SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

by Lynn White

A Scottish pro-Palestine activist is facing charges for “threatening and abusive behaviour” after reading a poem about children killed by Israel. Bill Williamson, 74, said he had been at a weekly Palestine vigil outside Dunoon Burgh Hall on July 4 when he was approached by a pair of police officers while he was reading out “Don’t Mention The Children” by the Jewish writer Michael Rosen through a megaphone. —The National (Scotland), July 19, 2026

Poets are dangerous.

Naming the dead 

leads to arrest.

The killing 

of some,

by some

is fine,

unlike

the threatening

nature

of reading a poem.

And the unmentionables,

the nameless

children,

must suffer silently.

Poets are ‘The Brave’

in Scotland today.

Poetry is dangerous.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

JULY OF ELECTION YEAR 2024

by Tarn Wilson

This year, if I keep my pace, 

I’ll read over 100 books.

I don’t know if this is a victory 

or a sad state of affairs.

I don’t know if I am in love 

with the world or addicted 

to distraction. Preachers and 

politicians used to call novels 

filthy and frivolous, wanted

us to read only stripped facts 

and sermons on virtue. Now, 

we’re pleased if children read

at all. Everywhere you look

screens hold miniature stories, 

trapdoors and tunnels toward 

truth and illusion. Last week, 

I asked a 24-year-old which 

candidate will win the youth 

vote for president. Biden is 

ridiculous, she explains: all

those gaffes-turned-memes.

Trump, she decides. He’s funnier.

 Funny? I ask. He has wittier 

insults. He says what we all wish 

we could say. Democrats are 

schoolmarms, then? I ask. 

Mothers who make you feel 

ashamed? What about the danger 

to our democracy? Low wages /

high rents. It’s all the same to us. 

We need more facts and tracts 

on virtues. We need novels, too,

about civil wars and WWII, 

about loss and love and grief 

and trees, anything to help us 

feel, in our bones, what it is 

we have to lose. Actually, she says, 

face lighting, RFK is trending 

on TikTok. His policies are crazy,

I say. He’s doing pull ups, she says. 

He looks strong. People like that.

Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and the craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write. Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet, and The Sun. 

CANDLE GLOW IN UKRAINE AND HONG KONG

by C. J. Anderson-Wu

We read books by candlelight whenever
power is out after air raids

We hold candles in the prohibited vigil 

for those nameless students killed

more than three decades ago

 

In the underground shelter we take turns
to recite stories for one another

At the park we mourn anonymously

in order to protect one another

 

We are in a war for
our dignified identity

We are in a war against

the deprivation of memories 

 

By candlelight we relay ancestors' stories
in our language

By candlelight we pass on the history

the regime is forcibly erasing

 

We are in a war 
for hard-earned sovereignty 

We are in a war 

against thought control

 

After the air raid alarm we briefly go home
and our stories are to be continued

As police approach we disperse into the night

and our struggles drag on

 

Reading, mourning, hiding and remembering
with different forms of resistance
we are in a war

Author’s Notes: 
     The publishing industry in Ukraine experienced significant growth after the outbreak of the war, as reading became one of the few activities people could engage in during power outages caused by bombardments. Additionally, the invasion led the Ukrainian public to value their own culture, history, and language more deeply.
     On June 4th each year, people in Hong Kong used to hold a candle vigil at Victoria Park for those who died during the Tiananmen Square Crackdown in 1989. However, since the implementation of the National Security Law by China in 2020, any event commemorating the slaughter of June 4th has become illegal. Several pro-democracy activists who persisted in continuing the vigil have been arrested and imprisoned without due process of law. 


C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020). Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards including the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

DEAR JOHN

by James Schwartz 

Gleefully proclaiming the joys of rock ‘n’ roll, drugs and sex in the streets, John Sinclair reigned as a nationally celebrated troubadour of youth rebellion during the psychedelic era, playing a lead role in making Detroit and Ann Arbor counterculture hot spots with the MC5 band, the White Panther Party, cutting-edge concerts and flamboyant rhetoric. Sinclair, who lived in Detroit, died Tuesday after years of declining health. —Detroit Free Press, April 2, 2024. Photo: James Schwartz and John Sinclair

A few years ago at a reading,

John Sinclair is discussing where he will be buried—

Flint or Detroit,

I chime in,

Rome by Keats,

That makes John smile,

He made me smile as well,

When he told me:

You're lucky to have escaped the Amish! 

Rest in power poet. 

James Schwartz is a Detroit-based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (2011), Punatic (2019), Motor City Mix (2022) and most recently two novellas Sunset in Rome (2022) and Long Lost Friend (2023) from Alien Buddha Press. @queeraspoetry

NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

 

for those who were killed in lewiston, maine 

                                                            by a man with an AR style gun 

                         

Just months before this week’s mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine’s Legislature considered three major bills to tighten gun restrictions: one to require criminal background checks for gun purchases, another to create a 72-hour waiting period before someone could take possession of a gun after purchasing it and a third to outlaw modifications that make semiautomatic weapons more deadly. All three bills were defeated in the Maine Senate by sizable margins. Maine, a largely blue state where Democrats control both chambers of the State Legislature and the governorship, has a long history of resisting gun control measures. —The New York Times, October 26, 2023

we begin this celebration 

in the name of

my right  my right  my right  

amen 

                         

             our response to today’s reading 

of the second amendment  

page 6 in your hymnal 

                        hail to thee, oh AR-15 

we will sing all 25 verses 

after which we will recite 

our litany of thanksgiving  

                         

now   let us rise and say together 

 

for no background checks 

we are thankful 

 

for our mutual support 

so needed in our holy culture of guns 

against those who deny our rights

we are thankful            

 

for being called to be a member 

to this sacred society

we are thankful 

 

for being able to sleep at night 

we are thankful 

 

for all those who sell AR-15s 

for this we are truly thankful 

 

for $$$$ 

we are very thankful 

 

please join me after this service 

for coffee   donuts 

and a short meeting 

concerning future recruitment plans  

 

now let us say amen to the final blessing  

 as we go to serve AR-15 

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, US Catholic, Commonweal, The Christian Century, Presence, Prism, and several anthologies. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. Five poems from her book, she: robed and words, set to music by James Lee III were performed on May 11, 2021. The soloist was the opera singer Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic and Grammy® nominated pianist Mayra Huang. The arrangement was part of a concert held at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023. The soloist was Elena Perroni. 

CHRISTMAS 1942: MY FIRST POEM EVER

by Susan Terris

I was in kindergarten at a K through 8 school that had an annual Christmas program on the stage in the gym. It always featured students from every grade. I was 5 and the only one from my class chosen. My mother taught me to recite "The Night Before Christmas" (written by Clement Clark Moore) by heart and dressed me up as one of Santa's elves with a pom-pom hat, a brown suit with a red belt, and my brown saddle shoes from Lasky's. When I walked onto the stage holding the book, everyone cheered and laughed, because I was so small. At the front center of the stage, I opened the book, and speaking in a loud voice, I recited it all. Some people in the audience giggled, but I was sure it was because they thought I was cute. After the Christmas program was over, my mother rushed up and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. I was sure she was going to say I had been wonderful. But, instead, she told me quietly that I'd "read" the poem holding the "The Night Before Christmas" upside-down. Yes. So, I can tell you in one short sentence what I found out about books and poetry at five-years-old:

 

YOU’D BETTER LEARN TO READ!

Susan Terris is a freelance editor and the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and 2 plays. Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Denver Quarterly, The New Verse News, and Ploughshares. Poems of hers have appeared in Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Her newest book is Dream Fragments, which won the Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

BLACK WOMAN ARRESTED FOR READING IN A LIBRARY, 1962

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

 

Black woman arrested for trying to read a book in a segregated library in Albany, GA. 1962. 

a dark bonfire 
roared 
step  
by  
step  
down 
thou shalt not read 
here 
she 
was 
booked 
(o the irony)  
she
the book 
her body still burns 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

CLASS WAR

by Larissa Shmailo

Freshly plucked tea leaves are seen in the hand of a tea garden worker in Jorhat in Assam, April 21, 2015. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood/Files

Your father’s fingers never got caught in a machine press.
You never saw the indigo marks on his nails as he never
lifted a finger against you, but I knew what my library books
cost.
The world was yours, and if I objected on behalf of a man
who worked overtime too many times, I was attacked as
a Marxist, which I am —the indigo marks and the midnight
shifts
of a family that worked till they dropped, Mama, Papa, Baba,
Ded—taught me how to read. They never lifted a tired worn
finger against you – their labor was, you so often told them,
sipping
tea picked by tired black fingers in inherited cups, was their
Horatio-Alger-Oprah-Winfrey-lack-of -get-up-and-go, lack-
of-entrepreneurmanship-why-didn’t they-invest-in-the-market?
fault.
I was permitted to woo your class, however, as your monkey
entertainment, your we-have-liberal- aesthetics poet. You
would dangle money and privilege (jump, artist, higher!) at
my nose.
Read on:
I have never forgotten who broke my father’s hands, my
mother’s back, the cost of my library cards. There are seven
billion of us and we have not forgotten where we came from,
who started the war.
You should never have let them teach us how to read.

Larissa Shmailo's new novel is Sly Bang (Spuyten Duyvil); her first novel was Patient Women (BlazeVOX). Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country (MadHat), #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books), In Paran (BlazeVOX), the chapbook A Cure for Suicide (Červená Barva Press), and the e-book Fib Sequence (Argotist EBooks). Tracks from her poetry CDs The No-Net World and Exorcism are available from most digital distributors. Shmailo’s work has appeared in Plume, the Brooklyn Rail, Fulcrum, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Journal of Poetics Research, Drunken Boat, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, and the anthologies Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Penguin Random House), Words for the Wedding (Penguin), Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey), Resist Much/Obey Little: Poems for the Inaugural (Spuyten Duyvil). Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the opera Victory over the Sun by Alexei Kruchenych, performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Garage Museum of Moscow, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Shmailo edited the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry (Big Bridge Press) and has been a translator on the Russian Bible for the Eugene A. Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship of the American Bible Society. 

POETRY READING AT CHURCH ON ELECTION DAY

by Earl J Wilcox

Source: Chicago Women Take Action

Munching chicken salad, sipping sweet tea,
they chat amiably, push their food gently
around white china plates, look slightly harried.
They are not their usual relaxed and friendly
fellowship souls. It’s Election Day, this first
Tuesday of November. Though T***P himself
is not officially on the ballot this year, he is
there in candidates who walk like him, talk
like him, spew vile like him, scream like him,
lie like he does. No wonder church members
waiting to hear poems about hope and trust
and honesty and charity and faith—these
and other truths of the human heart—are
sober and vexed on this Election Day.


Earl J Wilcox will try to write a poem today, but even if that does not work out, he will definitely vote!

BILLY COLLINS

by Erren Geraud Kelly

People use tents, makeshift plastic coverings and blankets as shelter in a block-long encampment that runs down San Pedro Street. Photo: Theonepointeight for The Intercept

Tried to get a ticket to
The reading, but it was sold out
So, i settled for watching his
Documentary
While i snacked on nachos
And beer.
I read another rejection letter
Earlier, i kept  thinking
Maybe if i wrote "safer"  poems
The New Yorker would love me
But the only safe place is in
My mind.
I tried to eat  Osso Busco once
But i kept thinking about the
Tent cities, strung along
Sixth street.
I want to be P.C., but everytime
I write polite poems,
I see dead black bodies
Floating between the lines


Erren Geraud Kelly is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Los Angeles whose work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, PoetryMagazine.com, Ceremony, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications, most recently Black Heart Literary Journal. He is the author of the book Disturbing The Peace (Night Ballet Press) and the chapbook The Rah Rah Girl forthcoming from Barometric Press.

EATING BREAKFAST AT COLONIAL AND READING HARPER'S ON THE EGG WARS

by Joan Colby

Meme source: Twitter

Reading how the hens suffer
Crammed by the thousands in metal cages,
Stacked stories high,
The air thick with dust and feathers,
Beaks clipped, thin necks bloody,
The dying decaying beneath calloused claws,
Adhering like bathmats to the wire floors.
Forced to lay seven times the norm,
Until spent, to be seized
By the handsful, gassed and ground
For pet food. Never seeing sunlight
Or spreading wings or nesting in trees
Or taking dustbaths or establishing
The pecking order. Reading that to guarantee
A normal chicken life would mean
Paying triple or more for this
Scrambled plate, I tell you
I’d pay whatever it costs to let them be
Chickens scratching in the dirt, how maybe we
Should set up the nesting boxes
In our old coop and get some
Leghorns, though I know we won’t
Bother really, and much as I abhor
What I am reading, there’s the long distance
Between slick paper and the
Long, long barns and my fork.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.