A SLAP IN THE FACE

by Paul Hostovsky

One man slaps another
as hard as he can in the face.
A third runs up with a microphone
and asks the slapped man
how it feels to be slapped in the face.
And it feels like a slap in the face,
which the man begins to say but then
starts weeping, and his words
trail off as the camera goes in
for a close-up of the wet glisten
in the eyes of the weeping man.
How does it feel to be weeping? 
asks the man with the microphone 
while we sit at home and watch 
and weep for the weeping man
and rage at the man who slapped him,
who is standing somewhere off-camera
waiting for his turn to be asked
why he did the slapping and how
it felt and please pass the popcorn 
because as it turns out the man 
who slapped the slapped man 
is a slapped man himself, and though
he isn’t weeping now, we can feel ourselves 
feeling for the unweeping man who slapped 
the weeping slapped man who has just
slapped the man with the microphone—
and though we really can’t blame him,
we do blame him, and we don't blame
ourselves, and we keep on chewing.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

MAKE DINNER WITH THE TELEVISION ON

by Alice Campbell Romano

Photo of @AdamParkhomenko’s family trapped in Ukraine.

Face what you have to face. Chop onions. Let your

eyes sting for the kitchen screen where a city is rubble,

nothing stands, all the ground is chunks of bricks

and stones, a wreckage more extreme even than the

leavings of a tornado the TV showed you last hour.

What does it profit an autocrat, an absolutist,

unless that his obliteration is more terrible than a work

of nature. I am that I am, God the destroyer. Onions

sauté now with sliced red peppers in a little olive oil.

You feel so feeble. But you don’t flip the remote to

California’s Gold. You add the chicken tenders, while a

newscaster tells you what you know. Children starve.

Alice Campbell Romano is a New Yorker who spent more than a decade in Italy, adapting Italian movie scripts into English. Her work has been published in print journals and online, most recently by Willows Wept Review and Ekphrastic Review's Starry Starry Night Anthology; this week in Prometheus Dreaming and forthcoming in Beyond Words.

MICAH IN THE MIDST OF THE PANDEMIC

by Katherine M. Clarke

Micah

Our puppy arrives, six pounds
of squirming golden fluff chirping and burrowing
under my arm, trembling against my breast.

I reach back to my mother’s knee to find
what I’ve forgotten I know, singing
knick-knack paddy whack give the dog a bone

and nestle him into his crate with Mr. Krinkle
whose face he chews off but who still obligingly rustles,
offering rope hands and feet to gnaw on in the night.

As pandemic chaos reigns outside, love grows inside,
my beloved Lily handling and tending this small body
bursting into life, insisting on what he wants and needs

tired or not, frightened or not, a life counting on her.
She walks softly in stocking feet to feel him underfoot
to know when he races over her toes to hide.

Scooped up Micah rides high along her arm,
a pasha attended by his servant.
Firsts abound—sleeping through the night,

tasting snow, eating grass, throwing up.
Accepting a collar and lead as she hustles
him out the side door to the yard.

Victory, cheering, applause. Relief for both.
No need for social distance as the lord of all wriggliness
plays with Delores, a stuffed sheep, and Road-Kill Buzzy,

the flat woodchuck toy. A spiky rubber teething ring
on the shower curtain spread over the living room rug
as if a sphere of the virus had leapt from the television

screen filled with images of tents and stadiums for hospitals
warehouses loaded with coffins, trucks filled with bodies
while we shelter at home, grateful, joy strewn all around.

Katherine M. Clarke is a professor emeritus of Antioch University New England. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Writing it Real, Breath and Shadow, Wordgathering, Oasis, The Sun Magazine, and Northern New England Review.

ABOUT COMEY

by Frederick Shiels

Distraction Accomplished by Pia Guerra at The Nib

we were never wrong, nor were we right, nor did we know.
El Jefe de 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has no doubts: October, 2016:
“It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made
in light of the kind of opposition he had where
they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution,”
or—April, 2018, "not smart," "failure", "slimeball," "the worst
FBI director in history." And yet

Comey stresses:  "I don’t buy this stuff about
him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia.
He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence who’s tracking conversations."
in other words—"not mentally unfit to be president,
but morally so . . .  a stain,"
The Director-emeritus seems not to be vengeful
not concerned about the weather, the yellow showers,

Summed it up—to date—about his first (public) meeting with the Man,
"well coiffed," he said, "hands about average" (charitably)
"And so I’m walking forward thinking that, thinking:
“How could he think this is a good idea? That he’s going to try to hug me,
the guy that a whole lot of people think, although that’s not true,

but think I tried to get him elected president—
and did. Isn’t he master of television? This is disastrous.”—
and so it is.


Frederick Shiels is an aspiring poet and Prof. Emeritus of Politics and History at Mercy College. He has published in Avocet, Deep South Review, The Hudson River Anthology, TheNewVerse.News, and most recent book is Preventable Disasters.

EVEN CHARLIE ROSE

by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky

Go ahead—watch and weep,
for it’s too late to shut our eyes.
No more falling back asleep!
Just go ahead—watch and weep—
every channel crawls with creeps.
Unmask the truth! Unveil their lies
then go ahead—watch and weep.
It’s far too late to shut our eyes.

Felicia Sanzari Chernesky is the longtime managing and poetry editor of the quarterly Academic Questions and the newish author of picture books. Her latest is The Boy Who Said Nonsense (Albert Whitman Company & 2016). She runs a poetry writing seminar for seniors, which has been one of the most invigorating and illuminating experiences of her life.

UNREALITY TV

by Melissa Balmain

TV Guide: July 8, 1967 - Efrem Zimbalist Jr. of "The FBI" and J. Edgar Hoover of The FBI

"Comey green lights TV series to boost FBI's image"

—The Hill, April 13, 2017

James crowed, "The way to raise our cred's
to show us working smart—
an altruistic team of Feds
with public needs at heart!
They'll see I'm not some fickle nut
Or floundering buffoon!"
"Okay," said the producers, "but
why jump the shark so soon?"

Melissa Balmain is Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poems have appeared in such places as American Arts Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, Lighten Up Online, and Poetry Daily; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and Success. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award) is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

WE WORKERS

by Thomas Piekarski

The south wall of Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry mural in the Detroit Institute of Arts. 

We are the workers who build the ships that police
vast oceans shared by squid, plankton and blue whales.
We’re workers autonomous in our uniforms swayed
by the motion of constellations gradual in their effect.
We’re black men without pensions to rely on gathered
in front of the convenience store with lottery tickets
tucked in our pockets. We’re scantily clad waitresses
sexy at Hooters serving deep fried appetizers for lunch.
In Chicago, Pensacola, Albuquerque and Minneapolis
we’re taxi drivers and plumbers rising and stretching
to get a jump on dawn, twisting out kinks in our backs.
We’re money-laundering Wall Street financial kingpins
whose losses that add to the national debt are reimbursed
by smug congressional scallywags. We’re the Mexicans
who labor in Salinas fields planting and picking crops
and go home to wives and kids existing mostly on beans.
We’re security personnel, and we demand you remove
your shoes, pass them through bomb detection scanners.
We change your oil down in the pits beneath engines,
and though our hands ache your car will run smoothly.
Is anything as tender as the steak cooked so invitingly
on a hot teppan grill by the immigrant Japanese chef?
Note the greeter at Walmart’s entrance slurring words
as he rolls his wheelchair back and forth, quite cheerful.
We’re doctors performing abortions, pharmacists bottling
way overpriced drugs by the millions for hypochondriacs.
We are the workers, stoic, captivated by random winds,
the workers who adore HBO, smart phones and burgers.
We’re the workers whose marrow is sucked out of bones
born from the infant canyons and ravines of our planet.
We’re dreams that left European killing fields and chose
our own nation. We’re Stephen Foster’s children, Mark
Twain’s alter ego, Lincoln’s ghost, Sitting Bull’s blood.
We live in cleverly constructed boxes near workplaces.
We dedicated workers are well trained to forget problems,
check our attitudes at the door, produce at top efficiency.
We thrive on hysterical rhetoric that stirs our nationalism.
When the day’s work’s done we retreat to our televisions.

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared widely in literary journals internationally, including Nimrod, Portland Review, Mandala Journal, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Poetry Quarterly. He has published a travel book, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.

THE GOLDEN CALF

by Ed Shacklee

Photoshopped image by Freelancer at DemocraticUnderground.com.

Times were hard -- the fearful crowd, unruly,

felt they'd become a television serial

whose laughter track embarrassed them unduly;

they longed for prose both purple and imperial.

The promises the idol strung together

were catchy nonsense jingles if they'd listened.

Its hide, so thin, was stitched from shopworn leather.

A fool could tell it wasn't gold, but glistened;

but they were sold, for God was dead or missing -- 

the brazen moos would answer every prayer.

What did it matter what the snake was hissing?

The Trojan Horse was none of their affair.

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia. He is working on a bestiary.

THE RED SUITCASE

by Jill Crainshaw

she borrowed the suitcase from her cousin

a faded fake leather red one that

stood by the door all those weeks holding

a bathrobe and slippers and baby things ready

to go to the hospital when her first son was born

five years ago now so the suitcase was empty

and made to fit in the overhead

her aunt stuck a magazine in that front

zippered pocket at the last minute

just in case she was hungry for a taste of

home while dining in places far away

it bobs in wild waters now

with sixty-six others spilling out

blouses linen trousers a new blue jacket just in case

those pills she always took to help her sleep

handwritten sticky notes hotel receipts

hidden in the corner from

the trip before the last one

toiletries travel-sized

she planned on returning home

her aunt stares at the television screen

"vanished from radar"

"no survivors"

commentators talk on and on while

she watches wind-swept waves

longing

for something

even a flash of red

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

WHERE WOULD THE KARDASHIANS BE WITHOUT KRIS JENNER?*

by Ron Riekki

'I will never replace his beloved mom': Kris Jenner promises to 'always love' Kanye West like her own son in touching note for Mother's Day —Justin Enriquez and George Stark, Daily Mail, May 11, 2015

When newspapers died,
their son
took over
the business
and he liked boobs,
so he’d write
obituaries
about boobs
and show boobs playing
golf
and he made the weather report
a boob weather report.

The boobs
appreciated the fame.

In the old days,
boobs couldn’t be
involved in politics,
but now boobs
run for President
every year.

When the newspaper industry
died,
it was from all of those years
of smoking,
or,
excuse me,
sucking,
all of those years
of sucking
all of the air
out of the room
to make room
for the boobs.

Here’s a news
flash.

Here’s a news
peep show.

Here’s a noose.


*NY Times Magazine headline, May 8, 2015

Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (MSU Press).

RAIN NIGHT

by David Chorlton

The streets flowed easily,
one into another, and the full moon rolled
behind the clouds. Thunder
beat against the door
to wake a sleeper who had been dreaming
disconcerting dreams
and who rose to ghost to the kitchen
through the living room, whose darkness
was tempered by reflections
coming from the raindrops as they filled
with light from the streetlamps
coming down.
                     The house was floating
on insomnia. A television
flashed on, and the evangelist who never sleeps
strode up and down a stage
wearing a suit cut from sharkskin and stars
while he turned a Bible’s pages
as if counting money. The next
channel showed a drama
in which throats were slashed
convincingly, and the story turned back
on itself until the guilty party
took her own life with a gesture
worthy of an opera. It was a fine
entertainment for the hour
                                         preceding
the early local news
that revealed the city under water
with nightlights and headlamps and searching
while saguaros took in more water
than their roots could hold
and tumbled with a splash
onto the ground. By dawn’s early light
on the freeway,
                        car roofs broke a surface
so calm it was more
beautiful than the usual
rush to be somewhere
other than here. The bickering
over climate change stalled
with the traffic;
                        replaced by this new
experience leaving everyone
impressed by nature’s power.

David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.

TALKING HEAD: LEFT AND RIGHT

by C.S. Fuqua

Image source: Outside the Beltway

Brat,
with a gift to make
crazy sound sane,
speaks gibberish,
calls it fact,
and his group of loonies
cheer him on,
enact his whims.
Irresponsible,
indefensible,
unconscionable,
giddy
all the way
to the bank.


C.S. Fuqua's published books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems ~ Vol. I, Hush, Puppy! A Southern Fried Tale (children’s picture book), Rise Up (short fiction collection), The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft, Trust Walk (short fiction collection), The Swing: Poems of Fatherhood, Divorced Dads, and Notes to My Becca, among others. His work has appeared in publications such as Main Street Rag, Pudding, Dark Regions, Iodine, Christian Science Monitor, Cemetery Dance, Bogg, Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXI, Amelia, Slipstream, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.