WHAT THEY TRIED IN MY SMALL TOWN

by Chad Parenteau

Glenn set a car on fire.
Surprisingly stuck around 
until the police arrived. 
 
Jesse got his girl pregnant.
Denied it. His family told hers
never contact him again. 
 
Tim’s Dad shot my aunt’s cat
from his window, kept guns
Tim grabbed from drawers.
 
Brian and James tried college.
Drank their first night. Thought 
licorice would conceal breath.
 
Some trolled on Facebook when 
Trump lost, angry that our world 
was bigger than where they lived.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

DEAR JASON ALDEAN

by Laurie Rosen

In my little town there were

moms at home doing laundry,

schools we could walk to,

one car in every driveway, sometimes two. 

Our neighborhoods teemed with children —

kick ball or wiffle ball in the middle of the street.

There was a bowling alley, ice cream parlor

and golf driving range, 

In my little town there were teachers 

who required us to memorize poems, 

write haikus, read Icarus, Hiroshima,

Shakespeare and the Bible. 

And in my little town, a football coach taught 

health class. A young teacher who spoke

openly on the VietNam war, civil rights 

and the slaughter of indigenous people

was disappeared, replaced

by an elderly retired teacher who bored us 

with dates and white washed facts,

screamed at us to pay attention. 

Our only lake, once a summer retreat, 

was declared a Superfund waste site. 

There was rampant drug and alcohol abuse, 

breast cancer, brain tumors, overdoses and suicides. 

In my little town, mostly white and Christian,

we sang China Town is Burning down, 

during recess, to the tune of ring-around-the-rosy 

at the one Chinese American boy 

in our third grade class, who stood

off to the side, while we held hands 

and skipped round and round.

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in The Muddy River Poetry Review, Peregrine, Oddball Magazine, Gyroscope Review, The New Verse News, The Inquisitive Eater: a journal of  The New School, One Art, and elsewhere.

PLACES OF SAFETY

by Pepper Trail

"There Is No Safe Place" by Amanda Lea Sidor

Iowa small town, the Methodist sanctuary, stained glass and bright wood
The scent of lilies,  smiling voices loud, "Great is Thy Faithfulness"

Pizza place down the block, always busy, orders shouted backward
Line at the counter, stomachs growling good, quick hit of gossip

Bear curled in its den, cubs asleep and suckling, living warmth
Above, outside, snow shadow of Denali climbing the white sky

Lafayette Park, high school groups, hormones and democracy
The White House in its dignity, old church tower looking down

North of the river, Estados Unidos, breath held no more at last
The child in your arms, shivering but safe, but safe

What we thought we knew, we did not know
Where we thought we were, we are not


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

CROSSROADS

by Howard Winn

Red Oaks Mill dam - after collapse. Image source: Ed Nisley's Blog

At the crossroads, they call it Red Oaks Mill on the AAA map,
in an empty obeisance to some historic past.
Mill is gone, dam remains but crumbling,
the red oaks have long been dead.
Empty strip mall stores stare
blindly at each other across the highway.
The Sunny Day Gift Shop
and its Korean proprietor are gone
with the Hallmark cards
cheerily celebrating birthdays, weddings,
mothers' and secretaries' day,
along with Michael who made flower and fern
arrangements prettily next door.
Paper taped to plate glass makes mirrors of windows
reflecting upon absence, loss, and death.
Liquor, Wine and Lotto,
respite from diminishing reality,
has moved along to cheaper digs.
Phil the pharmacist has been absorbed
by a glittering Rite Aid
expanded to sell Wonderbread, Campbell Soup, Twinkies,  Kraft Cheddar, and beer
because Grand Union is gone,
directed by  numbers from a foreign land.
Closed, the lost Burger King where too  slow moving beef and fries
incinerated some franchised American Drive-Thru Dream.
The former hardware store owner wears
an orange apron at a distant Home Depot and smiles
when he makes eye contact
and perhaps, perhaps not, when he
receives his regular hired hand's paycheck.
The farm is foreclosed and subdivided,
Black Angus finished by abattoir,
not even picturesque tumbleweeds blown
against abandoned fences
but pools, dentists, and barbecues rampant.
Lawns staked through the heart with signs of Century 21.


Most recently Howard Winn had poems and fiction published in The Dalhousie Review, Descant (Canada), Cactus Heart, Main Street Rag, Caduceus, Burning Word,  Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Southern Humanities Review, Cutting Edgz and Borderlands. His B. A. is from Vassar College. His graduate degree is from the Writing Program at Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at New York University. He is a State University of New York faculty member.