    
not now. Because if you did, you’d be
a demiurge of shadows—your own ghost,
unholy, praying for a miracle.                                                                      
A miracle to parse the mystery
of presences, of all the universe—
its molecules and light, its stars, coronas,                
infections, choices, triage, viruses.

Patient or provider, in this bed                                
you have a life to tend and medicate                      
as best you can. Till the determined day
you’ll move beyond the pity of James Wright—
above or in the ordinary earth
we creatures are condemned to walk upon.            


Gilbert Allen shelters in place in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.

SONG OF THE SEA: MEXICO 2018

by Donna Katzin

"Mexico town devastated by earthquake welcomes thousands from migrant caravan. Migrants from Central America are fleeing poverty and violence and are still weeks away from reaching the US." —The Guardian, October 30, 2018. Photo: Central Americans fill their water bottles with juice while waiting in line to receive donated food in Niltepec, Oaxaca. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP via The Guardian.

In your unfailing love you will lead

    the people you have redeemed.

In your strength you will guide them

    to your holy dwelling.

—Exodus, 15.1

A human river,
they come in shirts and sandals,                           
children holding their hands, 
mochilas bearing their only belongings.                                           

They come in shirts and sandals,                           
hunger in their hearts,
mochilas bearing their only belongings,                                             
turn their backs on beatings, gunshots in the night.

Hunger in their hearts,
they trudge through wilderness,
turn their backs on beatings, gunshots in the night --
leave the land that gave them life.                     

They trudge through wilderness,         
envisioning a Promised Land,
leave the land that gave them life.
Together they cry out to their god.                                       

Envisioning a Promised Land
like passengers of the St. Louis,
together they cry out to their god
when the border slams shut.                                                 

Like passengers of the St. Louis,           
refusing to turn back                   
when the border slams shut,
they surge in search of a miracle.                                                                         

Refusing to turn back,
a human river,
they surge in search of a miracle,
children holding their hands.

                                                                                             

Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including TheNewVerse.News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

REVISION

by Alan Walowitz

'Palestinian Volunteer Medic Killed, Dozens Wounded' in Latest Protests on Israel-Gaza Border —Haaretz, June 1, 2018. Photo: Palestinian protesters flee from incoming tear gas canisters during clashes following a demonstration along the border with Israel east of Khan Yunis, Gaza, June 1, 2018. Credit: SAID KHATIB/AFP via Haaretz.

You must change your life, Rilke said.
But what did he know about moving toward a fence
in such ragged order, armed with rocks and kites,
where live arms will greet you,
their 19-year-old bearers trained in this same theater
and are in receipt of their rules of engagement
and memorized the battle plan
like lines in a drama where the outcome is certain,
which will only make the ending more rich, more real?
Yet, how can you tell what these supernumeraries will feel
once the curtain comes down, and the dead are not mannequins
and are moved instead to the theater of the ground?

Much like this nation where I’m told,
—even if I’m the son unable to ask—
I can return any time I’d like,
I’ve been on this earth the allotted three score and ten.
I assure you, from vast experience,
to change a life requires more than one’s full portion.
But to revise, to see yourself again,
that can be an everyday miracle, if only we’d try.
Some of our fathers tell us we’re not quite chosen,
but just to be certain, we had better be better
and a light unto the nations.
This is hard work, the toughest there is,
but, didn’t I hear God say, in some unrecorded verse,
Hey, pal, isn’t this what you signed up for?


Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. He teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in Queens. Alan’s poetry chapbook Exactly Like Love is in its second printing available from Osedax Press.

FOURTH OF JULY 2017

by Susan P. Blevins

Sad Food Face Canvas Print  by Smetek

I could not celebrate this year
the lonely clamor to feed the hole in our
hearts with hot dogs and hamburgers,
hoping for alchemical miracle, from
simple-minded barbecue to
manna from heaven to feed our wounded
hearts, but instead all we ate turned to
bitterness and regret, leaving a
mouthful of ashes and dust,
uneasy and hungry still, listening to
the bands, watching the fireworks
in all their frenzied attempt to heal the
mockery of 2017’s Independence Day.

Susan P. Blevins’s blood pressure is up since last November. She is sure the country will have serious health problems in the next four years unless an antidote is found.

HANUKKAH DEMONSTRATION AGAINST HATE

by Judith Lechner

More than 75 people from the new Hudson Valley chapter of the group Jewish Voice for Peace gathered at Wall and North streets in Uptown Kingston late Wednesday afternoon to demonstrate their solidarity with Muslims and other minority groups. —Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman, December 21, 2016

Candles challenge city lampposts, neon signs, passing headlights.

            A miraculous oil lit the lamps in the Temple.

Crowd’s voices gather strength, shout “Love, not hate, makes America great.”

            Hanukkah candle flames remind us of ancient battle against oppressors.

December night chills hands holding placards of painted candles that tell their story.

            Holy Temple in Jerusalem 170 B.C.

            Greek-Syrian despot Antioch  forbids Jewish worship.

            Sends soldiers to massacre resistors in Land of Israel.

            Invaders erect altar to Zeus defiling the Temple.

            Long struggle led by Judah Maccabee wins back the holy site.

            Only enough oil to purify the Temple for one day.

            A miracle—oil burns for eight days.

Hanukkah is the memory of the rededication of the Temple.

            Purification celebrated by lighting eight candles one a day.

We dedicate ourselves to fighting hate in the temple within.

            Shine light on the persecution of Muslims and Blacks. 

We form a human menorah to display our unity in diversity.

            Lights spell out our message of brotherhood and justice.

Each candle helps illuminate inner darkness, clear hatred from clouded eyes.

             The message of Hanukkah --“a miracle can happen here.”

Judith Lechner—poet, short story and essay writer—has also written 24 nonfiction books for school libraries. Her poetry book The Moon Sings Back appeared in 2011. She is a member of the Goat Hill Poets, a performance group and has won the Green Heron Poetry Prize and Tattoo Haiku contest.

HOLY WEEK 2013

by James M. Croteau

Making dinner
with my lover
while NPR covers
gay marriage hearings
in the Supreme Court,
Inconceivable
in my boyhood
when nothing
was covered, or
everything
was covered, hearing
confined to mother’s words
warning of dirty
old men after little boys
in filthy public restrooms.
There will be no Easter
miracle, I’m sure,
I’ll not live to see
marriage in Michigan
where we cut our vegetables,
but simply standing
here with him,
this simple meal we make
is empty tomb enough
for that gay boy in me.

James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States. He recently had his first poem accepted for publication in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose.