OPEN LETTER TO ‘WOMEN FOR TRUMP’

by Nancy Meneely

At least two dozen women have accused Trump of assaulting them or making unwanted sexual advances. The allegations against Trump run the gamut of groping, leering at underaged pageant contestants, forcibly kissing women without permission, and other instances of assault. —Daily Kos, September 7, 2024

We who have been raped
will not find words 
with gnarl enough
to let you know
how terrible it is
to face a rapist’s face 
on every screen,
to hate,
to know again the horror
felt as nausea
too deep to be expelled
and grief disguised as furious
for certainties that spilled
the moment when
the sudden stranger
pulled himself away,
grief for helpless,
never wholly safe again.
 
How little you must guess of us
when you cry love for him.
How careless you diminish me.

Nancy Meneely’s first book, Letter from Italy, 1944 (Antrim House) was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name, composed by Sarah Meneely-Kyder and performed twice by Connecticut choruses and symphony orchestras. Her second book, Simple Absence (Antrim House), was nominated for The National Book Award and placed as a grand prize finalist in The Next Generation Indie Awards and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award.

AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS

a pantoum

by Kai Thigpen

i am not a weapon to be used

in the destruction of a people

 

for i was a stranger in the land

of egypt

 

even if my people sharpen themselves to steel points

or round themselves into bullets

 

thou shalt not murder

the destruction of a people

a choking silence

muffles rounds of bullets

 

thou shalt not use the name of 

 

genocide

 

in vain

 

a choking silence 

a temple destroyed again and again over so many centuries, so many times it’s all we can point to with our free hands while our other hands are soaked in blood from genocide

 

in the beginning

 

some of us have killed

some of us have been told

“you will not be safe if we do not kill”

 

 

a temple destroyed again and again over so many centuries, so many times it’s all we can point to with our free hands while our other hands are soaked in blood:

my people take the shards of the temple, of every country

we have been told to leave, of every house

in which we have needed to hide

and sharpen themselves to steel points

 

 

we have killed

 

therefore set these words 

upon your hearts and souls: i am not a weapon to be used

in the destruction of a people.

Kai Thigpen is a white, non-binary, Jewish poet and therapist serving primarily LGBT+ communities. They live on occupied Lenni Lenape land, in Philadelphia, with their partner and two fluffy cats. Kai's poetry chapbook, habitat, is available from Illuminated Press.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

An athlete, who cleared hurdles with great ease,

Got ready for the most important race

Of his career by streaming melodies

On board a bus to take him to the place

Decided on. But he relaxed too good!

Soon he was miles from where he should alight

And, if he took official guidance, would

Miss any chance of setting matters right.

And then a Good Samaritan appeared,

Re-routing him and stepping in to pay ...

In life, for certain hurdles to be cleared,

The stranger's kindness proves the only way,

As this man, with Olympic gold to own,

Now tells. He did not win his gold alone!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly.

HERE, HOLDING ON

by Carolyn Martin

Photo by Rob Sheridan: Ground Zero, New York City. October, 2001.

                                             
                        for New York City


October 1, 2001

Twenty days of barricades
and twos and threes pause
on Chambers Street—
business suits, backpacks, hoodies,
uniforms in every shape.
No one pontificates
over vacant desks and pews,
tear-wet beds, fire stations gone,
bone fragments searching for home.

Here, they’re awed.
Tower shadows fled.
The first time in thirty years
Village streets and living rooms,
store fronts with their sidewalk signs,
responders struggling with ash
bathe in sun. They bathe in the sun.

Here, light takes hold
and I, a stranger from 3,000 miles west,
grab a subway strap,
head to an uptown hotel
to write this down.

August 7, 2017

Here, breaking news:
DNA defines one more loss.
(Male. Unnamed. Per family request.)

Who’s left?

Eleven-hundred twelve gathered
in dusty dark, sharing thoughts
they thought as shadows dissolved.
Comparing notes on deals signed,
dinners served, dreams deferred
for the practicalities of work,
little words unsaid.

Here, holding on—each to each—until
they’re freed from this room
where they’ve agreed on the coarsest truth:
closure is a human myth.        

From English teacher to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and dry summers. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK, and her third poetry collection Thin Places was released by Kelsay Books in Summer 2017.

THE AGGREGATE

by Rick Mullin

Somewhere out there, not so far away
from all the inconsolable commuters
solemnly interred beneath a day
they’d warded off on personal computers,
wakes the shadow of catastrophe
and rage. Certainly in Tobyhanna,
Pennsylvania, there is little laughter.
Promise fades into a knotted red bandanna
in Wisconsin on the morning after.
In New Hampshire, Pyrrhic victory
suggests a mere alternative to death.
My morning walk to Wall Street, out of phase,
slow-motion, almost out of breath,
is interrupted by a stranger’s gaze.
And I don’t like the way he looks at me.


Rick Mullin's new poetry collection is Stignatz & the User of Vicenza.

VERITAS VANISHED

by Bob McNeil

Source: Politifact

Aphorists say that

The truth is old—
Bristlecone-pine-tree-old,

And the truth is cold—
Cadaver-in-the-arctic-cold.

Granted, the truth is a lot of things,
But it’s the thing
That’s not being told.

I believe
The truth is a stranger
That’s about as foreign as an extraterrestrial.
It will never land on the lips of politicians.

That’s the truth.

Tenaciously, Bob McNeil tries to compose poetic stun guns and Tasers, weapons for the downtrodden in their effort to trounce oppression.  His poems want to be fortresses against despotic politics.