TO THE ASHES IN L.A.

by Alexis Krasilovsky

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

A poem is a monument

when there aren’t enough stones

to place on the burial grounds

to hold ghosts

in place.

 

A poem is a monument

when you’re exiled from the land

and poems are portable.

 

A poem is a monument

when tears

evaporate before

words can be written down.

 

When you’re fleeing flames

that multiply like stars

in a darkening firmament,

only a poem

can speak to it.

 

When lies propagate

into your flickering

consciousness,

sweeping under rugs

the killing fields.

 

When your bare feet

step onto

radioactive sand.

 

When rose petals fly

in fiery winds,

replaced by embers

and ashes.

 

A poem is a monument

when pots filled with ashes

are left in the rain,

overflowing.

 

When seeds of memories

sprout anew,

and trees grow

high enough to bring shade.

 

          A poem is a monument

          when you take time to imagine

          the gravestones

          of your ancestors.

 

Alexis Krasilovsky most recent book Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems (Cyberwit) was a finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards. She is also the author of Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling and has traveled to twenty countries making and screening her global documentary features Women Behind the Camera and Let Them Eat Cake—available for free streaming on Kanopy.com.

IN MOSCOW

by Phyllis Wax

Natalia Samsonova says she imagines the muffled screams of those trapped under the rubble, the fire and smell of smoke, the grief of the mother who lost her husband and infant child beneath the ruins of the building in Dnipro bombed by Russia. She imagines being unable to breathe. That is why she is here, at a statue to the Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka, a largely unknown monument tucked away among Moscow’s brutalist apartment blocks that has hosted a furtive anti-war memorial at a time when few in Russia dare protest against the conflict. PHOTO: A woman holds a placard reading ‘Ukraine is not our enemy, they are our brothers’ in front of a monument to Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka in Moscow. Photograph: Reuters —The Guardian, January 28, 2023

On this poor, indigent ground

I shall sow flowers of flowing colors;

I shall sow flowers even amidst the frost,

And water them with my bitter tears.

—Lesya Ukrainka

Silently                    

they lay their flowers

before the poet’s statue.              

Alone

or in twos

they stand mute.

Thunderous      

in the silence

is their sorrow

their horror

and shame

at what Russia is doing.

Phyllis Wax watches the world from Milwaukee. Much of her poetry comes from her observations. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, in print and online.

A NEW WINSTON CHURCHILL STATUE

by Tom Bauer

‘Self-indulgent’: Churchill statue plans stir public controversy, perplexity over motivation. Statue will be installed at Calgary’s McDougall Centre in 2023. —Livewire Calgary, August 27, 2022

Like deadly white mold, signs keep surfacing.

The skin of life develops pustules and blisters;

past echos of a fierce disease of dominance

resurfacing to blight the natural landscape.

Looking at faces I see hope and care.

I see landscapes of spontaneous growth

moving as one towards some shared outcome

each of us unconsciously wants to see.

Statues do not see, and will not see us through

their purpose, ownership of all we seem.

Their stone presence blocks our human landscape.

The greatest monument might come to be

feeling connected when we come together

and see the real enemy: the harms we cause.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

I AM BUILDING A WALL

by David Feela

Cartoon by J.D. Crowe

in my head
where each brick
contains an insecurity.

I say they are drugs
and rape
and murder

but they also contain
my weight
my thinning hair

and my feeble resolve
which might be remembered
on the border there

between poverty and privilege
as nothing
but grievance and rage.

I want a monument
because gold
doesn’t please me anymore

and if enough debt
gets mixed into the mortar
the wall will divide generations

and then they’ll remember me
as the one
that got this thing done.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook Thought Experiments won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A collection of his essays How Delicate These Arches was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press will release his new chapbook Little Acres in April 2019.

DEAR GOD:

by Gil Hoy

Take down
the stars and bars,

the Confederate
battle flag that flies,

over the Capitol
in Charleston.

And take down
the Confederate

veterans' monument
and the statue of the white

supremacist who was once
governor and senator

that stand nearby.
Then take down all

the vestiges of slavery,
every fiber and every stone,

every hair-thin remnant
of that terrible time

until not a rootlet remains
in any city or town.

But when the symbols of racism
are all cleared away, taken down

carried off and finally
gone:  How to remove

the lingering hatred
from a grown man’s heart?


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, magna cum laude, and won a silver medal in the New England University Wrestling Championship at 177 lbs. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as an elected Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Gil’s poems have been published recently in The New Verse News, Clark Street Review, The Penman Review, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, The Zodiac Review and To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology.

THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWNS

by Tricia Knoll

Memorial in the memory of all who died in 2004 Tsunami at the Kanyakumari Beach, India. This monument was designed and constructed by B. Kanagaraj Cangan. Image source:  Indiancorrector at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

They all are, these monuments
to the unknowns, to each chance,
what more might have played out,
might have been said in the name of peace,
what more children born to cure disease,
walk for justice, lead the way, gaze at stars,
what poem written, what painting filled
in by bones buried under
the marble of war.

These tombs are everywhere
human hands have been.
Under the killer storms,
under the genocides,
and always at
histories shortened
under white marbles of war.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.

THE DIMINISHING MONUMENT

by Daniel Patrick Roche

An ivory mockery of King erected
in the shadows of two slave owners
and the Great Emancipator.
Carved in a foreign land
erected with scab labor
it is a monument--
to Establishment ignorance
rather than to the man himself.

The misunderstanding of its subject
carved upon its walls.
"I was a drum major for justice,
peace and righteousness.”
And then later chipped away,
corrected, like a poor student
unwilling to parade his ignorance.

King died defending workplace dignity.
He is not memorialized by hard white rock
hewn from the earth by exploited peoples
working in unsafe working conditions
for substandard pay, if the pay ever comes.
His legacy is diminished by it.
Go, shutter the Mall.
Hide this porcelain disgrace
from the eyes of workers
furloughed during the pissing match
after five years of frozen wages.
Perhaps they will remember the man
when this graven image is out of sight.


Daniel Patrick Roche is a political organizer and writer living in Northern California. An alumnus of UC Berkeley, he has worked for Nevada for Change, Joe Sestak for Senate, and Diego Bernal for San Antonio City Council District 1.