THE UNITED STATES OF BRAZIL

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

I throw up my hands. I cannot 

understand how half the country 

votes for stepping off the cliff 

of righteousness, the rule 

of law, protection of the weak 

and the other; how so many 

can see only belly button,

door lock, money swirling

on line, quick payments 

and the roaring feijoada, 

caipirinhas flowing 

and no more focus

on that favela up the hill.

Pied Piper and the Bible,

holiness and the puritan’s

American dream, wealth 

equals God’s blessing,

but aren’t we in Brazil…

the evangelical globalized,

localized, homogenized, 

two frontier myths become one, 

the United States of Brazil,

at least half the residents

singing hymns, marching 

to the sea to build beach-

front property, marching 

to the forest to burn it down.

Indran Amirthanayagam received Sri Lanka's State Literary Award for White Space Sonnets.  He won the Paterson Poetry Prize for The Elephants of Reckoning. His Lettre aux residents du monde is forthcoming from L'Harmattan. Amirthanayagam edits Beltway Poetry <www.beltwaypoetry.com>publishes at Beltway Editions >www.beltwayeditions.com>. He writes indranmx.substack.com

AFTER

by Roxanne Doty

A young girl stands amidst building rubble in Gaza. Photo: Mohammed Zaaboun/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images at Save the Children.

When the wars end

someone must collect

the limbs of the children

separate them from the rubble.

 

Someone must remind us

how much they resemble

our own fragile offsprings’

small legs that skipped

across the grass for the first time

arms that reached for you.

 

When the wars end

someone must patch

the fissures in the concrete

walls of our righteousness

fill the hollow chasm

in our moral codes.

 

And someone must care

for the children

who are no longer whole

and for those not yet broken.

Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her novel, Out Stealing Water, was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30. 2022. Her first poetry collection was published by Kelsay Books 2024. She has published stories and poems in Third Wednesday, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, The New Verse News, Espacio Fronterizo, Ocotillo Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, The Blue Guitar, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature,  International Times, Saranac Review, Gateway Review and Reunion-The Dallas Review.

A YOUNGER NETANYAHU RETURNS TO ADDRESS HIS OLDER SELF

by Gordon Gilbert

"What terrorists do is target the innocent deliberately, and therefore my definition of terrorism is… the systematic and deliberate attack, murder, maiming and menacing of innocent civilians for political goals.... You can tell a lot about terrorists and what happens when they come to power. Those who fight for freedom and come to power do not impose terrorism.  Those who do, who fight in terroristic means, end up being masters of terroristic states."  —Benjamin Netanyahu to William F. Buckley on Firing Line, May 30, 1986.

Ah, Bibi, habibi!

 

You are not the man I thought I'd be,

no, not the one I find I have become.

I always knew how absolutely

power does corrupt.

I see now how just knowing that

was not enough to keep me

on a path of righteousness,

or save me from myself,

my own worst enemy.

 

So much suffering for all,

and in the end,

so much worse for Israel,

even now, as I,

the man you used to be,

confront you!

 

But no, I must say "we."

I am the former you.

Can you not see

you once were me?

 

We are taking down with us

our own beloved Israel!

 

Ah, Bibi, habibi,

what have we become?

Gordon Gilbert is a resident of the West Village in NYC who got through the pandemic taking long walks along the Hudson River.

DID JUSTICE NOT MOAN?

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

An encounter in 2020 between a Jewish couple in Ijzim, Israel (south of Haifa) and the displaced Palestinians in whose house that couple has lived since 1948 when the Palestinians were denied the right to return to their village and property. Photo from an Al Jazeera video report. At YouTube, you can click on “SHOW MORE” to read an English translation of the Arabic narration.

Did their mothers tell them

Take whatever you want?

Did their fathers say

By any means necessary?

Did the god they concocted assure them

That they mattered more than anyone else?

Did the historians of erasure argue

That until they arrived the land was uninhabited?

Did the cartographers of eradication draw beautiful maps

Haunted by ghost villages?

Do the politicians they vote for promise

A sanitized future cleansed of the Other?

When they faced those they had dispossessed

And claimed not to give them a second thought

Did justice not moan?

Did righteousness not weep?

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His new book is At the Driveway Guitar Sale: Poems on Aging, Memory, Morality (Main Street Rag Publishing). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife, Cynthia, in northern California.