MY IMPROV TEACHER CANCELS CLASS TO JOIN THE PICKET LINES

by Ron Riekki

“I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.”

—Mitch Hedberg

 

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

—Yogi Berra

 

“Mary Barra makes twenty-nine million a year,” he says.

He’s sitting in front of the class.  He sits, because of his back.

He says he won’t be back for possibly infinity, that this

strike might put his family out, have to leave.  “And I’m from

Waterford too,” he says, “Where she was born.”  A student says,

“They put Ford into everything here—Ford River, Waterford.”

“Yeah, they put it right in the drinking water,” says another

student, “Trust me, I’m from Flint.”  The first day of class

he had us go around and say our names, what we do for

a living—roofer, firefighter, truck driver.  He stopped us,

said, “You guys have the hardest jobs.  What, is one of you

an oil rig worker?”  “I used to be,” said one of the students.

“What’re you all doing here?”  “We need some comedy

in our lives.”  I don’t tell the class this, but my PTSD

counselor recommended improv, said social connection

is better than counseling.  So I came.  One day, the teacher

asked for a suggestion, and someone shouted, “War!”

I froze up, couldn’t talk.  The teacher stood up, said,

“And this here’s the old town statue, unfortunately,

we’re gonna have to tear it down.  Bye, Robert E. Lee.”

And then a bunch of the class entered into the scene

as townspeople and they picked me up and hauled me

in the air across the stage.  Everybody was dying

laughing.  After, a student said, “You make a really

good Bobby E. Lee.”  More laughter.  I had started

to have a panic attack, but they brought me back, tore

it down.  And now we’re worried class is going to be

canceled.  An EMT in the class said COVID’s coming

back.  A guy who’s unemployed told us he was jealous

of our having work—and now our teacher doesn’t, says

it might go on forever, the strike, says he has to be out

on the line at 6 a.m., “but there’s no parking,” said he’s out

there in the rain.  “That sucks.”  “No,” he explains, “It’s

what I’ve been doing at GM my whole life.  We work

outside, every day.  Winter too.”  We sit there and stare,

silent, at the stage.  It’s empty.  Totally empty.  Black-

box theater.  But not even black boxes.  Nothing.  Just us.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).

WHAT IN GOD'S NAME?

by Marilyn Peretti

‘

I say Jesus Christ 

when I’m not supposed

to say Jesus Christ.

Jesus / Ukraine flag

Published: Oct 16, 2014

by 

Zakharii

I said Jesus Christ

when the pregnant woman

was carried on a stretcher

from the bombed maternity

hospital, her hip and leg 

hanging to the side,

and her baby died.

I said Jesus Christ

when the magnificent

Mariupol theater building 

was smashed, burying

hundreds of people

sheltering there.

I said Jesus Christ

when there were 7 fires

burning unchecked at

Chernobyl  Nuclear Plant.

I said Jesus Christ

when they displayed 

109 empty strollers 

representing the children 

who died — so far.

I said Jesus Christ

as Russia stepped up attacks

on Mariupol when it was

already reduced to ashes,

with thousands of survivors

left there, starving.

Jesus Christ

Marilyn Peretti from near Chicago has been published in various journals over the years, including The New Verse News, Kyoto Journal, Gray Sparrow Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Highland Park Poetry, Snowy Egret. Her most recent book is Behind the Mask in 2020... 2021... .

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS

by T R Poulson

I wish all emergencies could take place like this:

a theater in the city, stage guns made of rubber

and metal to withstand so many drops and hits

in rehearsals, forgotten lines and flubbers.

The line: I am not throwing away my shot,

as the killer creeps in—Lord show me how

to say no to this—that flutter, why not

here among the songs? The heartbeat now

slows, the patron falls, as Aaron Burr’s pistol

pops. Dying is easy, young man, living

is harder. It plays out as in a crystal

ball. Gun! No prayers, thoughts, forgiving

this time. If only hearts could always feast

on rhymes, as the attack of living lurks, looms,

the gunman a mere actor, a ghost deceased

long ago. I want to be in the room 

where it happens, where everything is just

musical, where lights give me an eyeful,

where words spoken, though fiction, I trust,

and paper walls surround non-shooting rifles.

T R Poulson lives in San Carlos, California.  Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, J Journal, and others.  She enjoys basketball, windsurfing, and going to plays, including a recent performance of Hamilton in San Francisco, which took place the day before the performance in which there was a false shooter alarm.

SONG FOR THE SHOOTERS

by Maryann Corbett

     

“Somehow this has become routine....”

                —Barack Obama

How this becomes routine, we cannot tell.
The bashful toddler’s ringlet-haloed head,
how early does it hear the songs of hell?

The nattering of talking heads, so shrill
it crawled inside the childish mind and bred?
How is this now routine? We cannot tell.

The silent, brooding boys who tripped and fell
down through the blacklight labyrinth of dread
whose only soundtrack is the song of hell?

We guess they held a hurt, its heft, its chill,
and gripped a fury till their fingers bled—
Routine, routine. This little we can tell:

Post office, movie theater, shopping mall,
and classrooms whence all understanding fled
ring with the screaming antiphons of hell.

What love, ringing its changes on the knell
of cell phones from the pockets of the dead,
must hear routine, routine? We cannot tell
how human ears unhear the songs of hell.


Maryann Corbett's third book, Mid Evil, won the 2014 Richard Wilbur Award. She lives in Saint Paul and works for the Minnesota Legislature.

WATTAGE

by Alejandro Escudé






The cellphone in the mind rings.
No one there—

She cries
for the impermanence
of permanence

the way a person can climb
up on a stage

seeking wattage.
There’s no real age

for barbarism.
It haunts the elementary school

and the college;
it seeps into the corridors

of Congress.
It seeks only excess.

And is dead
to even the planned

execution
of betrayal.

The narration of a soul
is its final

dissolution.
You mustn’t give it

context.
Only the kernel

of a lasting impression
should breathe.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.