MY CANNOTS

by Kim Malinowski

I cannot say ban guns 

 

I cannot say ban assault rifles 

when the Uzi I fired at eight still thrums 

its song through my veins, the recoil still smacking muscle 

rifle stabled on rusty hood 

merging in fierce moment with those before me 

deep in warrior chant. 

 

I cannot cannot say ban assault rifles 

the morgue has seen enough mangled 

enough loved ones pointing at shirts that should be muddy 

not tie-dyed with blood. 

 

I cannot cannot cannot watch faces line up  

as if on the milk carton shelf 

rows of parents, rows of children, wives, lovers, husbands, police 

panic the pledge of allegiance 

 

I cannot cannot cannot 

 

cannot see plague 

 

when I prime flintlock, inherit ancestors’  

gunpowder  

  savor gritty aftertaste  

Kim Malinowski is a lover of words. Her collection Home was published by Kelsay Books and her chapbook Death: A Love Story was published by Flutter Press. She has three forthcoming verse novels. Her work has appeared in War, Literature, and the Arts, BOMBFIRE, S/tick, Mookychick, and others. Her work dictated that she become a political science defined rebel, advocating for listening and understanding of our individual and collective history and bringing it to the page. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable. 

WHILE ON FACEBOOK

by Andrea Murphy

I’ve become obsessed
scrolling and clicking
to read the obscene
blood splattered justifications
of racism in blue,
in blue with
bullets and badges.

One says: “Black Lives
Matter. Blah, blah, blah.”
Another says, “Kill the
blue rat bastards killing
us.”
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE

And I am black scrolling
And I am blue scrolling
And I am filled with
the numbers
of the mentally ill. Killed.
Of little black boys
with toy guns. Killed.
Scrolling and clicking
in terror, I beg my
husband to be a
loyal puppy,
docile dog when in a car
with expired tags
or broken tail light
or when caught making an
illegal turn. We have
a five year old daughter.
He’s sworn to wear
his license as dog tags.
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE

They dog-tag toes
of black men at
the morgue five times
more often than whites
killed by blue men.
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE
“Don’t shoot;
hands up.”
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE
And gasp
And grieve
at death and hate because
I am obsessed with the
loss of our humanity.



Andrea Murphy is a fifteen year educator, who is currently on hiatus. She has taught English at both high school and community college. During this hiatus, she has decided to focus on her passion for creative writing and is an emerging poet in the St. Mary’s of California MFA program. Recently, she published a poem on Moonglasses.com. If asked what she plans to do with her degree, she would tell you that she intends to enjoy it.  She loves the lyrical expression of language and has made it her primary intention of study as she writes about family, legacy, illness, and blackness from a “womanist” perspective.  

EGYPT NOW

by David Radavich

Photo copyright by Tom Prokop.
 Used with permission from 123RF.

Is this
a worse desert
than the one
we knew?

Sharp, with no
relief of sun
or sand

and the faces
down like

ghosts

a violence
so pure

even the angels

cry out
in their belfries.


Every body
is ultimate

alone
in its blood

night
crawling

nowhere
safer than a morgue.


The palm trees
don’t know

their own water,

air aches
bent overhead.


Don’t tell time
to return

until

the sand

falls through.

                      
David Radavich’s recent collections include America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007), Canonicals: Love’s Hours (2009), and Middle-East Mezze (2011). His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe . His new collection is The Countries We Live In.