ON CASSIDY’S COATTAILS

by Indran Amirthanayagam

You have affirmed my faith Cassidy Hutchinson
in telling the truth, in speaking it openly before
the camera, in real time, before Congress, before
history and its judgments, before the criminal
watching from his Mar a Lago mansion, before
my children, before all people interested
in seeing the line that cannot and will not
be crossed no matter how many tantrums,
and lunges for the clavicle, and requests
to overturn an election fairly won come down
from the boss, the besotted and dangerous fool
who took control of the powers of state and sought
to make them serve himself first, his acolytes second,
and damn the people, his charge. Damn even
the deranged, armed with rifles, handguns,
spears and flagpoles and bear spray who marched
to stop certification of the US election. Amazing

that we saw this defacement, as Cassidy said,
of our Capitol. Amazing that we got through
that plunder, and are still living and loving
and moving about our United States. We were
driven to the brink. And the violation of 
women’s rights called Dobbs, and the approval
to carry guns in public, and I don’t know what
else, will come out of that radicalized building
on 1^st Street NE, but let me speak for the not
silent majority. No more. We will not allow
Januuary 6^th to happen again. Not in one day.

Not incrementally with elimination of
our human rights. There is a new day
in America charged, recharged, driven
by ethics, faith in the republic, in
undeniable rights. Morning again
I call it, for the mother and father
of all marches, in America. Not
on the Capitol, but in the conscience
of all our people. for truth, for justice,
for liberty. for the American way
not the highway, not the forked
road, not the Kool aid served
by the deluded prophet in a MAGA hat.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). 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.

"A MESHUGGENEH IS ON THE LOOSE"

by Judith Terzi

& I'm sitting here with my morning

coffee watching a cockatiel 

slip tail feathers through his beak. One by

one. The ends have become ragged

with so much preening. "Rumba Poderosa"

by the band Incendio is playing 

on a cd. The bird begins to sing along, 

dance on his perch. He scurries

to the left, then rushes back to his usual

place in front of his big purple

mirror. You see, he imagines the music 

emanates from his constant mirror 

buddy. His identical twin. The bird is in love 

with his own image. I am in love 

with the bird. He sways back & forth to any 

music, but especially to a Latin beat. 

A rumba. A bolero. A tango. It's a kind 

of bird praying, a bird davening, 

you might say. While all this sashaying 

is going on, a committee is meeting 

in a sedate space on the opposite coast. 

You could say the nine members 

of the committee have been placed in a different 

kind of cage. One with carafes of

hot water & coffee, sweet rolls, bottled water.

No ladders, no pinwheels, no miniature 

crystal balls. The committee is subpoenaing 

witnesses, scratching every surface 

for any evidence anywhere data can be found. 

The bird is biting its cage bars in between 

chirps to "Rumba Poderosa." Rumba of power 

in front of his own image that he adores. 

I think he's calling me. I hear a wolf whistle 

while I'm writing this. "Let's get it 

over with," he's saying. "What's the holdup? 

A meshuggeneh is on the loose." 

Now he's started to preen his feet. He's biting 

his nails. The music has stopped. I'm 

eating a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese. 

I'm having a second cup of Joe. 

Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay) as well as of five chapbooks, including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus). Her poetry appears in a wide array of journals and anthologies. A poem, "Ode to Malala Yousafzai," was included on a "Heroines" episode of BBC/Radio 3's "Words and Music." She taught French for many years in Pasadena, California, as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. A new chapbook, Now, Somehow, will appear later this year.