THE VIGILANT

by Alejandro Escudé

From “The Parade,” 1957, from Si Lewen’s Parade: An Artist’s Odyssey (2016) via Literary Hub

Merkel warns of populists’ rise in Europe —AP, May 28, 2019

from the trenches.
they rise,
the easy translucent stride
of ghost-men

in gas masks
run the cobblestone
streets between
the ferrying buses,
old France, old Spain,

dust brown boots
weaponized fences
torched children
shot out of chimneys

"La Marseillaise" sung
backward, the gaze
of the European
upon the hard American

wearing bones
around his neck
a ring of fiery stones

Druid masters
wearing blood-drenched
capes calling for
crusade war
war upon war
gardens of dead

silent proletariat
families marched
by illiterate armies
who never spoke
or learn the proper sound

each word passing
like a market ticker
above them Merkel,
T***p, Putin, Macron

angel of Patton
and Robespierre,
dark angel of Bormann,
warned and warning

electronic horses
galloping over glass churches
shattered idols and guns
replacing each letter
on the keys

and the irreverent typist
culling new plots ending
in plots unmarked,
unedited, whole,
unpublished, divine.


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.

ELECTION:2016

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Dora vs. Trump Cartoon by ELISE MCCOMB, age14, ROSEVILLE, MINN. (New York Times 2015 Cartoon Contest)

There are only seven plots, we’re told,

        and blunder is this world’s first and second.

                The desire for triumph shoulders at

                        the mother-belly of moral vacuity although,

                                mercifully, not quite hard enough to squeeze out

                                        yet. My friends who are conscientious objectors

or Buddhist, my friends who are in the intellectual closet,

                 even my apathetic friends are all

                         on Short Pierre Street waiting to see

                                 what happens. Because it has been so unbearable,

                                         we have borne it for 18 months—

the N words sprayed on one of our two city busses,

        the theories of corruption, actual corruption. And now,

                after arguing and lamentations, we are a chorus

                        of the damaged, counting their wounds, storing up

                                  experience for a later excuse to whine, Cabo,

                                         Toronto and stark survival on our minds.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and write in the Ozarks. She is the author of two books and three chapbooks, most recently Persephone on the Metro. See her work in Concis, Rat’s Ass Review, Mom Egg Review, and the Kentucky Review.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

by Lawrence J. Krips

Your article from February ninth
said nothing of how our terrorist search
protects no one but brings internecine fear
and what is it we teach?
So your author says of all the foiled plots
homeland has been saved many a day
not mentioning we’ve lost our country;
the freedom to be free, the world in dismay.

                        ~

I read your editorial on peace
and wonder when our nation will love,
love some space, just one small piece,
love even ones we hate.
My suggestion for your readers
is to start with loving us,
then we will stop killing our leaders
and then cease killing every one else.

                        ~

All I can say
is bless the N.R.A.
Who else to defend our rights
against unconstitutional insights?
The best protection is to arm.
More automatics keeps us from harm.
The radicals steal our guns
by stealing our rights one by one.

                        ~

The drones,
the killings,
the Americans.
Robot dragons
spit their fire.
the haste of death.
Blood spattered dreams –
            whose?
have died.

                        ~

We need to keep drilling.
Capitalism runs upon it.
We need to keep on killing.
This control is our ace in the hole.
We need to have more money
to serve the people who deserve.
We need to have soldiers in the army
to protect our preserve.

                        ~

Your anorexic take on modern psychotherapy
left me less than informed or cheered.
The lucid truth is therapy
is as good as the therapist.
And despite your insecurities about process
those that remain in the land of effects
remain in a territory tending toward death
instead of here in the thick of the juice.

                                                                                                                                             
Lawrence J. Krips is a writer and an empowerment coach.  His poems have appeared in Rhode Island Writers Circle Anthology, Origami Poems Project and Tifferet.  In 2012 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry.