WHERE WE ARE ALL FALLEN

by Chun Yu

 

“Give it back to me!”

I dragged the mugger and his bike

To the ground in a split second

Demanding firmly the return of

The device, an extension of my life

Snatched out of my hand from behind.

I was the last in a small crowd dashing

For an early evening downtown bus

Already shutting its door, pulling

Away from two blurry figures

Clashing on a late winter street

Beaten by cold rains and littered with

Random trash and nameless shadows.

 

“What are you doing?!”

The mugger yelled at me 

In disbelief of a muggee

Fighting for what was taken

His young eyes big and wide

Incredulous in black and white

Strong hand gripping my iPhone

Between our faces so close and

Have and have not newly switched

Veins popping and blood seething

In mutual desperation.

 

“I will give it back to you!”

He even yielded for a second

Under my unwavering stare

As my mind raced for the next move

But yanked away from my grip

With a force, sudden and resolute

And fled on his bike with

His prey and prize of the day.

I leaped up and chased after him

Like a sudden superwoman

In hope to right the wrong

(No runner or athlete

I had no idea where she came from.)

As far as I could on the darkening street

Soulless, helpless, and unnegotiable

Where he was lost, a fleeing shadow

So young and fit, full of

Heartbreaking and broken promises

Where I was lost, dragging my own shadow

Slight, alone, hands and heart emptied

A knee skinned raw.

 

“Don’t do that!”

My family and friends

Shocked and worried sick

Cried out in alarm, in synchrony

On two sides of the ocean

Hearing about my fierce fight

Fraught with danger

But keeping it from my parents

Too ill and frail to be informed

Having just pulled through Covid 

In their old ages, amidst dangers

Micro and viral, macro and epic.

 

“Don’t do that!”

I told myself that too, after:

Being petite at five foot three

Size extra small in America

Where weapons are legal and lethal

Deadly and deafening…

How I never learned Kung Fu

From Grandpa, who, having survived

Wars and revolutions, only wanted

His first granddaughter to focus

On school to become a scholar

Or better, a straight minded scientist

Safe, sensible, and disentangled from

The madness and messiness of the world…

 

But there was no time

To reason, not even with myself

For the do and do not

Being attacked and in defense

Being human, ancient and new.

 

After filing the police report

I couldn’t help but point out that

The corner, where I was mugged

In our beautiful City by the Bay

Beloved by the world

And us, with aching pride

Was dimly lit, and perhaps

Could be brightened, for safety

And for the sake of us all.

 

The officer, chill and seasoned

By the cold winds and fog

Blowing and billowing

On our golden high hills and

Through our dark low alleys

Summed it up, loud and clear

Almost with a laugh:

“This is the United States.

Nowhere is safe!”

 

I cleaned the blood off

My injured knee

Brought to the dim ground

Where we are all fallen.

 

I covered it with soft gauze

Which I wish I could apply

To the open wounds

We all carry

 

And prayed for the dawn

When we wake up

To find our way

To stand up

As one.

Author’s note: My poem is based on my experience of being mugged recently for my iPhone, much like these recent victims in the news reported by ABC News: San Francisco women targeted by teens in violent cellphone robbery spree. The incident took place at a bus station in downtown San Francisco back in March. As a petite Asian woman of 5'3", I may have appeared to be an easy target based on assumptions. However, to the mugger's surprise, I managed to tackle him to the ground with his bike and engaged in a brief exchange, during which he almost returned my phone. Unfortunately, he ultimately managed to escape with it. Writing this poem has been a profound process which allows me to reflect on the stories behind the incident from all sides, find healing and peace of mind as a victim while seeking possible solutions in the city I have chosen as my home, and which I deeply love, as a first-generation immigrant, a scientist turned bilingual poet, and a community connector.

Chun Yu, Ph.D., is an award-winning bilingual (English and Chinese) poet, graphic novelist, artist, scientist, and translator. She is the author of the memoir in verse Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Simon & Schuster). She is a Library Laureate 2023 of San Francisco Public Library and an awardee of YBCA 100 (2020). Her work is taught in world culture and history classes.

ODDS AND ENDS

by Gil Hoy

Dan Hudson. "Garbage Can" (1992), oil on panel, 24×34 inches.

On Wednesdays, 

I take my trash down to the curb. 

There's a blue bin for recyclables, 

a black bin for regular trash

and a brown bin for yard waste. 

You can tell a lot about a man 

from the contents of his trash. 

 

Our neighbor is obsessed with Covid 

and now buys most of her things 

on Amazon. Her son got sick a year ago, 

was in intensive care for three weeks 

and then died. Her blue bin is filled 

with broken down boxes every week. 

 

Her husband stays inside and has started 

drinking again. There are three or four

empty wine or bourbon bottles 

in their blue bin every week. 

 

A divorcee a few houses down  

worries about getting old. Her black bin 

holds the week's trash from products 

promising to make her gray hair brown again 

and remove the wrinkles from her face. 

She's put on weight since her husband left her 

for a younger woman five years ago. 

There are often three or four 

empty pizza boxes in her black bin. 

 

You can tell a lot about a woman

from the contents of her trash. 

 

Another neighbor has three birch trees 

next to his driveway. His yard waste bin 

is filled with grass the yard boy cut 

and birch tree branches that once encroached 

upon his driveway. His shiny Mercedes 

can now get in and out again without a scratch. 

His regular trash bin has empty pill bottles 

used to keep his blood pressure down. He bought 

the Mercedes and keeps his yard carefully 

manicured to keep up with his neighbors.

 

A house up the road has two recyclable bins 

that are always full. The house's black bin 

never has much trash at all. The owner works 

for a company that reduces greenhouse gases 

and makes our water cleaner. The owner 

attends political events most nights 

focusing on climate change. 

 

You can tell a lot about people 

from the trash they don't have.

 

A neighbor on the next street over 

is an accountant. His blue bin is filled 

with shredded paper: tax schedules, 

financial statements and old tax returns. 

By the time April 15 comes around, 

he has three blue bins that are overflowing.

 

Another one of my neighbors 

doesn't play by the rules.  

He puts his trash out early most weeks. 

And then he's fined by our Town. 

He was arrested a while back 

for stealing money from his clients 

and had to spend a few years 

away from his family. 

 

You can tell a lot about a person  

from how they handle their trash.

  

And as for me, my trash is not 

what it used to be. My wife passed away 

suddenly and the kids have all grown up 

and moved away. I don't talk with them 

or see them much anymore. 

 

I miss the deflated balloons from birthday parties 

and worn out hockey skates that used to be 

in my black bin. And the leaves that filled 

my yard waste bin when I could sometimes 

get the boys to rake. I miss my wife's 

empty fancy shampoo bottles 

I used to put in my blue bin.

 

On a good week, when I'm eating well, 

my bins may be as much as a quarter full. 

But most weeks, they're as empty 

as an old man's broken heart.  

 

You can tell a lot about a man 

from the contents of his trash. 

Editor's note: The losses mentioned in the final four stanzas of the poem are suffered by the poem's Speaker and not, thankfully, by its author. 

 

 

Gil Hoy is a widely published Boston poet and writer who studied poetry and writing at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. While at BU, Hoy was on the wrestling team and finished in second place in the New England University Wrestling Championships at 177 lbs. He served as an elected Brookline, Massachusetts Select Board Member for four terms. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer. His work has recently appeared in Best Poetry Online, Muddy River Poetry Review,  Tipton Poetry Journal, Rusty Truck,  Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review, Misfit Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Chiron Review, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. Hoy was nominated for a Best of the Net award last year.

SHE ALSO SOMETIMES ATE SALAMI

by Sean Kelbley

BOLIVAR, Ohio (AP) — Authorities in eastern Ohio say a grocery store employee has been charged with felony theft for helping herself to deli ham for years. Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Hale tells The Columbus Dispatch that an eight-year employee of regional grocery chain Giant Eagle was charged Friday with stealing food estimated by the store to be worth $9,200. The store’s loss prevention manager received a tip that an employee had been eating three to five slices of ham nearly every day over eight years. Authorities say she also sometimes ate salami. —AP via TV10, September 10, 2018

Bolivar (Ohio) rhymes with Oliver!
As in “Please Sir, I want some more.”
Not that she asked. None of us does.
It’s always worked: a pound of ham for you,
a slice for me. $9000 worth of meat

seems like a lot, but calculate the cost
of all the paperclips and pens and Post-It
pads you’ve carried home. Or think of
Government. It’s never just about the
ham. She kept parking in somebody’s
special spot, or got too many weekends
off, or got the ten-cent hourly raise, or stole
a man. Somebody told. Was it the one

who helps herself to bulk nut overweighs?
The one who picks off “spoiled” shrimp?
I’m sorry, we’re like you. How we pretend
to look the other way. How we keep score.
How we watch little things add up until
they’re big enough to use.

Sean Kelbley lives in southeastern Ohio, where he works as an elementary school counselor. His work appears in Crab Creek Review,  and online at Poets Reading the News, Rise Up Review (2017 Best of the Net nomination), and Tuck Magazine. He does not endorse employee theft. He dislikes hypocrisy.

POSTCARD FROM HOPEWELL CEMETERY

by Kathleen McClung

A Michigan woman accused of stealing flowers from local cemeteries that authorities say she used to decorate her home has been sentenced to jail. [She] was arrested after someone saw a car full of flowers leaving a cemetery. —The Detroit News, July 24, 2017

Such lavish praise on nearly every stone.
Nobody ever cheated here, I guess,
or bounced a check, defaulted on a loan,
or lit evictions with a black Zippo. Success
blooms here in jelly jars of peonies,
hibiscus, orchids, mums. They go to waste
each Tuesday though, when short-timers turn keys
on mowers, ride around, bring home bouquets
to wives. (My ex did once, ten years ago.
Then he left town with Viv.) On Monday nights
I make my rounds at dusk. I drive real slow
and pay respect, then load the car—blues, whites,
and fuchsias, sweet ceramic bowls the shape
of shamrocks, doves. They match my couch, my drapes.

Kathleen McClung lives, teaches, and writes in San Francisco. She judges sonnets for the Soul-Making Keats literary competition and hears the poetry in people trying to make ends meet.

4 70

by Akua Lezli Hope

In a case that has drawn comparisons to “Les Misérables,” the Supreme Court of Cassation [Italy] threw out the conviction of a homeless man from Ukraine, Roman Ostriakov, who was caught trying to take 4.07 euros — about $4.70 — worth of cheese and sausage from a store in Genoa without paying for it. A trial court sentenced him in February 2015 to six months in jail and a fine of €100. NY Times, May 3, 2016

Not since JeanValjean have we understood
so clearly the wages of steal or starve
damned for either for both for most
punished for manifesting the system’s failure
our e-screens endless disgorgement
of unattainable nutrition  satisfaction  satiation
bloats many, maims more with fatty malnutrition
but this isn’t that, it is about lack  lack  lack
of will to see all sated, to even the baseline
start us all level, fed, when there is food right before us,
or stashed and rotting in shipholds still
why many go hungry and this time there will
be no jail for the body’s keening, there will be no
incarceration for hunger, this time there will be no
ravening relentless pursuit by a mad cop
this time someone listened and injustice stopped

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, wearables, jewelry, adornments and peace whenever possible. A third generation Caribbean American, New Yorker and firstborn, she has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts,  Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. Her manuscript, Them Gone, won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in 2016.

WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE OWNED BY

by David Plumb

Slip on the Bible of your dreams
The organ will play and for a few short minutes,
perhaps America can fake attentiveness
between the wafer and the wine, the signs,
the blessings, perhaps a sacred universe,
a digression to quieter times,
of ruthless crucifixions,
promises of renewal, awakening,

While today fades in newsworthy bombs,
the theft of America’s wallet,
change chanted again and again
with working, unemployed Americans,
reaching for something, somewhere
beyond the weekend off, or the howling,
drooling, speculating, electrically magnified news,
wheedling, and gnawing at the remotes,
the hearts, the very strings of the sweet harp
we thought we heard in the clouds.


David Plumb’s latest fiction book is A Slight Change in the Weather. He has worked as a paramedic, a cab driver, a, cook and tour guide. A long time San Francisco writer, he now lives in South Florida . 

THE WALLFLOWERS

by Ed Shacklee

A Picasso and a Gauguin Are Among 7 Works Stolen From a Dutch Museum--NY Times, November 17, 2012

The Monet, Picasso, Gauguin and Matisse
were worth tens of millions of dollars apiece,
thus sturm und drang followed when they went AWOL
from Rotterdam’s lovely museum, Kunsthal,
and every TV blared the news without cease:
“Monet, Picasso, Gauguin and Matisse!”

But the burglars burgled two other fine paintings
which barely got mentioned and didn’t cause faintings.
The Meyer de Haan was an afterthought,
for what kind of bidding would he have brought?
And “Woman with Eyes Closed” by Lucian Freud
was a little too modern and not even nude,

so these were ignored as the burglars ran
off with Picasso, Monet and Gauguin,
plus the "Reading Girl in White and Yellow”
by Henry Matisse, an ingenious fellow;
but spare a few moments regret for de Haan
and Freud, who were stuffed in the back of a van --

less famous, but worthy to hang on the wall
of Rotterdam’s lovely museum, Kunsthal.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia.  His poems have appeared in The Flea, Light Quarterly, Shot Glass Journal and Tilt-a-Whirl, among other places.