TO ALL THE IMPRISONED CHILDREN

by Julie Weiss

Hold on. You´re a rabbit, clever

and bold, galloping free through

tomorrow´s boundless grasslands.

Hold on. You´re the most extraordinary

lotus, blooming through cracks

in your country´s polar ice caps.

Hold on. They may have grounded

your body, but your mind

can fly a thousand glorious kites

in the rising winds of resistance.

Your will, sharp enough to slice

a prison guard´s insults into fluff.

Hold on. Right now, you may feel

more like a beetle climbing

a mountain under a crush of boots

than anything human, but you´re not

alone. You´re the song we sing

when the notes in our throat

have lumped impossibly together.

You´re the rainbow colors we use

to airbrush our hope across the sky.

You’re the poem we bellow at every

demonstration. Imagine! Your beauty

flowing in epic proportions.

You´re our brightest star, the one

that anchors us to our place

in the universe. Hold on. Without you,

we´d all be hurled deep into space.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection Rooming with Elephants was published in February, 2025. She was a finalist for Best of the Net, won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award, and was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in ONE ART, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Gyroscope Review, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, The Indianapolis Review, MER, and SWWIM. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. 

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.

THE USUAL AMERICAN ELEGY

by William Doreski

In Michigan, another school

shot up by vain disgruntlement.

The freshly dead were tossed aside

by the rush of unbridled history.

I’ve never fondled a gun

with the affection that’s its due.

 

I’ve never savored the death

of a twelve-point white-tail stag

or even a rabbit hopping

toward its fate in a tasty stew.

The boy who fired that pistol

wanted to kill for reasons

 

I probably shared at his age.

But the guns my great-uncles gave me

to make a man of me remained

unloaded, unloved in my closet.

Later I gave them to an aunt

who liked to kill small animals.

 

Today the wind ruffles the pines

with affection absent from life.

The cold challenges my parka

with its warped and stubborn zipper.

I should wander deep in the woods

with orange safety vest averting

 

bullets from careless hunters.

A hundred people shot to death

every day in our enchanted world.

I keep an empty brass cartridge

on my desk to remind me that

like Mayakovski I could shoot

 

myself anytime I wish.

I don’t wish. The blowing dawn

brings a pale layer of blue,

and the ruined families of the dead

face another day of absence

indifferent to the winter sun. 

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.