BEFORE I KNEW ADAM HAD DIED

by Susan Vespoli

a hummingbird flittered on the other side of the glass 

patio door    a feathered sprite that stayed   stared

       at me     hovered like an airborne messenger     stayed 

       until I rose to face it      look into its seed-bead eyes

watch its wings thrum      to keep body aloft      its face

breathing in mine      until it released me       lifted off

       toward the pot of geraniums      breathed in billowy

       red petals      sipped nectar      through its dart-sharp beak

darted around the yard    like a small soft helicopter

and then      whoosh     disappeared over the fence. I didn’t know

       my son had already disappeared    from this human life

       or that I’d google to find a hummer is a symbol for freedom

and “may be a sign that a loved one has successfully made it

(like the hummingbird) to the other side   and is doing just fine.”

Editor's Note: Susan Vespoli’s son Adam, shot and killed by police last week, appeared in many of her poems, including "Chicken" and "Alex's Teeth" (Alex = code name for Adam) in The New Verse News.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, Arizona where the opioid epidemic is still alive and well. 

THE REUNION OF THE PUSSY RIOT SINGERS

by Tricia Knoll 

One of the two recently released members of Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said on Friday that their release was aimed solely at improving Russia's image before it hosts the Winter Olympic Games rather than a humanitarian gesture. --Mail & Guardian, December 29, 2013

May the games begin
the announcer calls
and may the best man,
oops and best women
carry the gold

for a nation waiting
for its glory count,
so speaks the media.
An embarrassment
of riches -- each nation

locks away those who speak
with the timber voice
of righteousness and pussies.
Amnesty is the tool
not of enlightenment
but of international spotlight.

Were the games to witness
to the strong
to commit peace
with unlike others,
with the soil we walk,
air we breathe,
and the creatures
who out-run us, out-sing us,
out-fly us, and out-think
us under the waters.
Were these the games,
a turning revolution,
victors might repair
the spoils.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who for decades has imagined winning the women's Olympic marathon while slowly jogging through an urban landscape. Her chapbook Urban Wild will be published in 2014 by Finishing Line Press.