ARE WE THERE YET?

Passover 2022

by Anita S. Pulier

Marc Chagall's "Passover Haggadah"

Celebrate forty years of wandering.

40 years of searching.

Read Haggadah to the children,

give thanks,

sing praises

for the tribe surviving.

Focus on the ancients,

not the news.

Ignore ICE, as it issues

this warning: if officers

view you as Other,

hear a foreign accent,

take notice of shabby clothes,

you will be wrangled

like cattle into pens

and, paperless or not, deported.

To where? Weep, explain

you have lived here

since you were two,

this is your home.

Your wife, your children,

your aged mother

may never see you again.

Glory be to what?

Listen! Angry screams nurtured

by hatred, drown out the cries

of kids in Florida, or Texas, or next door.

How many more will be force fed this poison

in the name of a merciless God

punishing the sin of survival?

Tonight, we Jews co-opt words;

suffering, pain, freedom.

I imagine the day that

anyone’s God

will deliver enlightenment,

angels will sing,

heavenly light will shine

on the cruel irony of the self-righteous,

the day each of us will be revealed

as the supplicant,

each of us the Other.

The day our ancient journey,

our Passover celebration,

will not fall so woefully short

of the promised land.

Anita S. Pulier’s chapbooks Perfect Diet, The Lovely Mundane, and Sounds of Morning and her books The Butcher's Diamond and Toast were published by Finishing Line Press. Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in nine print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac.

NEVER CRITICIZE A NAZI

by George Held

unless you have spoken out
in church or synagogue
or demonstrated in the streets
against your own fascist regime
as it squelches one civil right
after another

I know, as long as the sheriffs
concentrate on the Muslims
and the blacks and the Latinx
we can calmly complain among ourselves
about the increasing nastiness
and aggression

as the Other is whisked off
to prison and to the camps
now being built in the pine barrens
beyond the view of the casual
observer of all the nastiness
and aggression

and besides, it’ll be more peaceful
for a while, as long as we keep
resistance to ourselves and act
the part of loyal citizens—we know
the primacy of loyalty today—in
ignoring nastiness

have you calculated like an actuary
how long it will be before they
invade your house at 2 AM
and drag you before your cousin
the magistrate for arraignment
as a traitor

anyhow, it won’t be too long
unless you keep your mouth shut
and switch from Rachel to Hannity
at 9 PM and wear a handsome
red ball cap that says Keep America
Great

Oh, yes, and never criticize a Nazi.
Achtung!


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

CHARLESTON CHURCH MASSACRE

by Roger Aplon

"We forgive you."

Swept-up
on  a blast of heated air – one flash & another

& nowhere  to run,
to hide, to breathe free  . . . & he keeps
coming on
this pilfered heart, this shameless ragging,
like a lion on fire,
provoked, pissed-off,  punishing, a collapsed invention where
fear marries power,
with guns blazing the angel of death smacks his lips
slurping up a treacheries soup . . .
Speak not of justice, sanity & bigotry in one breath. Speak not
of mercy without
passion. Do unto others as you do unto me. 
The words ring wrong.
If harmony reigns what will come to fill the vacuum?
Guilt-of-the-fathers
passed to the sons.  Inbred fear of retribution. The Other, no longer dark
but from the light
comes to resurrect that supreme fabric. Owner. Master. Overseer.
That sublime indifference
born of  guilt – suspicion – nurturing – fomenting.
Is there no one to speak
against the blind warrior?
We forgive you.
It’s said with conviction – tearful & full of grace. Who’s earned
such a holy gift?
Tattooed across his brow a crown of thorns, swastika etched
between his shoulder blades.
This is the time of mutilation, of dementia, of disgrace.
Where are the voices of revolution?
Those willing to stand & be counted, unafraid of hard choices?
The one who bears malice bears
a cataclysm too long dismissed as fated, too long
      tolerated, too long unchallenged.
“Born in blood, so blood must be spilled.”
It’s the way of the smuggler,
the rapist, the strangler of kids, the demon lover of hatred & dread.
To this we say, with all our strength – No more!


Roger Aplon has had eleven books published: Ten of poetry (most recently It’s Only TV) & one of prose: Intimacies. He’s been awarded prizes & honors including an arts fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. After eight years in Barcelona, Spain, he now lives in Beacon, New York where he publishes the poetry magazine Waymark & is working on a new collection: Poetic Improvisations after musical ‘experiments’ by composers such as John Adams, Elliot Carter, Miles Davis & John Zorn.