LETTER TO CRAZY HORSE

by Roxanne Doty

Left: A 1934 sketch of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) made by a Mormon missionary after interviewing Crazy Horse's sister, who claimed the depiction was accurate. —Wikipedia. Right: The Native American activist Leonard Peltier—convicted in 1975 for the killings of two FBI agents—was released from federal prison on Tuesday after Joe Biden commuted his sentence at the end of his presidency in January. In a statement, Peltier said that he was “finally free!” —The Guardian, February 18, 2025

Innocence is the weakest defense
Leonard Peltier says, it has a single voice,
can only deny, while Guilt has a thousand voices
all of them lies. They said
you were resisting imprisonment
when George Crook’s military guard killed
you with his bayonet. Some call this murder
but language and land prevail.
 
The old medicine man says,
You could make a lovely mountain
into a great paperweight.
Can you make the monument to you
in the Black Hills into a wild, natural mountain again?
 
Today, I see people still longing
for justice and facing defeat,
the lust for stolen lands
still raging, white settlers still rampant.
I hear the thousand voices of guilt.
 
We all need your spirit now, Crazy Horse,
you, the last great figure of resistance
who inflicted defeat on the powerful.
And we need the patience and wisdom
of Leonard Peltier, finally free.

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by William Stafford’s “Report to Crazy Horse.” Italicized quotations by Leonard Peltier are from Prison Writings, My Life is My Sun Dance.

Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel Out Stealing Water was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30. 2022. Her first poetry collection was published by Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024. She has published stories and poems in Third Wednesday, Amethyst Review, Cloudbank, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, Cagibi, Espacio Fronterizo, Ocotillo Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, The Blue Guitar, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, The New Verse News, International Times, Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion-The Dallas Review.

WHEN ASKED WHAT SKILLS WE GAINED FROM SLAVERY

by MEH

how to run [from slave catchers, the klan, crooked cops,

especially when finding the distinction difficult]. how to

keep our own counsel. to code-switch. to sing songs

in mother-tongues they will emulate and sharecrop

in blackface or while ignoring their origin—jazz, blues,

rock and roll, R&B, rap. how to hide our babies from

[see original list], christening them with names proper

to replace stolen drums, lands, gods. how not to list

the skills we already possessed, were compelled to

employ—navigation, cultivation, curing smallpox—

knowing they will fall on ungrateful ears. how to turn

our every cheek. to be more Christ-like than those who

disgraced the religion they forced upon us. to embody

the fruits of the spirit—especially patience and self-

control—in arms, legs, backs chiseled in cottonfields,

defined by bearing the lash of injustice. how to refrain

from calling down a legion of angels, or easily poisoning

their food, or slitting an oppressor’s throat in their sleep,

at least for now.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections including Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The New Verse News, Cola Literary Review, The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and The Worcester Review among others. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.

THE YEAR OF THE GREAT PAUSE

Six Haiku

by Geoffrey A. Landis

the great pause:

a year for learning patience:

streets are quiet

this is what matters:

you show your love with distance

alone, together

together, apart

attention to what matters:

distance shows your love

the space between us

shows our love:

a year of isolation

a year for introverts

ready to go out;

stay inside

a year for learning patience

year of distancing

find inner reserves

Geoffrey A. Landis is a poet, science-fiction writer and scientist. His poetry appears in places from ArtCrimes to The Year’s Best Fantasy, and he is the author of two poetry collections: Iron Angels from VanZeno Press and The Book of Whimsy from NightBallet. In his spare time, he fences épée, because he likes to stab strangers with a sword.

PANDEMIC

by Sandra Sidman Larson

After Wallace Stevens


The house is quiet.
What might be said
is never ending.

Straight backed,
nothing between
the headlines explained.

It is only a question for
the dog in his curl,
only a question
of instinct

telling you
wars will
be fought.
Regardless.

And viruses will spread
on the world’s breath.

You live
in a parallel universe.
Neither you nor your dog
will move mountains.

An algorithm
from some higher power
is needed.

You might find salvation
if you wait
until the last leaf falls
the dog speaks

or the skies open, filling
you with the vision
you long for.

This probably won’t happen.
Patience.
A future is still possible.
Plan for it.

Sandra Sidman Larson, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has three chapbooks to her credit: Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Over a Threshold of Roots, (both Pudding House Press Publications) and Weekend Weather: Calendar Poems.  Her chapbook Ode to Beautiful was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016 and her first full manuscript by Main Street Rag Publications in 2017.  Her poetry has been published in many venues such as the Atlanta Review, Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters, and TheNewVerse.News. As a poet with grandchildren and great nieces and nephews she longs for a world where children are safe.

DON'T GET SICK IN AMERICA

by Alan Walowitz

Despite not being a doctor, I give him my best advice:
AARP, I tell him.  Always, At all costs, Remain Perpendicular.
My old pal Willard would laugh if his hearing aid hadn’t come loose
and we’d been sitting at the diner,
shooting the breeze over coffee, him telling me the same story
the third or fourth time.  I love the guy.
But now he’s lying on a gurney in the ER corridor for the 4th straight hour,
getting edgy, and who can blame him after all this time,
and against my best advice, parallel to the floor
along with all the others, quiet on their gurneys
or writhing gently in pain,
even the pain-energy wrested out of them?
Each either has or doesn’t have insurance—
they’re black and brown and grey and young
and the doctor--who hurries by from time to time
gives me a look that signifies, I know, I know, it’s crazy—
she’s a beautiful yellow-beige, with a face shaped like a heart
and I think I’m in love. The ER, this is America,
the great equalizer, no one’s special here,
no one gets to see the doctor first because he’s middle class or white,
or he used to be a Protestant from Rochester back in the day
and he was famous for clicking his heels and proclaiming,
In Germany they stand up when I enter the room!
And everyone would tell him, Sit down and shut up, Will!
Though I’m not next of kin,
a nurse figures I must be close, so stops by and tells me,
he’ll have a stress test first thing in the morning,
after spending the night in the hall
cause the treadmill’s booked the rest of today.
And just in case you needed a reminder,
Don’t get sick in America,
you gotta have patience to burn,
and one way or another,
you’re gonna have to pay.

Alan Walowitz has been published in various places on the web and off. He’s a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry, and teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in his native borough of Queens, NY. Alan’s chapbook Exactly Like Love was published by Osedax Press in 2016 and is now in its second printing. He’ll be reading at the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village on Tuesday, March 7th at 6 pm.