BLACK AND WHITE

by Donna Katzin

for Peter Magubane

Born in Johannesburg in 1932, Peter Magubane documented the brutality of apartheid and suffered from banning orders, solitary confinement and beatings as a result. From teaching himself as a boy with a Brownie camera, he went on to work for the influential magazine Drum and became Nelson Mandela’s official photographer. He died on New Year’s Day aged 91.  Photo: The Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976, when more than 15,000 children protested against an editct making Afrikaans the medium of instruction in black schools. At first, the refused to be photographed but Magubane said a struggle without documentation was no struggle and they had to show the world what was going on in South Africa. The students agreed and this picture was taken by Peter Magubane. —The Guardian, January 12, 2024

With shadow and light

you engrave enduring images

in our collective consciousness,

lend us your eyes as microscope 

that bores deep beneath the skin,

telescope that scans beyond the stars.

 

Broken bodies scattered at your feet—

one camera concealed in a milk carton,

another in a loaf of bread or Bible—

you chronicle histories of struggle,

reveal the beast that lurks within

and humanity that is possible.

 

Confined to solitary

blocks of cold cement,

you do not let them hold

or break your indomitable will, 

bequeath your hammering heart

to our beleaguered world.

 

You squint far beyond the time

you have seeded with your vision,

reclaim the radiance of rainbows,

splendor of the setting sun,

knowing, somewhere,

it will rise again.

 

Donna Katzin has served as the founding and former executive director of Shared Interest, a 30 year old non-profit organization that facilitates access to credit for low-income Black Southern Africans. In that capacity, she was privileged to meet and collaborate with Peter Magubane, and honor him. She currently co-coordinates Tipitapa Partners, which helps feed impoverished children and empower their mothers in Nicaragua. She also serves on the Board of the Fund for Community Change, as well as the Tikun Olam Commission of Reconstructing Judaism—working on reparations in the U.S.  A proud wife and mother, she is a contributor to The New Verse News and author of With These Hands—poems about the "new" South Africa giving birth to itself.

ELECTING THE SHADOW KING: A SPECULATIVE TALE

by Fred Demien

A study that evaluated medical records from 156 [St. Louis] child victims of firearms found that most did not know who shot them or why. —St. Louis Public Radio, May 9, 2023. Graphic by Susannah Lohr.

Americans under the age of eighteen are eight times more likely to be killed in St. Louis than in the rest of the country...[As of] March, eight St. Louis children have already been killed in 2021. —St. Louis Riverfront Times, March 10, 2021 

 

·      In 2021, twenty-three children were killed in gunfire in the St. Louis metropolitan area. 

·      In 2022, twenty-six children were killed in gunfire in the St. Louis metropolitan area. 

·      As of 13 June 2023, ten children have been killed in gunfire in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

There is no known original name, only what it became.  
The city that drips with the Shadow’s pitch.  
 
It wasn’t planned— 
the architects didn’t plot it in their original drawings;  
the sewer district had no recourse for its removal;  
the contractor did not budget it in her original bid.  
Only the asphalt worker knew, driving his roller,  
slow in the stick and heat of summer. But no one listened  
when he said he saw it swallow a child whole.  
Except that child’s mother, and another, another,  
as child after child disappeared. 
 
News reached the mayor too late  
after his election to campaign, so he ignored it.  
But one day the Shadow towered at the city’s gateway  
and opened like a mouth, with thousands of cries  
of young girls and boys screaming out.  
 
The mayor declared it a threat, but  
the money was already allotted, he said.  
They never fully calculated the damage, but a generation  
of future voters—gone. Everyone else evacuated.  
Even mothers left, their sons and daughters all 
drawn down the unending gullet of the Shadow. 
 
Still the mayor stays in the swallowed city,  
sitting at his darkened desk, writing 
—in what he thinks is ink— 
the songs he hears carried in children’s voices  
seeping from the walls. 
 
 He sends what he can to their mothers. 

Fred Demien is a queer, itinerant minister. In 2016, her work was longlisted for the Lascaux Prize in Poetry. Her writing will be published by The Forge Literary Magazine in July of 2023. An admirer of trees, bees, and human beings, she is currently writing and building community in the greater St. Louis area. 

ANTHROPOPHOBIA

by Daniel Lurie

More than a week after four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in a house near campus, the police chief leading the investigation said on Sunday that the police had not been able to answer many of the crime’s most pressing questions, such as how the victims’ roommates were not awakened during the overnight killings or where the killer might be now. The few details that have been uncovered have only deepened the mystery of a crime that has unnerved students and residents in the college town of Moscow, Idaho, and left victims’ families trying to help piece together what happened. Photo: Friends and community members celebrated the victims’ lives during a candlelight vigil in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Wednesday. Rajah Bose for The New York Times, November 21, 2022

Credi

You never trusted easy/when you first got here/every night you’d push a couch/ 
in front of the door/a dark cloud hangs/over an emptying/Moscow like quarantine/
you haven’t slept in 3 days/the faces of the 4 victims/a constant rolodex/
a handful of years younger than you/same age as your students/you hope/
they get home/after you canceled classes/you have nowhere else/to go/
over a phone call/your mother tells you to buy wood/for the ground floor windows/
all the stores are sold out/your friend Beck was struck/while on her bike/months ago/
drivers still floored it through town/this moment is a cardinal/ 
in a field of snow/you haven’t been there/but you know there’s a bouquet/
resting against a stone slab/an unrested abode/wrapped in yellow/
police tape/no one deserves to lose/their lives/the suspect still/
at large/fills every corner/every room/the eyes you won’t meet/
on the street/the shadow outside/your loved ones/homes/

Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer from Roundup, Montana. He attended Montana State University Billings, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communications. He is currently in his second year at the University of Idaho, pursuing an MFA in poetry. Daniel is passionate about the environment, human rights, rural life, and conceptualizing grief. He is the Poetry Editor for Fugue. His work has appeared in The Palouse Review, FeverDream, The Rook, Sidewalk Poetry, and most recently in Moscow’s Third Street Gallery. 

THE GROUNDHOG SPEAKS

by David Feela

As politicians emerge from legislative 

burrows, leaning on superstition

(believing if it is a sunny day 

the shadow they see must only be 

projected by our former insurgency)

they’ll rush back to their chambers 

for six more weeks of uncertainty.

If eventually the lawmakers choose 

weather to guide a fearful nation, 

will the groundhog please speak up, 

maybe mention the shadow they’ve seen 

is the thick head of their own invention.

David Feela writes monthly columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in 2019.

INTERSECTION

by Dick Westheimer

after the reading of "The Hill We Climb” 

Your sons and daughters shall prophesy; 

Your old shall dream dreams, 

And your youth shall see visions.

Joel 3:1

The poet shown like a nova, a new star rising from the dais, 

She spoke brilliance that rivaled the light that streamed through 

the parting clouds, but like any sun, could not see the shadows 

cast by her own bright light—only the glow on the faces 

of a nation reflected back to her as she rose fierce and lyrical.

Most of the elders gathered there—like lunar satellites 

in a sky of her making—were made luminous by her, 

reflected on her words, were dazzled by what she saw. 

Others, blind to her light, heard only 

the cawing of the crows nested in their heads. 

The wise ones there knew all about the casting of shadows. 

Some had even traded in darkness—had forged troubled unions 

of dark and light. But they knew this Black star before them 

was Antares to their lurking Ares. In that moment they felt  

that this night’s moon, bathed in her corona, could make them 

brave enough to face what lurks in the penumbral places.

Dick Westheimer writes poetry to makes sense of the world—which is made easier by the company of his wife of 40 years, and the plot of land they’ve worked together for all of those years. His poems have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, For a Better World, and Riparian.

VITAMIN D

by Scott C. Kaestner

A novel virus, a deadly mystery
we’re all reading together

doctors, politicians, economists
nurses, cooks, and clerks

cashiers, truckers, teachers
each and every one of us

learning on the fly, adjusting
trying to grasp our new reality

mutative existence exhausting
our ability to cope with it

the story changes, the mystery grows
amid our perpetual Groundhog Day

we see the shadow of death looming
it’s hard to see the sun in the dark

but it’s still there, rising every day
shining light into our lives

whether or not we choose to see it
let the light guide us through the shadows

illuminate darkness with love and unity
the belief that together we can

solve this mystery, together we can
mend broken hearts, together we can

heal the wounds, together we can
rebuild the world with the light

alive in all of us, together we can
know we’re all in this together

and one day this virus won’t be so novel
and one day this mystery will be solved

it will be a story of rebirth
together we will walk onward

into a future we found together
thanks to the light inside us all.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and is in need of a good moisturizer for his overwashed hands. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

SQUID SONNET

by Anne Graue

Seven years after scientists caught the elusive deep-sea cephalopod on video, they saw another. Then lightning struck a third time. Here is a juvenile giant squid approaching, attacking, and then retreating from a ring of pulsating blue LEDs on the Medusa deep-sea camera system. Video by Edie Widder and Nathan Robinson via The New York Times, June 21, 2019

It should be immense, for a giant squid—
The one on camera that emerges
from midnight, from nowhere, reaching for light
the bait in front of the lens. It spreads wide
its suckered tentacles, its ghost arms search
for prey. Millions of neurons in pointless
hunting with a stab at the lighted lure—
its only course to return to shadow.
This sonnet only fulfills its promise
to keep itself contained within its lines.
The squid, too, will adhere to nature’s plan—
male or female, to inject, lay and hatch
offspring in a final endeavor to
become food for crustaceans and sea stars. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter, and has poetry appearing in numerous journals and anthologies, online and in print. She also has reviews in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Whale Road Review, and The Rumpus, and at Asitoughttobe.com, where she is a contributing editor.

SHUTDOWN SHUT-UP

by David Feela

Cartoon by Mike Marland

We talked, then complained.
Now the why about what happened

deserves a reasonable explanation.
Fifteen days seems ample time

for tunneling under his wall of
obfuscation, finally into sunlight.

See the paunchy groundhog,
still afraid of his own shadow.

Tell him no, we’ll have no more
weeks of political winter.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A Collection of his essays, How Delicate These Arches, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press will release his new chapbook, Little Acres, in April 2019. He's tired of winter.

ECLIPSE

by William Marr

from The New York Times, August 14, 1932

Young at heart
the old sun
once in a while
likes to put on
his mischievous black mask
just to scare
the superstitious jittery
shadows

He doesn’t know
we now keep shadows
safely in a world of virtual reality
where we eat and drink
make love
all without benefit
of a single ray
of sunlight

William Marr has published 23 volumes of poetry (Autumn Window and Between Heaven and Earth are in English and the rest in his native Chinese language), 3 books of essays, and several books of translations.  His most recent published work Chicago Serenade is a trilingual (Chinese/English/French) anthology of poems published in Paris in 2015. 

THE BIG EYE

by David Radavich




What is the sound
of an eclipse
or a moon’s shadow?

That is the life
we want.

Not without dissonance
but chords echoing
silk, weaving
the overhead sky
night or day.

A small tune maybe
but momentous.

Big as galaxies.

A flower that
foresees its death.

Tomorrow will be
a different clef:
quavers and justice
that ring light.

David Radavich's recent poetry collections are America Bound: An Epic for Our Time, Middle-East Mezze, and The Countries We Live In.  His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe.

THE GHOSTS OF ISHINOMAKI

by Luisa A. Igloria

In early summer 2011, a taxi driver working in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, which had been devastated by the tsunami a few months earlier, had a mysterious encounter. A woman who was wearing a coat climbed in his cab near Ishinomaki Station. The woman directed him, “Please go to the Minamihama (district).” The driver, in his 50s, asked her, “The area is almost empty. Is it OK?” Then, the woman said in a shivering voice, “Have I died?” Surprised at the question, the driver looked back at the rear seat. No one was there. A Tohoku Gakuin University senior majoring in sociology included the encounter in her graduation thesis, in which seven taxi drivers reported carrying "ghost passengers" following the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. —The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 21, 2016. Photo by Getty Images via International Business Times.

There was something
I was trying to finish—
A lunchbox
for my little one:
balls of pearled rice,
the pale white body
of a radish undressed
on the chopping board.

*

Take me
to Hiroriyama,
I say to the driver.
After we crest
the hill he stops.
The road disappears.
There is nothing there.
Every time, I die again.

*

I am a shimmer
in the twisted grass,
a shadow on rusted
copper. My hands,
two pale fish lost
in a river of red
at the ends
of my sleeves.


Luisa A. Igloria is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world's first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015.

A SHADOW IS BORN

by Alejandro Escudé


Sep 30, 2015 · by Rob Stein and Eyder Peralta

From 

Couple Spends $100,000 To Clone Deceased Dog, Gets Two Puppies 

—HuffPost Science, Dec. 28, 2015

A chance to wipe
The death-slate
Clean,

And raise a clone.
We might dictate
Morals of old
But none do hold,

The messiah
Willing to pry a life
From the mouth
Of god.

I gaze at
My bloody feet,
The dust, having wandered
The desert,

A rueful act.
One traitor equals
One billion

With minds set
To explode or be
Appeased.

Holding a shadow
Should be
A harrowing thing,

To feel the body
There, only to witness
The darkness.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.