WE WANT A PRESIDENT

a wish list

by Bonnie Proudfoot in collaboration with Betsy Mars

We want a president who moves in down the street, 
spends a week or two. Even if we live in Flint, NOLA,
Hindman, Gallop, Butte, or the Bronx.
 
Who stands at the feet of a chalk line 
around victims of gun violence and weeps 
with families, friends, neighbors of the slain.
 
Who Faces the Nation and Meets the Press, 
This Week and other weeks as well.
 
Who flies Southwest economy class, 
rides the F train, buys local, birdwatches,
who saves the spotted owl, the monarch butterfly
the spotted salamander and the gopher frog. 
 
Who celebrates the 4th of July with poetry.
 
Who protects women who want to bring babies
Into the world and defends women who don't,
stands up for anyone facing gender-based rage,
who nurtures babies and spends time with children, 
not to teach them how to grow up faster 
but to teach herself how to imagine more.
 
Who pays taxes, declares gifts, keeps promises,
learns other languages, uses them. 
 
Who opens the White House doors to heads of
non-profits and legal aid groups, to teachers, 
911 dispatchers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists, 
actors, musicians, dancers, artists, farmworkers, 
bridge builders, smoke jumpers, border guards, 
police, soldiers, not just to donors or glitterati
 
Who recycles the plastic she picks up 
on shorelines and riverbeds. Who puts
solar panels on the roof of the White House and
charges her EV fleet. Who walks or bikes.
 
Who calls out sulfur leaching through creeks, 
fish floating belly up in lakes and rivers, 
the scraped-off mountaintops of Appalachia 
and all abominations to earth in the name of profit
 
Whose compassion breaks us open. 
Whose gravity weighs on us. Whose hope
holds us steady. Who laughs her ample laugh
shakes her womanly hips, hoists her groceries 
in an NPR tote bag, asks too many questions, 
dreams bigger than we ever could.
 
Who sits with Native American elders, 
holds an ear to the earth 
and listens.
 
 
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

 
Bonnie Proudfoot writes fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays. Her novel, Goshen Road (OU/ Swallow Press) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway. Her 2022 poetry chapbook, Household Gods, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig editions, along with a forthcoming book of short stories, Camp Probable. Bonnie resides in Athens, Ohio.

MISSING

by Laura Rodley

Native and Himalayan Views souvenir shop along the Mohawk Trail in Charlemont removed the 20-foot-tall Native American statue in front of the Route 2 store. Photo Credit: Native and Himalayan Views Facebook via Daily Voice.

First I passed the feathers
of the headdress
over the lip of Greenfield Mountain,
a headdress on a flatbed,
then the rest of the body
of the twenty-foot
Native American statue
that stood in Charlemont
in front of the gift shop
since before I was born,
the shop changing hands
many times, 
and now it’s being trucked
to Vinita Oklahoma, so distinctive
it’s recognizable from the tip
of headdress lying flat,
his face carved with deep grooves,
resembling oak bark, no smile.
I miss it already,
though I haven’t seen
it in years.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

PROFESSOR BULLHEAD AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY

by Peter Neil Carroll

He was soft-spoken, it seemed

when we first me, this son of

the Osage nation, introduced 

to me by a mentor we shared.

 

They were drinking Bourbon

at the hotel bar, headquarters

of the annual historical convention

at Chicago’s posh Palmer House.

 

Bullhead was about 30, though his

smooth skin may have made him look

younger. He knew a lot more history

than I did, but he was still seeking a job.

 

We met again a few years later, young

instructors, similar interests, but he was

still untenured looking for a safe niche.

He told me he had a plan to get promoted.

 

After the usual delays, he presented his plan

to the giants of our profession. Why not,

he asked, offer a course on Native American

history equivalent to ancient or medieval history?

 

Insults began before he finished. Dumb idea.

Worthless. How could Indians who spoke  

Algonquin be compared to Cicero or Duns Scotus?

Besides, a new course would reduce enrollments.

 

Bullhead interrupted the outrage and withdrew

his proposal, walked quietly to the door, then

slammed it shut like a blast of an atom bomb.

No one ever changed their minds, spoke regrets. 

Peter Neil Carroll is currently Poetry Moderator of Portside.org. His latest collection of poetry is Something is Bound to Break (Main Street Rag Press). Earlier titles include Fracking Dakota and A Child Turns Back to Wave which won the Prize Americana. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, recently in Cultural Weekly, Freshwater Poetry, Plainsongs, and BigCityLit.

ON THE APPOINTMENT OF JOY HARJO AS POET LAUREATE

by Peter Witt

Portrait by Sophie Herxheimer for Poetry Foundation.

I jumped for Joy
  with her appointment
  her anointment
as poet laureate
  her native background
  her tone, her sound
  her qualities
  beyond a baccalaureate
a musician and author
what does she offer?
  a box checked
  for ancestry
  recognition of her poetry
  her mastery
  ultimate flattery

As a nation
  we're diverse
  should display
  in our verse
different voices
  make different choices
honor perspectives
  varied objectives

Joins Joseph, Louise,
Robert, Rita, Juan
as firsts, but not lasts
there will be more
  in store
for melting cauldron
to remind our children
  not all are white
  not all are male
but if we fail
to honor our diversity
  our history
  our mystery
we lose
  our sanity
  our humanity

So, yes
I jumped for Joy
as we enjoy
the magic
of her
poetic
wisdom

Peter Witt lives in Texas and is a retired professor.  His poetry appears on allpoetry.com and has been included in several publications.

CAN IT HAPPEN HERE?

by  Jon Taylor

Image source: Newspaper Rock

Ask a Native American
declared a “merciless Indian savage”
in the country’s founding document
taught with reverence to schoolchildren.

Ask a descendant
of slaves from Africa
who isn’t behind bars with two million
others of his inheritance.

Ask a Mexican
who had the temerity
to resettle in the land Anglos stole
from his ancestors.

Ask an Arab immigrant
who was removed from an airplane
because his fellow passengers
felt uncomfortable in his presence.

Ask a six-year-old
taken from school in handcuffs
because he pulled the pigtails
of the girl in front of him.

Ask the parents
who lost custody of their children
because they let them walk home
from school by themselves.

Ask the old boy
shot dead in his armchair
when the law broke down his front door
looking for someone else.

Ask yourself
while being cavity searched
at the side of the road
for rolling through a stop sign.

Jon Taylor is the author of Berry Picker’s Blues, a book of Michigan/Northwoods/Upper Peninsula poems. He can be reached at taylor.jon440[at]gmail.com .

BEADED BOUNTY

by Catherine Wald

“Much of the beadwork featured in many pieces — from Ka’igwu moccasins to a Ute tobacco bag — used tiny glass seed beads from Venice, Italy, acquired through trade with Europeans.” —Seattle Times review (February 20, 2015) of “Indigenous Beauty”  at the Seattle Museum of Art.

Fingertips clasping confetti colors, I grasp
                  glass beads of Venice to recount ravens,
                                    superimpose suns and hawks. In shades of
                                                      Roman frescoes, my fables spin out:
                                                                        breathless as clouds, self-contained as cacti.

Plunder purchased from ghost-people, even in service
                  of beauty, of love, comes at a cost I can't fathom as I
                                    caress and pierce these tiny hulks, adorn
                                                      my childrens’ tunics with their shimmer.

As I bead, prairies are denuded, tents torched.
                  As I braid, Armageddons are prophesied and fulfilled.
                                    As I stitch, our love affair with earth is defiled by
                                                      notions of ownership; our sons succumb to
                                                                        microbes; our daughters birth monkeys;
                                                                                          our rivers run black, then dry.

Catherine Wald's books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.

NIZHONI, A YOUNG NAVAJO

by William Roland Rozar

Image source: Indian Children's Program

                                 April is Child Abuse Prevention Month 
                                        --Navajo-Hopi Observer, April 22, 2014


  This is my poem
                              This is my song
    I beat it on my drum
    My father beats me everyday
    He says it will make me strong
    And that someday I will pass my strength
    On to my children
    Who I will make strong.
                              But I just hurt,
    All the time,
                              And want to run away
    To leave and never return,
                              That also hurts,
    I must find a place
                                Where no one
    Can touch me.
                                This is my song
    I beat it on my drum.


William Roland Rozar is a poet who lives and writes in Eugene, Oregon.