REMEMBER THE MISSING

by Lois Marie Harrod

An installation in the form of a dinner table set for Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, stands outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art—with 203 empty chairs representing those taken hostage by Hamas in its surprise attack on Israel on October 7. Photo: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times, October 21, 2023.

203 place settings, one for each hostage

believed to be in Gaza, no end, no beginning

of the guests who have not appeared—

only a plate, a napkin and a wine glass for each, 

the photo taken as the sun sets so that the wine glasses

cast their solitary shadows on the backs of folding chairs.

Up and down what seems an endless table, wine bottles

stand uncorked, apples at each guest's place, 

bread, boats of flowers as far as the camera

can frame, empty chairs for hundreds, thousands,

all those made late for dinner by the rabid angers

of a few, and there is a woman too

caught by the photographer

walking behind the empty chairs.

She wears blue jeans and cropped top.

She has with a small tattoo on her left wrist.

She is looking at her i-Phone. 

She does not seem to see the endless table of empty seats.

Editor's Note: On October 21, it was believed that Hamas had captured 203 hostages; on Monday, October 23, according to The New York Times, Israel said that Hamas holds 222 hostages.

Lois Marie Harrod’s 18^th collection Spat was published by Finishing Line Press, 2021 and her chapbook Woman by Blue Lyra, 2020. Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3.

WHEN MY GRANDSON LEARNS ABOUT JIMMY CARTER

by Jane Patten

But for a photo

Neither of you will remember

That day in front of Maranatha Baptist Church—

He, because he had held so many babies,

And you were one of many in 

Such a long and layered life. 

And you, because you were so new

That your life was in the moment.

But we others there rejoiced

How he reached out to hold you,

The aged hands against your soft ones,

His white hair in contrast to your brown,

His wide smile at your

Wide eyes.

 

You did not know then

How we traveled down the Georgia roads

Of open fields and flatter ground

Just to hear him teach 

And to shake his hand,

Or that that this elder holding you

Had made each numbered day

In a long life count—

Sage, peacemaker, 

Man of the earth,

Man of the people,

Who rolled up his sleeves

To work.

 

A little later, just a little later,

You will learn more about the man who

Showed the world how to live:

Use knowledge.

Have compassion.

Give.

Be present.

Be fair.

Have courage.

Care.

 

And with a photo we will begin:

There you are.

You’re with him.

After retiring and moving to Huntsville, Jane Patten decided to write about her adventures, including growing up in Delaware and her career as a teacher in rural Georgia. Her writings have been published in Out Loud HSV: A Year in Review anthologies, The New Verse News, and Reckon.

LIZARD DAYS

by Alejandro Escudé

A lizard, small, on my walk along 

the largest airport in the country,

dead, curled, fetus-like, so swift

they are as they shoot back toward

the ivy mounds. At times I imagine

how many trash bins would the 

lizards fill if they were all collected

from the overgrowth—so I take

with my iPhone a photo of him,

Cretaceous little being, extinct, 

and think about the latest warning

issued to all Apple users, a hack

where they could take control,

absolute control, the newscaster

asserts, of your phone. I yearn

for a return to those lizard days

when I couldn’t carry around

a sea of digital pirates, both legal

and illegal, a neon mind-maze,

yet enough data to assume society’s 

panoptic perch. I choose to keep 

from running another space race

with my phone, contemplate

the deadness of a dead lizard

on the sidewalk as monolithic 

shadows of planes, like the foot-

prints of a dinosaur accelerated 

in time, mesh onward to the west.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

HEART OF THE GALAXY

by Alejandro Escudé

The mystery at the heart of the Milky Way has finally been solved. This morning, at simultaneous press conferences around the world, the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It’s not the first picture of a black hole this collaboration has given us—that was the iconic image of M87*, which they revealed on April 10, 2019. But it’s the one they wanted most. Sagittarius A* is our own private supermassive black hole, the still point around which our galaxy revolves. —Scientific American, May 12, 2022.

It’s an engine, 

the scientists say,

a black Mustang

parked at the curb

in front of our house,

the Milky Way,

I’ve been there, 

lightless, eating up stars,

surrounded by fire

that cannot reach me,

speed of light,

the scientists say,

why the image is blurry

yet crisp

as can be,

such are the rules

we live by, the movie

inside the maelstrom,

the Papi

and the Mami,

a solitary mitt laying 

centerfield, a baseball 

tucked inside 

twirling 

as the cradle

of life in the universe spins 

26,000 light years away,

humans beings, Lucy

to the aliens, biological

Big Bang, Adam

and Eve to the bug-eyed

Greys

and the lizard man

who staggers out of an oval door

of a saucer-metallic

flying saucer,

time falling into time,

a spot on a boy’s foot,

beach tar, sound of waves,

salty air.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

ON FATHER'S DAY

by Joan Mazza

I’m not posting photos on social media
of my father with his arm around me,
both of us grinning, oozing affection.
No photos like that exist, not even
from my childhood.

On Father’s Day, I’m perusing again
of my boozy father’s last act, self-
inflicted gun shot that whisked him out
of this world and our lives. How did he
excuse it?

I’m remembering how my short-fused
husband insisted my father have a gun,
took him to buy that Walther PPK
and showed him how to use it.
Self-defense,

he said. That was the gun he used when
he could not defend himself against misery
and hopeless blues, my mother’s cancer.
I’m thinking how glad I am that my Ex
never was a father.

In an old photo, my not-yet-Ex husband stands
unsmiling, pistol on hip, rifle and Confederate flag
crossed across his chest, wearing a string tie
and cowboy hat. I took that photo, and only
was bemused.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

NO SINGULAR COUNTRY

by Alejandro Escudé

Harrison Ford was injured last Thursday afternoon when his vintage single-engine airplane crashed on a golf course shortly after taking off from Santa Monica Airport. Photo of the plane by Alejandro Escudé.

Oh furious desire for the present! That nose!
Like the botched schnoz of a prizefighter,
the splayed yellow wings, aluminum body,
the star, a model-slick Army Corps roundel.
Ford’s plane, whole, stark,  not the protracted
present, but the breakneck speed existence,
unafraid, the kind that wolfs one across time
despite failure. Have you risked it? The plane
asks, Or are you pulling back? Other cars
maneuver around me, stopped to cellphone
snap the pic. Say what you want, but the man
that took down that plane, that wasp-like,
double A battery-shaped plane, that metallic
cereal box, met the abounding void and tore
through it, no perturbation over loose ends
nor much hindsight, no babble or echoing
self-talk, just the return home with no home.
No singular country but the loosened sky and

there it sits, intact, on that cool green grass.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. 

ROADSIDE SHRINES

by Carol Sanford

Highway shrine built in 2002 for DWI victim, Danielle Romero

You find them along expressways,
on the curves of country roads,
at city intersections harboring a patch of grass,
anywhere forty thousand of us die each year:
rough wooden crosses, wreaths
bright bows, plastic flowers
children's toys, photos.

Some tended regularly
some shrouded by weeds,
they promise, "You'll be in our thoughts"
"Love you forever," "We'll meet again."

Christina Johnson, an only child
died ten years ago--three months
short of high school graduation,
her shrine a four-foot cross
trimmed often in artificial flowers.

Driving past that spot
notorious for black ice, I imagine
her parents' lives and want comfort for them
and some lesson for us
in keeping the grief of highways
palpable and public.

 
Carol Sanford, a former teacher, lives in Michigan and writes poems and fiction in the loft of a cabin she and her husband built in the woods.