WORLD CUP

by Amy Jean Bailey

The stadium is filling with red

and white striped shirts, a swimming

zigzag. What was left of the potential

rain has melted now into pure light. 

Voices in unison singing 

Seven Nation Army 

by The White Stripes could be heard 

by a barista all the way in Lower

Queen Anne and I want so much

to love it here—the depth 

of our coffee, the sparkle in our sea. 

I want to point to the eagle’s nest 

by the walking path, maybe even have you 

over, where I’ll slide open the closet door

to display my colorful collection

of rainboots of varying heights,

before I gesture towards the Locks 

and explain how salmon 

swim upstream and might still make it—

as if they didn’t need a ladder,

as if we don’t.

Amy Jean Bailey is a poet and educator who has a PhD in anthropology from UCLA. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Timberline Review, Clockhouse, in the anthology The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona Press), and elsewhere. Born and raised in Chicago, and then living all over the U.S., she now resides with her dog in Seattle, Washington.

THE DAY AFTER KC’S FIRST WORLD CUP GAME

by Al Ortolani

For a while at the farmer’s market

it was a happier America. People

were pleasant, shopping in the shade

under the awning. Multiple languages,

all shades of skin, Christians

and Jews and Muslims. Hindus

and Buddhists and Secular Humanists. 

I bought Hungarian paprika, local garlic,

Mennonite bread, a bouquet of flowers

for my wife from a woman 

who sold bok choi and radishes. 

For lunch there were vine ripened 

Arkansas tomatoes, chili peppers, 

and Mexican Coca Cola. I’m certain 

someone who had never 

watched soccer in their life 

went on and on about Messi’s Hat Trick.

Al Ortolani is a retired public school teacher in the Kansas City area. His poems have appeared widely. He learned the ins and outs of soccer by following his children and grandchildren through the magic of the sport, albeit often confused by the rules.

A POET'S SELF-PORTRAIT AS A HOSPITAL BED

by Gil Hoy

More particularly, one of many hospital beds 

in a hospital where my son is being treated

 

for the bone sticking out of his leg 

from a soccer game

 

using my insurance that I bought for him 

because he is too young, only twelve

 

to have bought any insurance of his own. 

Nor has he any right to vote in a country 

 

where his elected representatives 

are about to take away his health insurance 

 

by making mine too expensive to afford.  

This morning, the news shows how easily 

 

this President and this Congress can take away 

a person’s health insurance, my child's, mine

 

or yours, for example, this President 

and this Congress a bit like a hospital bed 

 

in a country as ill as ours is now. 

Whatever hope we now have lies in a hospital bed 

 

and the medicines we can use to remove 

this pestilence, if we can just take them off 

 

the shelf—for there they sit—and use them 

before it’s too late. My son is still young enough 

 

to love me unconditionally, as much as he 

loves soccer, even though I wasn’t strong enough, 

 

nor my countrymen strong enough, to rise up 

and stop this thing from happening. But there is still 

 

time to act if we are strong enough, 

if we are determined enough, to find a cure. 

 

But judging by how things have gone so far, 

who can foresee with what success 

and with what result?

Gil Hoy is a Master’s Class student in fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and previously studied at Boston University. Gil's been nominated for a Best of the Net award in poetry. His work has previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Penmen Review, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

CANCER JEW

by Howie Good

We’re told that life, it can be a wedding or a funeral, happy or melancholy, just depends if we act like mourners or celebrants, it’s our choice, whether we dab away tears of joy or shed ones of grief, responsibility for our happiness, we’re told in podcasts and internet articles and by subliminal suggestion, is entirely ours, regardless of the colossal forces, the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics, the self-corrections of the market, that shape and direct our lives, that hurl us through a worrying present toward a future we already regret, tumors on eyes and nose and mouth and shadows congealing into a dark mass, a Jew lying on the ground, beaten to the point of death.

 

Note: “Cancer Jew” is a Dutch anti-Semitic slur.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

WINNING THE WORLD CUP

by Margaret Rozga

Hooray Spain!

Hooray soft kick,

hooray edge into the goal,

hooray England so close.

Hooray women!

 

I want to believe in my health,

the health of the sport, the health

of the word, the health of the world

at play on the field for all of us.

 

See the women cross field pass,

see the women head goalward,

see the women strong legs.

 

I play the we, play into the we.

If we can win, the win is for the we.     

If we lose, the loss swept into the win.

Spain is not my country, nor England.

 

What in the world, a win—

what for the world, a win—rejoice!

Here, where, how, and why for the world,

for the game, for women, whoever,

wherever, this world moment, believe.

Margaret Rozga served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. Her fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021). Cornerstone Press will also publish her 2024 forthcoming book, Restoring Prairie.

GOING HOME

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Portrait of Grant Wahl by Dan Leydon. “Grant arrived home Monday, December 12, and this transition was handled with the utmost care and sensitivity… An autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death. While the world knew Grant as a great journalist, we knew him as a man who approached the world with openness and love.” —Céline Gounder, Grant’s Wife, at Substack.

      In memory of Grant Wahl

The shoot-out wasn’t over

when you left.

But you know by now

that Argentina sent

The Netherlands packing,

a fitting end to a soccer game,

to any game, really,

which is all it is we’re playing.

You, one of the lucky ones—

you turned yours into a living.

Living. You lived to the max,

free to write of parties,

beautiful vistas, catastrophes,

trivia, friends, fears, premonitions.

Your wrote down your observations

of injustice as fluidly as those

of offside or of a shoot-out.

You left early, Grant, probably

just hours before you’d posted

your “Three Thoughts” on the game.

And the Netherlands went home.

Anne Harding Woodworth’s eighth book of poetry, Gender: Two Novellas in Verse, is a Literary Titan Silver Award Winner. Her book Trouble received the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry.

BALL OF MIRTH

by Dick Altman

As if the fate of nations

hung in the balance,

World Cup enters its final laps.

Though it would bring a smile,

if my hometown America

took home the gold,

I neither hold my breath

nor torture myself

over the outcome.

 

Because, in my eyes, soccer

is less about winning,

than the friendships

that encircle the ball,

whatever color of foot,

language or nationality.

 

I motorcycle—

between grad school

and college—

across Europe.

On my luggage rack,

tied in a net,

a soccer ball.

On every beach,

every campsite,

the ball serves as the key

to a kingdom of friendships.

 

The night I visit Greece’s Delphi,

mythical home of the Oracle,

I doubt even she could

have predicted what would

happen as I slept.

Someone likely too poor

to own a ball of their own

burns—likely with a cigarette—

a hole in the net

and steals the ball.

 

This—after five-thousand

kilometers starting in Amsterdam.

I could only smile.

What they really stole

was the fun—and I,

kid of twenty-two,

on a fantasy trip

most my age

could only dream about,

could afford to share

a ball that would,

in days, months,

even years to come,

produce,

in every dribble and kick,

unyielding rounds of mirth.

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

TARGETS

by Tricia Knoll

Weathered growth rings in a horizontal cross section cut through a tree felled around AD 1111 used for the western building complex at Aztec Ruins National Monument, San Juan County, New Mexico, USA. Source: commons.wikimedia.org . Photographer:  Michael Gäbler.

Soft or hard: like ice cream?
The you-can’t-imagine bull’s-eyes
on the chest of the emergency
room doctor, but someone did.
The deepest Mars crater yawns
wide open for a rocky landing.
Today’s news has turkeys
playing soccer, fenced orphanages
for orangutans. What if instead
of seeing targets and borders
in every mapped topography
we visualize growth rings,
slow but steady widening
of enduring trees as they bow
under winter’s weight
or resprout from the fire?
For seeds of wildflowers.
Gratitude for mandala graces.


Author's note: Written in response to Monday's shooting at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

Tricia Knoll was born in a Chicago hospital. She has a daily gratitude practice, trying to find that day's hint of beauty in the midst of news of wanton shootings, vicious pronouncements from the administration—a hint of something soothing somewhere. 

DILEMMA

by Joe Amaral

The large, bold woodcut image of a supplicant male slave in chains appears on the 1837 broadside publication of John Greenleaf Whittier's antislavery poem, "Our Countrymen in Chains." The design was originally adopted as the seal of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England in the 1780s, and appeared on several medallions for the society made by Josiah Wedgwood as early as 1787. —Library of Congress

Six minutes until game time
and the anthem is about to begin.

I’m afraid to kneel for inequality
in front of 11,000 drunk people

holding their hands half-heartedly
over hearts awaiting the start of

a collegiate soccer game where voice
rather than tangible action counts.

I want to avoid the hostile sneers of fans
awake in fake patriotism, ignorant to

police brutality. My kids follow the lead
of the crowd and stand. I ditch my family,

climbing concrete steps into the breeze-
way, my back to the flag, ducking into

a bathroom. The blood and soil floor is
piss-stained. I sort of kneel, listening as

the reverberation of a bad singer gravels
something antiquated and fragilely austere.

I feel for those going through the motions
dead-eyed. They know dutiful conformity

is an empty gesture unspoken. But a fist
in the air, a knee on the ground, now that

is no small token.

Joe Amaral works 48-hour shifts as a paramedic on the central coast of California. He has two young daughters, Zelia and Rui, and his wife Marina is a surgical nurse. They love spelunking outdoors, camping, traveling and hosting foreign exchange students. His writing has appeared worldwide in awesome places like 3Elements Review, Arcadia Magazine, Crow Hollow 19, The Good Men Project, The Rise Up Review and Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora. Joe won the 2014 Ingrid Reti Literary Award. 

MEMO: IN MEXICO'S DEFENSE

by Margaret Rozga

Mexico Finds Itself Knee-Deep in Victory -- NY Times, June 23, 2014

The ball touches his fingertips
ricochets left of the goal.

The ball against his body
for another save, and in the 69th minute
he saves again with the upper part
of his left thigh.

“There are nights” he says
“when the ball seems to hit you even
If you close your eyes.”

Mexico’s Coach Miguel Herrera
chose at the last minute to go with the calm
of goalie Guillermo Ochoa.

The ball is in his hands,
his calm and saving hands.


Margaret Rozga has published two books: Two Hundred Nights and One Day and Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad.  Her new book  Justice   Freedom   Herbs   is scheduled for January 2015 publication.

HOLY MACARENA MAJOR WORLD RELIGION

by Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

Only sport played in every
Country around rotating spherical globe
Defeatist loser mentality thinking squad
Shoulda coulda woulda might’ve didn’t

Team sport sense of togetherness
Combining experience balanced with youth
Requiring gritty perseverance sacrifice dedication
Practice practice more committed practice

It’s not the will to
Win but willful positive mindset
Being ever-prepared to win finding
Different insights to achieve goals

Best teams often are eliminated
Not believing they can hard
Enough regretfully upsetting compromised expectations
Deflating swelled ego nationalistic pride

Anything can happen probably will
Nothing simulated playing for real
Uniting uneven odds enthusiastic motivation
Catching fever pass it on

Passion evolves in 4-year cycles
2018 Olympics World Cup bids
The future isn’t something we
Enter it’s something we create

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

PEACE RIOT: KABUL, 9/11/13

by Rick Gray

Horns honked nonstop, and car radios blasted Afghan pop and patriotic tunes. Dancing crowds overwhelmed traffic circles as grinning police looked on. Flares and rockets arced and sparked overhead, and celebratory gunshots rang out, but no one flinched. . . . "It was not lost on the celebrants that Wednesday was the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that had branded their country a terrorist haven and plunged it into war once more. All day, national television stations here replayed film clips of New York’s twin towers falling and featured solemn interviews with experts about the event." --Washington Post, September 12, 2013. Image source: Twitter.

From a distance it sounds like
More war
But drive in closer and reach
Your open hand
Outside the cracked window
And feel it take hold.
This is nothing like what you dreamed.
It leads you recklessly into cheering mobs
beside your taxi, and won’t let go.
You are together now, and committed
Just like you said you always wanted
And with its free hand it pulls
the trigger of a rusted Kalashnikov
That shouts in English, just for you,
Straight up into thirty years of darkness
It’s over! Afghanistan two! India nothing!


Rick Gray has poems forthcoming in Salamander and Rkvry. His essay Total Darkness will appear in the forthcoming book Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. When not in Kabul, he lives with his wife and twin daughters in Florida.