ABOUT LOVE

by Ryan Caidic

 

 

Nearly 200,000 people in 124 villages in the northeastern Philippines were affected and over 5,400 fled massive plumes of ash that billowed from Mayon volcano over the weekend due to the collapse of lava deposits from its slopes, officials said Monday. —AP, May 4, 2026

Mayon is the most active volcano in the Philippines, erupting over 52 times in the past 500 years... Its most destructive recorded eruption occurred on February 1, 1814. The volcano belched dark ash and eventually bombarded the town of Cagsawa [where] about 1,200 locals perished in what is considered to be the most lethal eruption in Mayon's history. —Wikipedia

 

 

We live in the time of ash and awe,

where the bell tower of a ruined

cathedral frames the perfect dome

 

its crater glow combusting in pallid

pyroclastic smoke, thousands have fled

its strombolian show

 

of affection, amid the terrible beauty

engulfing kilometers of sky and city

under siege of nature’s desire

 

to shape itself, they say that Mayon

was the womb that rose from the burial

tomb of lovers Magayon and Panganoron

 

passion in the form of fire turned crust

then magma, then igneous stone

then lava, then a quiet, then rage,

 

then warmth, then grief, then ash again—

layers that unravel histories, unpredictable

yet predictable all the same.

 

Those who were burned have forgotten

relocating closer to the pulse

where the fire of Ibalon resides.

 

That’s the theology of love.

To be close enough to feel the rumble

of a molten heart, to be in the shadow

 

of its ending, and to exist,

every time a little more consumed

by its divine ravishing of flame.  

 

 

Ryan Caidic is a Filipino poet and advertising creative living in Denmark. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, The Missouri Review, Southeast Review, Apricity, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere, and has been highly commended by the Bridport Prize and Munster Literature Center.  

HANUKKAH

by Anita S. Pulier

Sure, we know the story.

Desecration of a temple,

hopelessness, sorrow.

Short on sanctified oil

the fire and light on hand

turn out to be good enough,

darkness is defeated.

And isn’t that the point?

Things are never perfect,

never, and “good enough”

is the miracle.

As each of our children

comes into their own,

defying myth and dogma,

they create for us, the

generation of overseers,

a unique spectrum in which

to pause, inhale the holiday,

embrace imperfection

redefine terms, witness

history in the making.

Anita's latest book is Leaving Brooklyn (Kelsay Books). Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily. 

WHAT THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK SAID

by Howie Good

As of January 24, the Doomsday Clock sits at 90 seconds to midnight. Jamie Christiani /   Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

The chemistry set I got for my 10th birthday came with glass test tubes and small bottles of dry chemicals in jewellike colors, plus a booklet with precise instructions on how to rubberize a hardboiled egg. It was the era of the Space Race. The scientist in the white lab coat held the Cold War rank of cultural spokesperson for progress. We were taught in school to worship science, as thousands of years ago a many-eyed beast with a body like a leopard’s and feet like a bear’s was worshipped. The clock declares it’s now nine seconds to midnight. Down in the street, an addled homeless man waves his arms around while remonstrating with a vicious-looking companion only he can see. 

Howie Good's latest poetry book is Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems from Redhawk Publications. He co-edits the journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

PITY THE NATION

by Kent Reichert

after Kahlil Gibran

after Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Pity the nation whose people look and speak and act alike,
embracing white as the color without hue.
Whose citizens chant in auditoriums,
as if the act of uttering the words
will make it so.
Whose minds, in the light of day,
shutter themselves from its rays,
preferring darkness as their dwelling.
Whose sacred books,
transformed into photographs,
are impotent.
Who fabricate fanciful explanations
atop a single grain of sand,
and cloak their ignorance in veneers of “rights” and “freedoms.”
Pity the nation whose lawmakers
bury their discerning eyes in graves of party
genuflecting to the loudest, vulgar voice
in fawning adoration at the words,
“…for I alone can save you!”
Pity the nation whose leader paints only forgeries
and whose citizens cry, “Masterpiece!”
Who fondle each new lie in bed at night,
seduced by its base allure.
Pity the nation to whom the glory of the myth
is the only truth.


Kent Reichert is retired from schools but not from words. His poems have appeared in The Dead Mule.  He is the author of two chapbooks, Soon Ah will be done… and Chronology of Spirits.

DEMOCRACY AS A WAY OF LIFE

by George Salamon

"We need to save democracy from capitalism, and save capitalism from itself." —Kevin J. Delaney, “American Workers Deserve to Live With Dignity,” The New York Times, July 5, 2020


Let us pretend this leopard can
Change its spots, let us dream
The impossible dream once more.
Not this old boy, who's not ready
For one more plunge into an
Unfulfillable dream to overturn
The one created by our Indian-
Killing, slave-owning heroes by
Our greed-consumed wheelers
And dealers and salesmen from
The Frontier to Silicon Valley, a
Dream without roots in democracy
But in the cult of Mammon and Mars,
Talking the big lie, the bigger promise,
But walking in the bloody footsteps of
Absurdities and atrocities committed
Against the humanism no magician or
Leader can inject into the heart of our
Homegrown capitalism.
We can "save" democracy in America
By making it our way of life, democracy
With its own culture grown from the
Essential democratic truths about the
Values of human life, beginning with the
Long march of democracy, sustained by
The new American Dream, through the
"Unprecedented waves and storms" our
Poet of democracy predicted and, with
Grit, patience and luck reach that "city
Upon a hill" as it morphs from myth into
A place of democratic life.


George Salamon, inspired by Whitman, in St. Louis, MO.

THE ERROR

by David Mason

Aeon-Uranus, Gaea, Carpi, Horae and Prometheus, Greco-Roman mosaic, Damascus Museum via Theoi Greek Mythology

So much descends from the sky
and rises to it, Ouranos to the Greeks
in a mistaken myth. So much descends
and rises, rain and prayers, errors
and Eros with his wings and arrows.
Man-god, mistake, the sky
is woman, womb of all weathers,
and what descends from that first mistake
is the line of all-white men in ties
of righteousness, stupidity and lack
of any understanding of the world.
They fall in line, sit in judgment.
They reject. They cut and dig
for dollars made of dead things
pressed for a billion years.
They who believe the myth
of Ouranos can’t see the clouds
as bellies giving birth to rain,
can’t feel the tears
of anyone but themselves.


David Mason is an American poet living in Tasmania.

BERLIN, DECEMBER 19, 2016

by J.D. Smith





Much reading renders dust the myth
Of some past golden age,
As rust and tarnish, canker, rot
Have flyspecked every page.

Outlines emerge, though, that describe
The wax and wane of powers
And which times had the wit to build—
Or only tear down—towers.

As on a crowded street one sorts
The harmless from the threat,
Some stories stand out from the day
And mark a turn, so that

If we can’t quite assay this age
Or what it is replacing,
We still can feel the flames and smell.
The swart smoke of debasing.

J.D. Smith’s third collection of poems Labor Day at Venice Beach was published in 2012; his first humor collection Notes of a Tourist on Planet Earth the following year.. His poems have appeared in journals and sites including 99 Poems for the 99 Percent, Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, Texas Review, and Dark Mountain 3.

NO CLOUDS LEFT TO COVER US

by Allie Long

Into orbit around Jupiter. Lockheed Martin built the Juno spacecraft for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Photo credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin via UniverseToday.

The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. —NASA explaining how the space probe Juno was named.

Jupiter covers his infidelity
with thick clouds, masquerading

behind an entire atmosphere
as something we’d want to discover.

He surely looks at Earth and laughs
at the colorless vapor that veils

the outlines of land and sea, at how
we are tilted in constant bow to the sun.

We cannot cover our sins like a god.
The façade of our planet is cracked

like the skin that surrounds a laceration,
framing a picture for the Universe

of our uniformed men sweeping our black
bodies away in a flood of blood-spatter

while we choose to read lists of their crimes
as eulogies. They must die a thousand times

on our televisions and a thousand more behind
the eyelids of loved ones. We turn blue fabric

purple, soaking it in the holes our bullets dig
into the men who resemble killers. We are unable

to grant that lungs still rise and fall below
badges, that no offense can hide a dead body

as it rots without reverence in the street,
that no cloud can clot bullet wounds.

Soon, Juno will peer through Jupiter's curtain
and crash to her death on his surface,

and we will finally be forced to recognize
that a guilty man never becomes the victim.

Allie Long is an economics and English double-major at the University of Virginia. Her poetry appears in Ground Fresh Thursday, Yellow Chair Review, and Bird's Thumb.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

by Chris O’Carroll

He wasn’t good.  He wasn’t great.
It’s 50 years now since he died.
Weird fantasies proliferate
About who plotted and who lied.

We crave real grandeur.  “Camelot”
Suffices as a substitute.
The romance of who might have shot
Trumps the dull fact of who did shoot.

We did not lose a golden age
Because the sniper found his aim,
But truth is never all the rage;
Myth is a more crowd-pleasing game.

When presidents are rated, he
Ranks as a gilded bantamweight,
More tawdry than he seemed to be.
He wasn’t good.  He wasn’t great.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  On November 22, 1963, he heard the news over the intercom in a Massachusetts junior high school.  Since then, he has published numerous poems in The New Verse News, and also in First Things, Light, The Rotary Dial, Snakeskin, and other print and online journals.

THE APOCALYPSE GOES UNNOTICED IN NEWTOWN

by Catherine McGuire

No one needs predictions, there.

And on Turkish borders, huddled tents

have no preps for crisis. Trenton slums,

the barrios of Rio, the drained and droughty deltas

of Tigris, or Sudan – Apocalypse can knock

and enter; no one will care.

Which is to say, the world is always ending;

our treasures crumble, dust to dust.

The myth-inflated bogeys threaten

while behind our backs, our futures rust.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep interest in philosophy, the “Why we are here?” question that lurks under so much of our lives. She will have a chapbook released by Uttered Chaos in September. It is tentatively titled, Reflections, Echoes and Palimpsests. She is webmaster for the Oregon Poetry Society and claims her entire garden as her 'poetry office'.