LOWNDES COUNTY

by Mariana McDonald

Source: Balls and Strikes, April 21, 2025. Pictured: Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who said, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.”

       for Catherine Flowers

A low wind shifts and yet the smell

persists, erasing whiffs of sweetbrush,  

freesia, lilac. Even the gardenia,  

drowned out by the blaring stench  

of waste, raw and moving, straight-  

piped, pumped into the yards of poor   

folks in Lowndes county, Alabama,  

where Jim Crow and ramshackle join   

to spread a putrid presence onto lawns   

where children play, E. coli and danger   

in the dirt. No rains can clean it,  

clear it, make the grass a sea of   

fresh green bending in the wind,  

seed of childhood memories, scent of  

freshly-cut & gathered blades of summer.  

A memory Lowndes County children may not have.  

One brave fighter worked for years to change it,  

got a president to sign his name to fairness,  

agree to let the lilies and magnolias  

one day reign there, redolent of justice,  

until one stinking voice called it illegal, 

overturned it,  cancelling the clean-up,  

leaving stench  

to flourish

Author’s note: 

“Lowndes County” is about the poor and 72% Black county in Alabama where lack of public sewage treatment facilities forces residents to “straight-pipe” sewage into their lawns, creating a putrid public health and environmental disaster. After years of residents battling the state to have the problem addressed, and inspired by the leadership of Lowndes County native Catherine Flowers, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation which resulted in the 2023 landmark environmental justice agreement. The agreement calls for wide-ranging public health remediation and sanitation improvements. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice deemed the agreement “DEI” and therefore illegal, and overturned the agreement this month.

Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, writer, scientist, and activist. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She became a Hambidge Arts Center Fellow in 2012, and was appointed Black Earth Institute Scholar/Fellow in 2022. She lives in Atlanta. 

SOMETHING ABOUT WOLVES IN LOUISVILLE

by W. Barrett Munn

They hunt

as if they were four wolves,

a pack in pursuit of its prey.

When found they surround.

Fearsome, they isolate the young, the weak.

The black

night of the deserted moon masks

their padded steps but rapid hearts

and adrenal sweat unmasks

their stealth intent.

In silence they surround.

Less silent comes their rush:

Sudden. Sure.

They come as one

faceless, nameless, savage fury

until prey can only hope

survival of encounter

but this prey never had a chance:

judged and juried,

justified the pack brings down

its game, misguided hunger quelled.

In silence they survive

the questions; they

close the open net

no game escapes

no mistakes as

the righteousness of nature

nestles close.

Silence is a necessity

voices turn blue ischemic,

black and whites become necrotic.

But the smell won't fade in silence.

Stench always has a cost.

Silence as a weapon is

too weak when conscience speaks

too weak and unreliable when

other hunters—larger,

more powerful—

lay down their open traps.

W. Barrett Munn lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His poems have appeared in Copperfield Review Quarterly, Volney Road Review, Speckled Trout Review, and The Asses of Parnassus. He is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature where he studied under Larry Callen.

HUNGRY, SCARED, AND SICK

an erasure poem by James Penha
from "Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Texas," 
The New York Times, July 6, 2019

Clint is known for holding what agents call U.A.C.’s, or unaccompanied alien children—children who cross the border alone or with relatives who are not their parents. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

the stuff of nightmares
scabies
shingles
chickenpox
stench
orders to take beds away
from children to make more space
"unaccompanied alien children"
as young as 3
as young as 5 months old
lacking diapers
toothbrushes
toothpaste
soap
children crammed into
a prison environment
My God, these are babies
They are keeping babies here


James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News.

FIDDLING WHILE NIGERIA BURNS

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

“Nigeria has ordered the closure of all secondary schools in Yobe state after Islamic extremists massacred 42 people at a boarding school in the region.” --The Independent (UK), 8 July 2013

Do you smell the stench, America?  in the vessels of fuel by Islamic extremists, in their vessels  of dried and fresh blood?  of burning flesh? of children at school? of wounded skin and bone? of ruptured tissue? of spilled brains? of a father's torment?  of seeing his two sons? who,  fleeing  fires of  Hell  are shot to death? hacked to pieces? do you hear their cries? smell embered hearts?  or is it a headline? buried with children? in fireworks of a different sort? the kind of American explosion in the sky? on the fourth of July? when we shoot the stars in bursts? when stepping  over ashes of Western civilization, we light our fires? fiddle with grills?  barbecue ribs buried in  smoky sauce? and  sniff the stifled air?   

 
Lucille Gang Shulklapper is a poet, fiction writer, workshop leader mother, and grandmother.