RECUERDO

by Julian O. Long

Hanging my heart’s wassail

outdoors again once more

shall I light tonight’s candle

to honor the Maccabees?

I, who am neither Jew nor Greek

nor gentile enough to call myself

Christian any longer, but not

alone. Eight days of Temple miracle

this year encompass Christmas.

 

A bit like recurring

planetary conjunctions billed

from time to time in the press

as the Star of Bethlehem, star

in the east that leads us towards

a dying west as Arcturus drives

his great plow in such heavenly

furrows as may from time to time

command him.

 

And we, needing children

we once were, await the miracle

winter solstice always seems to promise

ponder more and more the time

to time, as our recurring

celebrations grow each year

more hollow, as nations rage

and find no compass, take no

counsel or reproof.

 

What will the new year

bring us, no new birth

certainly. Left to comfort

ourselves, can we find solace

in faded retrograde, memory

of walks to school in childish

crowds when the air blew fresh

and scented with as yet no

fevered yearning?

 

It cannot be expanded

to the whole, and yet one almost

thinks it could if one knew the song—

and thus we begin to see our breath

as loops of cold air lift our singing

high and towards the sun, children

again once more in the chosen present

moment, having no memory or thought

of time before or after.

Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, PineStraw, and O’Henry.

A POEM IN FAVOR OF REMAINING PURPOSEFUL IN DARK TIMES

by Alan Walowitz

It’s late here, afternoon, and for all I know

the solstice might have come and gone.

Another of these sodden days

keeps me in my sleep-clothes—Gatkes,

my mother might say, a little Yiddish

meant to make things light

and shame me into the fray we’ve made

of forced boredom and too much sleep.

 

Not much happening before Christmas,

the true-believers at the mall, avoiding one another

as if they want to remain alive.

Still, here they are in droves

to address our national debt

and resuscitate mankind’s collective desire;

the National Guard poised to calm the streets

so I won’t have to worry the neighbor’s rage:

my leaves blown carelessly on his lawn again;

the cops have promised not to kill anymore.

Why not walk aimlessly around

masked and dazed by the beauty of the Christmas lights?

Underutilized, my own daughter says of me,

though it’s not how I was raised.

 

The moon was part of us once

before it was hoisted and fastened above

and later assigned to werewolves and love--

though we know we’re done with that.

But now the moon, risen low in the sky,

and twice as bright comes into its own --

holding out against any wobble,

any sudden tilt of the earth.

The Sun, that old Palooka,

means to cook us alive and swallow us whole.

Still, the moon remains, attached to the tides,  

and even in times like these,

determined to do its little job, 

whether or not it’s to any avail.

 

Meanwhile, let's not forget to attend to ours.  

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars. 

HOLIDAY MUSIC IN THE BLEAK MID-WINTER

by Mary K O'Melveny

Each time one hears Bing Crosby sing

"White Christmas," the virus has likely

claimed five lives. Last night we listened

to Ella’s version. I always wondered

if each time she sang it she thought

about racial irony or just conjured

up a view of snowy flakes on

the down low, sleigh bells providing

a back beat. I always preferred

the music rife with magical thinking,

chorale harmonies and swelling strings –

"Ave Maria," "The Little Drummer Boy,"

"Do You Hear What I Hear," "O Holy Night."

 

"We Three Kings," another standout,

spins its tale of faith burning beneath

a diamond sky. Those wise travelers

were my favorites. They radiated

intrigue enveloped by chilled air thick

with scents of cinnamon, clove,

licorice, citron and amber smoke.

Years after my mother died, she returns

whenever I hear "Silent Night." Each

December, we sat in an old Georgetown

church decorated with beeswax candles

and pine garlands, listening to a flute

rendition as delicate as a flock of doves.

 

This year, everyone’s holidays

are dimmed, as dampened as last night’s

fire ashes. Gravesites multiply

even as frozen vaccines are

borne across state lines like exotic

gifts. As the solstice approaches,

fresh as a miracle, melancholy

pushes against our need for comfort

and joy. We want to sing, to praise

new birth, even as snow falls upon snow.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

AMERICAN SOLSTICE

by Peleg Held

Wednesday's surprise announcement that the U.S. will quickly withdraw all its troops from Syria is the stuff of nightmares for many of the Kurds living under the protection of U.S forces and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “Everyone is upset, sad and afraid,” one SDF member from the Kurdish-dominant Syrian city of Kobane told Fox News. “It’s a historic mistake. We wanted to be part of America. We are surrounded by enemies, and ISIS isn’t even finished yet.” “Everyone is confused and scared. This will mean that Turkey will likely attack us. We are in shock because we thought the U.S. would help us achieve peace after ISIS. We didn’t think that they would help us defeat the terrorists and then leave us alone to face the horror of Turkish forces and its extreme factions,” lamented Mazloum Kurdy, a 33-year-old father and teacher from Kobane. “Now people are thinking to displace themselves from their homes here again, but nobody knows where a safe place to go is.” In his words, it is an ultimate betrayal by the United States. —Fox News, December 20, 2018. 

 . . . only when the mountains are no more, only when Ocalan’s solitary resistance no longer lights our way is the day we should say “Kurds are no more” . . .    —Hawzhin Azeez


You waver, thinning wisp of a republic,
as the smoke of betrayal is drawn into our chests.
Drift into infamy. You say you are freedom itself
and now no longer owe any promise to liberty.
In Kobane they will grip their fate in their own hands,
in Rojava they will look to the mountains as their only friends.
A great people will once again be backed to the wall
while cowards rub their heels and take
the bows for the sacrifices of others. The watchers
on the walls tonight see you turn your back. Resigned
but not surprised. The only Empire that does not betray
is the one that, clutching the stone of its own delusions
finally sinks under. When your time comes,
as it will, for the last sparks to go cold into the black
earth, no one will come to sing over your ash.
Under a red flag the last architects of Armenia
march to mark your enduring work of this day.
Waver, thinning wisp of a republic
as the smoke of betrayal is drawn into our chests.

Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.

THE SOLSTICE OF 2018

by Joan Colby

Image source: Vox

The Ursid showers cursed
With the Cold Moon—final fullness
Of the year. Its harsh reflected glow
Effacing the ten meteors
We hoped to see.

We hoped the solstice
Might bring a ring of charity.
On TV, he said plainly

“I will take the mantle.
I will be the one.”

To shut down the nation for a wall
To keep out all those who aspire.

Citizens, you will not walk
In the national forests thick with snow.
The gates of the great parks will close
Upon the canyons and the geysers.

If we stare into the universe
To see the Ursid showers,
A scowling face will blot
That smallest desire.
A metaphor of our sad future.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

IMPRESSION

by W.F. Lantry

Our marbled cherry trees have lost their leaves.

It’s not yet solstice. Birds are gathering

in hidden trees along the riverside.

I listen to them from the forest’s edge

and mark the dew on willows, heavy pods

of wisteria, weighing down each separate vine,

disordered grass stems tangling Mary’s feet.

We’ve each spent lifetimes learning all these signs:

our Fall is coming, even though the days

seem long enough to finish everything.

I take on so little. I take on far too much:

the red clay pond, half dug and filled with rain

beckons. It’s pleasant work, but other tasks

with other frames conspire. Is there time?

And yesterday, at dusk, we crossed a field.

I offered her my shirt against the cold

and noticed how the hawks have disappeared

replaced by owls and foxes, how the deer

made bold by wind, invade, how sedum change

from white to rose. Some moving into red

presage feathered designs of ice-framed ponds.

W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds(Finishing Line 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Asian Cha and Aesthetica. He works in Washington, DC and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.