WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW

by Shelly Blankman

Kids at school were cruel. They’d call her flaky. crazy, 

space cadet, airhead. She’d forget their names or where

she was going. School bells and fire alarms would echo

in her head, and her world would blur. The mockery was 

momentary. The misery would be incessant.

The last week of school, classmates autographed her 

yearbook with the labels and comments they’d hurled

to her at school. The five-minute walk home was endless.

At home, she flopped on her bed and muffled her sobs

with pillows, bursting her dam of tears.

No one knew what she’d been through. No one knew she’d

had brain surgery as a child. No one knew she had epilepsy.

Everyone could see her big head. The boys would flick it and

tug at her hair when the teacher wasn’t looking. She would 

wince, but dared not weep. Feigning fearlessness was her

armor that would be rusted by tears. As time passed, the bullies

were gone, but some labels remain.

Gus Walz stands in full view of the nation. His dad is running

for vice-president of the United States. His son has a nonverbal

learning disorder. He has no armor. He needs no armor. His dad

starts to speak. That’s my dad! he yells to the audience. His tears

flow freely. They are borne of pride, not shame. Cameras focus on him.

His tears of pride are posted on computers coast to coast. His

joy is fodder for their jokes. 

They knew there was something wrong with him.What they don’t

know is kindness. They have much to learn from people like Gus.  

Author’s Note: Gus Walz at the DNC being bullied by adults who should know better reminded me of own experience of being bullied in school for behavior that no one understood

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland with her husband of 44 years. They have two sons, Richard and Joshua, who live in New York and Texas, respectively. They have filled their empty nest with four rescue cats and a dog. Richard and Joshua surprised Shelly with the publication of her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Open Door Magazine, among others.

DOLLAR GENERAL

by Allison Joseph 

The victims of the racist shooting at a Jacksonville Dollar General store:
Angela Michelle Carr, 52; Anolt Joseph “A.J.” Laguerre Jr., 19; Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 29 

Jacksonville, August 27, 2023

What comforts you when the world is terrifying?
How do you keep your nerves and wits intact?
With all these compromises, liars lying,
like Amy sang, I just go back to black.
Should I become inured to misery,
embracing it as if it is a friend—
ignoring daily news, the grisly
spectacle and tableau, the dead ends
of broken links in paid for local news?
No wonder that I'm breaking out in hives:
I shop online, no Dollar General blues—
No supermarket trip is worth our lives. 
Is poetry still something I can use
when every day we're murdering the muse? 

Allison Joseph currently lives, teaches, and writes in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University. Her most recent collections of poems are Lexicon (Red Hen Press, 2021), Professional Happiness (Backbone Press, 2021), and Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (Red Hen Press, 2018). Confessions of a Barefaced Woman won the 2019 Feathered Quill Book Award and was a finalist in the poetry category for the 2019 NAACP Image Award. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times and in the Best American Poetry Series. She is the widow of poet and editor Jon Tribble.

INSTRUCTIONS

by Laurie Lamon

Image source: Mind Maps

Put them into the scissors’ ovals made for making

parts; fold them into the shape of the bird

crossing a wall, then vanishing into light’s room.

Let one warm the face turned on its side;

let one come to the breast as a sleepwalker touches

a door. Let them both envy the tongue.            

Let them count money like miseries that close

the eyes. Have them write in pencil the forty-two

resolutions against Israel. Have them handle

and return the identity cards of those who are here

and not here. Let them ease the burdens of smoke.

Instruct them to scatter straw, earth’s estate

to be carried in the mouths of the smallest animals.

Laurie Lamon's work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New Criterion, Ploughshares, Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, Plume, and other magazines and journals, including 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Ordinary Days, edited by Billy Collins, and thePoetry Daily and Verse Daily websites. In 2007 Lamon received a Witter Bynner award, selected by Poet Laureate Donald Hall. Lamon has also received a Pushcart Prize. Laurie Lamon has two collections of poetry are The Fork Without Hunger and Without Wings, CavanKerry Press (NJ), 2005 and 2009. Lamon is a professor of English at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington and the poetry editor for Rock & Sling.