STICKS AND STONES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

                                     

break my bones 

words can never hurt me 
but words are hurting 
even killing 
now  
to shut down 
to shut up 
tit for tat 
with bigger stones 
and bigger sticks 
we’ll show you who’s boss

while children die 
the hungry starve 
families live in cars 
books burn 
(this needful list is long) 
as bones break 
bodies break 
spirits die 
the world watches 
as hands take aim

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

SMALL THINGS

a factual account

by Shira Dentz

Brazilian geologists have found rocks comprised of plastic on an uninhabited island in the mid-Atlantic. —Plastic Soup Foundation, March 22, 2023

microplastics melt and cohabit 
stones on remote islands, 
melding new geology,
fashionably hybrid.
in short time the moon
will have its own time zone,
a part on our watch, as
seaweed blooms mid-ocean
wider than a continent
and lists towards shores,
still-hungry 

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including Sisyphusina (PANK Books); winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021), and two chapbooks including Flounders (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Poetrysociety.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards. 

A WOMAN IN TIGRAY

by Sarah Mackey Kirby

Britain's Channel 4 recently aired a devastating report on these atrocities. One survivor recounted a harrowing 10-day ordeal to the network during which she said she and five other women were gang-raped by Eritrean soldiers. She said the troops joked and took photos as they injected her with a drug, tied her to a rock, stripped, stabbed and raped repeatedly her. Doctors who've treated Tigrayan women have said one woman's vagina was stuffed with nails, stones and plastic. —CBS

is filled with stones,

nails. By her captors.

If she is not human,

if she must be bloodline-cleansed

from existence,

then why does crying matter.

 

The sun rises all over the world

as if it doesn’t know.

And sets apricot embers

each evening.

In darkness, a woman in Tigray

is filled with stones.

Filled with soldiers.

Alone below Orion’s belt,

sharp in the night sky,

glowing fire

three stars in a row.

Sarah Mackey Kirby's first poetry collection The Taste of Your Music (Impspired) will be published in May 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Chiron Review, Connecticut River Review, Impspired Magazine, and elsewhere. She and her husband live in Louisville, Kentucky.

THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE IN 2020

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

i sit here
what do i say
what could i have said
with either red or blue words
but i could not     did not
i watched for how long
as if from a window
to the street below
where the red and blue 
used words as stones and guns... 
painful watching has its other side
i in my silent poem
wept    


Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

AMERICA

by Gil Hoy

Image from Acropolis Restoration Service

The stones
of the Acropolis

Are mighty stones,
Weighty stones

Some cracked,
Others stained

Stones of time, tribute
Majesty and merit

Set upon higher ground. 

Blue-gray stones set
Above the sea,

Above the hill
And then the world

They are like
what we imagine
Democracy might be

Majority rule,

Minority rights

Free, fair elections

Cooperation,

Compromise.

Blue-gray stones
set above the world
to remind us

That democracies

have flown, 

are fleeting.

The stones 
of the Acropolis 

Are mighty stones, 
Weighty stones

Set upon higher ground. 

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program.  Hoy received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.  He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared (or will be appearing) most recently in Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, The Penmen Review, I am not a silent poet, Clark Street Review and TheNewVerse.News.

WHEN THE WATER RUNS OUT

by Joanna Schroeder



When we run out of water
we will drink tall glasses of stones
from the riverbeds.
We will brush our teeth and rinse

with only the stream of our own saliva,
the trickle of blood from our own gums.
We will wash our hair with wine,
clean our bodies with vinegar.
We will shower the azaleas with time,
all the second hands pulled
from antique watches, gathered in a pail
to pour down like our memory of rain.
We will survive on the notes
of desperate songs, the ones
we haven't heard in years,
conjuring old lovers ghosts
so parched as we are
so thirsty,
even for our own tears.



Joanna Schroeder is an ex-punk adult from Columbus, Ohio.