GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

by Tammy Smith

Art by Clay Jones

One of the slyest tricks
the mind’s eye knows:
to seal itself shut.
Save face.
Mask up.

Some say good can come
from a shutdown.
Maybe true for the sleep-deprived,
near collapse, knees buckling—

but for the rest of us, harder
to measure the loss:
empty offices, national parks,
stalled paychecks,
parties brawling over healthcare
without fanfare,
without conscience,
in crowded waiting rooms,
filling out the same damn forms.

Blank spaces, blank stares.

A shutdown is an ill-timed rest—
every blink, another verdict
against the people forced to sleep
without the aid
of their American dream.

Tammy Smith is a New Jersey–based poet and licensed clinical social worker. Her poems have been published in ONE ART, The New Verse News, Grand Little Things, Merion West, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

GOOGLE EARTH GAZA

by Robinson Terry

Before:
Bright white roofs greet the camera.
Square irises shaped like a city,
orderly rows of houses, 
neat columns of streets, and 
thin shadows that hug the edges of so many homes. 
Green trees scattered about
in no particular pattern—
though there are parks
just as surely as there are people—
even if the picture can’t catch or corroborate their existence,
they exist. 
 
After: 
leveled earth 
devoid of shape and structure
every building reduced to a basement
every basement staring up
at a sky that will never reach down far enough 
to grant them light 
fat shadows like a smattering of so much blood 
no design to the destruction
label it hazardous and call it a target
to justify wiping it from the surface:
a target has no depth 
a target is always flat 
a target only exists on a screen
no—human beings were not the targets—
a target can only be a building
not who built the building
they are not on the screen
they are not seen—
never were 

Robinson Terry is an English teacher living in Syracuse, NY. He has previously been published in Better Than Starbucks and The Broadkill Review. 

THE SOLSTICE OF 2018

by Joan Colby

Image source: Vox

The Ursid showers cursed
With the Cold Moon—final fullness
Of the year. Its harsh reflected glow
Effacing the ten meteors
We hoped to see.

We hoped the solstice
Might bring a ring of charity.
On TV, he said plainly

“I will take the mantle.
I will be the one.”

To shut down the nation for a wall
To keep out all those who aspire.

Citizens, you will not walk
In the national forests thick with snow.
The gates of the great parks will close
Upon the canyons and the geysers.

If we stare into the universe
To see the Ursid showers,
A scowling face will blot
That smallest desire.
A metaphor of our sad future.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.