LET US SPEAK OF ANYTHING BUT THIS

by Dick Westheimer

In the seventy-two hours before I wrote this line,

two hundred fifty-one shot, ninety-two killed

in America. Two hundred thirteen shooters 

with two hundred thirteen guns. In seventy-two hours.

The litany of shattered bones is endless. To list 

the names and numbers shot, to catalogue 

the body parts stopped, the skin rended,

the night terrors loosed in the dreams of bystanders,

to count the wrung hands, the thoughts and prayers,

the shaken heads of the rest of us—this is

what pornography looks like: us at a distance, gazing 

at the ruined flesh, the survivors, the fallen 

as objects of a feral lust. I mistake the dead 

for something other than dead, see them as credits 

in a snuff film that I watch on repeat, on shuffle mode, 

over and over, so numb that love is no longer at stake. 

But thats all it is: love 

lost, love missing, love bought, love sold

by the wheelbarrow load, love as seen on TV, 

love that can be viewed through the sighting scope

of a gun. I look at this like the shooter does, as redemption, 

and just like the man with the gun, I am able to look away 

when I’ve had enough. But there is never enough. 

There are a trillion bullets left in the world 

and sufficient ire to strike the primer of every one,

and seventeen of them lodged in Americans since I’ve begun 

writing this poem. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty-one.

Dick Westheimer has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years.  His most recent poems have appeared or are upcoming in Whale Road Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, The Banyan Review, Ritual Well, and Cutthroat. His debut chapbook Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by Sheila Na Gig Books.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPOKE LIKE A CHILD . . .

by Marsha Owens

When did he have an epiphany? she asked
unclear about how one is racist and then is not.

I know how life meanders, doesn’t march
in straight lines like VMI cadets stepping
around Stonewall Jackson’s horse, its body
stained with white and black blood before it
was stuffed and saluted, forever revered.

Her name was LaVinia, her body stout,
her words few, her work for my Mama—
clean toilets and stiffly pressed sheets,
her days long, two bus rides from Richmond
to the freshly coifed suburbs, all-white.

I didn’t know why LaVinia fixed sandwiches
for my brother and me but none for herself.

His name was Pete, lanky and dark, head bowed
to say, Mornin’ Ma’am to my Mama, Mornin’ Missy
to me, a five-year-old. His work for my Daddy—
boards nailed, shingles hauled up the ladder, laid
out just so—a few dollars at day’s end.

I didn’t know why Pete sat outside on the stoop
at lunchtime, eating his hot dog on a paper plate.

I swam in the culture into which I was born,
1950s, somewhere between slavery’s end
and the Act called Civil Rights.

I stumbled with other white people away
from horrible injustices and strode towards
desegregated neighborhoods, integrated schools,
JFK, MLK, Trayvon Martin, President Obama.

I listened and learned, read and reflected,
laughed and cried with new friends whose
memories were not mine, nor mine theirs.
No epiphany, just life. And I voted

“for the person who cares about all people,”
Daddy said in his old age, simplistic political
advice that had evolved over a lifetime
and became the politics I chose to follow.

Marsha Owens is a retired educator who still lives and writes in Richmond, VA. She voted for Ralph Northam and Mark Herring, not because they are perfect, but because their policies support "all people."

ADVENT

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

for Nina Ciel Norgeot

Soon again
The baby will be born
The angels will sing
The shepherds
Grateful for the distraction
On a cold uneventful night
Will visit the poor family
In the stable
The magi will observe
An astronomical anomaly
Pack up their camels
And head toward its light
And we will be reminded once more
Of the news we so easily and often forget
That every newborn child
Redeems our ruined world

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesday and others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.

HALF THE MERCY

by Tony Brown

Pope Francis confessed Thursday that he took the rosary cross of his late confessor from his casket and wears it to this day in a fabric pouch under his cassock. He said he did so telling the late priest, "Give me half your mercy." --ABC News, March 6, 2014

The Pope speaks

of how once he lifted a cross

from a corpse’s fingers,



left roses

in its place, and now

carries that theft
with him always

under his clothes.

Those innocent
severed roses still rot

in the dark of the tomb

where mercy is nowhere to be found
and there’s no redemption

or resurrection

to be had
as a crime is revealed,

no one is shocked, and once again

everything stays the same.


Tony Brown is a poet from Worcester, MA.  He works as a consultant and writer.