SOCKS

by Marilyn Peretti

Yuriy Blazhkevych at his home in Brooklyn the day before he left for Ukraine. “I’m so angry,” he said. Photo: Sasha Maslov for The New York Times, March 10, 2022

Zoryana says

   he never wears socks

   just flip flops,

speaking of her father,

   Yuriy, who is packing

   at his Brooklyn home

to fly to Warsaw.

Will he pack socks

   she wonders or still

   go bare, even in snow

as he does here in 

   Brighton Beach, winter

after cold winter.

Yuriy is returning

   to his homeland,

   Ukraine, to fight

Putin’s army, along with

   Ana, Ivan, Bogdani

   and Andrey, Americans

stabbed with pain

   by the cruel invasion.

As recommended, 

   Yuriy bought army fatigues,

   night goggles, belt

and holder for AK47s,

   helmet and boots. 

  Tearfully, she worries

about his freezing feet.

Marilyn Peretti from near Chicago has been published in various journals over the years, including The New Verse News, Kyoto Journal, Gray Sparrow Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Highland Park Poetry, Snowy Egret. Her most recent book is Behind the Mask in 2020... 2021... .

THE THREE SHADES

by Sara Cahill Marron

After Les Trois Ombres, 1886, Auguste Rodin, 

Plaster, Bronze

Three hooded men sit knees pressed to chests
foreheads falling together on the curb
Not quite a prayer circle the needles

lay littered, Chick-fil-A styrofoam cups
dance semi-circles between feet some
shoed some toes exposed from greyed

socks I sniff for the stench of days old
urine on cloth smelling only syrup thick
yellow honey heaviness tree pollen whipped

lighter as four p.m. descends on a breeze
carrying contagions, The Three on the nod
from too much junk slowing labored lungs

still as cut bronze heads and shoulders
hung so lowly so lost in Sister Morphine’s
seductive dose depressing respiration

The Three Shades barely breathing surrender
one battle, one corner—CoVID, the Queen,
burns through the streets with her World War.

Sara Cahill Marron, a relocated New York poet living in Washington D.C., is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018) and Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Dark Matter, Chagrin River Review, Foliate Oak, Gravel, Crab Fat Magazine, Gravitas, Atlas + Alice, Joey & the Black Boots, The Write Launch, Cordella, FLARE the Flagler Review, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunch Ticket.

UNITED NATIONS

by Howard Winn

My jeans were made in Mexico,
my shirt in Malaysia,
my shoes in China.
Socks were made in South Korea
and my jacket in Sri Lanka
although my underwear
remains anonymous
or perhaps I just missed
the country of origin
on some paper tag
that I threw away unthinkingly.
However it is clear that
my clothing is international
even if I am not and
I wonder what the now
unemployed workers of
my country are doing
with their spare time
and whether they will
vote Republican in
the next election when
pointless social issues
obscure the economic ones.


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.