LETHALITY

by Nan Meneely

His father taught him how to enclose a spider
so gently in tissues he can carry it live from his room
to a better place outdoors.
 
He grieves when a chipmunk lies mid-road, 
as exquisite as alive, forepaws stretched 
toward the brambly green safety ahead.
 
Knowing he might be too soft, he signs
with the Army to muscle up. But he didn’t bargain
for lethal, a word the recruiters never said.
 
He’s as certain of this as anything:
if he killed those named his enemies—
Venezuelans in fishing boats oceans away,
 
brown men working shop floor or field for minimum wage,
protesters armed with sandwiches shouting truth
to power, Somali immigrants fleeing hate—
 
he would kill the important part of himself,
the part he would fight for in anyone else.

Author's Note: This matter matters to me. My father, a doctor with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII, joined up enthusiastically but came home with a hatred of war and what we now know as PTSD. Eventually he killed himself. So Hegseth's lethality can be lethal in too many ways. 

Nan Meneely’s first book Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award. She has been published and rejected by The New Verse News.

GEORGE BUSH PAINTS

by Louise Robertson

Putin by Bush

This is what we artists and open mic 

worshipers have hoped for

all this time with our journals

and rants and sketches, to see

someone so Republican at the altar of

art. One sees the scratchings, 

like our own attempts at the cave wall.

Hands stained red. The trick

of dimension is like a whole extra grade

level. The trick of expression--

however easy to start--

so much harder to get exactly right.

I want to take him to workshop,

talk to him about getting the bones

of it down first. What could this man know of bone

and muscle and ligament

having ignored so much gore in his path:

the scraped and scalloped wartime bodies,

the skulls looking like so many bladders

emptied of their gray and red and black,

the rubble made out of parlors and

kitchens? If that introspection

can come from making art,

if that is one of life's most elusive gifts, if that

is the divine in the human coming out,

I have to say, George: finally.

Louise Robertson has earned degrees (BA Oberlin, MFA George Mason University), poetry publications (Pudding Magazine, New Verse News, Parting Gifts) and poetry awards (Mary Roberts Rinehart, Columbus Arts Festival Poetry Competition -- twice). She is active as a poet and organizer in her local Columbus, Ohio poetry.