100

by Tom Bauer

A residential building destroyed by Russian shelling in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Photograph: Maksim Levin/Reuters

That many days since they went marching in.

A hundred turns of horror and eyeballs

peeled back and fixed upon the safe truisms:

that this is what it is and this is wrong.

Emotions are the rulers here, not horror.

Are we urged to cry for the babes in earth,

unseen and unsung, dispatched with certitude

to certain doom for good truisms we love?

I’m like a gumshoe, just want the facts, ma’am.

No need to tell me who is right or wrong,

trying to convince me you know the real truth.

Who speaks true when murder is the argument

to prove the virtue of the cause? I can’t

see past the fact the top guys are getting paid.

Tom Bauer grew up playing violin and listening to spoken word recordings. When he was ten, he rashly announced he was going to be a poet. He did a bunch of university and stuff. He's had some poems published. He lives in Montreal and plays board games.

THE BIG SLEEP: ARE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WAKING UP?

by George Salamon

“Sleepwalker” sculpture by Tony Matelli at The High Line in NYC.

"...an age when Americans were sleepwalking through history..." —Haynes Johnson,  Sleepwalking Through History, America in the Reagan Years (1991).

It feels like we've been asleep since

The movie star charmed us to sleep,

Since our aspirations and expectations

Were stamped out of date and we decided

To sleep through the times when roles of those

On the national stage became vacant, when

Nothing could move anything to animate the

Emptiness we'd sleepwalked into, when every

Movement failed to resuscitate our consciousness,

We found ourselves alone and blind to what was

Waiting for us beyond the bend in the road, so

Today we cannot tell if everything has stopped,

Waiting for everything to start and we're just

Looking to find the right sequence so we can

Join again and, if all goes well and we the

People can find our voice and finally learn

To play against the rules and the rulers.

Is there reason to hope, or is hoping merely

Lying to oneself and  this poem merely

What I dreamt?

George Salamon lives in America's "heartland," but even so he cannot tell if there is still enough in the heart and vision  of Americans they can share and make known to those who look with contempt and condescension on "bleeding hearts."

AS SMALL AS A PIMPLE

by Dmitry Blizniuk 

translated by Sergey Gerasimov from the Russian

Stop Hate for Profit

There's no room in history for a wanderer with a backpack,

or a cobbler in a circle of splinter light,

or a girl with a walking stick.

There is nothing human in the history of humans.

We examine and study all forms and kinds of war monsters,

detective or horror stories.

History is emptied out pools of time:

people's blood and stupidity of rulers have flowed out,

and only dry mud is left,

senseless, enameled emptiness,

and pyramids, burial mounds of years and dates.

But now we see our reflection in the Internet,

colorful shadows of asses and faces in social networking sites.

A greenish sick salmon 

sluggishly slaps its tail in the dirty water

among oil spills, candy wrappers,

and all kinds of garbage.

Looking at the gasoline stain on water

you can see your reflected face—

and you are as small as a pimple.

Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Pinch, Salamander, Willow Springs, Grub Street, and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Member of PEN America.