EXPECT GOOD NEWS

by Karen Warinsky

 

Bees are in trouble, this we know

but in Oregon no bees died

of pesticide in five years

and somewhere a teen rescued an elder

wandering in 103-degree heat,

a firefighter saved three kids from drowning 

on the Fourth of July

an African coral reef has returned to life,

the same life a tiny girl wants to give

to her big sister

by donating her bone marrow,

while a doctor repaired a man’s hands

through brain surgery,

as scientists discovered a frog bacteria

that can wipe out cancer tumors

and that magic mushrooms

sometimes bring back memories from dementia,

and all the while people pay their bills

donate to the homeless, to food banks,

to hurting people in war zones

and they return money, jewelry and wallets

found in cabs, on the beach,

take out ads and post it till someone calls

take no reward,

Paul and Ringo call each other

every week

and sugar has been found in the Milky Way.

 

Remember there is good news

and never give up, never quit

feed your mind,

look for sugar in the stars.

Best of the Net nominee and award-winning poet Karen Warinsky is the author of four collections including Dining with War  (Alien Buddha Press), and Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books).  A former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest, Warinsky has published widely in lit mags and anthologies including Blue Heron,  Consilience, Silkworm, Wordpeace, Circumference, The Naugatuck River Review, and The New Verse News.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CYNICISM

by Michael Mark

The doctor looks at the x-ray 

of my little toe and notices

a dip in his 

Money Market fund. 

 

He recommends surgery.

 

The authorization request 

is forwarded to the insurance 

company examiner who'd

been warned by management 

about being too liberal with 

approvals.

 

She reviews the doctor’s 

diagnosis, carefully 

considering her job security.

 

After reading the denial

my wife

asks why we pay so much

for insurance if we can’t

use it.

 

And why doctors go

to medical school to get 

all the knowledge 

when the insurance 

companies

have all the power.

 

And why do I 

go around without shoes 

all the time

because that’s what caused

the bump on my toe?

 

I go for a ride to blow off

steam and my car breaks down.

 

Bending over the engine, 

the mechanic 

glances at my expensive shoes

and I say,

Yeah, I know, this is going to be a big job.

Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, awarded the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Prize. Poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, The Sun, The Best New Poets 2024.

SURGEONS OF THE INSECT WORLD

by Martin Elster

Ants in Florida perform life-saving surgery on their peers, scientists have discovered. They are only the second animal in the world known to do this — along with humans.  —Live Science, July 2, 2024. Image by Bart Zjilstra.

The femur of an ant sustains a wound?
No fear! Her friends come round to amputate it.
The injured ant is brave. (They don’t sedate it.)
Her tight-knit colony is super-tuned
to spot all troubles, never apathetic
to nest-mates. Every helper is a hero.
Each one of them, despite receiving zero
training, is a natural-born medic.
They diagnose, see if the wound’s infected
or sterile, and then treat accordingly
(like surgeons you or I might go to see).
Damaged or not, no member is neglected.
They work for forty minutes on her leg
to lop it off. At first, they lick and lick
the wound so clean, no germ will make her sick.
Mouths moving up her limb, she doesn’t beg
her mates to stop. Stoic, calm, collected,
she sits there while the surgeons work intently,
gnawing at her shoulder — far from gently.
With five remaining legs, feeling respected,
she walks off as if nothing is amiss
with feelings of contentment — or even bliss. 
With Primal Instinct as their sole director,

she’s confident her kinfolks will protect her.

The winner of the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, Martin Elster comes from Hartford, CT, where he studied percussion and composition at the Hartt School of Music and performed with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Martin, whose poetry has been strongly influenced by his musical sensibilities, has written two books, the latest of which is Celestial Euphony (Plum White Press, 2019).

ATTACHED

by Esther Cohen

Tractional Retinal Detachment is a painting by Feyene Art which was uploaded to Fine Art America on February 3rd, 2019.

My cousin Stanley
has been living on kibbutz
forever detached retina
a few days ago 
went to an eye hospital
an hour away
surgeon a skilled
Palestinian doctor did 
a beautiful job 
and although he still
has the usual eye problems
sight will take a while
Stanley was grateful in the middle of all this
to have such a good doctor
fix his eye.

Esther Cohen’s new book All of Us will be published Nov 6 by Saddle Road Press.

THE NEWS AT SYCAMORE GAP

by Gus Peterson

Boy, 16, Arrested After Felling of Famous U.K. Tree That Appeared in 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.’ The tree, known as the Sycamore Gap tree, appeared in the 1991 movie 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman. —People, September 29, 2023

Minutes after it breaks,

the breaking down of it,

speculation online—

only a trained arborist

could have done this,

the cut so surgical,

the wound so practiced.

Only one versed in

disassembling the world,

only inhuman hands

would hold the hungry teeth

of a saw so steady,

impart such cleanliness

to death, here where the empire

at last reached its limit,

Roman wave thinning

over the beach of the world

the way a dough’s fabric,

rolled again and again,

tears. In the end,

vandalism. In the end,

just another kid. In the end,

any surgery a cutting open,

off, the inside revealed

out, that all too human face

leaning in for a look,

admiring its handiwork.

Gus Peterson lives and works in Maine. 

TO PICK UP AGAIN

by Indran Amirthanayagam 

When thousands of far-right supporters of Brazil's ex-leader, Jair Bolsonaro ransacked Brazil's government buildings on Sunday, political leaders condemned the grave attack on the country's democratic fabric. The buildings also held a rich collection of art, some of which suffered irreparable damage. The government has mourned the loss of key parts of the artistic collection, which it said represents an important chapter in its national history… As mulatas, a painting by Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, was found punctured in seven places. The government said it was worth at least 8 million reais (£1.2; $1.5m). Photo: Damage to the Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting is inspected. —BBC via Yahoo! News, January 10, 2023

Urine and shit provide biological

clues to riot investigators, combing 

executive palace, congress, supreme 

court in Brasilia as condemnations 

spread the day after, the passing 

of blame, words of support and 

sympathy, and revisions of what 

could have been done to hold 

 

the line. The line did not hold, 

the damage done, but the body is alive 

still and ready for restoration surgery, 

new heart, liver, kidney, and craftsmen 

hired to work on the great painting 

punctured in seven parts.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

TENDING TO HIS OWN HEART ON FATHER'S DAY

by Laura Rodley

His heart is carefully tendered,

a stent maintaining a constant

opening in his left descending

artery, the artery that was

completely blocked three years

ago causing his heart attack,

before his surgery. His heart has

healed to full sixty percent ejection

fraction: normal. He takes his meds

regularly, calls me, his wife, to say

he’s taking them while on the road,

a way to remember what is so easy to forget.

Before his heart attack, the pumping action

of his heart was just an afterthought, a given,

no monitoring or overseeing required.

Now he is father to his heart, constantly

aware of its pulses, aware of pains that were similar

to his neck pain, the nausea, when his heart

was blocked, a pearl spun of his own plaque

blocking the flow. He will always be watching

the rhythm of his heart, aware of its working, or not.

His heart is no longer a child released out

into the world like his son and daughters.

His heart rides with him everywhere,

has special needs: low salt, no butter, only

olive oil, a specific regimen he must follow

to not fail his heart so his heart won’t fail him.

Though, if, in spite of this, his heart fails,

it would not be his fault: it’s genetics, an inherited

weakness that overtipped the cart, but now he’s

pushing it, all of it, his heart, his father

who had four heart attacks, his being father

to his own heart, making sure it wakes up

on time, beats on time, he’s never closing the door.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

PROSTHETICS AND AESTHETICS

by Janet Chalmers

“It’s a tremendous amount to put your body through, and it’s not like we’re going to get our breasts back,” said Rebecca Pine, 40, who decided against reconstruction surgery after a mastectomy. Credit Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.

after “‘Going Flat’ After Breast Cancer,” by Roni Caryn Rabin 

in The New York Times, October 31 1, 2016.

Even before it was removed she knew she’d
have the tender cicatrix tattooed, would search

the gallery’s designs of ivy, snakes and dragons
intertwined until she found the single rose with

dagger thorns to shield her naked archer’s chest,
would use her grandmother’s antique crystal

serving bowl to display with warrior’s disdain

the powdered pink prothesis she would refuse.

J. Gerard Chalmers (Janet Chalmers) is a New York writer with an MFA from Columbia University. She has published poems, reviews and social commentary in many literary publications such as Bellevue Literary Review, Barrow Street, New Millennium Writings, Fogged Clarity, The Naugatuck River Review, Inkwell and the Kenyon Review (online). She was nominated for the 2014 anthology, Best New Poets and was a semi-finalist in the 2015 U. of Wisconsin Brittingham Prize and Felix Pollak Prize poetry series. She is currently writing a book of poetry called Scorpion Love about Picasso's mistress, the artist Dora Maar.

ELEGY FOR CLAUDIA EMERSON

by Joan Mazza

Claudia Emerson, Florida, 2008. Photo by Joan Mazza.


Even when your flame flickered, you still

shone in photos of the stitches of your

upper arm, broken when opening a jar.



Through surgeries and radiation, you coupled

your words with music, stanzas we entered

unafraid. You kept your smile when your hair



fell out, and showed us how to fall in love

with love again when you and Kent gazed

at each other. You said that when you were gone



women would line up around the block

with casseroles for Kent. He’s widowed

twice now. Another late wife.



Before your brain surgery, you wrote,

I hope I wake up! and you did.

How we’ll miss your light and words.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

MAN EATER

by Kristina England




A highly addictive drug whose name derives from the green, scaly sores that develop on users’ rotting flesh was reported to have found a toehold in the United States this week. --LA Times, September 28, 2013


1.

A woman lies on an operating table.
Metal tools deconstruct her brain,
then reassemble it.
She wakes, relieved to see another day,
expects the healing process,
the pain of coming back to life.
Weeks later, doctors inform
her the medical equipment was tainted,
the extra life that surgery gave her
may be eaten away;
she'd go mad in the process.
But they couldn't know for sure.
They had to wait
with her and seven other patients.
So the doctors, the media,
the whole world sat down,
flipped through magazines
while she went mad anyway.

2.

A boy will inject himself in Arizona
with a drug called Krokodil.
Gasoline and oil in the blood,
his arm will bubble up,
go gangrene.

Two years to live,
he'll shoot up again,
reduce the days
with heroin.

3.

A skin rash bans my friend's mother
from hugging her before surgery.

Lauren has stage 3 breast cancer.
Her mother - MRSA.
They can't even be in the same room
or else Lauren could get sick,
contract a flesh eating disease.

They know the odds, separate themselves,
wait to feel that mother-daughter touch again,
believing they will because belief
is the only thing between us
and the facts.

4.

Flesh eating bacteria is breeding.
We find it in our conversations.

My mother and I tongueless from politics,
our conflicting thoughts on Obamacare
some tool, some needle, some rash
we refuse to deal with.

She sits on the right side of the table.
I circle my fork through spaghetti

on the left.

Soon we'll be dead to each other -
a statistic, an autopsy.

It will hurt.
It will be maddening.

And yet, we'll still inject ourselves,
unwilling to believe
we are addicted,
we are suicidal,
we are the boy in Arizona,
senseless,
always searching for that ultimate high.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her poetry and fiction is published or forthcoming in Extract(s), Gargoyle, New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other journals.