ANTHROPOPHOBIA

by Daniel Lurie

More than a week after four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in a house near campus, the police chief leading the investigation said on Sunday that the police had not been able to answer many of the crime’s most pressing questions, such as how the victims’ roommates were not awakened during the overnight killings or where the killer might be now. The few details that have been uncovered have only deepened the mystery of a crime that has unnerved students and residents in the college town of Moscow, Idaho, and left victims’ families trying to help piece together what happened. Photo: Friends and community members celebrated the victims’ lives during a candlelight vigil in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Wednesday. Rajah Bose for The New York Times, November 21, 2022

Credi

You never trusted easy/when you first got here/every night you’d push a couch/ 
in front of the door/a dark cloud hangs/over an emptying/Moscow like quarantine/
you haven’t slept in 3 days/the faces of the 4 victims/a constant rolodex/
a handful of years younger than you/same age as your students/you hope/
they get home/after you canceled classes/you have nowhere else/to go/
over a phone call/your mother tells you to buy wood/for the ground floor windows/
all the stores are sold out/your friend Beck was struck/while on her bike/months ago/
drivers still floored it through town/this moment is a cardinal/ 
in a field of snow/you haven’t been there/but you know there’s a bouquet/
resting against a stone slab/an unrested abode/wrapped in yellow/
police tape/no one deserves to lose/their lives/the suspect still/
at large/fills every corner/every room/the eyes you won’t meet/
on the street/the shadow outside/your loved ones/homes/

Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer from Roundup, Montana. He attended Montana State University Billings, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communications. He is currently in his second year at the University of Idaho, pursuing an MFA in poetry. Daniel is passionate about the environment, human rights, rural life, and conceptualizing grief. He is the Poetry Editor for Fugue. His work has appeared in The Palouse Review, FeverDream, The Rook, Sidewalk Poetry, and most recently in Moscow’s Third Street Gallery. 

LITTLE THINGS AND BIG THINGS

by John Kotula

A terrible, terribly damaged boy nearly bleeds to death in a boat, under a tarp, in somebody’s back yard. Yes, he has blood on his hands and worse. How have we let this happen to one of our boys? But no one will say they are broken hearted. They will only say they are strong. “You picked the wrong city this time,” they say. I just want to cry for a while and hold each other.

My granddaughter is fussing in her car seat. I corkscrew my arm back and grope around for her blinky. I help her get it to her mouth. My beautiful daughter smiles at her beautiful daughter in the rearview mirror. The baby grabs my index finger in her damp, four month old fist and goes back to sleep. Something to suck on, the purr of the motor, someone within reach who loves her, is all she needs for contentment.

Way up in the mountains of Honduras there are plans to build a dam that no one needs or wants. It will make rich Hondurans richer. They will siphon off their share. It will make rich Americans richer. They will sell unsustainable technology to the rich Honduras. Some how the Chinese are involved. Some rich Chinese will get richer, too. The thatched roof houses of the poor people who live along the river will be thirty feet under water.

There is a young man who trusts me to give him advice. His mother is suddenly in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He is ashamed that he doesn’t understand her condition and doesn’t know how to make things better for her. I take the young man to the hospital and help him talk to the social worker. I joke with his mother in my bad Spanish and make her laugh. He feels a little better. I would be proud to be this young man’s father.

Automatic weapon fire blows apart a whole school full of tiny, fragile bodies. Even with the knowledge that they will never hold their own children again, the parents go to Washington and say please don’t let this happen to some one else. But the Republicans have so blatantly sold their souls, you got to wonder why God doesn’t strike them down. Hey God, where is the fire? Where is the brimstone? Where are the frogs and boils?

I am three floors above sea level in an old, old building. Looking out through wavy glass I can see the beach curve away to the north. A poet is reading about her memories of living in Alaska. I know many people in the room. Some of them I’ve known for forty years. In that moment, The New York Times and National Public Radio are far away. I don’t think so much about the little things. The big things are more important.

John Kotula is a writer and artist who lives in Peace Dale, Rhode Island.

AT LARGE

by Ana Garza G'z

Someone threw a gallon of urine in the lobby of the Fresno Housing Authority office on the Fulton Mall on Thursday morning, the Fresno Fire Department said. The office, in the 1300 block of the mall, was evacuated briefly while the Fire Department investigated the incident, which happened about 10 a.m. A man described by a witness as "homeless" tossed the container, which then broke, spilling the fluid, a Fire Department spokesman said. There were no injuries and workers returned to the building. The suspect is at large. --The Fresno Bee, Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/01/17/3137073/container-of-urine-thrown-in-fresno.html#storylink=cpy

No pride--just  a glass door, a desk,
a story, an application.
Weeks later, you’re denied
By a scowl when you check in.

You wonder what it takes
to fill a gallon with piss?
Well, first, you need a gallon.
You think you can get milk,

but for that, you need four dollars.
You also need a fridge.
to keep it in, a house,
gas and power service,

and a forty-hour job
that pays at least minimum
so you can try for Food Stamps
and low-income housing.

You have to wait on both,
despite the questions (“where do you live?”)
despite the weather (January),
despite the work you did

in that other life.
God forbid,
the people  who spend four dollars
on a cup of coffee spend

a little extra here
and there. They’ll never miss
a cent. You panhandle for
a morning to buy the milk.

You drink it in a day.
You get the massive shits.
You don’t care. You aim,
and you gather every drip,

every single drip. You take
your time. With dehydration,
it takes five days. You sit
at public computers, filling in

boxes. And then you walk
back to the glass doors and the desk
with nothing for the jobless,
but advice: those who seek find success.

You stand there, under a roof
you can’t have, and you give in
to the impulse to show them
your work, a gallon, which you spill.


Ana Garza G'z has an M. F. A. from California State University, Fresno. Forty-one of her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently in The Mom Egg. She works as a community interpreter and translator.