STICK BOYS

by Lynne Schilling

© Bidouze Stephane | Dreamstime.com

Like a tower of graceful giraffes, Ethiopian  

boys on bamboo stilts walk high over the land.

 

The boys smile; some have intricate designs

painted on their faces or long, straight legs. 

 

Their aerial travel allows them to spot the cows 

in high grass, avoid the bites of venomous snakes.

 

It makes me think of those who bend the knee,

smudge the line between right and wrong—

 

the bottom-lined CEOs, the well-endowed

university presidents, the media moguls,

 

the politicians and puffed-up agency heads, 

the bonus-hungry citizens—

 

They look weak and cowed on the ground

among the vipers.

While Lynne Schilling has been writing poetry on and off for forty years, she began writing  seriously four years ago at age 75.. She has published in Quartet, The Alchemy Spoon, Rue Scribe, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Lucky Jefferson and others. She has a poem forthcoming in contemporary haibun online. 

READING THE TEA LEAVES

by Kit Zak 

Since our first report, the massive campaign against climate science – and action on climate, funded by oil barons the Koch Brothers has come to light. And while fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, whose very products are causing global warming, continue to fund think tanks driving the campaigns, much of the foundation funding has now been driven underground, masked by a funding front-group called the Donors Trust – and its associate Donors Capital Fund, two “donor-advised” funds created to hide the real givers and thus shield them from negative exposure of their support for these campaigns. Funding to the organizations that comprise the denial machine has risen during the Obama presidency, just as the urgency of climate solutions and promise of policy advances also rose. --Greenpeace, September, 2013

three falls later
traces of Sandy's wrath linger
losses top 50 billion
in a swath from Norfolk to Maine

Tacloban's cyclone
bodies line roadsides
the unnamed dumped in mass graves
thirst  hunger  disease stalk
the half-dead search for Mom and Son
among shack-splintered debris

tornadoes blight Illinois
tearing through twelve states
the highest winds ever
telephone poles stuck in trees
cars flipped upside down, found two lots away
500 homes in one town rubbled

fossil fuel moguls sigh
calculate their rising costs.


Kit Zak lives with her husband in Lewes,  DE. She has most recently had poems published in an anthology about motherhood as well as in the following journals: Avocet: A Nature Journal, The Blue Collar  Review,  and A Time of Singing.

ARE YOU BEING SERFED?

by James Cronin

Image source: Occupy Sandy Relief

Power lines await the squall.
Climate, hotter and wetter,
plays its part. Which is better,
trim the trees or let them fall?

The boss, moneyed, payday sees,
(too many workers will rile
the market) and so with guile
says trim the costs not the trees.

Oil barons who led BP,
joining moguls making mints,
put profits first then repent,
cutting corners kills at sea.

Shadow bankers weave and bob,
sales of swindles yet unpriced
making millions, what a heist!
Who’d suspect an inside job?

One party’s solons, knowing
nothing, pitch to rustic fools:
lower taxes, skewer rules,
keep the fracking oil flowing.

Damn teachers and their unions,
cops, firemen too; who needs them?
Workers should find their bottom,
picking grapes or green onions.

Health care lies can work once more.
Use some fibs and bull feces,
let the old die in pieces.
Stuck with vouchers? Don’t get sore.

Who knows best? The top percent.
Laid off workers need not frown,
Swiss bank wealth will trickle down.
The homeless can save on rent.

Pledge all to that man Grover;
backed by billions, he can grin.
Gut the country? It’s no sin,
“starve the beast” ‘til it’s over.

Like lemmings attempting flight,
or dogs in sad distemper,
folks fall free, not a whimper.
The day’s sold, who’ll price the night?


After a four decade career in the law, both as a lawyer and as a juvenile court judge, James Cronin is enjoying his retirement pursuing literary studies and creative writing.