INTERLOCHEN

by Virginia Aronson

 

Years before they were convicted sex offenders, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell used his wealth to gain access to a prestigious boarding school for young artists in Michigan, using a rental lodge Epstein donated to the school as a base from which to recruit some of their earliest victims, according to Department of Justice records and former campus administrators. —NPR, February 19, 2026

You sit on a bench
licking your ice cream
vanilla, maybe mocha
surrounded by summer
friends 13, 14 you are
such lucky talented girls
at the famous incubator
for budding artists
young friends giggling
singing in the sunshine
when she walks by
with a small cute dog
on a leash

and the bench empties
you're all squealing
you all love Yorkies!
you all bend to pet her
your future before you
like a field of daisies
and romping puppies
your friends drift off
to play piano, dance, paint
and the woman turns
her intense gaze
on you, she wants you
to meet her friend
this man can help you
he gives scholarships
he loves young artists
he is very wealthy
fellow Interlochen grad
school and camp benefactor
and your bright eyes brighten
your dreams coming true

and this man, he pays
for your education
while he takes
everything else
your childhood
your dreams
your sweet future
as he pets you
for years
and keeps you
on his tight leash.

Virginia Aronson is the director of Food and Nutrition Resources Foundation and the author of many published books. New poetry collections include Collateral Damage (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Whiskey Island and Whiskey Straight Women (Cyberwit Press).

MY HEART GOES OUT

by Joan Mazza

The morning after the storm. Photo tweeted by @miguelmarquez.

to those many people who lost

their homes, flattened and inundated

by Hurricane Ian’s smack down.

To people sifting through mud

and debris to salvage what’s useful,

from homes without roofs.

The videos and photos are published

of houses floating away, smashed.

Pets gone. My heart goes out

to the people of Pakistan weeks

after one third of their country

was flooded and now their children

are dying of cholera. Swathes

of forests have burned all over

the world. Whales are eating

plastic because the ocean is full

of it. Covid isn’t over. People

are dying every day, gasping

for breath. My heart goes out

to those too cold or too hot, breathing

mold or dust or smoke and ash.

For my friends Shaun and Karen

in a marathon to outrun cancer.

For Charlotte who said goodbye to her

beloved hound Maggie after sixteen

years. For everyone suffering

as humans always have in a world

that throws us beauty and abundance,

love, pleasure, and plush comforts,

leaves us anticipating, eager for more,

and then snatches it all away.

My heart goes out to you, to us. 

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops  on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Poet Lore, Slant, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

HAIKU, UNHELD

"Two young girls who left their pet rabbit behind, mothers carrying toddlers and luggage—these are some of the more than half million people who fled their homes in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion." —NPR,  February 28, 2022. 

Editor's Notes:  1. When sirens rang out and Russian missiles began pummeling Ukraine’s cities, hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes, many bringing with them the cats, dogs and other pets they cannot leave behind.” —The Mercury News, February 28, 2022.   2. Humane Society International is providing necessary support, including emergency funds, to groups that are helping the Ukrainian people and the animals in their care who have been devastated by Russia’s military invasion. You can rush a gift to its emergency response for Ukraine and other rescue and relief efforts here.    3. “When we talk about pets in the same breath as the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, it can sometimes feel a little flippant. Surely our focus should be on the human victims, not someone’s cat? But to the very real people at the centre of this tragedy, their pets are not something to be flippantly forgotten about. —EuroNewsGreen.   4. The Telegraph (UK)) photo above from the Ukraine evacuation does not picture the girls mentioned in the NPR story.

Melissa Bentley lives in North Carolina, and works in the field of public mental health services.

HOARDING LIGHT

by Susan Vespoli

Maybe I’m hoarding Molly
while on lockdown, luminescent
in her fourth year around the sun.

People gasp and ask,
you’re still seeing your granddaughter?
like it’s a crime,

and I want to hide her behind my skirts,
she who chalks cement
with hearts, water-paints rocks,

watches youtube
compilations of Snoopy laughing
and never tires of tossing

the rubber bone for my ecstatic dog.
I turn off daily death counts on the news
to watch her in the field of brilliant

poppies that sprang up in my front yard.
She who bends to sniff and pluck
and count the bees,

then runs after bugs
she wants to keep as pets:
crane flies and beetles,

a fat khaki grasshopper
wriggling between index finger
and her thumb

as I the buzz-kill cry,
Not in the house! It’s a living being 
that needs its family. Let it go,

and so, she does: opens pincer grip
as the insect soars
across the yard in an arc.

Susan Vespoli is a poet/essay who lives in Phoenix, AZ. Her work has been published in spots such NVN, Rattle, Nailed Magazine, Mom Egg Review, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.

KATRINA ANNIVERSARY SONG

by Diane Elayne Dees

Uptown; 2012; ©David G. Spielman; from The Katrina Decade: Images of an Altered City (THNOC 2015) Photo source: The Historic New Orleans Collection via Curbed NOLA

corrupt Corps, Federal flood
blue roofs, insurance scams
trashed car, no house
no phone, no job
abandoned pets, missing corpses
toxic water, staph infections
black mold, asthma worse
dying patients, floating caskets
gangs of looters, schools gone
Danziger Bridge, shot in the back
lead exposure, can’t think
murdered dogs, suicide
recurring nightmares, lifetime Xanax
blame the victims, heck of a job


Diane Elayne Dees is a writer and psychotherapist in Louisiana. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including the 2006 anthology, Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women's professional tennis.

LIVING FOSSIL

by Mark Danowsky

“Normally, we wouldn't call something a living fossil. But the name seems tailor-made for the frilled shark, whose roots are traced to 80 million years ago.” --Bill Chappell, NPR, January 21, 2015. Phot source: Reddit.

Your cat and dog
communicate well-
enough to earn
a place inside
and remind us
domestication is
a two-way street

We speak
to our pets
and they respond
in their own way
which often means:

not speaking

turning to stare
at anything but you

walking away

I sometimes say
"you're a fake wolf"
to my dog
and I mean it
because it's true;
though I'm a wolf fan
when I wake
to find him standing over me
it's creepy enough

I would never say
you look primitive
to the dog
since who am I
to judge—
any creature
here today
has earned the right
to live among us

Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Apiary, Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Snow Monkey and The New Verse News.  His poem "5am Summer Storm"won Imitation Fruit’s “Animals and Their Human’s” Contest, in 2013. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently lives in a van down by the Susquehanna River. He works for a private detective agency and is assistant copy editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.