HOW DO YOU DEFINE AN ENDING?

by Mark Danowsky

“Never-Ending Road” painting by Elizabeth Kenney

After three years, The New York Times announces that close coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic is coming to an end.

What has ended, I wonder,
And what has not?
 
So many with prolonged illness
Know the battle rages on 
 
And those soon to fall ill
And those who will fall ill
 
I count myself 
Among the lucky 
 
Recall my sureness
That I would not survive
 
Of course, few foresee
The deft hand of death 
 
His scythe, at times, the edge
Of visible—a bullet 
 
Stops the heart 
Without just cause
 
The needle droops 
In a useless arm 
 
Tires spin on ice
And metal crushes metal
 
A cloud opens up 
For tears to flood

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is author of the poetry collections As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press), JAWN (Moonstone Press), Violet Flame (tiny wren lit), and Meatless (Plan B Press). Recent poems in Red Ogre Review, Green Ink Review, The Broadkill Review, anti-heroin chic, Harpy Hybrid Review, Otoliths, and elsewhere.

IF ONLY

by D. R. Goodman

If truth were a truncheon
            and logic a scythe
and facts were a finger—
            a poke in the eye,
then their smack or their cut
            would be suitable tools
to counter corruption
            and falsehood and fools.

But truth is a concept
            and logic a skill,
and facts are for science,
            while lies are for thrill;
corruption’s for profit,
            and profit is yuge;
and fools lack self-knowledge—
            they’re stuck as the stooge.

So temper your weapons
            and fight back in kind;
abandon persuasion,
            abandon the mind;
and dull your compassion,
            for their side has none.
But go vote your ass off,
            lest they will have won.


D. R. Goodman teaches martial arts in Berkeley and Oakland, California. She is the author of Greed: A Confession from Able Muse Press, a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and twice winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, and in many other journals.

SALVADORIAN SAW

by David Radavich

Image source: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

How best to
sacrifice a child?

Hand him over
to gang-leaders’ guns?
Pay for blood
in coinage?

Or give him to
government forces
in a simple box
I nailed myself?

Open her body
before the cathedral
with a scythe?

Or go to the U.S.
and shiver in a cage
without food
or shower or a bed?

Solomon, tell me
how to divide
this child

so her soul
can sing tomorrow.

David Radavich's latest book is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007).  Other recent poetry collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014).  He has served as president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, Charlotte Writers' Club, and North Carolina Poetry Society and currently administers the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series.

THE MOON 2018

by Harold Oberman

December 24, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of NASA's  Earthrise photograph. Harold Oberman was young enough when the Apollo missions filled him with optimism, but on earth, circumstances have changed. His poems have recently appeared in TheNewVerse.News and are forthcoming in the Free State Review.