TODAY STARTED OUT WITH A HOPEFUL MOMENT

by Mark Danowsky

by Andrew Shu

“My dear fellow, who will let you?”

“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

                        - Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

 

a story about an eagle

saving a baby hawk

instead of devouring

an eagle

the symbol of America

making a surprising choice

a moment of silence now

for humanity

who often shows no mercy

here comes the blood

sacrifices of scapegoats

who cry out the injustice

the weight of voices in pain

screams must echo

there is no way to ignore this 

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press) and JAWN (Moonstone Press). A short collection Violet Flame is forthcoming from tiny wren lit. 

CUSTOMS AND CONCENTRATION

by Peleg Held

Child migrants sleeping on the ground at the McAllen, Texas Border Patrol station. —NowThis, May 19 2019

A scapegoat tkhine, the sound of the note
thinned into air, red string at the throat—
its knot sung to sleep in a clavicled swale—
marking her, keeping her, outside the Pale,
the deep-drumming pigment that lodged in the heart
the night that she drank down the well of their art,
the dregs of the umbra that darkened the mat
Tenemos preguntas, the click of the latch,
the last strand of horse-hair plucked from a bow
sung out through rosin, then cinder, then snow,
salt dropped like breadcrumbs while good people slept
in the town with a desk where papers are checked
and cages of souls who once dreamed across fire
covered on stone as the cold law requires.


Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.