TEXAS IN HELL

by Robert Knox

The eyes of the others,

les autres

 

Hate mongering

Closed doors of the mind in self-panic

Race-pandering Congressional creeps

stalk the Halls of Hades

When? in God’s name?

 

A universal set of trigger-fingers

in circular execution

A lake of burning fire

Armed to the teeth = utterly unprotected

Gehenna on the dusty plain

 

Looking into the eyes

of the lost

No consolation in the knowing

 

Self-slaying America

Compelled to repeat the same self-torture

endlessly: forever

Infinite self-slaughter

 

An underworld of hate,

unholy perdition

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of the recently published collection of linked short stories, titled House Stories. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site. 

BREATH OF DAMNATION

by Phyllis Klein

Plenty of people in The City, including this man walking on Market Street, donned a mask Friday due to bad air quality as smoke from the Camp Fire in Northern California drifts down into the Bay Area 2018. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner, November 10, 2018)

After the fire fractures its invisible
borders, the air going south becomes
a death powder. The Anna’s hummingbirds,

white-breasted nuthatches, the western
meadowlarks all disappear as if the atmosphere
pushes them indoors. Ominous vapors grab

oranges on their bushes with fingers visible
as ghosts in a dimly lit room. The sun, our lady
of perpetual light, glares down through a haze,

murky blue. Nothing wet. Or shiny. The dirt
tries to move, no wind, no dust, only rocklike
rusty brown with cracks.  Everyone knows this

feeling, a drought, field drained of water,
perdition place of nightmares. Here it is: our
dread of Hades, right outside the window, real

enough to taste, to smell.

Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet, a Literary Confection. She also has poems forthcoming in I-70 and 3Elements. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And the healing power of anything as beautiful as poetry.